Macromedia Flash – Web content design tool that can create animated graphics that may be synchronize to sound.
Flash Vocabulary
1. Stage - The stage is where you draw and import artwork, add text and sound, and additional features such as navigation buttons or other user interface components.
2. Toolbar - The toolbar contains the tools for creating editing and modifying text and graphics.
3. Panels - Help you view, organize, and modify the elements in a document.
4. Timeline - The Timeline organizes and controls a document's content over time.
5. Property Inspector - The Property Inspector enables you specify the properties of a object.
6. Layers - Layers are a way of organizing objects on the stage, much like a stack of transparent sheets for an overhead projector.
7. Color Mixer - Panel that may be used to set the current color used by a drawing or paint tool.
8. Symbol - In Flash, a symbol is a graphic, button, or movie clip that you create once and can reuse throughout a document.
9. Library - The library In a Flash document stores symbols created in Flash and also maybe used to import files such as video clips, sound clips, bitmaps, and vector artwork.
10. Instance - When you select a symbol in a library and drag it onto the Stage you create an instance of that symbol.
11. Graphic Symbols - Graphic symbols are used for static images and simple animations. Graphic symbols operate in sync with the Timeline of the main movie. Interactive sounds and buttons won't work in a graphic's symbol's animation sequence.
12. Movie Clips - These symbols play independently of the movie Timeline. You may put actions, sounds and buttons inside movie clips.
13. Button Symbols - Used for creating buttons. The timeline for a button is a little different from the regular Flash Timeline. A button has four states:
The Up state: how the button appears on the screen when it first appears.
The Over state becomes visible when you move your pointer over a button on the stage.
The Down state is revealed when you click a button.
The Hit state is revealed when you click a button
General Flash Concepts
The color palettes in Flash are automatically set to display 216 web-safe colors. For more color graduations, you can use the Color Mixer.
There are two methods for creating an animation sequence in Flash: tweened animation and frame-by-frame animation
Frame-by-frame animation involves a series of keyframes with different images in each frame.
Tween animation is created when Flash automatically fills in frames between the starting and ending frames for an object on the stage
There are two types of tweens in Flash: shape tweens and motion tweens.
Motion tweens needs two keyframes (start and end frames) containing the same symbol. In a motion tween you can change the following properties; color, alpa (fade), position, size. Motion tweens are also commonly called transformations, which are moving of elements on a stage.
Shape tween needs two keyframes (start and end frames) containing a non-symbol object (shape drawn in Flash or imported bitmapped image). In shape tween you can change the following properties: color, alpha (fade), shape. Shape tweens are also commonly called deformations, which are changing the shape of elements on a stage.
