Getting Started with Flash Chapter 1 Understand the Flash workspace Lesson 1

Getting Started with Flash  Introduction: What is Adobe Flash?  A developmental tool that allows students to create compelling interactive experiences, often by using animation  An excellent program for developing animations that are used in websites, such as product demonstrations and banner ads  Flash uses vector images.  Vectors are scalable  Reduces the size of graphic files  Flash provides for streaming content over the Internet.  Does not need to wait for entire contents of Web page to load to start playing

© 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Tools You’ll Use Getting Started with Flash

Tools panel A Typical Flash Workspace © 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Movie Menu bar Object on the stage Title Bar Menu Bar Object in the Library panel Pasteboard –Stage– Playhead Selecting frame 1 displays the object (car) on the Stage Understand the Flash Workspace

 You can place objects on the stage and they are incorporated on a timeline.  You can create a movie by arranging objects on the stage and then animating the objects.  You can play the movie on the stage using movie controls, such as play, stop, and rewind. © 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Understand the Flash Workspace

 There are three parts of the workspace.  Menu bar organizes commands within menus  Stage is where you place objects  Timeline is how you organize and control objects on the Stage  You can display one or more panels at the same time. © 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Understand the Flash Workspace

 The Stage contains all the objects such as drawings, photos, animations, text, and video. – Shows how the objects behave within the movie and how they interact with each other – You can resize and change the background color © 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Understand the Flash Workspace

© 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning The Timeline is used to organize and control the movie’s contents by specifying when each object appears on the Stage. The images of the Timeline are contained within frames. Layers help to organize the objects on the Stage. Understand the Flash Workspace

© 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Understand the Flash Workspace You can use Panels to view, organize, and modify objects and features in a movie. The Tools panel contains a set of tools, used to draw and edit graphics and text. The Properties panel is used to display and change the properties of an object, such as size and transparency of a circle.

© 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Grouped panels Stand-alone panel Floating panel Collapsed panel sets Stacked panels (Properties/ Library and Color) Arranging panels Understand the Flash Workspace

© 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Understand the Flash Workspace The Library panel is used to store and organize the various assets of a movie such as graphics, buttons, sounds, and video. You can expand a panel to show all of its features or collapse it to reduce the clutter on a workspace.

© 2011 Delmar Cengage Learning Floating panels can be resized by dragging the left side, right side, or bottom of the panel. Flash provides several preset workspace configurations that provide panels and panel sets most often used. Understand the Flash Workspace