| Flash has been the gold standard in multimedia creation software for almost 10 years. The program has come a long way since the mid-1990s, when professional animatorslike those at Microsoft's MSN and Disney Onlineused an early incarnation called FutureSplash. Over the years , Flash earned a following of programming geeks as an alternative to Java for creating vector-based Web graphics. In the 21st century, though, anyone with a desktop computer (or even a laptop) can be a Web animator. With Flash 8's easy-to-use panels and toolbars , you can create sophisticated, interactive animations that run on the Web, on standalone computers, on handhelds, on kiosksvirtually anywhere you find a screen (see Figure I-1). Here are just some of the things you can create with Flash: -
Drawings and animations . Flash gives you the drawing tools to create original artwork and the animation tools to give it movement and life. You can then edit your Flash document in another program, add it to a Web page, or burn it to a CD or DVD. Flash recognizes multimedia files created using other programs, so you can enrich your animations with image, sound, and video files you already have (or that you find on the Web). -
Multimedia Web sites . You can create original drawings and animations with Flash, add in voice-overs, background music, and video clips, and then publish it all to a Web page with the click of a button. Using Flash's built-in scripting language, ActionScript, you can add interactive features like hotspots and navigation bars. You can even position elements on the screen precisely and then change the layout at runtime. With Flash, even regular folks can create real-time video blogs and eye- grabbing splash pages. Figure I-1. The Yankee Candle Company's Web site, www.yankeecandle.com, is just one example of the movement, interactivity, and polish Flash can add to a site. From the home page, clicking Custom Candle Favors  Custom Votives displays this Web-based Flash program.  -
Banner ads . These blinking, flashing, animated strips of Madison Avenue marvelousness are easy to produce in Flash. Typically, banner ads consist of a skinny animation and a link to the sponsor site (see Figure I-2). Figure I-2. Over half of the banner ads you run across on the Web were produced using Flash. The best ones include compelling, lifelike action. Here, a man walks into the scene, picks up the product, and then walks offscreen . Clicking the product zips you to a different Web page, where you can place an order online.  -
Tutorials . Web-based training courses, which often include a combination of text, drawings, animations, video clips, and voice-overs, are a natural fit for Flash. By hooking Flash up to a server on the back end, you can even present your audience with graded tests and up-to-the-minute product information. You don't have to deliver your tutorials over the Web, though; you can publish them as standalone projector files (Chapter 14) and deliver them to your students via CDs or DVDs. -
Full-length ads and product presentations . Marketing types can use Flash to create slick, storyboarded, buy-our-stuff-now animations and program mock-ups. -
Customer service kiosks . Many of the kiosks you see in stores and building lobbies use Flash to help customers find what they need. For example, kiosks in photomats walk customers through the process of transferring images from their digital camera and ordering their own prints; kiosks in banks let customers withdraw funds, check interest rates, and make deposits. -
Television and film effects . The Hollywood set has been known to use Flash to create spectacular visual effects for TV shows and even smaller feature films . But where the TV and film industry is seriously adopting Flash is on promotional Web sites, where they wed Flash graphics to scenes taken from their movies and shows to present powerful trailers , interactive tours of movie and show sets, and teasers . -
Games and other programs . With support for runtime scripting, back end data transfers, and interactive controls such as buttons and text boxes, Flash has everything a programmer needs to create a cool-looking game (check out www.addictinggames.com for a few examples) or other rich Internet applications (Adobe/Macromedia's 20-dollar term for "Web-based program"). UP TO SPEED
Flash Is Everywhere | | One of the reasons for Flash's success is that a version of Flash Player comes with most browsers (including AOL, Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera) and operating systems (including Windows and Mac). So, unlike Apple's QuickTime or RealNetworks' RealPlayer, Web surfers don't have to do anything special to play Flash animations embedded in Web pages. In fact, depending on whose figures you believe, somewhere between 70 and 98 percent of all the PCs and Macs connected to the Web can play Flash animations right out of the box. This ubiquity is a huge boon for anyone interested in creating animations with Flash, because once you create your masterpiece, virtually everyone connected to the Internet will be able to see and enjoy itwith one caveat. If you use brand-new features introduced in Flash 8, folks running an earlier version of Flash Player (like Flash 6 or 7) may not be able to see your animation the way you meant for it to look until they download and install a copy of the Flash 8 Player. |
Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a free lunch . If Flash is an incredibly powerful, useful programand it isit's also harder to use than a greased tightrope. That's where this book comes in. You don't have to be a professional artist, animator, or software developer to create useful animations with Flash. All you need are this book and an idea of what you'd like to create. The examples, explanations , and step-by-step instructions you find in the next 14 chapters show you how to turn that idea into a working animation.  |
