Flash

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Definition

Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both the Adobe Flash Player, and to the Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program. The player features support for vector and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video. (Wikipedia, retrieved 12 July 2007).

This page contains some general definitions, as well as links and references to tutorials, software and other websites.

Flash articles in EduTech wiki

Flash tutorials in EduTech Wiki

EduTech Wiki contains a few introductory Flash tutorials for Flash version 9 (aka Flash CS3). I used them in my COAP 2110 (Fall 1 2007) and STIC III (Fall 2007, in french) courses. So far, we have this list of flash tutorials. Some are better than others and none is top quality so far, but most can serve as lecture notes. (Daniel K. Schneider 30 August 2007).

Setting up Flash and understanding the environment
  1. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium installation
  2. Flash CS3 desktop tutorial
Basic drawing
  1. Flash drawing tutorial
  2. Flash layers tutorial
Basic animation
  1. Flash frame-by-frame animation tutorial
  2. Flash motion tweening tutorial
  3. Flash shape tweening tutorial
  4. Flash animation summary
  5. Flash special effects tutorial
Use of external media
  1. Flash video component tutorial
  2. Flash sound tutorial
  3. Clipart and texture (to help you finding/importing media elements)
Advanced drawing
  1. Flash object transform tutorial
  2. Flash arranging objects tutorial
  3. Flash colors tutorial
  4. Flash pen tutorial (not done)
Basic interactivity
  1. Flash button tutorial
  2. Flash components tutorial (just started)
  3. Flash video component tutorial
  4. Flash drag and drop tutorial
  5. ActionScript 3 event handling tutorial
  6. ActionScript 3 interactive objects tutorial (not finished)
  7. Flash games tutorial (just started)
Associated materials (mostly flash files)

Other Flash articles in EduTech Wiki

These are pieces like overviews, cheatsheets or unfinished stuff.

  1. Flash CS3 keyboard shortcuts
  2. Flash ActionScript 3 overview
  3. Flash formats and objects overview (not ActionScript objects !)
  4. Flash - being organized
  5. Actionscript 3 -- a fully fledged programming language

Alternative technologies

General formats
Others

See also multimedia authoring systems and computer games. Some of these have their own format, some can export to more common formats.

Links for software and media elements

General / Indexes

  • OsFlash 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 (Flash player download)
  • Gnash (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

  • SWISH. 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 article.
  • UIRA A project to make a free authoring tool. Should output both Flash and SVG. (development seems to have stalled in 2007).
  • FLAME. A similar project. For the moment, outputs SVG.
  • HaXe. Programming language very similar to actionscript that can compile a SWF file for Flash Players 6 to 9. Free to use.

Special purpose authoring tools

  • Adobe Captivate. An authoring environment to create simulations, scenario-based training, and robust quizzes. Can importexport to Flash *.fla documents.
  • Adobe Flex is a software development kit and an IDE for a group of technologies to make [rich internet application]s with Flash, HTML, JavaScript etc.).
  • OpenOffice Impress (the power point clone) can produce *.swf
  • Some capturing tools (see screen capture, photo gallery makers, and video editing software can export to Flash.

Generating Flash

  • Ming Ming is a C library for generating SWF ("Flash") format movies, plus a set of wrappers for using the library from C++ and popular scripting languages like PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby.
  • SWFMill xml2swf and swf2xml processor that can be used to create (non interactive) multiframe SWF animations.

Reusable flash code

There are several kinds of components

  • *.swf - Flash (embedd as movie)
  • *.fla - Flash source code (i.e. a template with drawings and code)
  • *.as - Action Script source code (watch out for the version !!)
  • *.swc - Compiled components (like the ones in the built-in components library).
Indexes
Free (need more)
Commercial (I only want to have 5-6, the best at some point and not a long list ...)

In addition, you also should know that you can import several vector graphics formats. e.g. Windows Metafile formats into Flash CS3 (speeds up drawing).

Media for building your own scenes

Links to Tutorials

This section only should index good and free tutorials. No junk indexes with nothing but advertisements. There is a problem with Flash Version. Various Flash versions are considerably different and most sites include older stuff...

Web sites with tutorials

  • Both just links or "real" repositories
  • Since there exist very little Flash 9-only collections, I also include sites with older information. There is quite a huge difference between ActionScript 2 and 3, but drawing and the elements of the Flash environment (timeline, etc.) are not that different.
Collections - both text and videos
  • Oman3D. Contains both good text and video tutorials (the latter from learnflash.com).
Collections - mostly video
  • Wikivid Flash. Index of Video Tutorials (mostly Flash 8, but CS3 is similar) from the whole web. Probably the biggest index of training videos.
  • cartoonsmart.com/ Includes three good Flash video tutorials, e.g. shape tweening and a button tutorial.
  • LearnFlash.com. (Some good free ones, scroll down, for more registration is needed)
Collections - mostly text tutorials
  • lukamaras.com Probably one of the best short tutorials site (mostly Flash MX/Flash 8)
  • WebWasp (some content is free, *.fla files are sold)
  • ToxicLab.org. About 99 little Flash tutorials submitted by various people. The ones I have seen are short and nice.
Collections - to sort out
  • Flash Kit Index of Tutorials (lots of outdated ones too).
  • Subsites of http://about.com, e.g. webdesign and [http:animation.about.com animation] have several flash related resources. You need to search ...

Recommended introductory CS3 tutorials

Basics (graphics and animation)

??

ActionScript 2.0
ActionScript 3.0

Academic Flash courses

(should include lecture notes or Slides, plus examples)

Reference and manuals on-line

Tip: Since the help pane in CS3 can't be really detached, better use Adobe's on-line help.

On-line manuals

(It's not really obvious to find things at Adobe. There is much more documentation that one might think at first glance ...)

  • Flex Live Docs (for ActionScript 3 programming). For programmers only.

Cheatsheets

Other links

General

Forums

Links to Adobe

(includes some tutorials, including video tutorials)

Help

Good Flash examples

Artsy websites
Flash trailers for company websites / advertizements
Flash comics

Books

No idea if they are any good, except Veer, The Missing Manual which is great for learning drawing and the Flash CS3 tool. It doesn't cover ActionScript 3.

  • Adobe Creative Team (2007). Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Classroom in a Book. ISBN 0321499824
  • Anderson, Andy (2007). Adobe Flash CS3 Professional On Demand. ISBN 0789736926 592 pages.
  • Finkelstein Ellen and Gurdy Leete (2007). Flash CS3 For Dummies. ISBN 0470121009, 408 pages.
  • Gerantabee, Fred (August ? 2007). Dynamic Learning: Flash CS3 Professional. ISBN 10 0-596-51058-6
  • Veer, E.A. Vander and Chris Grover (2007). Flash CS3: The Missing Manual. ISBN 0596510446 - 527 pages. - O'Reilly page (From reviews on the web, this looks like the most suitable one for starters. The example files can be found on the Missing CD-ROM page. Daniel K. Schneider bought this and I think it's ok, can be used as a textbook, if you agree to cover topics by topics v.s a more project-oriented approach.)
  • Morris David (2007). Creating a Web Site with Flash CS3 Professional: Visual QuickProject Guide. ISBN 0321503007
  • Moock, Colin, Essential ActionScript 3.0. ISBN 0-596-52694-6. (From reviews on the web, this seems to be best action script 3.0 book)
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