Flash tutorials

Introduction[edit | edit source]

EduTech Wiki contains introductory Flash and ActionScript tutorials for Flash using Adobe CS6. I used these tutorials in my Web animation classes at Webster University, Geneva until 2012/13 or so. A similar virtual book exists in french for my classes at University of Geneva. Some chapters are better than others and none is top quality so far, but most can serve as lecture notes and for some self-study.

Some tutorials were made with CS3, CS4 or CS5. The interface did change, but since Adobe's terminology is stable, CS6 users should have no problems learning from tutorials made for older versions. The difference between CS3 and CS4 isn't major, but there are some useful additions in CS4 like better motion tweening, inverse kinematics and support for 3D animation of 2D objects. CS5 is no different from CS4 as far as the user interface is concerned, but since it code snippets it is better suited for teaching Flash to beginners. CS6 added better support for mobile computing.

Since Adobe lost the fight it doesn't make much sense to teach Flash anymore, although Flash application were and still are popular in education. I personally always liked Flash as replacement for too difficult Java applets and never for HTML. In 2018, HTML5 is not there yet and I am not sure that the complex HTML5 DOM model with its many ways of doing the same thing is optimal progress.

Adobe renamed the "Flash Professional" tool to "Animate CC" since it now also can generate HTML5 / Create JS code which works OK without reaching Flash quality. Since I decided to teach a little two week class for beginners about interactive animations I made a single tutorial so far:

• Animate CC 2018 - Interactive animated web sites

- Daniel K. Schneider April 2013 / April 2018

List of Flash Tutorials[edit | edit source]

Introduction[edit | edit source]

• Flash

Understanding the environment[edit | edit source]

1. Flash CS6 desktop tutorial

Basic drawing[edit | edit source]

1. Flash drawing tutorial
2. Flash layers tutorial

Basic animation[edit | edit source]

1. Flash animation overview
2. Flash frame-by-frame animation tutorial
3. Flash classic motion tweening tutorial (CS3, including motion guides)
4. Flash CS6 motion tweening tutorial
5. Flash shape tweening tutorial
6. Flash animation summary

Use of external media[edit | edit source]

1. Flash video component tutorial
2. Flash sound tutorial
3. Clipart and texture (to help you finding/importing media elements)

Advanced drawing[edit | edit source]

1. Flash object transform tutorial
2. Flash arranging objects tutorial
3. Flash colors tutorial
4. Flash bitmap tracing tutorial
5. Flash pen tutorial

Basic interactivity and use of components[edit | edit source]

1. Flash button tutorial
2. Flash components overview (not complete)
3. Flash component button tutorial
4. Flash video component tutorial
5. Flash and php interaction tutorial (not started yet)
6. Flash animation and interactivity example problems
7. Flash actions-frame tutorial (CS5)

Medium animation[edit | edit source]

1. Flash embedded movie clip tutorial
2. Flash CS3 special effects tutorial
3. Flash inverse kinematics tutorial
4. Flash mask layers tutorial

Medium Interactivity[edit | edit source]

(some more ActionScript)

1. Flash using embedded movie clips tutorial
2. Flash augmented video tutorial
3. Flash video captions tutorial
4. Flash drag and drop tutorial
5. ActionScript 3 event handling tutorial
6. ActionScript 3 interactive objects tutorial (not finished)
7. Flash ActionScript 3 overview (Not an overview of the language. So far this is missing, but there is a AS3 - Survol du langage ActionScript
8. ActionScript 3 reading XML tutorial (stub)
9. Flash CS4 motion tweening with AS3 tutorial
10. Flash datagrid component tutorial
11. Flash games tutorial (not really done, maybe sometimes in 2009))
12. Flash for presentations tutorial (not done, stub)

Working with ActionScript libraries[edit | edit source]

1. Flash using ActionScript libraries tutorial (under construction)
2. AS3 TweenLite tweening engine (tutorial missing)
3. Flash Papervision3D tutorial
4. Flash CS4 motion tweening with AS3 tutorial

List of deprecated tutorials[edit | edit source]

(CS3/4)

1. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium installation
2. Flash CS3 desktop tutorial
3. Flash CS4 desktop tutorial
4. Flash CS5 desktop tutorial (stub)

Drawing

1. Flash CS3 drawing tutorial

Animation

1. Flash CS4 motion tweening tutorial
2. Flash CS3 sound tutorial
3. Flash CS4 inverse kinematics tutorial

Interactivity

1. Flash CS3 button tutorial
2. Flash CS3 component button tutorial
3. Flash CS3 video component tutorial
4. ActionScript 3 interactive objects tutorial (CS3)

CS4 and ActionScript 2

1. Flash button tutorial - AS2 -- Flash 8.
2. Flash component button tutorial - AS2

List of Flash Wiki books[edit | edit source]

Wiki books can be printed as PDF or be ordered as Print Books. Ordering a book from Pediapress may be cheaper than printing on a home printer.

1. EduTech Wiki:Books/Flash very first steps (Simple drawing and animation)
2. EduTech Wiki:Books/Flash first steps (as above + simple interactivity)
3. EduTech Wiki:Books/Flash tutorials (most tutorials)

Other Flash articles of interest[edit | edit source]

General

1. Flash -- the entry page for most everything that is Flash
2. Flash CS3 keyboard shortcuts
3. Flash ActionScript 3 overview -- a conceptual little overview of AS3
4. Flash formats and objects overview (not ActionScript objects !)
5. Flash - being organized (some advice for beginning Flash CS3 designers)
6. Flash 3D -- overview page of of Flash 3D tools and AS3 libraries

ActionScript and Flex tutorials

1. ActionScript 3 tutorials -- a complete programming language. The entry page for "pure" AS3 tutorials
2. Flex tutorials. Entry page for Flex tutorials.

Other resources[edit | edit source]

See:

• Flash and AS3 links

Media assets (pages that include links to repositories for media elements)

• Clipart
• Texture
• Sound Assets