 | is used by over half a million Web authors worldwide to design and deliver
high-impact, low-bandwidth websites. |
| can be used to create many kinds of applets (programs that runs within a
web page) but is especially popular for making animations since it
incorporates a 'timeline' feature that is not found in programs such
as Java or Visual Basic. Familiarity with Adobe Flash is thus helpful for understanding
other timeline-based applications such as Adobe Premiere, a video
editing tool that we also hope to use in this course. |
| is Java-based and thus provides an introduction to this powerful,
platform-independent programming language. |
| uses a Java-like language called ActionScript which is easier to learn
than Java itself, but Flash is still a very sophisticated program that is difficult
to learn. |
| is expensive! The latest version of Flash, Flash 8, costs $400
for the Basic version and $700 for the Pro version on the Adobe
site in December 2005. |
| allows you to do most of what you can do with other
programming languages such as MS Visual Basic, with the huge benefit that your
Flash programs can be easily incorporated into web pages (programs that run
inside web pages are called 'applets'). |
| has a few tutorials available here - please follow the link above... |
If you are interested in using Flash only for making flashy presentations
then don't study my tutorials - follow instead the lessons and tutorials that
are included with the Adobe Flash program. These are well made and worth working
your way through, though this will take you several hours.
My classes will focus on Flash programming (scripting).
We'll concentrate on making Flash animations that
ARE interactive and, in some cases, useful too. It's possible to make useful or
interactive programs without using the 'timeline' feature in Flash, and that is
what we will do - in other words our Flash movie will have only one frame.
I'm going to assume that you have already worked through the lessons that are
included with Flash, and perhaps some of the tutorials too - the ActionScript
tutorial would be especially relevant and so would the components tutorial
since
Flash components (push button, radio button, checkbox, listbox…) are all items
that we learned about already when we studied VB (in VB they were called
'controls' but in Flash they are called 'components'. I'm going to assume that
you have already worked your way through my Visual Basic tutorials, and that you
more or less remember how we did the calculator and lunar lander
applications. We'll try to reproduce these applications with Flash.
Flash has a programming (scripting) language called ActionScript and
if you have already worked with Visual Basic you should be able to understand
existing ActionScripts without too much trouble. However, it's always more
difficult to write programs than it is to read them, and ActionScript is based
on Java rather than Visual Basic so ActionScript has only limited
similarity with VB. Note, however, that this means that by studying ActionScript
you will be getting an introduction to Java, the most sought-after programming
language on the planet (VB is
easier to learn than Java but there are probably more job vacancies for Java programmers.
Java has an advantage over VB in that it can run on many different platforms
(Windows, Mac, Linux...) whereas VB runs only under Windows.
It's time to get started with our first Flash program, a
four-function
calculator…
