Intro to Flash
Flash is a program from Adobe used to create interactive content for the web.
Flash movies can be distributed on the web or published to a CD-Rom or DVD.
On the web Flash movies require the Flash Player browser plug-in. The Flash player is already installed on most browsers. If you do not have it, the player can be downloaded for free at www.adobe.com.
File Structure
You will be primarily working with 2 types of flash files
- .fla
- .swf
.FLA is the development file
This is the authoring file saved by flash
It can be reopened and edited
It is a big file
.SWF is the published file
It is not editable
It is smaller and compressed
The Flash Property Inspector
The property inspector is a context sensitive panel located below the stage.
If nothing is selected the property inspector shows information about the movie itself
You can modify the size of the movie, background color, frame rate and publish settings.
When another of the others tools are selected or something on the stage is selected then the property inspector represents the properties of the selected item.
Setting Document Properties in Flash
You can change the document properties in the propery inspector or by selecting Modify from the menu and Document.
Here you can change the size of the movie, Background color and Frame rate.
Size
By default flash is set to 550pixels by 400 pixels
Frame rate
The frame rate is how many frames per second a movie plays.
Flash plays 12 frames a second by default
This is faster than the eye can process so it gives the illusion of animation.
A higher frame rate will put more stress on the computer playing it.
Changing the background color
Click on the color button
Select the color you want
- You can pick a color from the swatches
- You can type in a hexadecimal color value
- You can move the eyedropper over a color you want and click
Make Default
Once you get the settings you want, you can click the Make Default button and all new movies created after this will reflect these changes by default
Viewing the Stage
You can zoom in and out on the stage
From the menu choose View | Magnification and select a percentage.
Or you can choose to fit to your content or Show all
There are also zoom options on the top right of the timeline
There is a Zoom tool on the tools panel as well
When you select the Zoom tool you are given two options
Enlarge or reduce
You can select the enlarge and everytime you click on the stage it zooms in, it zooms out when you select the reduce option and click the stage
You can also use the zoom tool to drag a select box around what you want to zoom into
The maximum zoom is 2,000%
The lowest zoom is 8%
The hand tool
Allows you to manually scroll in any direction by dragging the hand
