Flash Tools: Interface Overview

Series Summary

At a time when it seems like just about everyone has their own Web site, the online challenge has moved beyond basic Web site construction and become how to set a site apart. How can designers grab the attention of someone who happens upon their site and get them to stay awhile? The solution is video, not simply home movie clips a la YouTube, but customized movies with animation-style special effects. A few years ago, animation programs such as Flash seemed virtually unapproachable for the non-professional. But with the latest version Flash, even the casual user can create amazing animations and custom interfaces for their own website. Borrowing sophisticated techniques from major studios such as using shared backgrounds and individual frames, this program give users insight into how their favorite cartoons are created. As a popular animation program for creating interactive websites, Adobe Flash has become an essential software program for Web designers. In this free video tutorial, a professional Web designer demonstrates how to use the basic drawing tools in this program, including the gradient transform tool, the eyedropper tool, the transform tool, the lasso selection tool and the paint bucket tool. The designer also includes an overview of the program interface and an example of a Flash Web site.

Video Transcript

"Now that we've seen what Flash can do here in the interface what I want to do is show you a very brief, let's get this out of the way, show you a very brief overview of the interface. And then we can get down to working inside of Flash. The first thing that you'll notice when you open Flash, is that your tool bar is completely grayed out. In other words, you can see these tools are there, but if you try, if you try to click on them, they don't activate. And that's simply because we have not yet opened a blank document. Just like any other program whether it's PhotoShop or Illustrator or, you know, even Microsoft Word, you need to have a blank document before you can start working. So, we'll go up to file, new and it gives you a bunch of different options. We'll get into a lot of these later. For now we'll just accept the default. And it gives us a blank canvas. And again, like I said, with any application that you work with, you need a blank document before any of your tools will come to life. And now you can see, if I click on these documents, sorry, if I click on these tools, I can now activate them."