Flash CS4 Digital Classroom Book with DVD
Adobe Flash CS4 Digital Classroom book with DVD is like having a personal instructor guiding you through each lesson, while you work at your own pace. This Flash CS4 book with DVD includes 15 self-paced lessons helping you learn essential Flash skills and explore new features and capabilities of Adobe Flash.
- Full color lessons with easy to follow step-by-step instructions
- Video tutorials highlight key topics in each lesson
- Covers all essential Flash skills
- Gets you up-and-running quickly with included Flash CS4 lesson files on DVD
- Written by expert Flash instructors – it's like having your own personal tutor
- Used by hundreds of schools and more than 100,000 readers
Flash CS4 Digital Classroom Book with DVD Contents
Starting Up
- About Flash Digital Classroom
- Prerequisites
- System requirements
- Starting Adobe Flash CS4
- Resetting the Flash workspace
- Loading lesson files
- Working with the video tutorials
- Setting up for viewing the video tutorials
- Viewing the video tutorials with the Adobe Flash Player
- Additional resources
Lesson 1: What’s New in Adobe Flash CS4?
- Starting up
- Testing the waters
- New animation engine
- Motion Presets
- The Motion Editor
- New easing behaviors
- New drawing tools: The Deco and Spray Brush tools
- The 3D Rotation and 3D Translation tools
- Inverse Kinematics: The new
Bone and Bind tools - New CS4 interface
- New F4V video format
- Adobe Media Encoder
Lesson 2: Flash CS4 Jumpstart
- Starting up
- What is Flash?
- About Flash Player
- Flash file types
- Creating a new document
- Setting up your new document
- Saving your Flash document
- Opening documents
- The Flash workspace
- The Stage and work area
- The Flash Tools panel
- The Property Inspector
- Panels and panel groups
- The Timeline
- Practicing with the Flash tools
- The drawing and selection tools in action
- Using gradient and color tools
- Animation in action
- Getting help
- Support forums
- Moving forward
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 3: Getting Started with the Drawing Tools
- Starting up
- Drawing in Flash
- Using the Merge Drawing model
- Creating artwork in Merged
Drawing mode - Working with Drawing Objects
- Putting it all together
- Using the Line tool
- Using the Pen tool
- Using the Add and Delete Anchor
Point tools - Using the Combine Objects menu
- Using the Primitive tools (Smart Shapes)
- Using the Oval Primitive tool
- The Rectangle Primitive tool
- Adding text to your artwork
- Adding filters
- Working with colors
- Getting set up
- Creating gradients
- Using opacity with gradient colors
- Creating custom colors
- Saving a custom color set
- Organizing and layering graphics
- Working with layers
- Arranging, locking, and hiding layers
- Creating layer folders
- Transforming graphics
- The Transform menu and Free Transform tool
- The Transform panel
- Transforming gradients
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 4: Using Symbols and the Library
- Starting up
- What are symbols?
- A look at the Library panel
- Creating symbols
- Converting a graphic to a symbol
Creating blank symbols - Building artwork with symbol instances
- Positioning and snapping
in symbol instances - Editing and duplicating symbols
- Editing symbols in place
- Modifying individual symbol instances
- Modifying instance color
- Fine-tuning your background
- Duplicating symbols
- Adding graphics and
text to your banner - Swapping symbols
- Managing the Library
- Organizing symbols with folders
- The Move To command
- Deleting items from the library
- Controlling library views
- Wrapping up
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 5: Advanced Tools
- Starting up
- Working with gradients
- Adjusting gradients with the Gradient Transform tool
- New Flash CS4 tools for advanced drawing
- Spraying symbols Masking
- Introducing the Deco tool
- Advanced Deco tool techniques
- Introduction to IK tools
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 6: Creating Basic Animation
- Starting up
- Introducing keyframes and the Timeline
- Layers
- Frames and keyframes
- Building animation: Enter the tween
- New: Tween layers and
automatic keyframing - Tweening multiple objects
- Previewing animation with Test Movie
- Moving and transforming tween paths
- Incorporating color effects and scaling
- New: Introducing the Motion Editor
- Modifying the animation
using the Motion Editor - Tweening rotation
- Controlling animation paths
- Where did Motion Guide layers go?
- What happens to my existing Flash files that use Motion Guide layers?
- How do I create a motion guide if I still want to?
- Morphing graphics and
colors with shape tweens - Shape tween basics
- Legacy techniques: Creating classic tweens
- Adding color effects and scaling to a classic tween
- (Re)creating motion guides for classic tweens
- Troubleshooting Motion Guides
- Adjusting animation with onion skinning
- Looking ahead
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 7: Advanced Animation
- Starting up
- Copying, pasting, and saving animation
- Using Copy and Paste Motion
- New: Creating Motion Presets
- Applying Advanced Easing Behavior
- Animating Masks
- Creating Animation with IK Poses
- Sequencing Animation
- Shifting, Moving, and Extending Tween Spans
- New: Rendering and Animating in 3D
- The 3D Rotation tool
- The 3D Translation tool
- Fine-Tuning Tweens with the Motion Editor
- Adding shape tweens and shape hints
- Creating Shape Hints
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 8: Customizing Your Workflow
- Starting up
- Customizing workspace layouts
- Opening the completed file
- Working with panels
- Collapsing and storing panels
- Managing workspaces
- Setting preferences
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Visual aids for alignment
- Rulers and guides
- Guide layers
- Advanced alignment
- Refining your aligned objects
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 9: Working with Imported Files
- Starting up
- Import formats
- Importing still images
- Viewing the completed lesson file
- Import a bitmap image
- Adding text
- Swapping out an imported file
- Modifying imported artwork
- Updating imported files
- Importing Photoshop files
- Importing a layered Photoshop file
- Importing Illustrator artwork
- Animating the bat
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 10: Introducing ActionScript
- Starting up
- Exploring the lesson file
- What is ActionScript?
- ActionScript 2.0 or 3.0: Which should you use?
- An important note about Publish settings
- The Actions panel at work
- Standard (default) script editing mode
- Using Script Assist
- Adding & removing actions
- Adding actions to frames
- Using stop( )
- Using the goto action to navigate the Timeline
- Controlling Movie Clip Timelines
- Functions
- Wrapping up
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 11: Creating Button Symbols
- Starting up
- Working with button symbols
- Building buttons
- Adding text to a button
- Duplicating and modifying buttons
- Creating text-based buttons
- Creating frame labels for ActionScript
- Adding ActionScript: Events and event handlers
- Understanding events
- Responding to events with event handlers
- Tying it all together with event listeners
- Linking buttons to specific frames
- Adding an event listener to a button
- Linking buttons to a web site
- Introducing navigateToURL( ) and URLRequest( )
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 12: Adding Sound to Your Movies
- Starting up
- Preparing sound files for Flash
- Sample rate and bit depth
- Editing your audio
- Mono or stereo
- Audio file formats
- Importing sounds
- Placing sounds on the Timeline
- Adding sound to your slide show project
- Adding the remaining narration
- Adding sound effects to buttons
- Placing Event sounds on button frames
- Controlling sounds
- Editing sounds
- Trimming sound
- Controlling sounds
- Repeating and looping sounds
- Looping sounds
- Introducing the SoundMixer and stopAll( )
- More sync menu controls: stop and start
- Start sounds
- Stop sounds
- Sound publishing options
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 13: Introducing Movie Clips
- Starting up
- About movie clips
- Creating movie clips Laying the foundation: Your first movie clip
- Previewing movie clip animation from the main Timeline
- Creating the landing gear Combining movie clips and main Timeline animation
- Nesting movie clips
- Adding ActionScript to movie clip Timelines
- Controlling movie clip playback
- Adding some variation to the propellers
- Tweening movie clips
- Adding a second tween
- Combining movie clips for complex animation
- Adding filter effects to movie clips
- Using the Filters panel
- Creating a filter effect
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 14: Working with Video
- Starting up
- Video in Flash: formats and fundamentals
- Understanding video
- Embedded versus linked video
- The Flash Video format
- Understanding codecs
- Understanding the Adobe Media Encoder
- Converting video with the Adobe Media Encoder
- Working with embedded video
- Adding embedded video to the Timeline
- Building controls for embedded video
- The Bandwidth Profiler
- Working with linked video
- Adding cue points in the Adobe Media Encoder
- Adding linked video to the Timeline
- Working with the FLVPlayback component
- Self study
- Review
Lesson 15: Delivering Your Final Movie
- Starting up
- The publishing process
- Publishing to the web
- Customizing the Publish settings
- CD-ROM delivery
- Creating a standalone projector
- Make a full-screen projector
- Using Export Movie
- An overview of FTP
- Using Adobe Device Central in Flash
- Self study
- Review