Intro

I come to the world of Flash and web design from an arts background, not as a programmer, so the challenges that face me as I learn to be competent in Flash design are significant. Most of the dynamic web sites these days use Flash as a primary medium for animation and interactive graphics. As broadband use of the Net becomes more common, people will come to expect "television like" features in web sites. Yet most of these dynamic qualities require a mastery of ActionScripting -or Flash programming. You cannot be just a good artist with a good concept of layout and design, you also need to know how to do math. Yuk!
My eighth grade Algebra teacher said of me, "Jeff has no natural aptitude for math, but he tries very hard." That assessment of my abilities was right on target - or almost. I excelled at Geometry, but the rest was a wall of confusion. So, the idea of learning to program to create art in Flash was a scary thought indeed. Picking up the ActionScripting Manual in Flash 5 confirmed my worst nightmares. It is a list of functions telling what they do but not how they do it or when to use them. It reminds me of being required to memorize formulas for Quadratic Equations without anyone teaching you how to apply them to real problems. FPBP - For Programmers By Programmers- that is my assessment of the manual. It is a dictionary, not an instruction manual.  Thank God for Lynda.com!

History

I started learning Flash with version 4 back in late 1998 or early 1999. I was able to create many simple animations, tweens, and effects, but often the effects I wanted to create required too much computing power, and so my animations would slow to a crawl, then stutter and stall. I was told that the way to increase my efficiency and decrease my file size was to learn to ActionScript. Some brilliant designers, who were also programming geniuses, started producing 3D interactive animations created with math functions. I longed to try this, but as I started to learn the Flash 4 version of scripting, I was soon over my head. I was determined to try to master some of these marvelous effects, but then Flash 5 appeared and invalidated much of the Flash 4 language, method and coding. So, I decided to wait for Flash 5, which offered a revised language for scripting very similar to Javascript. 

I eagerly bought Flash 5 in Sept. of 2000, when it first came out, but was totally frustrated and disappointed by it, since it was so crash prone on the Mac that it was entirely unusable. It was only in, about February, of this year that Macromedia provided an update that fixed most of these problems, and so my quest to learn ActionScripting began anew. Yet I also knew the task was daunting and I could not teach myself. I started looking into seminars, but found that the locations and the costs to be discouraging, if not prohibitive. It was then, by divine grace, I stumbled on to the web site of Lynda.com and downloaded a sample lesson from their Advanced ActionScripting CD. It looked intriguing and it seemed to speak to my need for visual demonstrations to go along with the spoken word.  The best part of the whole deal was that while a seminar at a conference might cost you well upwards of $2,000 [including travel, hotel, admission, and seminar fee of $700], this CD sells for about $150. To me, it was worth the gamble to acquire my own home tutor.

Review

Advanced Flash 5: introduction to ActionScripting -   by Josh Ulm and Garo Green [Lynda.com], is a 6 hour instructional CD-ROM. It is broken down into 14 sections with multiple lessons, starting from an overview and progressing into the depths of interactive programming. The teachers provide a lively and often humorous approach to the materials, and the pace is just about right.

One of the tremendous benefits of having this CD- ROM is that, unlike a live seminar, you can play and replay each section until you understand it, which I did quite frequently. There are many, many confusing terms and methods for creating specific special effects in Flash. Often there are multiple ways of creating the same effect. I also used the CD as a reference while construction my own, newly revised Flash 5 site <http://www.PetersonSales.net/index2.html>.

The CD is definitely an intro. It introduces many of the broad techniques and terms, while giving you examples to copy and reproduce. An intro is exactly what I needed. I needed to get a feel for the basic concepts, and learn to use some examples to understand interactivity. For example, one section provides materials on collision scripting and shows you how to make objects aware of each other. With these techniques, you can create a simple game of asteroids. Another section teaches you how to load shared assets like Movie and Smart Clips. This section is very helpful in learning how to use assets in your library but which are not yet on your movie stage.  One section shows you how to use a text container to load various pages of html text in your Flash pages. You can edit these pages of text in a text editor without having to recreate your Flash movies, when you want to update your web pages. [For an example of text loaded into a text container, go to the Prices area and click on the various buttons ]

One of the most difficult concepts is learning how to use addressing syntax. When you want Movie Clip A to move to location B, you could use a simple tween, but tweens are processor intensive and slow down your Flash pages. The preferred way is to use ActionScripting, but to do that you must know how to talk to the Movie Clip. Several of the chapters address the nuts and bolts of targeting [talking to] your movie clips. Flash 4 used a method called Tell Targeting, but Flash 5 uses a dot syntax that is essentially the same as javascript.  It is clean, neat, and while not entirely easy, it creates a common environment for you, if you are familiar with any other html programming language like PHP.

I used many of the techniques from the CD to redo my web site. One of the frustrating aspects of the CD, however, is that I often wanted to know more. There are a few techniques used in the sample site that are not fully explained. So, the CD became the springboard for my first forays into ActionScripting, but to complete my projects, I often had to get help from user groups and mail lists. My main menu for my site is a scrolling menu, but I had to get help learning how to create perpetual motion for the selectable icons, the CD gives a sample of a menu that is user scrollable. But this CD gave me confidence. It gave me enough background that I knew what I needed to ask, and I didn't seem like a complete idiot when I asked the experts for their help. I got far enough along in the problem to get stuck, but with enough of the details, so that the experts could see my problem and understand what I was trying to do.

I ran into a few problems that are not entirely related to the CD, but have to do with the way Flash operates. Because the web pages in the training CD are already loaded into your computer, you don't realize the file sizes involved with the Flash pages you are creating.  My goal was to create reasonably fast loading pages, however, one of the techniques of Flash 5 is using Smart Clips.  Smart Clips are reusable elements in your library that can be used in multiple Flash movies on your web site. The major problem with Smart Clips,is that they load at the beginning of your movie. So if you have a Smart Clip of photographs of 200k, the entire clip will load in the first frame of your movie, creating the appearance of a stalled or broken movie. It may work okay for broadband, but any slower connection often makes it unusable. For the most part, after learning all the techniques, I abandoned most Smart Clips, except those I could use as empty containers to load other movies, because the clips killed any illusion of a fast loading site.

Conclusion

My newly revised site is an experiment - a work in progress. It does not have any high end, 3D math or equations. I hope to learn some of those techniques in the coming year. But, I've made my first steps into the world of scripting, and I am pretty satisfied with the load times and initial interactive techniques I've employed.

For the future, I've bought a book or two on ActionScripting, I'd love a CD of similar quality on Flash Maths, but I now feel familiar enough with the concepts and methods, that the books will no longer be frightening. It will be a bit more like picking up a book in a foreign language when you already have a conversational knowledge of it. 

If you are interested in learning ActionScripting, and have been hesitant about delving into the depths, I would heartily recommend you pick up this introduction to the new ways of Flash 5 from Lynda.com. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Jeff Peterson is a Macintosh pioneer, acquiring his first 128k Mac in 1984. In 1993, he produced one of the first electronic magazines, O Theophilus,and some of the first educational courses for the web. He started his own web design company in 1999, www.PetersonSales.net and is still acquiring new clients. Jeff is also a part-time theologian, The Scholar's Corner, and he loves to play Flight Sims when he gets a chance, being part of the notorious Shadow Riders, call sign Padre =<SR>=.

© 2001 Jefferis Kent Peterson
www.PetersonSales.net
www.Flashtips.org