Interactive Adventures
Adobe Flex/Flash Training
Flash Fundamentals Flex Fundamentals

Flash Fundamentals

Flash Fundamentals training will have you creating compelling drawings, animations, designs, web ads, forms, and games in no time. You'll leave the Flash Fundamentals training course confident in your ability to use all that Flash has to offer, including advanced features like adding video and audio and using ActionScript programming.

This course is designed to give an overall feel for the basics of Flash and also for the student to come away with a strong understanding of how to create an application and publish it to the web. As part of the benefits of taking this course, you will be given a personal directory for the display of your Flash projects. This can be used as an example of your practical knowledge (Flash employers always request on-line samples). There are also on-line resources available but you must use the "login id/password" given to class members.

Week 1: Getting Started and Drawing Essentials

  • Creating a new document, The default workspace, Reorganizing panels
  • Customizing your workspace, Saving workspaces
  • Document tabs,Maximize mode ,Finding help
  • Drawing tool basics,Drawing with the Pencil and Line tools
  • The improved Pen tool,The Quick Color tools,Drawing with shapes
  • Selecting content,Manipulating lines and fills,
  • Painting with brushes,Erasing content
  • Understanding drawing modes

Week 2: Color Essentials and Symbols Essentials

  • Using the Color Mixer, The Gradient Transform tool, Color swatches
  • Symbols overview, Creating and editing symbols
  • Nesting and breaking apart symbols
  • Working with buttons, Working with movie clips
  • Working with graphics , Using the Library
  • Transformation tools, Transformation panels, Transformation menus

Week 3: Timeline Essentials, Testing and Publishing Your Files

  • Using layers, Adding, deleting, and grouping layers
  • What is a keyframe? Using frames and keyframes
  • Working with multiple frames
  • Copying and pasting frames, Understanding scenes
  • Understanding document settings
  • Testing buttons and movie clips
  • Testing your movie, Publishing your movie

Week 4: Image Essentials, Animation Essentials

  • Vector vs. bitmap, Importing images and image compression
  • Importing Photoshop files, Importing Illustrator files
  • Tracing bitmaps , Breaking apart bitmaps
  • Shape tweening,Using shape hints,
  • Tweening gradients, Motion tweening
  • Copy and Paste Motion, Motion guides
  • Custom easing

Week 5: Text Essentials and Using Filters and Blend Modes

  • Understanding text types, Controlling text appearance
  • Simple text effects through tweening
  • Adding text to a project file
  • Spell-checking and Find and Replace
  • Using filters, Special filter options
  • Animating filters
  • Adding filters to a project file
  • Using blend modes
  • Flash-specific blend modes

Week 6:Using Components and Sound Essentials

  • Components overview
  • Adding a UIScrollBar component
  • Using a Loader component
  • Adding sound to the timeline
  • Adding basic effects to sounds, Sound sync options
  • Adding sound to buttons , Sound compression basics

Week 7:Video Essentials and Introduction to ActionScript

  • Embedded vs. external videos
  • Embedding videos with the Flash Video Encoder
  • Encoding external FLVs with optional cue points
  • Playing external videos with the FLVPlayback component
  • Overview and interface elements of ActionScript
  • Frame scripts, tracing, and comments
  • Variable basics, Function basics
  • Buttons and EventListeners, Simple navigation
  • Scripting components

Week 8: Putting it All Together

  • The story so far
  • Animated buttons , Animated masks
  • Publishing your site
  • Internet publishing considerations
  • Considerations for Internet Security