Flash Tutorials Daniel K. Schneider (ed.) PDF generated using the open source mwlib toolkit. See http://code.pediapress.com/ for more information. PDF generated at: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 04:56:08 CET Contents Articles Flash and the CS6 authoring tool 1 Flash 1 Flash CS6 desktop tutorial 7 Basic drawing 18 Flash drawing tutorial 18 Flash layers tutorial 33 Basic animation 37 Flash animation overview 37 Flash frame-by-frame animation tutorial 40 Flash classic motion tweening tutorial 63 Flash CS6 motion tweening tutorial 81 Flash shape tweening tutorial 96 Flash embedded movie clip tutorial 106 Flash animation summary 113 Use of external media 126 Flash video component tutorial 126 Timed Text 133 Flash sound tutorial 138 Clipart 147 Texture 151 Advanced drawing 153 Flash object transform tutorial 153 Flash arranging objects tutorial 169 Flash colors tutorial 174 Flash bitmap tracing tutorial 186 Flash pen tutorial 192 Basic interactivity and use of components 194 Flash button tutorial 194 Flash components overview 212 Flash component button tutorial 223 Flash video component tutorial 237 More animation 245 Flash mask layers tutorial 245 Flash inverse kinematics tutorial 249 Flash CS4 motion tweening with AS3 tutorial 263 More interactivity 268 Flash using embedded movie clips tutorial 268 Flash augmented video tutorial 276 Flash video captions tutorial 294 Flash actions-frame tutorial 300 Flash datagrid component tutorial 303 Flash drag and drop tutorial 316 ActionScript 3 interactive objects tutorial 328 ActionScript 3 event handling tutorial 354 Working with ActionScript libraries 362 Flash ActionScript 3 overview 362 Flash using ActionScript libraries tutorial 368 AS3 tweening platform 373 FliNT particle system 389 Flash Papervision3D tutorial 398 Other Flash articles of interest 409 Flash CS3 keyboard shortcuts 409 Flash formats and objects overview 413 Flash - being organized 416 Flash 3D 418 References Article Sources and Contributors 422 Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 423 Article Licenses License 428 1 Flash and the CS6 authoring tool Flash Draft This page needs to be updated for Flash CS6, but principles remain the same ... Definition “Adobe Flash (previously called Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform originally acquired by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications. Flash can manipulate vector and raster graphics and supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video. It contains a scripting language called ActionScript. Several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash content, including Adobe Flash Player, which is available free for most common web browsers, some mobile phones and for other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).” (Wikipedia, retrieved May 23 2009). In addition, Flash is used as a format for desktop applications under the name of "Adobe Integrated Runtime" (Adobe AIR). We could distinguish four kinds of Flash authors: (a) People who use simple offline or online tools to generate applications like slide shows. (b) Multi-media authors who create good looking Flash movies. (c) Multi-media / light-weight programmers who create interactive Flash applications and (d) "Real programmers" who write so-called rich internet applications. Today, many tools can produce runnable Flash contents. However, only Adobe's commercial Flash authoring tools allow non-programmers to exploit the full capabilities of this format. Programmers, on the other hand, may use Adobe's free Flex software development kit instead of the commercial Flex builder. Flash tutorials and articles in EduTech wiki EduTech Wiki includes introductory Flash and ActionScript 3 (AS3) tutorials for Flash version 11 using mostly Adobe Flash CS6 Professional and for Flash version 9 using CS3, plus some CS4/CS5 tutorials that introduced new features not in CS3). We used these in COAP 2110 (Fall 1 2007, Fall 2008, Spring 2010, Sprint 2013, Webster University), STIC III (Fall 2007, fall 2008, Geneva university), and STIC IV (spring 2010, in french, Geneva university) courses. Some tutorials better than others and none is top quality so far, but most can serve as lecture notes and for some self-study. Most tutorials have been upgraded to CS6 in winter 2013. CS4 and CS5 users can read CS6 tutorials, but should take files from tutorials developed for CS3 and CS4. The interface changes between CS3 and CS4/CS5/CS6 are substantial but not major. The differences between CS4, CS5 and CS6 are rather minor. We produced three families of tutorials with some overlaps: • Flash tutorials (Flash CS6 plus ActionScript 3 for non-programmers, and links to deprecated CS3/4/5 versions) • Actionscript 3 (Beginner's tutorials for "pure" AS3, i.e. tool independent coding, these should be further expanded, but are not so far ...) • Flex tutorials (very few) Flash 2 All materials (*.fla, *.swf, etc.) are available at http:/ / tecfa. unige. ch/ guides/ flash/ under a CC BY-NC-SA licence. 1. Flash CS3 keyboard shortcuts 2. Flash ActionScript 3 overview -- a conceptual little overview of AS3 3. Flash formats and objects overview (not ActionScript objects !) 4. Flash - being organized (some advice for beginning Flash CS3 designers) 5. Actionscript 3 -- a complete programming language. An entry page for AS3 tutorials 6. Flash 3D -- overview page of of Flash 3D tools and AS3 libraries The Flash framework In the past, Flash was just a web animation/interactive multimedia technology. Today (2008) Flash is a serious contender for one-stop rich internet application technology as the following picture shows: Adobe Flash Platform for RIAs. Retrieved nov 2008 from http:/ / www. adobe. com/ devnet/ actionscript/ articles/ atp_ria_guide. html Flash 3 Flash versions compared CS3 was a major break from earlier versions (Flash 8 and earlier) with respect to ActionScript. ActionScript 3 is much more difficult to learn than ActionScript since it uses a modern typical user interface paradigm. In Flash 8 one could directly attach scripts to objects. In Flash 9 and later scripts are attached to frames. Changes/Additions in CS4: • A completely redesigned interface • Easier motion tweening (CS 3 motion tweening was renamed "classic tween") • inverse kinematics • Support for 3D animation of 2D objects. CS5 includes: • Better looping support in motion tweens. E.g. ctrl-select first keyframe, then ALT-drag to right after the tween span, then inverse keyframes with the right click menu) • Physic engine additions to inverse kinematics, e.g. spring functions • Support for IPhone applications (not sure that it works, since Apple doesn't like other's developing environments) • Much better text support • Code snippets (helps beginners to write AS3 code). • XML-based source code: Either compressed *.fla files or *.xfl folders. • Easier management of cue points in videos (directly in CS5) • Better deco brushes, e.g. you now can easily draw a tree... CS6 includes: • Better support for mobile technology • and more .... (to document) Since CS5, Flash includes code snippets. Therefore, these newer versions are better suited for teaching Flash to beginners. However, for learning modern Flash, it doesn't make a big difference whether you use CS3, CS4 or CS5 or CS6. Some schools simply can't afford upgrading at an 18 month rate ... Alternative technologies General formats • DHTML, i.e. the combination of HTML, CSS, DOM and JavaScript and AJAX, the same combo plus server-client communication trough JavaScript. There exist various software packages (e.g. hippo [1]) and libraries (e.g. GSAP [2]). • SVG, an XML-based vector graphics format sponsored by WC3. SVG is a powerful format, but lacks support from authoring tool and web browser makers. Adobe, before it acquired Macromedia, used to support SVG. SVG works well in the Opera browser and increasingly better in Firefox. • HTML5. It includes SVG and "DHTML" • SMIL, an XML-based multi-media integration language that supports timing, layout, animations, etc. SMIL is included in the full SVG profile. SMILE works with several media players (e.g. RealPlayer and Adobe Media Player). A variant exists for Internet Explorer. • Microsoft Silverlight [3], a mostly failed attempt by Microsoft attempt to have its own "Flash" Others See also multimedia authoring systems and computer games. Some of these have their own format, some can export to more common formats. Flash 4 Links for software and media elements General / Indexes • OsFlash [4] has a large comprehensive list of links to Open Source Flash projects, both those hosted on OSFlash and elsewhere. Of particular interest are tools that generate flash in various ways. Viewers • Adobe [5] (Flash player download) • Gnash [6] (Wikipedia article) A project which aims to create a player and browser plugin for the Adobe Flash file format which is free software. Authoring tools • Adobe Flash CS5 Professional [7]. The commercial authoring tool. Students: You can get huge discounts either through some stores or Adobe's education program [8] (takes some times to fight through this web site and to find the appropriate page). In both cases you will have to send proof to Adobe before you will get a key. Teachers pay more, institutions can make deals that are more difficult to get. Adobe Flash CS3 Professional was released in April 2007, CS4 Professional in October 2008 and CS5 in April 2010. CS4 adds inverse kinematics, easier motion tweening (i.e. object-based animation finally!) and some basic support for 3D animations of 2D objects. CS5 adds for example a physics engine. • SWISH [9]. An alternative set of commercial products to produce Flash. Much cheaper and somewhat easier it seems, but doesn't export to *.fla files (so you can't import to the Adobe authoring tool). See the Wikipedia [10] article. • Salasaga [11].