Flash tutorials

Introduction

EduTech Wiki contains a few introductory Flash and ActionScript tutorials for Flash version 9 (aka Flash CS3) and some Flash CS4. I used them in my COAP 2110 (Fall 1 2007 and Fall 2008) and STIC III (Fall 2007 and fall 2008, in french) courses. Some are better than others and none is top quality so far, but most can serve as lecture notes and for some self-study.

I started a round of updating for CS4. I also hope to find time to work on the Actionscript 3 tutorials. - Daniel K. Schneider May 2009.

Most CS3 tutorials are also of interest to CS4 users. The difference between CS3 and CS4 isn't major, but there are some useful additions in CS4 like better motion tweening, inverse kinematics and support for 3D animation of 2D objects.

List of Flash CS3 Tutorials

Setting up Flash and understanding the environment

1. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium installation
2. Flash CS3 desktop tutorial
3. Flash CS4 desktop tutorial

Basic drawing

1. Flash drawing tutorial
2. Flash layers tutorial

Basic animation

1. Flash animation overview
2. Flash frame-by-frame animation tutorial
3. Flash classic motion tweening tutorial
4. Flash CS4 motion tweening tutorial
5. Flash shape tweening tutorial
6. Flash animation summary

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 bitmap tracing tutorial
5. Flash pen tutorial

Basic interactivity and use of components

1. Flash button tutorial
2. Flash button tutorial - AS2 -- only for people who work with (old) Flash 8.
3. Flash components overview (not complete)
4. Flash component button tutorial
5. Flash component button tutorial - AS2
6. Flash video component tutorial
7. Flash datagrid component tutorial
8. Flash and php interaction tutorial (not started yet)
9. Flash animation and interactivity example problems

Medium animation

1. Flash special effects tutorial
2. Flash embedded movie clip tutorial

Medium Interactivity

(some more ActionScript)

1. Flash drag and drop tutorial
2. ActionScript 3 event handling tutorial
3. ActionScript 3 interactive objects tutorial (not finished)
4. Flash CS4 motion tweening with AS3 tutorial
5. Flash games tutorial (not really done, maybe sometimes in 2009))
6. Flash for presentations tutorial (not done, stub)

Working with ActionScript libraries

1. Flash using ActionScript libraries tutorial (under construction)
2. AS3 TweenLite tweening engine (tutorial missing)
3. Flash Papervision3D tutorial

List of Flash CS4 Tutorials

1. Flash CS4 inverse kinematics tutorial
2. Flash CS4 3D tools tutorial
3. Flash CS4 motion tweening tutorial
4. Flash CS4 motion tweening with AS3 tutorial

Other Flash articles of interest

General

1. Flash -- the entry page for most everything that is Flash
2. Flash CS3 keyboard shortcuts
3. Flash ActionScript 3 overview -- a conceptual little overview of AS3
4. Flash formats and objects overview (not ActionScript objects !)
5. Flash - being organized (some advice for beginning Flash CS3 designers)
6. Flash 3D -- overview page of of Flash 3D tools and AS3 libraries

ActionScript and Flex tutorials

1. ActionScript 3 tutorials -- a complete programming language. The entry page for "pure" AS3 tutorials
2. Flex tutorials. Entry page for Flex tutorials.

Other resources

We maintain five pages that include external resources:

• Flash - Includes links for Flash software
• Flash and AS3 links - general
• Flash and AS3 links - tutorials
• Flash and AS3 links - documentation (Flash and AS3 Books, Reference Manuals and Cheatsheets)
• Flash and AS3 links - toolkits (AS 3 Toolkits, Libraries, Flash reusable components, AS 3 reusable code, etc.)

Media (pages that include links to repositories for media elements)

• Clipart
• Texture