Flash 5 Visual Insight - Softcover

Sherry London; Dan London

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1576107000 ISBN 13: 9781576107003

Publisher: Coriolis Group, 2001

Synopsis

Flash 5 Visual Insight provides an illustrative, simple approach to this leading web development program. The format grabs the readers' attention with screenshots and caption-like text teaching the applicable and useful fundamental elements of this program, such as tools and their options. Then, building on that base to guide readers through creating their own movie!

About this title

About the Author

Sherry London (Cherry Hill, NJ) is the author of numerous books on computer graphics applications including Painter 6 f/x and Design, Photoshop 5 In Depth, and Illustrator 9 f/x and Design.Dan London is a Web designer who creates both HTML and Flash-based sites.

From the Inside Flap

Introduction

This Book s Structure
This book is composed of two parts. Part I, Techniques and Tasks, is composed of Chapters 1 through 9. This part deals with the nitty-gritty details of working with Flash. Part I presents, in down-to-earth language, the precise methods and procedures you need to follow to make Flash do what you want. Each chapter s topic is progressively more advanced, beginning with a chapter on understanding the Flash user interface and leading up to a chapter on publishing and optimizing Web sites with Flash.
Part II, Projects, is composed of Chapters 10 through 15. This part contains a series of projects that expand on the knowledge gained in Part I. Each project deals with how to use Flash to solve common real-life Web-design situations, such as creating custom Web pages, working with layers, creating buttons, and making drop-down menus.
Flash newbies are probably best off starting with Chapter 1 and working their way through the book chapter by chapter. Other users might want to dive into the table of contents or index and go right to the areas that they need to use right away.
In either case, this book is designed to give you a good grounding in Flash 5. Turn the page, and begin creating.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
Basic Tools

Learn to navigate the Flash interface

Open, create, and save images

Become familiar with the basic tools and functions

Learn to set program preferences
A First Look at Flash
Macromedia Flash 5 is a very complex program that enables you to create sophisticated Web animations and applications that are cross-platform and cross-browser and that download quickly and reliably. Although Flash 5 contains an advanced-level scripting language, you can create many sites without needing to program at all. As you ll see, Flash has many tools that an artist can use quite easily.
The best place to start learning Flash is to look at its interface and see how the various tools work. In this chapter, you ll learn about the Flash interface and meet the various tools, palettes, and preference settings. You ll take a very brief look at some of the animation items, but you ll learn much more about those later in the book.
Opening Flash
The first time you open Flash, you ll see a tutorial entitled Welcome to Flash 5. Flash ships with excellent tutorials that are worth working through. Each tutorial is in its own Flash movie. Choosing File|Close (Cmd/Ctrl+W) or clicking the Close box closes only the current movie (each Flash document is considered a movie).
You can view the tutorials at any time by choosing Help|Lessons.
Exploring the Interface
After closing the tutorial, you re ready to create or open a Flash movie. The main components of the Flash work environment are various toolbars, palettes, and menu items that enable you to create exciting projects. Note the following components:

1.

Toolbar

2.

Menu bar

3.

Timeline

4.

Stage

5.

Launcher bar

6.

Info palette

7.

Transform palette

8.

Stroke palette

9.

Fill palette

10.

Mixer palette

11.

Swatches palette

12.

Character palette

13.

Paragraph palette

14.

Text Options palette

15.

Instance palette

16.

Effects palette

17.

Frame palette

18.

Sound palette
Tooltips
Holding the mouse cursor over any icon for a few seconds brings up a tooltip message, which tells you the name of the icon and the Shortcut key, if there is one. Tooltips are helpful because Flash has so many icons that you can all too easily forget what each one does.
The Stage
The stage is where you create your movie and where the action happens. Macromedia Flash owes much of its original inspiration to Macromedia Director, and the stage metaphor is one of its borrowed concepts. The stage appears directly under the Timeline. All your image elements live on the stage, and the size of the stage determines the size of your movie.
The Tool Interface
The Toolbox is control central for creating images. All the painting and drawing tools are in the Toolbox. The Toolbox itself is divided into four sections: Tools, View, Colors, and Options. The Options change based on the active tool. Icons help you remember the tool s function:
Tools

1.

Selection (Arrow) tool

2.

Line tool

3.

Pen tool

4.

Oval tool

5.

Pencil tool

6.

Ink Bottle tool

7.

Eyedropper tool

8.

Subselect tool

9.

Lasso tool

10.

Text tool

11.

Rectangle tool

12.

Paintbrush tool

13.

Paintbucket tool

14.

Eraser tool View

1.

Hand tool

2.

Zoom tool Colors

1.

Stroke Color selector

2.

Fill Color selector

3.

Default Colors, No Stroke or Fill, and Swap Fill and Stroke Options

1.

Snap

2.

Smooth

3.

Straighten

4.

Rotate

5.

Scale About Movies Flash calls its files movies, so when you open a file for editing, you are opening a movie. Flash lets you open, create, edit, save, and change properties of movies. Opening Movies To open an existing file, choose File|Open. A dialog box shows the files on your hard drive. Flash will open a variety of file types. Flash movies that have not been compiled have an .fla extension and movies that are ready to be placed on the Web have a .swf extension. Creating a New Movie To create a new movie, choose File|New. A new movie document opens using the defaults set at the Movie Property dialog box. Setting Movie Properties To change the properties of a movie, choose Modify|Movie (Cmd/Ctrl+M). In the Movie Properties dialog box, you ll find these options:

Frame Rate Determines how fast the movie plays. The optimal speed for Web viewing is 12 frames per second (fps), which is the default.

Dimensions Changes the movie height and/or width.

Match Sets the movie size to match either the contents of the stage or the size of your printer paper (minus the margin setting). You can make a tiny movie by placing all your objects near the top-left corner of the stage. If you design a form, you might want to match the size of the paper on which it should be printed.

Background Color Changes the color of the background. Click the Background Color swatch and select a new color from the sample colors that appear.

Ruler Units Determines ruler units. This setting also affects the units in the Info palette.

Save Default Saves your new settings as the defaults. Saving Movies Choose File|Save or File|Save As to save your movie. The only format available is Flash Movie. If you re working on a Mac, you might want to add the .fla suffix so you can exchange files with the Windows version. Exporting Movies You can export animations in a variety of formats with the Export Movie command. In addition to the Flash Player format, your choices range from a PICT sequence to a QuickTime movie. The file types you can export are somewhat different on the Mac than they are in Windows. Exporting Images To save the current view of the movie as a static image, choose File|Export Image. From the Format drop-down box, select your desired format. You can save in all the standard Web formats, including GIF, JPEG, and PNG. You can also save files in Adobe Illustrator, DXF, EPS, and a variety of raster formats. The Windows version also lets you export in Windows Metafile and Enhanced Metafile formats.

Edition details

• Publisher: Coriolis Group
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1576107000
• ISBN 13: 9781576107003
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376