Table of Contents

Introduction
History and development of the program
What is it used for?
How to use this book

Interface
At a glance guide to the interface
The Start Page
What are all the windows for?
Changing your view
Panel Sets and customizing your interface
Using the Help files
Flash Documents
Naming files and working cross platform

Vector Drawing
At a glance guide to the tools
The drawing tools
Drawing a line
Drawing with the Pencil tool
The Shape Tools
Painting with the Brush tool
Using the Pen tool and the Subselection tool
To overlap or to obliterate: object drawing vs. merge drawing
Changing colours
Creating gradient fills
Transforming fills
Creating text
Paragraph options
Spell checker

Selecting and Modifying
Making selections
Modifying drawings
Adding strokes
Combining shapes
Rulers, Guides and Grids
Step by step create a perspective grid
At a glance keyboard shortcuts for the tools

Importing Images
Vectors vs. bitmaps
File types
Bitmap file formats
Vector file formats
To import images
Introducing the Library
Importing images with areas of transparency
Tracing bitmaps
Painting with bitmaps

Layers, Symbols and Keyframes
Introducing layers
Step-by-step create a manual drop shadow
Introducing symbols
Designing interactive buttons
Creating a button symbol
Introducing keyframes
What is a behavior?
Step-by-step create an interactive links page
Using movie clip symbols
Step-by step create animated rollover buttons

Navigation 2 - Menus

Button actions and frame actions
Creating a basic menu
Menus and submenus
An online portfolio
Loading images
Mail to link


Animation
Creating a banner ad with frame-by-frame animation
Separating and locking layers
Using keyframes
Onion skinning
Frame rate and size
Symbol animation
Creating graphic symbols and instances
Motion tweening
Editing symbols
Summary

More Animation Techniques
Using motion paths
Easing
Shape tweening
Animated highlights
Animating gradients
Mask layers

Further Animation Techniques
Timeline effects
Animated symbols
Creating a looped background
Copying and pasting frames
Altering symbol centre points
Symbols within symbols
Using scenes
Character design tips

Sound
Creating sounds to bring into Flash
Some fundamentals of digital audio
Importing sounds
Streaming vs. event sounds
Editing sounds in Flash
Attach a sound to a button
Adding comments to frames
Warning about file sizes

Video
What is digital video?
How do you bring it into your computer?
Using video in Flash
Rotoscoping
Preparing for video output
Frame rate and frame size
Pixel aspect ratio
Frames vs. fields
Broadcast safe colors
Overscan

Designing for Cross-media
Planning a web site
Information architecture
Design for the web
Size
Color
Typography
Usability
Planning for animation

Putting Flash on the Web
Accessibility
Project management tips
Tips for lowering file sizes
Testing your work
Anatomy of a website
Exporting
Exporting with audio
Creating pre-loaders
Uploading

Cross-media Publishing
Publishing Profiles
Exporting stills
Exporting with audio
Exporting for video output
About compression and file sizes
Compositing your Flash movie
Putting your Flash movie onto video or DVD
Exporting projectors

Appendix. Resources
Web usage statistics
Web design info
Accessibility
More about mobile devices
Sound resources on the web
ActionScripting tutorials on the web
Flash animation tutorials on the web
Animation resources on the web
Further reading on character animation
Further reading on motion graphics
Further reading on Flash