Learn more about using FLASH to make multimedia files and interactive web pages.

    · A comprehensive course that you can study in your own home.

    · A useful qualification for anyone interested in multimedia and graphic design.

    · Learn from our highly experienced and qualified tutors.

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.

Flash was developed by a company called Macromedia. Earlier versions are known as Macromedia Flash. The Adobe company has since bought out Macromedia; hence Flash is now an Adobe product.

Course Structure

 There are twelve lessons in total, as outlined below:

1. Introduction to Flash -Introduction, Vector graphics, Bitmap graphics, Streaming, How flash works, Upgraded features
2. Using the Flash MX editor -Creating a new document, Setting preferences, Editing, Clipboard, Action script editing, Zooming, Scenes, Objects, Moving the stage, Grids,Guides, Rulers, Timeline, Keyframes, Layers, Frame labels, etc.
3. Drawing & Colour -Toolbar, Basics of drawing in flash, Pencil tool, Drawing lines and shapes, Brush tool, Masks, etc
4. Working with objects & symbols -Objects, Arrow tool, Lasso tool, Symbols, Assets, Library, etc
5. Working with text -Static text, Embedded and Device Fonts, etc
6. Working with graphics -Turning bitmaps into vector graphics, Using bitmaps as fills, Modifying bitmap fills, The magic wand.
7. Animation -Frame by frame animation, Tweened animation, Setting up a movie, Animating, Layers, Adding a background, Creating timeline effects.
8. Actionscript -Creating interaction, Planning scripts for a movie, Object oriented programming, The movie clip object.
9. Using audio in your movies -Unsynchronised sound, Synchronised sound, Importing sounds, Adding sounds to frames, Adding sounds to buttoons, Using event sounds, Start sounds, Streaming sounds, Stopping sounds, Looping sounds, Editing sounds.
10. Using video in your movies -Quality, Keyframe interval, Scale, Importing audio, Working with video, Importing video.
11. Components -The check box, Importing text scroll bar, Creating a form, Adding a check box, Adding a combo box, Push buttons, Configure components, Write action script to gather data, Action script for the entire movie, Action script to each key frame, Testing the movie.
12. Publishing -How to prepare your finished movie for distribution via the Internet, CD and other formats. You will also learn techniques for optimising your movies so they perform efficiently and on multiple system configurations.

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.

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