Flash 8: The Missing Manual

Flash 8: The Missing Manual

Part I: Creating a Flash Animation

Chapter 1. Getting Around Flash
Section 1.1. Starting Flash
Section 1.2. A Tour of the Flash Desktop
Section 1.3. Toolbars
Section 1.4. Panels
Section 1.5. The Timeline
Section 1.6. The Flash 8 Test Drive
Section 1.7. Opening a Flash File

Chapter 2. Creating Simple Drawings
Section 2.1. Planning Pays Off
Section 2.2. Preparing to Draw
Section 2.3. Creating Original Artwork
Section 2.4. Copying and Pasting Drawn Objects
Section 2.5. Adding Color

Chapter 3. Animating Your Drawings
Section 3.1. Frame-by-Frame Animation
Section 3.2. Adding Layers to Your Animation
Section 3.3. Animating Automatically (Tweening)

Part II: Advanced Drawing and Animation

Chapter 4. Organizing Frames and Layers
Section 4.1. Working with Frames
Section 4.2. Adding Content to Multiple Layers
Section 4.3. Viewing Layers
Section 4.4. Working with Layers
Section 4.5. Organizing Layers

Chapter 5. Advanced Drawing and Coloring
Section 5.1. Selecting Graphic Elements
Section 5.2. Manipulating Graphic Elements
Section 5.3. Adding Text to Your Drawing
Section 5.4. Advanced Color and Fills
Section 5.5. Creating Custom Colors
Section 5.6. Saving Color Swatches
Section 5.7. Importing a Custom Color Palette
Section 5.8. Copying Color with the Eyedropper

Chapter 6. Adding Special Effects
Section 6.1. Built-in Timeline Effects
Section 6.2. Spotlight Effect Using Mask Layers

Chapter 7. Reusable Flash: Symbols and Templates
Section 7.1. Symbols and Instances
Section 7.2. Templates

Chapter 8. Incorporating Non-Flash Media Files
Section 8.1. Incorporating Graphics
Section 8.2. Incorporating Sound
Section 8.3. Incorporating Video

Part III: Adding Interactivity

Chapter 9. Automating Flash with ActionScript
Section 9.1. How ActionScript Works
Section 9.2. Adding an Action
Section 9.3. Adding a Prebuilt Behavior

Chapter 10. Controlling Animation
Section 10.1. Slowing Down (or Speeding Up) Animation
Section 10.2. Organizing an Animation
Section 10.3. Looping a Series of Frames
Section 10.4. Reversing a Series of Frames

Chapter 11. Interacting with Your Audience
Section 11.1. Dynamic Text
Section 11.2. Input Text
Section 11.3. Tying Actions to Events

Chapter 12. Components for Interactivity
Section 12.1. The Built-in Components
Section 12.2. Adding Components
Section 12.3. Customizing Components
Section 12.4. Finding Additional Components

Part IV: Delivering Your Animation to Its Audience

Chapter 13. Testing and Debugging
Section 13.1. Testing Strategies
Section 13.2. Testing on the Stage
Section 13.3. Testing in Flash Player
Section 13.4. Testing Inside a Web Page
Section 13.5. Testing Download Time
Section 13.6. The Art of Debugging Chapter 14. Publishing and Exporting
Section 14.1. Optimizing Flash Documents
Section 14.2. Publishing Your Animations
Section 14.3. Exporting Flash to Other Formats

Part V: Appendix

Appendix A. Installation and Help
Section A.1. Installing and Activating Flash 8
Section A.2. Getting Help from Flash
Section A.3. Getting Help from Adobe
Section A.4. Finding Flash Gurus

How This Book Is Organized

Flash 8: The Missing Manual is divided into five parts, each containing several chapters:

Part 1: Creating a Flash Animation guides you through the creation of your very first Flash animation, from the first glimmer of an idea to drawing images, animating those images, and testing your work.

Part 2: Advanced Drawing and Animation is the meatiest of the four parts. Here you'll see how to manipulate your drawings by rotating, skewing, stacking, and aligning them; how to add color, special effects, and multimedia files such as audio and video clips; how to slash file size by turning bits and pieces of your drawings into special elements called symbols; and how to create composite drawings using layers.

Part 3: Adding Interactivity shows you how to add ActionScript actions to frames to create automatic effects and to buttons to create audience-controlled effects. You'll see how to loop and reverse a section of an animation, how to let your audience choose which section of an animation to play, and how to customize the prebuilt interactive components that come with Flash.

Part 4: Delivering Your Animation to Its Audience focuses on testing, debugging, and optimizing your animation. You'll also find out how to publish your animation so that your audience can see and enjoy it and how to export an editable version of your animation so that you can rework it using another graphics, video editing, or Web development program.

Part 5: Appendix