Using 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. Acknowledgments Project Management: Sheila McGinn Writing: Chris Bedford Managing Editor: Rosana Francescato Lead Editor: Lisa Stanziano Editing: Geta Carlson, John Hammett, Mary Kraemer, Noreen Maher, Mark Nigara, Lisa Stanziano 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 About Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 About Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 What's new in Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Chapter 1: Working with Flash Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Creating or opening a document and setting properties . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Using document tabs for multiple documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Saving Flash documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 About adding media content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 About creating motion and interactivity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 About components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Managing media assets with the library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 About ActionScript. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 About Multiple Timelines and levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 About nested movie clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Using absolute and relative target paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 About scenes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Working with scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Using the Movie Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Using Find and Replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Using the Undo, Redo, and Repeat menu commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Using the History panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Saving documents when you undo steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Automating tasks with the Commands menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Creating custom keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 About customizing context menus in Flash documents . . . . . . . . . . . 62 About the links menu in Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Speeding up document display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Optimizing Flash documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Testing document download performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Printing from the Flash authoring tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3 Chapter 2: Working with Projects (Flash Professional Only) . . .69 Creating and managing projects (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . 70 Using version control with projects (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . 73 Troubleshooting remote folder setup (Flash Professional only) . . . . . 75 Chapter 3: Using Symbols, Instances, and Library Assets . . . . . 77 Types of symbols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 About 9-slice scaling and movie clip symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Editing movie clip symbols with 9-slice scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Runtime bitmap caching movie clip and button symbols . . . . . . . . . . . 81 About controlling instances and symbols with ActionScript . . . . . . . . 82 Creating symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Creating instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Creating buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Enabling, editing, and testing buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Editing symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Changing instance properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Controlling instances with behaviors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Creating custom behaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Best practices for using behaviors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Breaking apart instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Getting information about instances on the Stage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Copying library assets between documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Using shared library assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Resolving conflicts between library assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Chapter 4: Working with Color, Strokes, and Fills . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 About the Color Mixer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 About creating gradients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 Using the Stroke Color and Fill Color controls in the Tools panel. . . .114 Using the Stroke Color and Fill Color controls in the Property inspector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 Working with solid colors and gradient fills in the Color Mixer . . . . . . 117 Modifying strokes with the Ink Bottle tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Applying solid, gradient, and bitmap fills with the Paint Bucket tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Transforming gradient and bitmap fills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 Copying strokes and fills with the Eyedropper tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Locking a gradient or bitmap to fill the Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Modifying color palettes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 4 Contents Chapter 5: Drawing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 About vector and bitmap graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 About Flash drawing models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 About Flash drawing and painting tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133 Using the Object Drawing model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134 Drawing with the Pencil tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 Drawing straight lines, ovals, and rectangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Drawing polygons and stars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138 Using the Pen tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138 Painting with the Brush tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144 Reshaping lines and shape outlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146 Erasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149 Modifying shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150 Snapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Specifying drawing settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154 Chapter 6: Working with Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 About FlashType . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159 About Unicode text encoding in Flash applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160 About font outlines and device fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160 Creating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .162 Creating scrolling text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166 Setting text attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166 Creating font symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Editing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Checking spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 About transforming text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Using Timeline effects with text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Breaking text apart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Linking text to a URL (horizontal text only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Preserving rich text formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Substituting missing fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180 Controlling text with ActionScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .182 Creating scrolling text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 Chapter 7: Using Imported Artwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Placing artwork into Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Working with imported bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Contents 5 Chapter 8: Working with Graphic Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Selecting objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Grouping objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 Moving, copying, and deleting objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Stacking objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Transforming objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Flipping objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Restoring transformed objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Aligning objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Breaking apart groups and objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222 Chapter 9: Using Filters and Blends (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 About filters (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225 About importing filters and blends from Fireworks PNG files (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .226 About animating filters (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 About filters and Flash Player performance (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .228 Applying filters (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229 About blend modes (Flash Professional only). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239 Applying a blend mode (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Chapter 10: Creating Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Using Timeline effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 About tweened animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248 About frame-by-frame animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 About layers in animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 About creating keyframes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 About representations of animation in the Timeline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 About frame rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Extending still images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Distributing objects to layers for tweened animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . .252 Tweening instances, groups, and type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253 Tweening motion along a path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Applying custom ease in/ease out to motion tweens (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .258 Tweening shapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Using shape hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .263 Creating frame-by-frame animations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .264 Editing animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265 Using mask layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268 6 Contents Chapter 11: Working with Video. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 About video features in Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 About using video in Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 Video and the Property inspector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 About digital video and Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 Importing video using the Video Import wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 Encoding video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Importing Flash Video files into the Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 About playing back external FLV files dynamically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 Changing the properties of a video clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .301 Controlling video playback using behaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 Using the FLVPlayback component (Flash Professional only) . . . . 304 About controlling video playback using the Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 Media components (Flash Player 6 and 7) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 Chapter 12: Working with Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Importing sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312 Adding sounds to a document. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313 Adding sounds to buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .315 Using sounds with Sound objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .316 About accessing ID3 properties in MP3 files with Flash Player . . . .316 Using the sound-editing controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Controlling sound playback using behaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318 Starting and stopping sounds at keyframes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 About the onSoundComplete event. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 Compressing sounds for export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .321 About using sounds in Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Chapter 13: Writing ActionScript with Script Assist . . . . . . . . . 327 About Script Assist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 Using Script Assist to write ActionScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 Creating a startDrag/stopDrag event using Script Assist . . . . . . . . . .331 Chapter 14: Working with Screens (Flash Professional Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Understanding screen-based documents and the screen authoring environment (Flash Professional only). . . . . . . . . . 336 Using the Screen Outline pane (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . 342 About undoing and redoing commands with screens (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Using the screens context menu (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . 343 Contents 7 Creating a new screen-based document (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .343 Adding screens to a document (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . 344 Naming screens (Flash Professional only). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .346 Setting properties and parameters for a screen (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 About adding media content to screens (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Selecting and moving screens (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . 351 Creating controls and transitions for screens with behaviors (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .353 Using Find and Replace with screens (Flash Professional only) . . .356 About using the Movie Explorer with screens ( Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 About using Timelines with screens (Flash Professional only) . . . . . 357 About using ActionScript with screens (Flash Professional only) . . 357 About using components with screens (Flash Professional only) . 360 Accessibility in the Flash screens authoring environment (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Chapter 15: Creating Multilanguage Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Selecting an encoding language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .364 About fonts for Unicode-encoded text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .366 Using embedded fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .366 Authoring multilanguage text with the Strings panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370 Creating documents with multilanguage text without using the Strings panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Using external text or XML files that are not Unicode-encoded . . . .385 Chapter 16: Data Integration (Flash Professional Only). . . . . . .387 Additional resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Creating a simple application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Workflows for using the data components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .393 Data binding (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 Data connectivity (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 Data management (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 Data resolution (Flash Professional only). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .427 Advanced topics in data integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 8 Contents Chapter 17: Publishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455 Playing your Flash SWF files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 About publishing secure Flash documents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 Configuring a server for Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 Publishing Flash documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 About publishing Flash Lite documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 Using publish profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 About HTML publishing templates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .481 Customizing HTML publishing templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 Editing Flash HTML settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 Previewing the publishing format and settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498 Using Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498 About configuring a web server for Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499 Chapter 18: Exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 Exporting Flash content and images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .501 About export file formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502 Updating Flash content for Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .510 Chapter 19: Creating Accessible Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 Worldwide accessibility standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .512 Macromedia Flash Accessibility web page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .513 Understanding screen reader technology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .513 Using Flash to enter accessibility information for screen readers . . .516 Viewing and creating tab order and reading order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 Creating a tab order index for keyboard navigation in the Accessibility panel (Flash Professional only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 About animation and accessibility for the visually impaired . . . . . . . 528 Using accessible components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 Creating accessibility with ActionScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530 Accessibility for hearing-impaired users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 Testing accessible content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 Chapter 20: Printing from SWF Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 Controlling printing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536 Supported printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537 Using the ActionScript PrintJob class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537 Building a print job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537 Starting a print job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 Printing frames independent of the PrintJob class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 Changing the printed background color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547 Contents 9 Using frame labels to disable printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .547 Printing from the Flash Player context menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .548 Publishing a document with printable frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550 Chapter 21: Creating E-learning Content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551 Getting started with Flash learning interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .552 About Flash learning interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .552 Including a Flash learning interaction in a document. . . . . . . . . . . . . .553 Changing the appearance of a learning interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .564 Testing a quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Configuring learning interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Adding, naming, and registering assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 Setting feedback options for a learning interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .582 Setting Knowledge Track options for a learning interaction . . . . . . .583 Setting navigation options for a learning interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . .584 Setting control button labels for a learning interaction . . . . . . . . . . . .585 Tracking to AICC- or SCORM-compliant learning management systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .586 Extending learning interaction scripts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590 Appendix A: Using Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593 Using templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593 Appendix B: XML to UI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605 Layout tag summary for XML to UI dialog boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606 Control tag summary for XML to UI dialog boxes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .607 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .611 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .622 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .624 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .625 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .629 10 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .631 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 636 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 642 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 647 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649 About the Configuration Folders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .651 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655 Contents 11 12 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: About Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 About Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 What's new in Flash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 About Flash Flash is an authoring tool that lets you create anything from a simple animation to a complex, interactive web application such as an online store. You can make your Flash applications media rich by adding pictures, sound, and video. Flash includes many features that make it powerful but easy to use, such as drag-and-drop user interface components, built-in behaviors that add ActionScript to your document, and special effects that you can add to objects. When you author in Flash you work in a Flash document, a file that, when saved, has the file extension .fla. When you are ready to deploy your Flash content, you publish it, creating a file with the extension .swf. Flash Player, described in the next section, runs the SWF file. About Flash Player Macromedia 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 and across the broadest range of platforms, browsers, and devices. 13 The Macromedia Flash Player is distributed with products from every major software partner, including Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, AOL, and Opera, to bring rich content and applications immediately 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 There are two editions of Flash: Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8. To verify which edition you have installed, select Help > About Flash in the application. Flash Basic 8 Flash Basic 8 is the perfect tool for the web designer, interactive media professional, or subject matter expert developing multimedia content. Emphasis is on creation, import, and manipulation of many types of media (audio, video, bitmaps, vectors, text, and data). Macromedia designed Flash Professional 8 for advanced web designers and application builders. Flash Professional 8 includes all the features of Flash Basic 8, along with several powerful new tools. It provides new expressiveness tools for optimizing the look and feel of the Flash files you design. External scripting and capabilities for handling dynamic data from databases are some of the features that make Flash Professional 8 particularly suitable for large-scale, complex projects deployed using Flash Player along with a hybrid of HTML content. Flash Professional 8 New features available in both Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 The new features in Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 provide greater expressiveness, text support, scripting improvements, and video support. Expressiveness Flash includes many features designed specifically to enable greater expressiveness in the look and feel of your finished projects. Gradient enhancements New controls let you apply complex gradients to objects on the Stage. You can add up to 15 colors to a gradient, precisely control the location of the gradient focal point, and apply other parameters to the gradient. The workflow for applying gradients has also been simplified. For more information, see "Working with solid colors and gradient fills in the Color Mixer" on page 117. 14 Introduction Adjustable gradient focal point The Fill Transform tool now includes an editable focal point that lets you position the focal point (center) of a gradient fill applied to an object. For more information, see "Transforming gradient and bitmap fills" on page 121. You can now create shapes directly on the Stage that will not interfere with other overlapping shapes. Previously in Flash, all shapes on the same layer of the Stage could affect the outlines of other shapes that they overlapped. 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" on page 131. Rectangle and Oval Tool Settings dialog box Object Drawing model The new Rectangle and Oval Tool Settings dialog box lets you specify the width and height of ovals and rectangles, as well as the corner radius of rectangles so that you can create rounded-corner rectangles. To activate the dialog box, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Macintosh) to select the Oval and Rectangle drawing tools on the Stage. When you click OK to verify your settings, Flash draws an appropriately sized oval or rectangle where you clicked the Stage. For more information, see "Drawing straight lines, ovals, and rectangles" on page 137. Joins and caps on strokes are now drawn more cleanly and precisely. A join is the place where two strokes come together. A cap is the end point of a stroke that does not join with another stroke. In addition, the maximum size of a stroke has been increased from 10 to 200 pixels, and you can now color strokes using a gradient fill. For more information, see "Using the Stroke Color and Fill Color controls in the Property inspector" on page 115. New curve algorithm The Pencil tool and Brush tool now let you select the degree of smoothing to apply to curves that you draw with those tools. By increasing the amount of smoothing, you can reduce the number of points used to calculate the curve, which results in smaller SWF files. For more information, see "Optimizing curves" on page 149. Text handles Enhanced strokes A new, improved method for working with text includes text boxes that you can resize. You can more easily reposition text blocks with text handles. For more information, see "Creating text" on page 162. Improved Fireworks importer The importer for Macromedia Fireworks PNG files now supports a greater number of the properties that you can apply to graphics in Fireworks. When you import Fireworks files into Flash, these graphics properties remain intact and editable in Flash. Among the properties available in Fireworks that you can now import into Flash are blend modes and filters (called effects in Fireworks). For more information, see "Importing Fireworks PNG files" on page 195. What's new in Flash 15 Text support FlashType, a new text rendering engine, enhances the quality and consistency of the way Flash displays text. Improved text in both Flash authoring and Flash Player Text on the Stage now has a more consistent appearance in the Flash authoring tool and in Flash Player. For more information, see About FlashType in Chapter 6, "Working with Text," on page 157. You can specify anti-aliasing options for individual text blocks; these options enhance the display of text for different environments. For example, you can specify anti-aliasing for animation or readability, or apply custom settings that you control. For more information, see "About anti-aliasing text" on page 161 in Chapter 6, "Working with Text," on page 157. Improved anti-aliasing options Scripting improvements The scripting improvements in Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 provide better performance, flexibility, and ease of use. A new assisted mode in the Actions panel, Script Assist lets you more easily create scripts without having detailed knowledge of ActionScript. Script Assist helps you build scripts by selecting items from the Actions toolbox in the Actions panel, and provides an interface of text fields, radio buttons, and check boxes that prompt you for the correct variables and other scripting language constructs. For more information, see Chapter 13, "Using Script Assist to write ActionScript," on page 328. Script Assist Workspace enhancements 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. For more information, see "Using the Stage" on page 56 in Getting Started with Flash. Expanded Stage work area 16 Introduction Improved panel management A key aspect of any software application is that the work flow it allows aids in your productivity. Macromedia Flash 8 has an improved panel management solution that lets you optimize the workspace to better suit the way that you work. Flash lets you group panels together in tabbed-panel sets. You can reduce onscreen clutter by grouping your most commonly used panels together, and you can assign custom names to each panel group. For more information, see "Using panels and the Property inspector" on page 78 in Getting Started with Flash. Single Library panel You can now use a single Library panel to view the library items of multiple Flash files simultaneously. For more information, see "About adding media content" on page 29. Drag and drop components to Library panel In earlier versions of Flash, you had to place components on the Stage and then delete them--even components that had no visual elements and were only accessed using ActionScript. You can now place such components directly into the library without having to place them on the Stage and later delete them. For more information, see Using Components. Macintosh document tabs You can now open multiple Flash files in the same window and select among them using document tabs at the top of the window. For more information, see "Using document tabs for multiple documents" on page 25. Improved Preferences dialog box The Preferences dialog box has been streamlined and reorganized for improved clarity and ease of use. For more information, see "Setting preferences in Flash" on page 84 in Getting Started with Flash. To simplify the work flow for bitmaps and sounds, you can now access the linkage options for these media types in their respective Properties dialog boxes. Linkage options for bitmaps and sounds are now in the Properties dialog box Object-based Undo and Redo commands 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 lets you 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" on page 53. Export keyboard shortcuts as HTML You can export Flash keyboard shortcuts as an HTML file that you can view and print using a standard web browser. For more information, see "Creating custom keyboard shortcuts" on page 60. What's new in Flash 17 Other improvements Multiline support in the Strings panel The Strings panel has been improved to include multiline support in the String field and the language XML file. For more information, see "Authoring multilanguage text with the Strings panel" on page 370. SWF file metadata You can now add metadata to Flash files so that you can search more effectively for these files using Internet search engines, such as Google.com. For more information, see "Creating or opening a document and setting properties" on page 22. Local and network playback security A new security model lets you determine the local and network playback security for SWF files that you publish. The security settings let you decide if SWF files should be given local or network access to files and computing resources. This helps prevent the malicious use of SWF files accessing information on a local computer and transmitting that information over the network. To learn more, see "About local and network playback security" on page 458. Improved Flash Player detection Previously, using Flash Player detection resulted in the creation of three separate HTML pages. The Flash Player detection feature has been improved so that it now publishes only a single HTML page, simplifying the publishing of your Flash content. For more information, see "Configuring publish settings for Flash Player detection" on page 468. New features available in Flash Professional 8 Flash Professional 8 offers all the features available in Flash Basic 8, plus a variety of new features to enhance application development and design. Features include the screen-based visual development environment and tools for managing data interactively and for fostering team productivity. Expressiveness Custom easing controls New easing controls let you precisely choose how tweens that you apply in the Timeline affect the appearance of tweened objects on the Stage. A tween is the application of a change to an object over a period of time. Easing a tween controls when the changes to the object are applied. Custom easing lets you easily and precisely control these elements through an intuitive graph that provides independent control over the position, rotation, scale, color, and filters used in a motion tween. For more information, see "Applying custom ease in/ease out to motion tweens (Flash Professional only)" on page 258. 18 Introduction Filters Filters let you create more compelling designs by applying visual effects to movie clips and text. Filters are natively supported and rendered in real time by Flash Player 8. With these filters, you can make objects glow, add drop shadows, and apply many other effects and combinations of effects. For more information, see Chapter 9, "Using Filters and Blends (Flash Professional only)," on page 225. 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. Flash offers runtime control over blend modes, letting you composite graphical effects that are dynamic and can react to user interactivity. For more information, see "Using Filters and Blends (Flash Professional only)" on page 225. Bitmap smoothing Bitmap images now look much better on the Stage when severely enlarged or reduced. The appearance of these bitmaps in the Flash authoring tool and in Flash Player is now consistent. Runtime bitmap caching Runtime bitmap caching lets you optimize playback performance by specifying that a static movie clip (for example, a background image) or button symbol be cached as a bitmap at runtime. Caching a movie clip as a bitmap prevents Flash Player from having to continually redraw the image, providing a significant improvement in playback performance. For more information, see "Runtime bitmap caching movie clip and button symbols" on page 81. Video improvements Flash Professional 8 provides several new video features to help you more easily create high-quality video presentations using Flash. Flash encodes video files using the On2 VP6 video codec. The On2 VP6 codec provides superior video quality using the smallest possible file size. For more information, see "About the On2 VP6 and Sorenson Spark video codecs" on page 280. Improved video work flow On2 VP6 video codec The Video Import wizard has been improved to help you deploy video content for embedded, progressively downloaded, and streaming video delivery. You can import video stored locally on your computer, or video already deployed to a web server or Flash Communication Server. For more information, see "Importing video using the Video Import wizard" on page 284. Flash 8 Video Encoder (Stand-alone Edition) To improve the work flow for video professionals, Flash Professional 8 includes a new, stand-alone video encoder that you can install on a computer dedicated to video encoding. The Flash 8 Video Encoder lets you batch process video encoding, allowing you to encode several video clips at a time. Flash 8 Video Encoder also lets you edit videoclips, embed cue points, and crop and trim the video's frame size. For more information, see "Encoding video" on page 293. What's new in Flash 19 Alpha channel support Alpha channels let you encode video such that the background is removed and saved as a transparency. This lets you overlay (or composite) the video on top of other Flash content, while the subject of the video remains in the foreground. For example, a common use of alpha channels is to record a video clip of a presenter using a blue screen as a backdrop. The video can then be encoded with an alpha channel, and the presenter can be placed in front of another image as the backdrop to the video. For more information, see "Specifying advanced encoding settings (Flash Professional only)" on page 294. Embedded cue points The Flash Video Encoder lets you embed cue points directly into your Flash Video (FLV) files. Cue points cause the video playback to trigger other actions within the presentation, letting you synchronize the video with animation, text, graphics, and other interactive content. Used in conjunction with the new Flash Video component FLVPlayback, you can coordinate the playback of a video clip with accompanying interactive content when individual cue points are reached. For example, you can create a Flash presentation that has video playing in one area of the screen while descriptive text and graphics appear in another area. Cue points cause the video playback to trigger these other actions in the presentation, letting you create richer interactive content. "Using the FLVPlayback component (Flash Professional only)" on page 304. Enhancements to ActionScript 2.0 The ActionScript language has grown and developed since its introduction several years ago. With each new release of Flash, additional keywords, objects, methods, and other language elements have been added to ActionScript. There are also ActionScript-related improvements to the Flash 8 authoring environments. Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 introduce several new language elements for expressive features, such as filters and blending modes, and application development, such as JavaScript integration (ExternalInterface) and File I/O (FileReference and FileReferenceList). To learn more about the improvements made to ActionScript 2.0, see "What's New in Flash 8 ActionScript" in Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Flash. 20 Introduction