Introduction to macromedia

flash
Macromedia was a former American graphics and
web-development software house (1992-2005)
headquartered in San Francisco, California that
produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver.
Its rival, Adobe Systems,acquired Macromedia on
December 3, 2005 and controls the line of
Macromedia products.
It is a client application available in most web
browsers.
It features support for vector and raster graphics, a
native scripting language called Action Script and
bidirectional streaming of audio and video.






Macromedia Flash Macromedia's popular application Flash has
redefined the way web developers approach web design.
Websites made up of music, videos, and custom, graphic
intensive interfaces are all possible with Macromedia Flash
Macromedia Flash is an industry leading tool that supplies its
users with animations, presentations, and mind blowing websites,
while doing this at a constant low bandwidth.
Flash is a program by Macromedia for creating interactive,
animated online content.
Animated simply means "to have movement" -- Flash content
does not have to be a cartoon.
It is commonly used to mimic software interface elements such
as scroll bars, drop-down menus, buttons, and navigational
systems.

The term "Flash" has also come to mean the actual files created using
Macromedia s program of the same name.

Getting to know the Flash authoring environment makes you more
effective and efficient as you create movies.

You'll get to know the parts of the Flash window, which include the
Toolbar, Timeline, Stage, panels, and Property Inspector.

The Toolbar, also known as the Tools panel, contains tools that you can
use to draw, paint, select, and modify artwork.

The Timeline represents the overall structure of a Flash document and
controls the content.

The Timeline consists of layers, frames, and scenes that make up a
Flash document. Layers are like transparent sheets stacked on top of one
another. Each layer can contain different images that appear on the
Stage.
A frame displays content at a specific moment on the Stage.

Macromedia flash MX professional :

Flash MX Professional uses two
versions of the Flash Player for
authoring: the Flash MX
Professional 2004 test movie player
and the stand-alone player.
Whenever you select the Control
>Test Movie or Control > Test Scene
menu commands in Flash MX
Professional 2004, the test movie
player is started.
Flash movies


A movie clip is a symbol which
(generally speaking) resides in the
library, with one or more instances of
it on stage.
Additional important things to
remember about movie clips: every
movie clip instance has its own
timeline, its own play head, and its
own functions and variables.
Every movie clip instance also has its
own name, which may be assigned by
you in the properties panel, or will be
assigned by Flash otherwise. A movie
clip always runs at the same frame rate
as the main timeline.



Flash Toolbars

The menu bar at the top of the
Flash application window displays
menus with commands
for controlling Flash functionality.

The menus include File, Edit,
View, Insert, Modify, Text,
Commands, Control, Window, and
Help. The edit bar, at the top of the
Timeline, contains controls and
information for editing scenes and
symbols, and for changing the
magnification level of the Stage.

The tools in the Tools panel let
you draw, paint, select, and modify
artwork, as well as change the view
of the Stage.

Additional important things to remember
about movie clips:

The tools area contains drawing, painting, and
selection tools.
The view area contains tools for zooming and
panning in the application window.
The colours area contains modifiers for stroke and
folklores.
The options area displays modifiers for the currently
selected tool.
Modifiers affect the tool's painting or editing
operations
Symbols:


A symbol is a reusable object used/created in Flash.
A Symbol can be reused throughout your movie or
imported and used in other movies.
There are three types of symbols: Graphics, Buttons, and
Movie clips.
A copy of a symbol used in the movie is called an
Instance, which can have its own independent properties
(like colour, size, function, etc.) different from the original
symbol.
All symbols used in a flash movie are stored in the Library
from where you can drag-and-drop new instances of the
symbols into your movie.
When a symbol is edited all of its instances get updated,
but changing the properties, effects or dimensions of an
instance of a symbol does not affect the original symbol or
other instances.

Graphic symbols are
reusable static images that
are used mainly to create
animations.
Any drawn
vector/plaintext/imported
bitmap (photo), or
combinations of these, can
be converted into a single
controllable object: as a
graphic symbol.
They have only one frame
in their timeline
Button symbols are used for
timeline navigation - They add
interactivity to the movie and
respond to mouse clicks, key
press or rollovers/rollout, and
other actions.
You define the graphics
associated with various button
states (Up/Over/Down/Hit), and
then assign actions to the
instance of a button. They have
4 frames in their timeline - one
each for the up, over and down
states, and one to define the hit
area of the button.

Movie clip symbols are reusable
pieces of flash animation - consisting
of one or more graphic/button
symbols - thus theyre flash movies
within your flash movie.

They have their own non-restricted
Timeline (any number of layers and
frames - just like the main timeline)
that plays independent of the main
movie's Timeline.

The best thing about using movie
clips is that you can control them
from action script - you can change
their dimensions, position, colour,
alpha, and other properties and can
even duplicate and delete them.

Motion Guides are paths drawn by you
that your objects will follow.
However, Motion Guides only work
with Motion Tweens.
Let's say you wanted to animate an a
bird flying in a curving path. You can
do this by using a Motion Guide.
You can drag horizontal and vertical
guides from the rulers onto the Stage
when the rulers are displayed.
You can move guides, lock guides,
hide guides, and remove guides.
You can also snap objects to guides, and change
the guide colour and snap tolerance (how close
objects must be to snap to a guide).
Flash allows you to create nested timelines.
Drag gable guides appear on the Stage only when
the Timeline in which they were created is active.
You can clear all the guides in the current editing
mode--document-editing mode or symbol-editing
mode.
If you clear guides in document-editing mode, all
the guides in the document are cleared.
If you clear guides in symbol-editing mode, all
the guides in all symbols are cleared.
Animation in flash:

While working in Flash you will
find it necessary to create
simple animation sequences. In
Flash, animation can be done in
four basic ways: Motion
Tween Shape Tween Frame-
by-Frame Animation Guided
Motion Tween Creating Motion
Tween.

Timeline of Motion Tween Use
the Colour Panel of the
Properties inspector to reduce
the Alpha value from100 to 32
for the1stand last frames to
produce Simple Alpha
Tweening as shown in the
Example.




You can create Shape Tweened
animations using Shape option from
the Tween panel of the Properties
inspector. Draw a vector using any of
the drawing tools in Flash, say a small
circle and remove its border.
Click the10th frame in the Timeline
and insert a Key Frame (F6). Now
draw another shape say a diamond
using the rectangle tool without a
border.
Now right-click on any frame in
between these two Key Frames and
select Shape option from the Tween
panel of the Properties inspector.
Save your work and test the Movie
(Ctrl + Enter). That's it you have
learnt how to create Shape Tween in
Flash.



In Frame-by-Frame animation
we create the object for each
frame so as to produce an
animation sequence.
Insert Key frame (F6) and
move the alphabets so as to
produce an animation sequence.
Repeat the above step as far as
desired to create Frame-by-
Frame animation as shown in
the example.
Save your work and test the
Movie (Ctrl + Enter). That's it
you have created an animation
using Frame-by-Frame
animation.

Create a vector/plain text using
any of the drawing tools in
Flash, say a text with 'Flash'
typed and break it using Break
Apart (Ctrl + B) as done in the
previous example and put each
alphabet indifferent layers and
name the layers as shown in the
picture.
Insert a guide layer by right-
clicking the topmost layer and
select 'Add Guide Layer'
(Insert-->Timeline-->Motion
Guide), draw any path using the
pencil tool in the guide layer as
shown in the example.

Now create Motion tween by
selecting the object in the 1st
frame and snapping its
registration point to one end
of the path.
Snap the object in the last
frame to the other end of the
path in the guide layer.
Repeat the same for all the
objects (alphabets) by
snapping their registration
points to the path in the
guide layer.
Save your work and test the
Movie (Ctrl + Enter). That's
it we have learnt how to
create motion along a guided
path.

Oldest version of flash: Compatible flash
player includes flash
6,7,8.
Flash MX 2004
Flash 10, 10.1, 10.2

Version

released

Comments

Future
Splash
Animator



1995

Initial version of Flash with basic editing
tools and a timeline. In December 1996,
Macromedia acquired Future Splash and
later released it as Flash 1.0.

1

1996
Flash 1 (December 1996) - a Macromedia re-
branded version of the Future Splash
Animator.

2

1997
Flash 2 (June 1997) - the object library was
added to Flash.

3

1998
Flash 3 (31 May 1998) - the movie clip
element, Java script plug-in integration,
transparency and an external stand alone
player was added to Flash.


4

1999

Flash 4 (15 June 1999) - internal variables,
an input field, advanced Action script, and
streaming MP3.



5

2000

Flash 5 (24 August 2000) Java script like
Action
script, Smart clips, HTML text formatting
added.

MX

2002

Flash MX (15 March 2002) - UI
Components, XML, compression, streaming
video codec.

MX2004

2003

Flash MX 2004 (10 September 2003) - text alias,
Unicode, Action script 2.0, improved streaming video
codec, behaviours. Launch of a Pro version - all Flash
MX 2004 features plus a form and slide editor, web
services integration, Object Oriented Programming in
Action Script 2.0, and Media Playback components,
which encapsulate a complete MP3 and/or FLV player
in a component that may be placed in a SWF.

8

2005
Flash 8 (13 September 2005) - Added an external
interface allowing the host machine to
programmatically control Flash content. At the same
time the Pro version was released - with improved
higher-quality of video codec and encoder. Added
Filters and Blending Modes for movie-clips and
buttons.