New Media Training

Macromedia Flash 8: Advanced Design

Description

Macromedia Flash 8: Advanced Design provides Flash designers with prior ActionScript experience the knowledge and hands-on practice they need to build more flexible and dynamic design-based Flash content. This course focuses on teaching students more advanced ActionScript topics that will remove a reliance on Timeline-based visual tools. Students will learn to generate dynamic design and navigation elements that cannot be created without ActionScript.

Audience

This course is for Flash designers who have some experience with ActionScript but want to learn more advanced topics and features to enhance their designs. To gain the most from this class you should already have:

Experience creating Flash designs and animation using the Timeline.
Equivalent knowledge from the Macromedia Flash 8: Rich Content Creation course.
Equivalent knowledge from the Macromedia Flash 8: ActionScript course.
At least one year of Flash design experience.

Course Outline

Unit 1: Introducing the Course

Introducing the course
Understanding the course format
Discussing the course objectives
Reviewing the course prerequisites
Reviewing the course outline

Unit 2: Architecting a Flash Application

Architecting with layers
Architecting with Movie Clips
Placing code in external ActionScript files
Introducing object oriented programming concepts
Working with Flash classes
Writing methods, functions and event handlers
Referencing dynamic variables using bracket notation
Extending the Movie Clip class
Detecting Movie Clip interactions with hitTest()

Unit 3: Working with Graphics

Learning about Flash drawing models
Using filters
Using blends
Creating filters and blends with ActionScript
Introducing bitmap caching

Unit 4: Importing XML Data

Learning about XML
Using XML in Flash
Accessing XML data
Looping through XML data

Unit 5: Working with Text

Implementing advanced anti-alias rendering
Introducing the TextFormat class
Formatting text with cascading style sheets
Resizing text fields

Unit 6: Implementing Advanced Graphic Loading

Creating reusable instance-based code
Loading external media with MovieClipLoader
Creating instances of the Flash Object class
Introducing listeners and event handlers
Understanding the MovieClipLoader event handlers
Using createEmptyMovieClip() and getNextHighestDepth()
Attaching Movie Clips
Positioning visual elements dynamically
Understanding swapping depths

Unit 7: Reviewing Animation Basics with ActionScript

Creating Timeline-based custom easing
Animating with ActionScript
Interacting with the mouse location
Adding easing via ActionScript
Creating a mask with ActionScript

Unit 8: Learning Advanced Animation with ActionScript

Introducing the Tween class
Handling Tween class events
Introducing the Transition classes
Using Delegate to create a component listener

Unit 9: Styling and Skinning Components

Styling components
Skinning components with themes
Skinning components manually

External links: Adobe