Why Choose this Course?
Flash is
used to make multimedia files and interactive websites. This course provides a
comprehensive introduction to Adobe Flash. This course was originally designed for Macromedia Flash MX and its basic core lessons are still applicable to later versions of the software (now acquired by Adobe Systems). It assumes the student has no
knowledge of Flash at all but they must have access to a computer
with a CDROM drive and Adobe Flash installed.
By the end of the course, the student should be
able to easily understand all the major aspects of Flash MX and use it to
produce their own Flash applications.
There are twelve lessons in total, as
outlined below:
- Lesson 1. Introduction to Flash
- Lesson 2. Using the Flash MX editor
- Lesson 3. Drawing & Colour
- Lesson 4. Working with objects & symbols
- Lesson 5. Working with text
- Lesson 6. Working with graphics
- Lesson 7. Animation
- Lesson 8. Actionscript
- Lesson 9. Using audio in your movies
- Lesson 10. Using video in your movies
- Lesson 11. Components
- Lesson 12. Publishing
In the 1990’s, most websites were simply made up of static graphics, text and sometimes simple animations (called animated Gifs) which made many sites nothing more than glorified brochures and text heavy resources. With the birth of the ‘New Media’ industry, new tools were developed to make the internet a much more interactive and entertaining medium – one of these tools was Macromedia Flash. Flash enabled website designers and developers to create complex animations, incorporate decent quality sound and develop unique and experimental interfaces for their online projects. Using vector graphics and special compression techniques, Flash allows websites to show high quality graphics, play great sound and add ‘extra dimensions’ of interactivity without choking up bandwidth. This has made Flash one of today’s most popular website development and design tools.
Flash uses an internet friendly technology called ‘streaming’. Streaming enables information to be displayed as it is downloading, rather than only displaying once downloading has completed. This enables a well designed Flash project to seem to load instantly or very quickly while in fact it is downloading information as the user views it.
A good example of this technology is ‘streaming audio’ where you can listen to music while it is downloading across the internet instead of waiting for it to completely download.
How Flash works
For Flash to work on a website, the person visiting the website needs to have a ‘plug-in’ installed. This ‘plug-in’ enables the browser to identify and then display Flash content. Although the plug-in is a separate program, recent statistics show that around 95% of internet users already have the Flash plug-in installed. Flash is heavily supported by the I.T. industry and therefore comes installed with most windows based PC’s and some Mac computers. In later lessons, we will show you how to make your website detect if the visitor has the plug-in installed and if they don’t, how to direct them to the macromedia site to install it.
