Complete Idiot's Guide to Macromedia Flash 5

INTRODUCTION. Why You Need This Book. How to Use This Book. Getting the Most Mileage from This Book. I. FLASH IN A FLASH. 1. Getting a Feel for Flash. Flash's Place in the World of Web Development. Let's Do Dessert First! How Flash Works. How Flash Animates. The Viewer Makes It All Happen. Vector Versus Bitmap Graphics. How Flash Fits into Web Design. What's New in Flash. Installing Flash. Choosing an Install Folder. Typical, Custom, or Compact? Installing the Netscape Plug-In. 2. Getting Around Backstage. Meet the Flash Environment. Toolbar Versus Tools. Have a Seat at the Tool Bar. Float with the Toolbox. Making Movies. Get on Stage. Frames and the Timeline. The Layered Look. Controlling Panels. Docked Panels. Panels and Objects. Managing Panels. Using the Status Bar to View Panels. Changing Movie Properties.The Powerful Preferences Box. How Flash Works-In General. Define How Flash Edits and Copies. II. LIGHTS! CAMERA! VECTORS??? 3. Ready, Set, Draw! Get It Straight. Setting Stroke Color. Setting Stroke Thickness and Style. Lines with Custom Style. Drawing Straight Lines and Angles. Throw Me a Curve. Straight Line Zigzags. Drawing Smooth Curves. From Curve to Straighten-or Vice Versa. Getting More Help...Or Less. Open and Closed Curves. Using the Pen Tool. Modifying Drawn Lines. Stepping Out of the Box. Drawing Ovals. Drawing Rectangles. When Shapes and Lines Intersect. 4. Paint the Town. Brushin'. Selecting Brushes. Creating Cool Brush Effects. Erasing Objects. Cleaning Up with Erase. Turn On the Faucet. Erase-It's a DRAW Tool. 5. Have Your Fill. Putting Colors to Work. Choosing and Changing Solid Fill Colors. Orchestrating Your Colors. How Transparent Can You Get? Blending Colors with Gradient Fills. Get Out the Paint Bucket. Filling with the Paint Bucket. Reshaping Fills. Borrowing Colors.Changing Lines. Changing Line Color. Changing Line Height and Style. 6. Snip, Snap, Stick. Movin' and Shakin'. Three Faces of the Arrow tool. Selecting Many Objects. Selecting Rectangular Areas and Lassoing Objects. Straightening and Curving Selections. Copying, Cutting, and Moving Objects. Resizing and Reshaping Objects. Rotating Objects. Combining Objects into Groups. Moving Groups to the Front or Back. Locking Grouped Objects. Microediting with the Subselect Tool. Moving Nodes. Editing Curves with Control Points. III. SETTING THE STAGE. 7. Stage Design. What Are Stage Elements? Using Rulers. Creating Custom Guides. Grids and Snaps. Aesthetics of Stage Design. Setting Stage Size. Setting Background Color. 8. Working with Layers. Beyond Drawing in One Dimension. Getting to the Next Layer. Adding (or Deleting) Layers. Looking at Multiple Layers. Movin' Layers Front and Back. Editing Across Layers. Special Types of Layers. Defining a Guide Layer. Creating Peek Holes with Mask Layers. 9. Write On: Making Text Flash-y. Text in a Flash. Wrapping It Down. Twistin' & Turnin' Text. Scaling Text. Rotating Text. Skewing Text. Formatting Text. Choosing Text to Format. Changing Fonts. Adding Font Style. Superscript/Subscript. Aligning and Spacing Paragraphs. Looks Good in Flash...But Will It Play in a Browser? Text as Shapes. Convert Some Text to Shapes. IV. HANGING OUT AT THE RECYCLING CENTER. 10. Recycling with Symbols. Storing Objects as Symbols. Creating Graphics Symbols. Converting Existing Objects into Symbols. Placing Symbols in Movies. Looking at Symbols. The Symbol Library. Spotting Symbols on the Stage. Using Symbols in Movies. Changing Symbols. Changing Symbol Instances. 11. Building Your Own Library. Keeping Actors on Call. Flash's Pre-Fab Libraries. Organizing Libraries. Scoping Out Your Symbols. Creating Folders. Sharing Libraries Between Movies. Serious Symbolism. ID'ing Symbols with the Info Panel. Using a Library to Switch Symbols. V. GETTING YOUR BUTTONS PUSHED. 12. Creating Control Buttons. Preparing Buttons for Web Pages. Creating Buttons with the Button Library. Using Symbol Buttons. Editing Symbol Instances. Building a Button from Scratch. A Super-Quick Look at Frames. Creating a Four-Frame Button Movie. Editing a Button. Testing the Hit Frame. 13. Interacting with the Audience. Assigning Actions to Flash Buttons. Defining Mouse Events for Actions. Letting the Viewer Control the Action. Hold That Pose! Adding Go To Actions to Jump To Frames. Adding Links to Web Sites. 14. Filling In the Blanks. Interactive Movies. Adding Stop Actions to Frames. Actions and Frames. Actions and Layers. Adding a Stop Action to a Frame. Creating Text Boxes. Collecting Data in a Text Field. Displaying Data in a Text Field. Creating a Button to Act on Collected Data. Creating a Button to Calculate Collected Data. Formatting Text Fields. VI. ANIMATING WITH FLASH MOVIES. 15. Everybody Dance Now! How Flash Animates. Inserting Keyframes. Creating Frame-by-Frame Motion with Keyframes. Generating Static Frames. Creating Blank Keyframes. Putting It All Together. Viewing Animation. Viewing Multiple Frames with Onion Skinning. Using the Control Window. Testing Movies in the Flash Viewer. Changing Frame Rate. 16. Automating Animation. Creating Tween Frames. Adding Tweening. Creating a Motion Guide. Adding Rotation and Scaling to a Tween. More Fun Tweening Techniques. Removing Tweening. Shape Tweening. Using Drawings for Shape Tweening. An Easy Shape Tween. Animating with Masking. Creating a Masking Layer for a Movie. Assigning Masked Properties Layers. 17. Keeping It All Together. Creating Animated Symbols. Creating an Animated Symbol from Scratch. Converting Animated Layers into an Animated Symbol. Using Animated Symbols in Movies. Creating Movie Clips. Creating a Scene. Breaking Movies into Scenes. Combining Scenes into Movies. 18. Crank It Up! Where Do Sounds Come From? Use the Sounds Library. Do-It-Yourself Sound. Sounds Are Symbols. Adding Sound to Buttons. Adding Sound to Movie Frames. Editing Instances of Sound Files. Looping Sound Files. Stopping Sound Files. Editing Volume and Stereo Separation. Synchronizing Sound and Video. 19. Advanced Animation Techniques. Waiting Until a Frame Is Loaded. Different Download Times-Different Movies. Using the If Frame Is Loaded Action. Launching One Movie from Another Movie. Why Load Movies? Loading Movies. Using Variables. Using Variables to Load Movies. Combining an If Action with a Load Movie Action. VII. FLASHING THE WEB. 20. Getting Outside Help: Importing Objects. Importing Vector Graphics into Flash. Importing Vector Graphics. Copying and Pasting Vector Graphics. Importing Bitmap Files. Color Cropping Bitmap Images with the Color Wand. Converting Bitmaps to Flash Vector Graphics. Importing Text. 21. Putting Flash Online. Watching Movies with Flash Player. Saving Flash Player Files. Watching Movies with Flash Player. Downloading the Flash Player. Creating Web Pages with Embedded Flash Files. Adding a Flash Movie to a Web Site: The Easiest Way. Embedding a Flash Movie in a Web Page. Hand Coding HTML for Flash Movies. Testing Your Movie in a Web Page. 22. Exporting Flash Movies. Exporting Flash Movies to Static Graphics. Choosing a File Format for Export. Export Options. Exporting to GIF. Exporting to JPEG. Exporting to Graphic Sequences. Exporting to Other Movie Formats. Exporting to Windows AVI Format. Exporting to QuickTime Movie Format. Exporting to Animated GIF. Exporting Sound Files. Flash-Speak. Index.