Macromedia Flash 8

How to Use This Book

You don’t have to read this book from cover to cover. We provide just the information you need, when you need it. Start with the first three chapters. Then play around with graphics until you create what you need for your Web site. You might want to check out Chapter 6, on layers, to help you organize it all, and Chapter 7, which covers symbols. Then feel free to jump right to Chapter 9, on animation, to create your first real Flash movie. Chapter 13 tells you how to get your movie on your Web site. Then fire up your browser, sit back, and marvel.

Of course, you’ll want to check out other chapters when you need them so that you can create text and buttons, add sound and video, and create an interactive Web site. Chapter 12 provides some ideas for putting all the Flash features together for your best Web site ever.

Keep Macromedia Flash 8 For Dummies by your computer while you work. You’ll find it to be a loyal helper.

How This Book Is Organized

We start by presenting an overview of the Flash universe and then continue in the general order that you would use to create a Flash animation. More basic material is at the beginning of the book, and more advanced material (but not too advanced!) comes later on. You might never use all the material in this book in one Flash movie.

To be more specific, this book is divided into seven parts (to represent the seven states of consciousness — okay, we don’t have to get too cosmic here). Each part contains two or more chapters that relate to that part. Each chap­ter thoroughly covers one topic so that you don’t have to go searching all over creation to get the information you need.

Part I: A Blast of Flash

Part I contains important introductory information about Flash. In Chapter 1, we tell you what Flash is all about, show you what the Flash screen looks like, and explain how to get help when you need it most. You can also find instructions for starting Flash, starting a new movie, and opening an existing movie, and we give you a short list of steps for creating your first animation. Chapter 2 explains in more detail the steps for creating a Flash movie. We also explain some basic concepts that all Flash users need to know.

Part II: 1,000 Pictures and 1,000 Words

Part II explains all the tools available for creating graphics in Flash. Chapter 3 explains the unique drawing tools included in Flash. Of course, we also explain how to import graphics if you don’t feel like creating your own. Chapter 4 shows you how to edit and manipulate graphic objects, and Chapter 5 is all

about creating text. Chapter 6 explains layers, which help you organize your graphics so that they don’t interfere with each other.

Part III: Getting Symbolic

Symbols are graphical objects that you save to use again and again. Whenever you want to place an object on a Web page more than once, you can save the object as a symbol. You can also group together many individual objects, making them useful when you want to manipulate, edit, or animate them all at one time. Chapter 7 explains creating and editing symbols. Chapter 8 describes how to create buttons — not the kind that you sew, but rather the kind that you click with your mouse. Buttons are a kind of symbol, but on a Web page they execute an action when clicked.

Part IV: Total Flash-o-Rama

Part IV explains how to put all your graphics together and make them move. Chapter 9 covers animation in detail — from frame-by-frame animation to tweening, where Flash calculates the animation between your first and last frames. Tween movement to make your objects move or morph into new shapes. You can also tween color and transparency.

Chapter 10 shows how to create interactive Web sites that react to your view­ers. For example, when a viewer clicks a button, Flash can jump to a different part of a movie or go to a different Web page entirely. To create interactivity, you use ActionScript, Flash’s JavaScript-like programming language. We tell you how to put ActionScript to work.

Chapter 11 is about adding multimedia — sound, music, and video — to your Flash movies and buttons.

Part V: The Movie and the Web

This part helps you put all your animated graphics and cool buttons together and publish your work on the Web. Chapter 12 outlines the various tech­niques that you can use to create a great Web site using only Flash.

Chapter 13 explains how to test your animation for speed and suitability for all browsers and systems. Then we cover all the details of publishing movies as well as the other available formats, such as HTML and GIF. You can also create projectors — movies that play themselves.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

What’s a For Dummies book without The Part of Tens? Chapter 14 answers some frequently asked questions about Flash and introduces some fun tech­niques, such as creating drag-and-drop objects and simulating 3-D effects. Chapter 15 provides you with the ten best resources for learning about Flash (besides this book, of course). Chapter 16 lists our winners for ten great Flash Web designers, although new ones emerge all the time.

Part VII: Appendixes

Last, but not least, we come to the appendixes. They add some valuable information to the end of this book. Appendix A adds instructions on installing Flash as well as setting preferences and options, illustrations of all the tools and panels in Flash 8. In Appendix B, we show you what’s what on the Property inspector and on the various panels.

Appendix C tells you what’s on the companion Web site (www.dummies.com/ go/flash8). We provide Flash movies that we illustrate in the book and others that you can just play with to see how they work. We also add our own library of graphics that you can add to your own movies. In addition, we provide a bonus chapter, which is a glossary of obscure terms.
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