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The following is a list of all pages in the Notes section of flash-creations.com, with a keyword description of what's on each page. The first 5 sections are introductory Flash material. Following that are Actionscript Basics, Dynamic Content, Server Communications, Classes, AS2 Samples, and older AS1 ASTB Samples.
| Intro | |
| What is Flash | Flash for web, Flash for standalone executables, Flash IDE, creating a Flash movie |
| Examples of Flash on the Web | examples of flash used for different purposes on the web |
| Create | |
| Drawing in the Flash IDE | drawing fill and stroke objects in Flash IDE, how Flash is different from other drawing programs, 5 quirks of Flash, pen tool, subselect tool, selection methods, rectangle, oval, paint bucket, ink bottle |
| Creating Gradients in the Flash IDE | color mixer for creating gradients, editing gradients in Flash IDE |
| More Drawing Tips | soften fill edges, paste in place, paint inside |
| Import Sound and Bitmaps | import sound files, bitmap graphics, illustrator files into Flash, convert bitmap to vector graphic, make animated gif into swf |
| A Drawing Sample | use drawing tools, imported graphics, trace bitmap, transform tool, soften fill edges to make a scene |
| Animate | |
| Using Keyframes to Animate | make keyframe, extend timeline, keyframe animation, drawing tools and import sound to main timeline to animate scene |
| Motion Tweens (plain and guided) | motion tween to move an object across the stage, transform panel, motion tween requires symbol, start keyframe, end keyframe, guided motion tween to make an object follow a path, guided motion path, insert blank keyframe |
| Tweens for Fade Transitions | motion tween for fade, grow, rotate, change color, example of photo transitions, move keyframe |
| Shape Tweens | shape tweens, cartoon bouncing ball, onion skin outlines |
| Masks | create mask, motion tweened mask, shaped tweened mask, convert text to shape with Modify, Break Apart, using a mask for handwriting or drawing effect |
| Control | |
| Control the playhead | playhead commands, make movie stop at end, adding a replay button |
| Control movieclip playhead | 3 ways to make a movieclip, including from existing content, stop a movieclip, use a button to control a movieclip, give movieclip an instance name to make it addressable |
| Movieclip Reference page | movieclip properties, _root and _parent, absolute vs relative addresses, instance names, default behavior of movieclips |
| Frame-based website structure | website structure with section content in keyframes, intro animation, navigation buttons |
| Creating a Movieclip | create a movieclip from contents in another fla, copy frames, paste frames, put movieclip and control in section of website, edit movieclip on stage |
| Example Contact Form | add user input form to movie, static text, input text, dynamic textfield to display message, LoadVars and PHP code to send email, set tab order, set focus on form entry |
| Scrolling Graphics or Text | make movieclip with text or graphic content scrollable with buttons (Flash 5 style code) |
| Preloader for website | find size of published movie, find size of each frame in movie, see how movie looks at different connection speeds, add 100-frame preloader to beginning of movie |
| Website structure with content swf's | use individual swfs for site content, each with own preloader, loadMovie |
| Publish | |
| Placing Flash on HTML page | adjust swf location on html page, margins, center, javascript to open popup window from flash or html |
| Detection | updated flash detection in flash mx 2004 and flash 8, specifying alternate content, flashobject, swfobject, kewbee flash plugin switcher |
| Compression notes | set compression of bitmap graphics, sound, individually or throughout movie |
| Actionscript Basics | |
| Actionscript Syntax | actionscript in frame, actions panel, syntax, variable naming, code block, case sensitivity, expressions |
| Actionscript Playhead Commands | movieclip timeline, gotoAndPlay, gotoAndStop, scope, path to instance, adding code to actions panel, errors, output panel |
| Playhead Commands and Addressing Nested Movieclips | control continuous loop movieclip, play, stop, address nested movieclips |
| Coded Motion with the Tween Class | control movieclips via properties, visible, alpha, tween class, named functions |
| Creating transitions & motion with onEnterFrame | onRollOver, onRollOut, onEnterFrame, use of this, moving buttons |
| About ActionScript Classes | class, property, method, storing data, datatype, Array, using flash help, online documentation |
| Declare, Assign variables | declare variable, assign value to variable, every variable is a property of a timeline |
| Comments, Trace | single-line, multiline comments, use trace to debug |
| Simple Datatypes in Actionscript | number, boolean, true/false, string, String methods, find string, concatenate string, substring, replace one string with another |
| Arrays and Objects | array, Array methods, push, pop, splice, object, dot syntax, associative array, array of objects, recordset, dataprovider for v2 component |
| Code Blocks | code block, if then else, for loop, syntax check, indent code, check equals, functions, event handler, assignment, randomBetween function |
| Actionscript Operators | operators, increment, decrement, compare, equals, greater than, less than, bit operators, and, or, not, modulo, remainder, bit shift, ternary |
| Using Event Handlers instead of buttons | onrelease, onrollover, onrollout, onmousemove, onpress, event handlers, actionscript in frames versus on buttons, using movieclip controls instead of buttons, this, examples of controls |
| Code Structure | an example framework for putting code in main frame of movie: set up areas to document movie, import classes, declare and/or initialize variables, define functions, start movie |
| Toggle Buttons | on/off button, pause/play button, controls with two states, examples of using a variable to track state or using _currentframe in the toggle button itself to track state |
| Button Groups | control group of nav buttons, show state of selected control, controls that grow, controls with different labels, array to hold group information, nav buttons and slideshow |
| Dragging, Detecting Collisions | collision detection, make movieclip draggable, onEnterFrame for continuous checking, drag in a line, rectangle drag constraints, collision between point and movieclip, collision between between bounding box of 2 movieclips, collision between mouse and movieclip bounding box |
| Distorting Magnifier | use duplicateMovieClip or attachMovie to create a distoring magnifier, mask, create copies of movieclip |
| Scrolling and Formatting Text | scroll text, html format text, text behind a mask, scrollbar, embed font, make button movieclip from button, flash 8 text aliasing options |
| Example bee game | event handler (onRollover, onRollOut) example, difference between registration point and transformation point, use align panel to make center registration point, hittest, keeping score, displaying score |
| Dart Shooter Game | downloadable shoot bubbles example game, onenterframe, collision detection, random placement (Math.random), shape tween, drag multiple objects |
| Controlling Sound | put sound in movieclip, control sound volume, control volume of whole movie, slider control |
| Easing Slider with Tween class | keeping fla and actionscript separate, as file, button pulse on mouseover, Tween class, slider, easing, make generic function, why upper left registration point, addressing movieclips by dot syntax or string representation of name, ways to link a control with a particular movieclip |
| Easing Slider 2: Group of Buttons, Delegate | example of using a group of buttons with an information array to show a visual indication of which control was selected, and track information related to each control, Tween onMotionFinished method, use of Delegate to change scope |
| Intro to Using v2 Components in Flash | using components, UI components, radio button, checkbox, push button, textarea, combobox, dropdown, setstyle, edit content in multiple frames, addeventlistener, framework for listener, component help |
| Timers, Intervals and Delays | ways to control timing in flash: onEnterFrame, Tween with onMotionFinished, getTimer, setInterval, clearInterval, elapsed time, timers, countdown, time between button clicks, detecting a double-click |
| Dynamic Content | |
| Dynamic Content | including dynamic content, asynchronous events |
| Flash Drawing API | drawing API, createEmptyMovieClip, beginFill, lineStyle, draw line, draw curve, draw circle, MovieClip.prototype, registration point, draw shape with cutout, reverse direction to make mask with cutout |
| Creating Dynamic Textfields | createtextfield, textformat, text and htmlText, how to embed fonts |
| Attach Movieclips Dynamically | use attachMovie to attach snowflake movieclips from the library, apply random position, alpha, rotation, speed |
| Easing Slider 3: Attaching graphics dynamically | use array of information to attachMovie dynamically |
| Easing Slider 4: Creating text dynamically | use createTextField to create text fields dynamically, format with css or with TextFormat class, Flash 8 anti-aliasing properties, setNewTextFormat |
| Load External Jpg's and Swf's | use external jpg, load external swf, MovieClipLoader, onLoadInit, onLoadProgress, loadClip, load jpgs sequentially, path to jpg, MovieClipLoader framework to cut and paste, simulate download |
| Scrolling Photo Viewer | continuous scroll under mask, dynamic load jpgs sequentially, respond to mouse position |
| Preloading a swf | example load swf, show load progress, set up movie with init function, sound off during preload |
| XML | what is xml, how to use xml with flash, xml structure, read xml and convert to array of objects, use xml data as dataprovider for v2 components |
| Easing Slider 5: XML as Data Source, HTML links | easing slider example with xml as data source, including html-formatted text with links, css styling for a tags, use of cdata, single-click scrollable textfield |
| Server Communications | |
| LoadVars (and PHP) intro | LoadVars, Flash to PHP, Flash to server communications, send, sendAndLoad, get data from server, send data to server |
| AP - PHP Lookup | lookup for actionscript php equivalents, conversion, array, string, type, syntax |
| Read from text file | read content from text file, onData, onLoad, variable=value pairs, utf-8 encoding |
| Datagrid, LoadVars with PHP & MySQL | datagrid component, loadvars, retrieve records, display records in datagrid, insert record, delete record, php, mysql, phpmyadmin, addslashes, stripslashes, methods of flash-database communication, custom sort, use addItem and removeItem instead of push and splice for dataprovider |
| Flash Remoting Example | using remoting for binary data communication between flash and web server, amfphp, remoting components, php class, methodtable, recordset sort |
| Display pictures in a directory | PHP script to return list of all jpgs in a directory, Flash createEmptyMovieClip holders for jpgs to display, buttons to tween previous, next |
| Actionscript Classes | |
| Intro to Actionscript Classes | ActionScript 2 classes, where to store, path, class structure, import |
| Math Class | Math class, random, floor, round, create new method, trigonometry functions, radians, degrees, rotation, sin, cos, tan, Atan2, object follows mouse example, turn dial, tweened rotation |
| Key Class (for keyboard interaction) | finding which key was pressed, getcode, getascii, keylistener, onKeyDown versus onEnterFrame check, make Enter key like button press, table of keycodes |
| Date Class | get current date or time, set date variable, date methods, clock, append date string to keep from pulling cached version of swf |
| ActionScript Color Class | use instance of color class to set color of movieclip, color transition, random color, for/in loop |
| Using EventDispatcher | using built-in eventDispatcher to communicate between classes, dispatchEvent, broadcast, listener, sender, receiver |
| New Samples | |
| Drawing API generated Pie Chart | piechart, drawing api example, createtext, read from text file |
| Event-model Email Sample | use ActionScript 2 classes to separate function, EventDispatcher, v2 button component with Delegate to set scope |
| Creating a Tween Sequence | Create named instances of Tween class and use onMotionFinished to set up a sequence of tweens, addressing movieclips in a loop, array of colors, embed font, change color dynamically, recursive tween function, perpetual motion example |
| Tweened Sequences Using Fuse | fuse for sequential tweens, fuse class, array of objects |
| Using SVG in Flash | read svg file, parse svg path tag, d attribute, animation package, animate outline, display svg in flash |
| Using the BitmapData class to Draw an Elevation Map | representation of bitmap data in flash, bitmapdata class for quick rendering of pixel-based data, noaa, goedas, elevation data, topographic map, color range, parse comma-delimited (csv) file with onData |
| Using a SWF as a data holder | Using a SWF as a data holder for elevation data as source for a map drawn with bitmapdata class |
| Two-Level Menu | two level menu with easing, tween class with onMotionFinished, photos fade in |
| Flash and Yahoo! Map API | Use Yahoo map api with Flash, geocode, latitude, longitude, marker, swf, library, loadVars in, XML out |
| Class-based Dart Shooter Game | Actionscript 2 game using game manager class and movieclip extensions, eventdispatcher |
| ASTB Samples | |
| Notes about ASTB Samples | note about samples in this section |
| 3D Outline Sample | bezier curves, 3d outlines, shape properties, ActionScript 1 classes, matrices for projecting 3d vectors into 2d space |
| Edge collision detection sample | collision detection, point on shape hits any point on other shape's border, localToGlobal, hittest, simulating physics (gravity, damping) |
| Flash and PHP address book sample | Flash LoadVars, PHP and MySQL to create addressbook with clickable photo links, server communications, asfunction, movieclip addressing |
| Create and save shapes sample | allow user to draw shapes by dragging mouse or creating bezier curves, save as shared object, output SVG, output shared object equivalent text, reduce points in drawing |
If you are not a student at the Corcoran and would like to access all the class files used in the examples at this site, you may do so by obtaining a file subscription, which allows access to all files used at the site for one month from date of purchase. The file section is updated as I update the site.
(Not all downloads require a subscription. Where a link to the fla is provided, a subscription is not needed to download the file. Here is a list of all files currently available for download)
A username and password will be emailed to you at the address you supply to Paypal for you to use to access the file directory at this site.
