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PC Encyclo \ F Feb 24 2009 Flash by Chuck Bryan

Flash Website Feb 24 2009 Flash: 1996: Web Animation: If you remember the original Web, you’ll remember the small GIF animations that used to prevail. Flash is web animation in a whole new way. One way to think about the whole “animation” process is to look at MS Movie Maker. The idea is that there is:  a “Stage” for the different animation frames,  along with a definite timeline for everything to run on.  Layers then allow foreground and background objects into this mix.  Panels control all this. These “floating windows” let you modify various Flash Movie related items, such as color, images and text. o Example: The Transform Panel lets you rotate, skew and scale an object, text, or bitmap. Animation takes two basic forms:  Frame-by-frame. This is typical for GIF Animation sequences. VERY time- consuming and laborious.  Tweened ( Flash can generate the “tweens” frames given a start and an end frame.

Tools Window: Very “Paint program” like: The Tools window looks a lot like any “Paint” program, complete with circle, square, pencil and brush options. There’s even the old Paint Bucket and Lasso icons.  A Motion-Guide Layer is a special “guide” layer that lets you specify a non- linear path along which “Motion-tweened” animation sequences can be guided.  A Flash Mask operates like a “window” to reveal what’s underneath it, or can act like a “spotlight” effect on an object.

Flash versions: Flash is a contraction of the original name "FutureSplashAnimator" originally from FutureWave software. After its acquisition by , it was introduced as Flash in 1996. Since then there have been many more versions:  Flash 2 ( 1997 )  Flash 3 ( 1998 )  Flash 4 ( 1999 )  Flash 5 ( 2001 )  Flash MX ( 2002 ) Macromedia Flash Player 6  Flash MX 2004 : Flash Player 7  Flash 8 ( 2005 ) with On2 VP6 video codec  Flash Player 9 ( 2006 ) It includes a scripting language called ActionScript. If you buy the Flash program, go through the lessons that are included with it.

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Actionscript Flash Feb 24 2009 Interactive Animation: ActionScript: The animation can be made interactive by assigning actions to a movie element, such as a button, key press, or mouse movement. This could be playing a sound, pausing a movie clip, loading a graphic, etc. ActionScript is a scripting language, similar to JavaScript, that you can use to add that interactivity to Flash Movie elements. Think Window > Development Panels > Actions from the main menu. You also have the option of using “code snippets” ( “stubs” ) from the left side of the panel. For “non-programmer” types, you can also add actions by using the Behaviors Panel. Lets face it, some actions you may wish to add may be so common that Flash can establish a simple way to use them without having to “code” them at all. This is where you run into the “Event drop-down box”. Event-Driven Architecture: Windows uses an “event-driven” architecture and so does Flash. When you get into the programming code, you soon see that it all depends on the particular ( user initiated ) event, such as:  “On Press”,  “On Release”,  “On Drag Over” etc.

Symbol : Reusable Element: In Flash parlance, a “symbol” is a reusable element that can be added into a movie.  Examples: These include: o buttons, o bitmap images o movie clips o audio files.  Any copies of these symbols is called a new “instance”. You can now at least sound like a Flash guru. OpenOffice.org’s Impress: OpenOffice.org Impress: Besides being able to create PowerPoint compatible files, you can also save your work as a file!

HTML connection Flash Feb 24 2009 HTML Code can include Flash files: Flash is easily added to regular HTML code:

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Note: Classid is an attribute to the tag. It tells the Internet Explorer to lad the ActiveX plug-in if it is not installed.

IE uses the tag while tag.

Flash versus animated Images and Java Applets:  Flash loads much faster, is interactive, and does not require the programming skills of Java Applets.  Tweening is creating an object ( symbol with a "name" )on one part of the stage, moving it to another part and on the timeline and letting Flash do the "In Betweening" or Tweening for short.

Flash Software Website Apr 14 2008 Flash Creation ( Authoring ) Software: CS3 Professional $699 US or $199 upgrade version from Flash 8 ( Macromedia ) ( CS3=Creative Suite 3). You can’t help but think that if they cut the price even in half they would open the market to four times as many sales.

First time user: Build an animated banner for a website. SWF files are the files you can put online when you embed them in a web page. The plug- in then displays the SWF file. The Stage and panels are the Flash Workspace or authoring environment.

Working with Flash involves the idea of importing various “assets” such as sound, bitmap graphic and other graphic formats into a document.

The Property Inspector then works with the Timeline to control the content over time, measured in frames. Layers are another important concept at this point.

Flash banners, Flash Player see Website

Flash Streaming Video Website Apr 14 2008 Streaming audio and Video: Adobe Flash ( formerly Macromedia Flash ) offers support for bi-directional streaming of audio and video.

The traditional “Flash Files” ( flash movies ) usually have a .swf file extension. Initially the Flash Player plug-in was not bundled with popular web browsers and users had to visit the old Macromedia website and download it. As of 2000, the Flash Player was distributed with Internet Explorer.

Music Video Player: Example: www.youtube.com offers music videos like “Funky town” (1980) that you can watch if you download the Adobe Flash Player.

Vector Graphics Website Apr 14 2008 Flash: Vector graphics for the Web: In the beginning was text: The original web was like an open “text mailbox” until the IMG tag was added. Suddenly image bitmaps could be carried as well.

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The uncompressed “bitmaps” slowly gave way to compressed bitmaps by way of JPEGS that saved a lot of file space/download time but the GIF came to shine on its own for simple animations as well as simple graphic images with text. Thus a second 256 color bitmap format was added. The GIF bitmap usage in websites is almost a historical accident since the PNG standard is much better suited to the task with better compression, ICC support and alpha transparency. Vector-based PDF Graphics: The classic example of Vector-based graphics are maps and wiring diagrams. These scalable images could be expanded as needed without the inherent pixelization of a bitmap. What’s needed is a universal web vector standard, which might just be Adobe/Macromedia Shockwave Flash or SWF. Not XML-based language but a more traditional binary format embedded in the HTML page. Vector-based Animation: Flash has always realized that the big benefit of vector based graphics is that once an object has been described, all that’s needed for animation is a path and a transform! SVG: Scalable Vector Graphic is a new "standard" proposed by the W3C that will have to tackle Flash first!

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