Despite the many improvements in software over the years, one feature has grown consistently worse: documentation. With the purchase of most software programs these days, you don't get a single page of printed instructions. To learn about the hundreds of features in a program, you're expected to use online electronic help.
But even if you're comfortable reading a help screen in one window as you try to work in another, something is still missing. At times, the terse electronic help screens assume you already understand the discussion at hand and hurriedly skip over important topics that require an in-depth presentation. In addition, you don't always get an objective evaluation of the program's features. (Engineers often add technically sophisticated features to a program because they can, not because you need them.) You shouldn't have to waste your time learning features that don't help you get your work done.
The purpose of this book, then, is to serve as the manual that should have been in the box. In this book's pages, you'll find step-by-step instructions for using every Flash feature, including those you may not have quite understood, let alone mastered, such as working with video or drawing objects with ActionScript. In addition, you'll find clear evaluations of each feature that help you determine which ones are useful to you, as well as how and when to use them.
Note
This book periodically recommends other books, covering topics that might interest Flash designers and developers. Careful readers may notice that not every one of these titles is published by Missing Manual parent O'Reilly Media. While we're happy to mention other Missing Manuals and books in the O'Reilly family, if there's a great book out there that doesn't happen to be published by O'Reilly, we'll still let you know about it.
Flash CS5: The Missing Manual is designed for readers of every skill level, except the super-advanced programmer. If Flash is the first image creation or animation program you've ever used, you'll be able to dive right in using the explanations and examples in this book. If you come from an animation or multimedia background, you'll find this book a useful reference for unique Flash topics such as the motion tweens and the Motion Editor. The primary discussions are written for advanced-beginner or intermediate computer users. But if you're a first-timer, special sidebar articles called Up to Speed provide the introductory information you need to understand the topic at hand. If you're an advanced user, on the other hand, keep your eye out for similar shaded boxes called Power Users' Clinic. They offer more technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the experienced Flash fan. The Design Time boxes explain the art of effective multimedia design.
The ActionScript programming language is a broad, complex subject. This book isn't an exhaustive reference manual, but it gives you a great introduction to ActionScript programming, providing working examples and clear explanations of ActionScript principles.
Flash Professional CS5 works almost precisely the same in its Macintosh and Windows versions. You'll find the same buttons in almost every dialog box. Occasionally, they'll be dressed up differently. In this book, the illustrations have been given even-handed treatment, rotating between Windows 7 and Mac OS X.
Shortcut keys are probably the area where the Mac and Windows versions differ the most. Often where Windows uses the Ctrl key, Macs use the ⌘ key. You'll find some other relatively minor differences, too.
Whenever this book refers to a key combination, you'll see the Windows keystroke listed first (with + symbols, as is customary in Windows documentation); the Macintosh keystroke follows in parentheses (with - symbols, in time-honored Mac fashion). In other words, you might read, "The keyboard shortcut for saving a file is Ctrl+S (⌘-S)."
Flash CS5: The Missing Manual is divided into five parts, each containing several chapters:
Part One: Creating a Flash Animation guides you through the creation of your very first Flash animation, from the first glimmer of an idea to drawing images, animating those images, and testing your work.
Part Two: Advanced Drawing and Animation is the designer's feast. Here you'll see how to manipulate your drawings by rotating, skewing, stacking, and aligning them; how to add color, special effects, and multimedia files like audio and video clips; how to slash file size by turning bits and pieces of your drawings into special elements called symbols; and how to create composite drawings using layers. Text is an increasingly important part of Flash animations and applications, so this section introduces important text topics. In Part three, you'll learn how ActionScript works with text. In this section, you'll learn about the Motion Editor and how to use the inverse kinematics ("Bones") feature (Chapter 9).
Part Three: Adding Interactivity shows you how to add ActionScript 3.0 actions to your animations, creating on-the-fly special effects and giving your audience the power to control your animations. An entire chapter is devoted to predesigned components, like buttons, checkboxes, sliders, and scrolling lists. Powerful but easy to use, these components give your animation professional functions and style. This section includes lots of examples and ActionScript code. You can copy and modify some of the practical examples for your own projects. You'll see how to loop frames and how to let your audience choose which section of an animation to play, and how to customize the prebuilt interactive components that come with Flash. You'll find specific chapters on using ActionScript with text and using ActionScript to draw.
Part Four: Debugging and Delivering Your Animation focuses on testing, debugging, and optimizing your animation. You'll also find out how to publish your animation so that your audience can see and enjoy it and how to export an editable version of your animation so that you can rework it using another graphics, video editing, or web development program. The last chapter introduces Adobe AIR, a system for creating full-blown desktop applications using Flash.
Part Five: Appendixes. Appendix A, Installation and Help, explains how to install Flash and where to turn for help. Appendix B, Flash CS5, Menu by Menu, provides a menu-by-menu description of the commands you'll find in Flash CS5.
Throughout this book, you'll find instructions like, "Open your Program Files→Adobe→Adobe Flash CS5 folder." That's Missing Manual shorthand for much longer sentences like "Double-click your Program Files folder to open it. Inside, you'll find a folder called Adobe; double-click to open it. Inside that folder is a folder called Adobe Flash CS5; open it, too." This arrow shorthand also simplifies the business of choosing menu commands, as you can see in Figure 3.
This book is designed to get you started animating faster and more professionally. As you read the book's chapters, you'll encounter a number of living examples—step-by-step tutorials that you can build yourself, using raw materials that you can download from this book's "Missing CD" (www.missingmanuals.com/cds). You might not gain very much by simply reading these step-by-step lessons while relaxing in your hammock. But if you take the time to work through them at the computer, you'll discover that these tutorials give you an unprecedented insight into the way professional designers create animations and applications in Flash.
At www.missingmanuals.com, you'll find articles, tips, and updates to Flash CS5: The Missing Manual. In fact, we invite and encourage you to submit such corrections and updates yourself. In an effort to keep the book as up to date and accurate as possible, each time we print more copies of this book, we'll make any confirmed corrections you've suggested. We'll also note such changes on the website so that you can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book, if you like. (Go to www.missingmanuals.com/feedback, choose the book's name from the pop-up menu, and then click Go to see the changes.)
Also on our Feedback page, you can get expert answers to questions that come to you while reading this book, write a book review, and find groups for folks who share your interest in Flash.
We'd love to hear your suggestions for new books in the Missing Manual line. There's a place for that on missingmanuals.com, too. And while you're online, you can also register this book at www.oreilly.com (you can jump directly to the registration page by going here: http://tinyurl.com/yo82k3). Registering means we can send you updates about this book, and you'll be eligible for special offers like discounts on future editions of Flash CS5: The Missing Manual.
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