User manual MACROMEDIA FLASH 8 - GETTING STARTED WITH FLASH

Getting Started with Flash Trademarks 1 Step RoboPDF, ActiveEdit, ActiveTest, Authorware, Blue Sky Software, Blue Sky, Breeze, Breezo, Captivate, Central, ColdFusion, Contribute, Database Explorer, Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, FlashCast, FlashHelp, Flash Lite, FlashPaper, Flash Video Encoder, Flex, Flex Builder, Fontographer, FreeHand, Generator, HomeSite, JRun, MacRecorder, Macromedia, MXML, RoboEngine, RoboHelp, RoboInfo, RoboPDF, Roundtrip, Roundtrip HTML, Shockwave, SoundEdit, Studio MX, UltraDev, and WebHelp are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. and may be registered in the United States or in other jurisdictions including internationally. Other product names, logos, designs, titles, words, or phrases mentioned within this publication may be trademarks, service marks, or trade names of Macromedia, Inc. or other entities and may be registered in certain jurisdictions including internationally. Third-Party Information This guide contains links to third-party websites that are not under the control of Macromedia, and Macromedia is not responsible for the content on any linked site. If you access a third-party website mentioned in this guide, then you do so at your own risk. Macromedia provides these links only as a convenience, and the inclusion of the link does not imply that Macromedia endorses or accepts any responsibility for the content on those third-party sites. Speech compression and decompression technology licensed from Nellymoser, Inc. (www.nellymoser.com). SorensonTM SparkTM video compression and decompression technology licensed from Sorenson Media, Inc. Opera ® browser Copyright © 1995-2002 Opera Software ASA and its suppliers. All rights reserved. Macromedia Flash 8 video is powered by On2 TrueMotion video technology. © 1992-2005 On2 Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.on2.com. Visual SourceSafe is a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Copyright © 2005 Macromedia, Inc. All rights reserved. This manual may not be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or converted to any electronic or machine-readable form in whole or in part without written approval from Macromedia, Inc. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the owner or authorized user of a valid copy of the software with which this manual was provided may print out one copy of this manual from an electronic version of this manual for the sole purpose of such owner or authorized user learning to use such software, provided that no part of this manual may be printed out, reproduced, distributed, resold, or transmitted for any other purposes, including, without limitation, commercial purposes, such as selling copies of this documentation or providing paid-for support services. Part Number ZPF80M100A Acknowledgments Project Management: Sheila McGinn Writing: Jay Armstrong Managing Editor: Rosana Francescato Lead Editor: Lisa Stanziano Editing: Geta Carlson, Evelyn Eldridge, Mark Nigara Production Management: Patrice O'Neill, Kristin Conradi, Yuko Yagi Media Design and Production: Adam Barnett, Aaron Begley, Paul Benkman. John Francis, Geeta Karmarkar, Masayo Noda, Paul Rangel, Arena Reed, Mario Reynoso Special thanks to Jody Bleyle, Mary Burger, Lisa Friendly, Stephanie Gowin, Bonnie Loo, Mary Ann Walsh, Erick Vera, the beta testers, and the entire Flash and Flash Player engineering and QA teams. First Edition: September 2005 Macromedia, Inc. 601 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94103 Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 What is Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 What you can do with Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Making a simple Flash document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 About Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 What's new in Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Installing Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Chapter 1: Learning Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Where to start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Get the most from the Flash documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Accessing the Flash documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Accessing additional online Flash resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Choosing the right help books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Using the Flash help system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Opening the Help panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Searching the help system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Using context-sensitive help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Printing the Flash documentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Purchasing printed documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Discussing the Flash documentation with LiveDocs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Controlling the appearance of the Help panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Getting updates to Flash Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Chapter 2: Flash Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 About Flash files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Getting to know the workspace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3 Chapter 3: Tutorial: Building Your First Flash Application . . . . .95 Review your task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Examine the completed application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Create a working folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Create a new document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Create symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Edit a symbol Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Add actions to frames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Add labels to frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Add motion tweens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 Edit the main Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 Create the border. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113 Add a symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 Add a text box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Add the movie clip to the Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Add a button component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Add ActionScript code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Publish your document. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Chapter 4: Tutorial: Building a Video Player (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Review your task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Examine the completed application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Create a working folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Encode a video file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Create a new Flash document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Add a media component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Publish your document. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 The next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 4 Contents Introduction Welcome to Macromedia Flash Basic 8 and Macromedia Flash Professional 8. Flash provides everything you need to create and deliver rich web content and powerful applications. Whether you're designing motion graphics or building data-driven applications, Flash has the tools to produce great results and deliver the best user experience across multiple platforms and devices. This guide is designed to introduce you to Flash. The tutorial in this guide leads you through the process of creating a simple Flash application. This chapter contains the following sections: What is Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 What you can do with Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Making a simple Flash document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 About Flash Player. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 What's new in Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Installing Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 What is Flash Flash is an authoring tool that designers and developers use to create presentations, applications, and other content that enables user interaction. Flash projects can include simple animations, video content, complex presentations, applications, and everything in between. In general, individual pieces of content made with Flash are called applications, even though they might only be a basic animation. You can make media-rich Flash applications by including pictures, sound, video, and special effects. 5 Flash is extremely well suited to creating content for delivery over the Internet because its files are very small. Flash achieves this through its extensive use of vector graphics. Vector graphics require significantly less memory and storage space than bitmap graphics because they are represented by mathematical formulas instead of large data sets. Bitmap graphics are larger because each individual pixel in the image requires a separate piece of data to represent it. To build an application in Flash, you create graphics with the Flash drawing tools and import additional media elements into your Flash document. Next, you define how and when you want to use each of those elements to create the application you have in mind. When you author content in Flash, you work in a Flash document file. Flash documents have the file extension .fla (FLA). A Flash document has four main parts: The Stage is where your graphics, videos, buttons, and so on appear during playback. The Stage is described further in "Flash Basics" on page 49. The Timeline is where you tell Flash when you want the graphics and other elements of your project to appear. You also use the Timeline to specify the layering order of graphics on the Stage. Graphics in higher layers appear on top of graphics in lower layers. The Library panel is where Flash displays a list of the media elements in your Flash document. ActionScript code allows you to add interactivity to the media elements in your document. For example, you can add code that causes a button to display a new image when the user clicks it. You can also use ActionScript to add logic to your applications. Logic enables your application to behave in different ways depending on the user's actions or other conditions. Flash includes two versions of ActionScript, each suited to an author's specific needs. For more information about writing ActionScript, see Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Flash in the Help panel. Flash includes many features that make it powerful but easy to use, such as prebuilt drag-and-drop user interface components, built-in behaviors that let you easily add ActionScript to your document, and special effects that you can add to media objects. 6 Introduction When you have finished authoring your Flash document, you publish it using the File > Publish command. This creates a compressed version of your file with the extension .swf (SWF). You can then use Flash Player to play the SWF file in a web browser or as a stand-alone application. For an introduction to Flash Player, see "About Flash Player" on page 17. What you can do with Flash With the wide array of features in Flash, you can create many types of applications. The following are some examples of the kinds of applications Flash can generate: These include banner ads, online greeting cards, cartoons, and so on. Many other types of Flash applications include animation elements as well. Games Animations Many games are built with Flash. Games usually combine the animation capabilities of Flash with the logic capabilities of ActionScript. User interfaces Many website designers use Flash to design user interfaces. The interfaces include simple navigation bars as well as much more complex interfaces. You can find an example of a navigation bar created with Flash across the top of the www.macromedia.com home page. These are areas in web pages that designers use for displaying information that may change over time. A flexible messaging area (FMA) on a restaurant website might display information about each day's menu specials. You can find an example of an FMA on the www.macromedia.com home page. The tutorial in "Tutorial: Building Your First Flash Application" on page 95 guides you through the process of building an FMA. These include a wide spectrum of applications that provide a rich user interface for displaying and manipulating remotely stored data over the Internet. A rich Internet application could be a calendar application, a price-finding application, a shopping catalog, an education and testing application, or any other application that presents remote data with a graphically rich interface. You can find many examples of real projects created by Flash users on the Macromedia website at www.macromedia.com/cfusion/showcase/. Rich Internet applications Flexible messaging areas What you can do with Flash 7 To build a Flash application, you typically perform the following basic steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Decide which basic tasks the application will perform. Create and import media elements, such as images, video, sound, text, and so on. Arrange the media elements on the Stage and in the Timeline to define when and how they appear in your application. Apply special effects to media elements as you see fit. Write ActionScript code to control how the media elements behave, including how the elements respond to user interactions. Test your application to determine if it is working as planned and find any bugs in its construction. Test your application throughout the creation process. Publish your FLA file as a SWF file that can be displayed in a web page and played back with Flash Player. 7. Depending on your project and your working style, you may use these steps in a different order. As you become familiar with Flash and its workflows, you will discover a style of working that suits you best. Making a simple Flash document To illustrate the basic steps of creating any Flash document, this section guides you through the process in a simple tutorial. This short tutorial is just a sample of the Flash workflow. More tutorials are available in "Tutorial: Building Your First Flash Application" and in Flash Tutorials. The first step is to create a new document in Flash. To create a new Flash document: 1. 2. Select File > New. In the New Document dialog box, Flash Document is selected by default. Click OK. In the Property inspector, the Size button displays the current Stage size setting as 550 x 400 pixels. 8 Introduction 3. The Background color swatch is set to white. You can change the color of the Stage by clicking the swatch and selecting a different color. The Property inspector, showing the Stage size and background color Drawing a circle After you've created your document, you are ready to add some artwork for the document. To draw a circle on the Stage: 1. Select the Oval tool from the Tools panel. The Oval tool in the Tools panel Making a simple Flash document 9 2. Select the No Color option from the Stroke Color Picker. Selecting the No Color option in the Stroke Color Picker 3. Select a color of your choice from the Fill Color Picker. Make sure the fill color contrasts well with the Stage color. Draw a circle on the Stage by selecting the Oval tool and Shift-dragging on the Stage. Holding the Shift key constrains the Oval tool to a circle. 4. The circle shape drawn on the Stage 10 Introduction Creating a symbol You can turn your new artwork into a reusable asset by converting it to a Flash symbol. A symbol is a media asset that can be reused anywhere in your Flash document without the need to re-create it. To create a symbol: 1. Click the Selection tool in the Tools panel. The Tools panel with the Selection tool selected 2. 3. 4. Click the circle on the Stage to select it. With the circle still selected, select Modify > Convert to Symbol. In the Convert to Symbol dialog box, type my_circle into the Name text box. The default behavior is now Movie Clip. Click OK. A square bounding box appears around the circle. You have now created a reusable asset, called a symbol, in your document. 5. 6. The new symbol appears in the Library panel. If the Library panel is not open, select Window > Library. Making a simple Flash document 11 Animating the circle Now that you have some artwork in your document, you can make it more interesting by animating it to move across the Stage. To create an animation with the circle: 1. Drag the circle to just left of the Stage area. The circle shape moved to the left of the Stage area 2. Click Frame 20 of Layer 1 in the Timeline. Selecting Frame 20 of Layer 1 in the Timeline 12 Introduction 3. Select Insert > Timeline > Frame. Flash adds frames to Frame 20, which remains selected. Frames inserted in the Timeline 4. With Frame 20 still selected, select Insert > Timeline > Keyframe. A keyframe is added in Frame 20. A keyframe is a frame where some property of an object is explicitly changed. In this new keyframe, you will change the circle's location. Inserting a keyframe in Frame 20 5. 6. With Frame 20 still selected in the Timeline, drag the circle to just right of the Stage area. Select Frame 1 of Layer 1 in the Timeline. Making a simple Flash document 13 7. In the Property inspector (its default location is at the bottom of the Flash application window), select Motion from the Tween pop-up menu. Selecting a motion tween in the Property inspector An arrow appears in the Timeline in Layer 1 between Frame 1 and Frame 20. The Timeline with an arrow indicating a motion tween This step creates a tweened animation of the circle moving from its position in the first keyframe in Frame 1 to its new position in the second keyframe in Frame 20. For more information on tweening, see Chapter 10, "Creating Motion," in Using Flash. 8. 9. In the Timeline, drag the red playhead back and forth from frame 1 to frame 20 to preview the animation. Select File > Save. a location for the file on your hard disk and name the file SimpleFlash.fla. Select Control > Test Movie to test the FLA file. the Test Movie window. 10. Choose 11. 12. Close 14 Introduction Publishing the file When you finish your Flash document, you are ready to publish it so it can be viewed in a browser. When you publish a FLA file, Flash compresses it into the SWF file format. This is the format that you place in a web page. The Publish command can automatically generate an HTML file with the correct tags in it for you. To publish the Flash file and view it in a browser: 1. 2. Select File > Publish Settings. In the Publish Settings dialog box, select the Formats tab and verify that only the Flash and HTML options are selected. This action causes Flash to publish only the Flash SWF file and an HTML file. The HTML file is used to display the SWF file in a web browser. The Flash and HTML options on the Formats tab Making a simple Flash document 15 3. In the Publish Settings dialog box, select the HTML tab and verify that Flash Only is selected in the Template pop-up menu. This template creates a simple HTML file that contains only your SWF file when displayed in a browser window. Choosing Flash Only from the Template menu 4. 5. 6. 7. Click OK. Select File > Publish and open your web browser. Select File > Open in the web browser. Navigate to the folder where you saved your FLA file. The SimpleFlash.swf and SimpleFlash.html files are there. Flash creates these files when you click Publish. 16 Introduction 8. 9. Select the file named SimpleFlash.html. Click Open. Your Flash document is displayed in the browser window. Congratulations! You have now completed your first Flash document. About Flash Player Flash Player 8, which runs the applications that you create, is installed by default when you install Flash. Flash Player ensures that all Flash SWF files are viewable and available consistently across the broadest range of platforms, browsers, and devices, including mobile phones. Flash Player is distributed with products from every major software partner, including Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, AOL, and Opera, which brings rich content and applications to over 516 million people worldwide. Flash Player is distributed freely to anyone who wants to use it. You can get the latest version of Flash Player at the Macromedia Flash Player Download Center at www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer. What's new in Flash Many new features in Flash are helpful to beginners. This section summarizes those new features. For a comprehensive list of new features for both beginning and advanced Flash users, see "What's new in Flash" in Using Flash. New Features in Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 The following are new features for beginners in Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8. Gradient enhancements New controls allow you to apply complex gradients to objects on the Stage. You can add up to 16 colors to a gradient, precisely control the location of the gradient focal point, and apply other parameters to the gradient. Macromedia also simplified the workflow for applying gradients. For more information, see "Transforming gradient and bitmap fills" in Using Flash. What's new in Flash 17 Object Drawing model Previously in Flash, all shapes in the same layer on the Stage could affect the outlines of other overlapping shapes. You can now create shapes directly on the Stage that do not interfere with other shapes on the Stage. When you create a shape with the new Object Drawing model, the shape does not cause changes to other shapes that exist underneath the new shape. For more information, see "About Flash drawing models" in Using Flash. FlashType Text objects on the Stage now have a more consistent appearance in the Flash authoring tool and in Flash Player. For more information, see Chapter 6, "Working with Text" in Using Flash. Script Assist mode A new assisted mode in the Actions panel allows you to create scripts without detailed knowledge of ActionScript. For more information, see Chapter 13, "Writing ActionScript with Script Assist" in Using Flash. Expanded Stage Work Area You can use the area around the Stage to store graphics and other objects without having them appear on the Stage when you play the SWF file. Macromedia expanded this area, called the work area, to allow you to store more items there. Flash users often use the work area to store graphics they plan to animate on the Stage later, or to store objects that do not have a graphical representation during playback, such as data components. Macintosh document tabs You can now open multiple Flash files in the same Flash application window and choose among them by using the document tabs at the top of the window. Improved Preferences dialog box Macromedia streamlined the design of the Preferences dialog box and reorganized it for improved clarity and ease of use. For more information, see "Setting preferences in Flash" on page 78. You can now use a single Library panel to view the library items of multiple Flash files simultaneously. For more information, see "Managing media assets with the library" in Using Flash. Single Library panel Improved publishing interface The Publish Settings dialog box has been streamlined for easier control over your published SWF files. For more information, see Chapter 17, "Publishing" in Using Flash. 18 Introduction Object-level Undo mode You can now choose to keep track of the changes you make in Flash on a per-object basis. When you use this mode, each object on the Stage and in the library has its own undo list. This allows you to undo the changes you make to an object without having to undo changes to any other object. For more information, see "Using the Undo, Redo, and Repeat menu commands" in Using Flash. New features in Flash Professional 8 only The following are new features for beginners available in Flash Professional 8 only: A tween is the application of a change to a graphic object over a period of time. For example, you could tween the location of a picture of a car from one side of the Stage to the other to make the car move from side to side. To ease a tween is to control the rate at which the change is applied to the object. New easing controls in Flash allow you to precisely control how tweens that you apply in the timeline affect the appearance of tweened objects on the Stage. With the new controls, you can make an object move back and forth on the Stage within a single tween or create other complex tween effects. For more information, see "Applying custom ease in/ease out to motion tweens (Flash Professional only)" in Using Flash. Graphics effects filters You can apply graphics filters to objects on the Stage. These are called filters because they pass the image data of the object through an algorithm that filters the data in a specific way. With these filters, you can make objects glow, add drop shadows, and apply many other effects and combinations of effects. For more information, see "About filters (Flash Professional only)" in Using Flash. Blend modes You can achieve a variety of compositing effects by using blend modes to change the way the image of one object on the Stage is combined with the images of any objects beneath it. For more information, see "About blend modes (Flash Professional only)" in Using Flash. Bitmap smoothing Bitmap images now look much better on the Stage when greatly enlarged or reduced. The appearance of these bitmaps in the Flash authoring tool and in Flash Player is now consistent. For more information about bitmap settings, see "Setting bitmap properties" in Using Flash. Custom easing controls What's new in Flash 19 Improved text anti-aliasing You can now apply new anti-aliasing settings that make normal and small-sized text much clearer and easier to read onscreen. For more information, see "Setting anti-aliasing options for text" in Using Flash. New video encoder A new video encoder application is included with Flash Professional 8. It is a separate application that provides an easy way to convert video files into the Flash Video (FLV) format. The application also allows you to perform batch processing of video files. For more information, see "Encoding video" in Using Flash. Video alpha channel support You can now use an alpha channel with video objects, allowing you to create transparency effects. For more information about using video in Flash, see Chapter 11, "Working with Video" in Using Flash. Installing Flash The following sections describe the process of installing Flash. System requirements Complete product system requirements and recommendations are available on the Flash system requirements web page at www.macromedia.com/go/ sysreqs. Installing and activating Flash Installing Flash is an automated process. After installation, you can choose to run the 30-day trial mode, or you can choose to activate either Flash Basic 8 or Flash Professional 8. You must activate both editions of Flash over the Internet or phone before use, and you need your serial number to activate either edition of Flash unless you want to select the trial mode. Windows 98 SE users must have Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or later in order to activate Flash over the Internet. Installing Macromedia Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 does not overwrite earlier Flash versions that you might have installed. N OT E 20 Introduction