Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers

by Green, Tom

• ISBN13: 9781590598610
• ISBN10: 159059861X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-07-23
• Publisher: Apress

Summary

Flash is one of the most engaging and innovative, and versatile technologies available allowing the creation of pretty much anything from simple slideshows, animated banners and icons and cartoons, to Rich Internet Applications, Interactive videos, and dynamic user interfaces for web sites, kiosks, or DVDs. The possibilities are endless, except that now, it just got better. In 2007, Adobe released Flash CS3, which boasts a whole host of new features, including fully customizable workspace, full ActionScript 3.0 support, a PSD importer, a tween-to-code animation converter, and much more. And this book is all you'll need to learn Flash CS3 from the ground up, or learn about all these new features, if you already have previous Flash experience Flash experts Tom Green and David Stiller take you step-by-step through all facets of Flash CS3, with the emphasis firmly on good design techniques that you use in your own projects.

Table of Contents

Learning the Flash CS3 Professional Interface	p. 3
The Start page and creating a Flash document	p. 4
Managing your workspace	p. 7
Setting document preferences and properties	p. 9
The Property inspector	p. 12
Zooming the stage	p. 13
Exploring the panels in the Flash interface	p. 15
The timeline	p. 15
Frames	p. 16
Using the Property inspector	p. 18
The Tools panel	p. 20
The library	p. 21
Where to get help	p. 22
Using layers	p. 24
Your turn: Building a Flash movie	p. 29
Adding the mountains and playing with color	p. 32
Using trees to create the illusion of depth	p. 33
Using a motion tween to create a twinkling star	p. 36
A moon over Lake Nanagook	p. 37
Breaking the stillness of the night at Lake Nanagook	p. 41
Testing your movie	p. 43
Your turn: Moonrise over Lake Nanagook	p. 44
What you've learned	p. 46
Graphics in Flash CS3	p. 49
The Tools panel	p. 52
The Selection and Subselection tools	p. 53
The Free Transform tool	p. 55
The Gradient Transform tool	p. 56
Object Drawing mode	p. 58
Your turn: Moon rise at Lake Nanagook	p. 60
Drawing in Flash CS3	p. 63
The Pencil tool	p. 63
The Brush tool	p. 65
The Eraser tool	p. 66
The Pen tool	p. 67
Your turn: Trees grow at Lake Nanagook	p. 69
Working with Color in Flash	p. 72
Creating persistent custom colors	p. 76
Your turn: Playing with color	p. 78
Using bitmap images in Flash	p. 82
Working with bitmaps inside Flash	p. 83
Your turn: Tracing bitmaps in Flash	p. 85
JPG files and Flash	p. 88
Using GIF files in Flash CS3	p. 91
Importing Fireworks CS3 documents into Flash CS3	p. 93
Importing Illustrator CS3 documents into Flash CS3	p. 96
Importing Photoshop CS3 documents into Flash CS3	p. 100
Notes from the Photoshop File Importer front	p. 104
Creating a banner ad	p. 107
What you've learned	p. 109
Symbols and Libraries	p. 111
Symbol essentials	p. 113
Symbol types	p. 115
Editing symbols	p. 117
Symbols and 9-slice scaling	p. 118
The 9-slice "gotchas"	p. 122
Sharing symbols	p. 124
Sharing libraries	p. 125
Filters and blend modes	p. 129
Applying a Drop Shadow filter	p. 130
Playing with blends	p. 134
Managing content on the stage	p. 136
Aligning objects on the stage	p. 138
Stacking order and using the Align panel	p. 140
Masks and masking	p. 144
A simple mask	p. 144
Using text as a mask	p. 148
Your turn: Creating a soft mask in Flash	p. 151
Creating the cutout for the mask	p. 152
A mask without a mask layer	p. 153
What you've learned	p. 155
ActionScript Basics	p. 157
The power of ActionScript	p. 159
The Actions panel	p. 160
ActionScript vs. behaviors	p. 164
Everything is an object	p. 164
Classes define objects	p. 165
Properties	p. 166
Methods	p. 169
Events	p. 171
Syntax	p. 174
Commenting code	p. 175
Dot notation	p. 177
Variables	p. 178
Data types	p. 180
Operators	p. 182
Conditional statements	p. 185
Class files	p. 190
Document class	p. 190
How to read the ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference	p. 192
Search tactics	p. 193
Checking syntax	p. 196
Your turn: Using ActionScript	p. 200
Pausing the main timeline	p. 201
Looping the timeline	p. 202
What you've learned	p. 203
Audio in Flash CS3	p. 205
Flash and the audio formats	p. 207
Bit depth and sample rates	p. 207
Flash and MP3	p. 209
Adding audio to Flash	p. 210
Using audio in Flash	p. 214
Your turn: Adding sound to a button	p. 218
Controlling audio with ActionScript 3.0	p. 219
Playing a sound from the library	p. 219
Using a movieclip to play a sound	p. 220
Playing a sound from outside of Flash	p. 222
Turning a remote sound on and off	p. 223
Your turn: Building an MP3 player	p. 224
What you've learned	p. 237
Text in Flash CS3	p. 239
Fonts and typefaces	p. 241
Working with device fonts	p. 243
Types of text fields	p. 245
Static text	p. 245
Your turn: Playing with static text	p. 248
Dynamic text	p. 256
Input text	p. 263
HTML formatting	p. 264
Hyperlinks and Flash text	p. 266
Using HTML for hyperlinks	p. 267
Using hyperlinks to trigger ActionScript	p. 268
Embedding font outlines	p. 269
Checking spelling	p. 273
Your turn: A visit to the pond	p. 275
Scrolling text	p. 277
What you've learned	p. 281
Animation in Flash CS3	p. 283
Shape tweening	p. 285
Scaling and stretching	p. 286
Shape tween modifiers	p. 289
Altering shapes	p. 290
Shape hints	p. 293
Altering gradients	p. 296
Motion tweening	p. 297
Rotation	p. 298
Motion tween properties	p. 299
Scaling, stretching, and deforming	p. 300
Easing	p. 301
Custom easing	p. 304
Using animation	p. 310
A closer look at the Timeline panel	p. 310
Onion skinning	p. 311
Editing multiple frames	p. 314
Combining timelines	p. 318
Motion tween effects	p. 322
Motion guides	p. 325
Tweening a mask	p. 327
Your turn: Making an animated button	p. 328
An even cooler animated button	p. 329
Copy motion as ActionScript 3.0	p. 331
What you've learned	p. 336
Video in Flash	p. 339
Video on the Web	p. 341
Encoding an FLV	p. 342
Playing an FLV in Flash CS3	p. 351
Using the Import Video wizard	p. 351
Using the FLVPlayback component	p. 357
Playing video using ActionScript	p. 361
Using the FLVPlayback control components	p. 364
Using the FLVPlaybackCaptioning component	p. 366
Timed text XML for captions	p. 366
Preparing and using alpha channel video	p. 369
Going full screen with video	p. 371
When video is not video	p. 375
Your turn: XML captions for video	p. 378
Playing with alpha channel video	p. 383
What you've learned	p. 386
Using the Flash UI Components to Build Interfaces	p. 389
Button component	p. 391
Using the Button component	p. 392
Changing the Button component's appearance	p. 396
Skinning	p. 396
Styling components	p. 398
CheckBox component	p. 401
ColorPicker component	p. 402
ComboBox component	p. 404
DataGrid component	p. 407
Label component	p. 408
List component	p. 409
NumericStepper component	p. 411
ProgressBar component	p. 412
RadioButton component	p. 413
ScrollPane component	p. 415
Slider component	p. 416
TextArea component	p. 417
TextInput component	p. 418
TileList component	p. 419
UILoader component	p. 420
UIScroller component	p. 422
What you've learned	p. 423
CSS and Flash	p. 425
The power of CSS	p. 427
Element selectors vs. class selectors	p. 434
Custom tags	p. 437
Style inheritance	p. 439
Styling hyperlinks	p. 440
Embedded fonts	p. 442
Loading external CSS	p. 445
What you've learned	p. 448
Dynamic Data (XML) and Flash	p. 451
The power of XML	p. 453
Writing XML	p. 453
Loading an XML file	p. 456
E4X	p. 457
E4X bonus round	p. 462
Your turn: Using XML to build a slideshow	p. 463
What you've learned	p. 471
Going Mobile in Flash	p. 473
Flash and devices	p. 474
Device Central CS3	p. 476
Creating a new Flash document using Device Central	p. 480
Testing a mobile movie	p. 484
Publishing a mobile movie	p. 487
Constructing a mobile application	p. 489
Adding the gallery	p. 494
"Wiring it up" with ActionScript	p. 495
What you've learned	p. 503
Optimizing Flash Movies	p. 505
Flash's "love-hate" Internet relationship	p. 506
This "Internet" thing	p. 507
Enter the World Wide Web	p. 508
Bandwidth	p. 509
So who are these folks we call users?	p. 510
Streaming	p. 510
The Bandwidth Profiler	p. 512
Optimizing and fine-tuning your Flash movies	p. 516
Structure	p. 516
Optimizing elements in the movie	p. 518
Using the Loader class to display images and SWFs	p. 520
Your turn: Creating a preloader	p. 522
Optimizing Flash content for use in video	p. 527
What you've learned	p. 532
Publishing Flash Movies	p. 535
Web formats	p. 536
Flash	p. 537
HTML	p. 538
Animated GIFs	p. 539
QuickTime	p. 542
It's showtime!	p. 543
Publishing Flash movies containing linked files	p. 553
What you've learned	p. 555
Index	p. 556
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