Adobe Flash CS4 Professional

Adobe Flash provides several ways to export and save Flash movie (SWF) files. The method you should choose depends primarily on how you plan to deploy the movie. If you want to embed your movie in a web page, the easiest and most foolproof method is Flash’s Publish option. Publish automatically exports the SWF file, creates the HTML Web page container for displaying the movie on the Internet and creates the JavaScript required to load the movie into the Web page, saving you a lot work and time.

1. Open an existing Flash FLA file or create a new one in Flash. Click the “File” menu and select “Publish Settings…” to open the Publish Settings dialog box.
2. Step 2

   Click the “Format” tab to display the Format section of Publish Settings. Place check marks in the check boxes beside “Flash (.swf)” and “HTML (.html).” You can change the file names for the movie and web page files in the column of fields labeled “File:” By default, Flash gives them the same name as the FLA file.

3. Step 3

   Click the “Flash” tab to display the Flash section of Publish Settings. Set “JPEG quality” in the Images and Sound section to “80,” and check “Compress movie” in the SWF Settings section. The settings in the Flash section of Publish Settings mostly control playback and sound quality. You can adjust them as needed to balance movie quality and file size.

4. Step 4

   Click the “HTML” tab to display the HTML section of Publish Settings. Click the “Template” drop-down and choose “Flash Only,” and then put a check beside “Detect Flash Version.” Detect Flash Version creates a script that checks the user’s Flash Player version. If the user’s version is too old to play the movie, the script displays a message and a link to automatically download and install the latest version.

5. Step 5

   Click the “Publish” button. Flash saves the SWF and HTML files in the same directory as the Flash FLA file.

Flash CS4 (Action Script 3.0) coding is quite different (some say a lot more difficult) than coding in Action Script 2. Nevertheless, custom flash buttons that serve as hyper links to web sites are very nice as web design elements. The buttons themselves and either be created using your artistic skills, or pulled from a wide variety of pre-made samples.

1. Pull a sample button to your stage using the common libraries menu item in the Window menu.
2.
Step 2

Click on your button and give it an instance name in the Properties panel.
3.
Step 3

Click on the frame containing your button and open the Actions panel
4.
Step 4

Write the following code so your button can ‘hear’ when you click!

mybutton.addEventListener (MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, Go);
5.
Step 5

Use the following to tell the button where to go when you click:

function Go(evt:MouseEvent):void
{
var targetURL:URLRequest=new URLRequest(“http://www.mysite.com”);

navigateToURL(targetURL);
}
6.
Step 6

Click on to the stage and depress F-12 to preview your document.
Click the button to to access your web site.

You may have to set flash security to allow access to the internet from your design environment. If you have trouble with this step, simply post the file to your web site. If you typed the code carefully (and case-sensitively) it will work!

What would any programming language without the ability to test a condition and then act upon that test. Adobe’s Flash ActionScript 3.0 programming language gives that ability with the the IF-ELSE statement.

Here is how you write an IF-ELSE statement in Adobe’s Flash ActionScript 3.0 programming language.

1. The IF-ELSE statment is read as “if some condition is true then do something, if the condition is not true, then do something else”. The first line of the IF-ELSE statement is written as:

   if (some condition) {

   That’s “if” open parenthesis, followed by the condition you want to test, a closed parenthesis, then an opening curly brace which signifies the code after that brace is to be executed if the “some condition” is true.

2. Step 2

   The next series of lines is the code to be executed if the condition is true. It can be a series of lines of code, a call to a function and so on. So you code now looks like:
   if (some condition) {
   Some code
   }

   When you are finished with the code that you want executed if the condition is true you simply end it with a closed curly brace as shown above.

3. Step 3

   Finally, although not required, we add in our ELSE statement. This gets exceuted if the condition in the steps above is false.

   else {
   execute this code if condition is not true
   }

   Just like the first part you open your code block with an open curly brace, put in your code and close it with a closed curly brace. So you final code looks like this:

   if (some condition) {
   code
   }
   else {
   more code
   }

Adobe Flash provides visual and motion content rather than textual content. For some users, especially those with screen reading Internet browsers, the lack of text makes Flash inaccessible and unusable. Recent versions of Adobe Flash have included an Accessibility panel that will help screen reader users gain access to your content. Read on for how to use it.

1. To bring the Accessibility panel into view, choose Window > Other panels > Accessibility.
2. Step 2

   In Flash CS3, the Accessibility panel offers the opportunity to select options to Make movie accessible, Make child objects accessible, Auto label, name and write a text description of each object.

3. Step 3

   In Flash CS4, the panel includes options to Make object accessible, Make child objects accessible, provide a name, a description and add shortcuts and tab index options if desired.

4. Step 4

   Always choose Make object accessible, as this option instructs the Flash player to provide the textual alternative information you include to screen readers. Also, be sure you check Make child objects accessible so that buttons, text and other material in child objects is accessible to screen readers.

5. Step 5

   The Name option gives the object a name. This information will help users understand what the object is and what purpose it serves in the movie. Name is comparable to the alt attribute in HTML.

6. Step 6

   Description is a longer description of what the object is and tells more about what is happening in the movie. It is comparable to the longdesc element in HTML.

Flash CS4 is part of Adobe’s Creative Suite 4. It is a software package that allows users to create animations and other video-related content. Flash is typically used to create animation and video files that are optimized for streaming over the Web. If you are just beginning to learn Flash or do not know how some Flash functions work in the CS4 version, you can easily learn how to add a movie clip to your storyboard in Flash CS4.

1. Launch Adobe Flash CS4 and load a movie file stored on your local computer or on a Web server. Click “File,” “Import” then “Import Video.”
2. Step 2

   Find and select the movie file from your computer or enter the URL of the file on your Web server. If you are importing a movie file onto your local computer, select “Load External Video with Playback Component.” If you are importing a movie file from a server, select “Already Deployed to a Web Server.”

3. Step 3

   Choose a skin for your video content. This is the graphic that will surround the video clip. You can select “None” if you don’t want to use a skin or select a Flash skin.

4. Step 4

   Move the movie file after it has been inserted into your storyboard. Flash will create a place holder in the storyboard for the movie file. You can move this movie clip before or after certain content in your storyboard.

Adobe Flash CS4 has become a favorite tool for web developers who want to create rich interactive media experiences for people who visit Flash-enabled websites. Flash includes powerful animation tools and a sophisticated programming language that allows greater creative freedom than traditional HTML websites. Flash video streaming has become among the most popular methods of delivering movies and television programming to Internet users. Provide an impressive feature on any website by using Flash to create a customized media player for video streaming.

1. Open Flash CS4 and select “Flash File (Action Script 2.0)” from the “Create New” startup menu.
2. Step 2

   Open the Components window by selecting “Window” then “Components” from the main menu, or pressing “Ctrl” and “F7″ from your keyboard.

3. Step 3

   Highlight “MediaController” from the Components window and use your mouse to drag the MediaController onto the project stage (the white rectangle in the middle of the “Untitled-1″ window).

4. Step 4

   Position the MediaController in the lower third portion of the stage. From the “Properties” tab for the MediaController, adjust the width to equal the width (in pixels) of the video files you plan to stream using this player. For this example, enter “360″ next to “W” under “Position and Size.”

5. Step 5

   Name the MediaController by entering, as an example, “vcontrol” in the field that displays “<Instance Name>” in the “MediaController Properties” tab.

6. Step 6

   Highlight “MediaDisplay” from the Components window and use your mouse to drag the MediaDisplay component onto the project stage. Place the rectangular box directly above the MediaController component.

7. Step 7

   Enter the size equal to your video file image size in the Properties tab. For this example, enter a width of 360 and a height of 240. Name the MediaDisplay “vdisplay” where “<Instance Name>” is displayed. Adjust the MediaDisplay position as needed by dragging the rectangular box to position it on top of the MediaController.

8. Step 8

   Open the Behaviors window by selecting “Window” and “Behaviors” from the main menu or press “Ctrl” and “Shift” and “F3″ on the keyboard.

9. Step 9

   Click the “+” sign in the Behaviors window and select “Media” and “Associate Controller” from the menu. Select “vcontrol” in the dialog box.

10. Step 10

    Open the Component Inspector window by selecting “Window” and “Component Inspector” from the main menu or pressing “Shift” and “F7″ on the keyboard. Make sure the MediaDisplay component remains selected.

11. Step 11

    Enter the URL or file path to your video file in the “URL” field of the Component Inspector. Save your Flash project file and publish the video player by entering “Ctrl” and “F12″ on your keyboard.

Flash has come a long way since the days of simple animation. With Action Script 3.0 it is become a more usable piece of software in creating very robust websites.

One of the advancements is the ability to create event listeners. These are pieces of code that will execute when some type of event or action occurs.

In this tutorial I am going to create an object and then create the event called mouse over. This means when the user moves the mouse cursor over the object something will happen, in this case, we will just print some text in the trace window.

1. Launch Flash CS4 and create a new ActionScript 3.0 Flash file.
2.
Step 2

Draw an object on the stage. I have drawn a rectangle.
3.
Step 3

Select the object you drew on the stage and press the F8 button. You will see the “Convert to window” screen appear. Give the object a name, in my case I am calling it Rectangle, make the type “Move Clip” and make sure you check on the box that reads “Export for ActionScript”, then click the ok button.
4.
Step 4

We now need to give our rectangle object a name. Press CTRL+F3 to display the properties panel as shown in the picture associated with this step. Notice how I gave my movie clip object an instance name called “mcRectangle”.
5.
Step 5

Click on the first frame in the timeline and then press the F9 key to bring up the action script window.
6.
Step 6

In the picture associated with this step, you see the action script code needed to complete this tutorial. So go ahead and copy what it is written.

The first line of code:
mcRectangle.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, mcRectangle_MouseOver)
Creates a mouse over event listener for the object mcRectangle. This says when the mouse cursor moves over mcRectangle then execute the function “mcRectangle_MouseOver”.

Lines 2 through handle the actual mouse event fucntion with a paramter of “e”. On line 3 we see where we send our output to the trace window.
7.
Step 7

Run the program by pressing the CTRL+ENTER keys and move your mouse cursor over the object.

Do you have a website, course, or presentation that has uncontrolled sound that you can’t seem to stop? If so, this is the article for you.

1. Create a button that the user can click to stop the sound. There are several online tutorials and good books such as Action Script for Dummies that can teach you about button creation.
2. Step 2

   Add a graphic as the face of this button. This button could be a menu button (button with a drop-down menu once clicked), navigational button (“Next” or “Previous”), directional button (“Off” button), etc.

3. Step 3

   Go to the Actions palette and add an action to the button once clicked or highlighted: on(press){ stopAllSounds();}

4. Step 4

   Publish your movie – include HTML as an output (Shift + F12).

5. Step 5

   Test your movie – be sure to test the internet or HTML file to ensure you do not get an error and the file or movie displays/plays as designed.

6. Step 6

   Add this script to all buttons as needed. It is especially helpful for menus to turn off sound from a previous page within a training course or CBT.

7. Step 7

   Add any graphical elements to the buttons int the various states (up, down, and over…) as needed.

8. Step 8

   Hold a pilot group to ensure you have correctly implemented this script or button in every place needed.

9. Step 9

   Publish the final movie to the place of deployment.

Flash CS4 (the CS refers to Adobe’s Creative Suite package, of which Flash is a part of, and the 4 is its version number) is part of a package of design tools used to build websites, edit and enhance photographs, and create movies. Flash, which was once a standalone product, is included in the suite for users who make interactive components such as games and surveys, plus allows for embedded video, button actions and debugging. Adobe is set to release the CS5 version on April 29, but you can still learn Flash CS4 through a variety of tools and venues.

1. Search for online Flash CS4 help tutorials, available for free online. For example, the Best Web Designz website can teach you topics such as “Drawing in Flash,” “Moving Ball Animation,” “How to Manage Layers” and “Introduction to Flash CS4.” These tutorials may be completed in your own time; some require you to download a video or movie; others are just websites you click through.
2. Step 2

   Contact the computer science department of a college or university nearby; many schools teach topics which may involve Flash. For example, the North Carolina State University Computer Science department offers classes titled “Web Page Development” and “Special Topics in Computer Science.” Inquire whether a student would be willing to give private tutoring lessons; some schools may offer credit or let the student conduct the work in lieu of a project.

3. Step 3

   Check your local bookstore or an online bookseller for Flash CS4 titles such as “Adobe Flash CS4 Classroom in a Book,” “Flash CS4: The Missing Manual,” “Creating a Website With Flash CS4;” books may be found in the computer or textbook sections. Look for titles with words such as “Beginner,” “Introduction” or “for Dummies.”

4. Step 4

   Explore your local community college’s evening or adult class offerings. Many schools offer training in the Creative Suite or dedicated courses to each component. For example, the Tacoma Community College offers two “Introduction to Flash” courses; contact the professor to inquire whether the version of the class is behind CS4 and whether the information would still apply to your release. Most adult education courses have no requirements or prerequisites.

5. Step 5

   Double-click the Flash icon on your desktop, then select the “Help” menu option at the top of the screen. Choose from the learning tools available, from searchable words where you can input items such as “button,” “timeline” or “script” to links that will take you directly to Flash forums and knowledge bases of information.

This tutorial is very easy and for the beginning user of Adobe’s Flash CS4. If you are learning how to do animation using Flash, you won’t get very far without knowing how to create a move clip symbol, which is what you need in order to do animation.

In this tutorial I am going to draw a simple object on the screen and change it to a movie clip symbol.

1. Launch Adobe Flash CS4 and choose new Flash (action script 3).
2.
Step 2

From your tools panel, select the object drawing tool…in my case I am going to draw a rectangle as shown in the picture associated witht this step.
3.
Step 3

Go ahead and draw the object onto your stage. Once your object is drawn switch to the selection tool in your tools panel as shown in the picture associated with this step.
4.
Step 4

With the selection tool activated, click on the object you just drew on the stage and press the F8 key on your keyboard. That will bring up the “Convert to Symbol” window. Give your symbol a name, then select “Movie Clip” as type and click on the ok button. You are done. Your object is now a movie clip symbol and you are ready to animate it.