Flash Michelle Johnston, Firebird Services Ltd

What Is Flash? Flash is a multimedia program created specially for use on the Web You can create animations/movies using Flash Flash uses vector graphics, which means that the graphics can be scaled to any size without losing clarity/quality Flash does not require programming skills and is easy to learn

Why Is Flash Better? Flash loads faster than animated gifs and Java applets (assuming that Flash is enabled on the browser) Flash allows interactivity, whereas animated gifs do not Programming skills are not needed to use Flash, whereas they are to write Java applets

How Do You Play Flash? Macromedia Shockwave Player is shipped with Windows 95, 98, MacOS, Internet Explorer CD, America Online, and Netscape Navigator. Now it is estimated that 96% of browsers can experience Flash without needing to download the player Download it for free

Creating a Movie Flash MX 2004 (or Flash MX Professional 2004) needed to create Flash movies Download a 30 day free trial version at: Macromedia Flash – Help has lessons that are very good

Creating a Movie

Creating a Movie Additional extras, generated auto by Flash if you select File > Publish: – classid is an attribute to the tag. It tells Internet Explorer to load the ActiveX plug-in if it is not installed – pluginspage is an attribute to the tag. It displays a link to the Shockwave download page if Netscape does not have it

Tweening Tweening is the term given to the way in which Flash creates animations “between” or “tween” pages You specify the transformation you require and Flash creates the frames

Tweening Step 1 Create a small circle to the left in the Stage area. Do this by selecting the circle tool from the left toolbar. Draw the circle in the Stage area. Step 2 Select the Arrow tool from the left toolbar. Double-click on the circle to select it. Step 3 Now we have to convert the circle to a symbol. When the circle is converted to a symbol we can create instances of the circle. From the top menu choose Insert > Convert to Symbol. Name the symbol "Ball", and select OK. Step 4 Go to Frame 10 in the Timeline. Do this by clicking the gray field below 10. Then right click in this field. Choose Insert Keyframe. Keyframes appear as circles in a frame. This operation duplicates the image. Note: A keyframe specifies changes in an animation. You create keyframes at important points in the Timeline and let Flash create the frames in between. Step 5 Select the circle and move it to the right a couple of inches. Step 6 Click on the Timeline any place between Frame 1 and Frame 10. Then right click and choose Create Motion Tween. Step 7 Choose Control > Test Movie from the top menu to test your Flash movie.

Creating a Movie Raw file =.fla extension Publish file =.swf extension.swf file can be run as standalone app, launched when user clicks on it It must be assigned a.exe file automatically and the Macromedia flash player app is included with the.swf file

Movies.swf files can also be embedded in web pages in the same way as you would embed a graphic Unless the swf is published as an exe file, the user must have the flash player installed on their computer to play the file Because the movie will be downloaded over the web you must carefully consider file size to ensure optimal performance and usability

Performance Issues Reduce Sound and Animation to the essentials only Ensure text is legible on all platforms Include skip buttons to allow skipping of animations Ensure movie conforms to usability guidelines/standards Ensure movie conforms to accessibility guidelines