ptg 6 Chapter 1 Tools Panel Contains drawing and other related tools to create and manipulate graphics. Property Inspector Displays information about the properties and attributes of tools and graphic elements. Viewing the Flash Window Panel Windows Gives you access to authoring tools and attribute settings for elements. Welcome screen Provides easy access links to create and open Flash documents. From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Chapter 1 Getting Started with Flash CS5 7 Document Window Displays open Flash documents, which include an Edit bar, Timeline and Stage. Edit Bar Displays what editing mode you are working in and allows you to switch scenes. Stage Provides a place to compose the content for individual frames, which includes drawing artwork or arranging imported graphics. Timeline Gives you a visual represent- ation of every frame, layer and scene in the document. From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg 8 Chapter 1 Before you begin to create a movie in Flash, it's important to develop a project plan first. The project plan provides a site map for you to follow as you build your project in Flash. Without a project plan, you'll inevitably hit road blocks, which will cause you to waste time redesigning all of or portions of the movie. Planning a movie project involves determining its purpose, identifying the audi- ence, logically developing the content, organ- izing the structure of the content, developing the layout and design, and identifying the delivery computer system. With a project plan in place, you'll be ready to create a movie in Flash. Plan a Movie Creating a movie can take a long time; it's worth the effort to plan carefully. The ten- dency for most first-time Flash developers is to start creating a movie without carefully planning the project. Before you begin, you need to develop and follow a plan. Otherwise, you might end up spending a lot of time fix- ing or completely changing parts of the movie, which you could have avoided from the beginning. You need to figure out the goal of the project, the look and feel of your pro- duction, its length and size, how it will inter- act with the viewer, and how and for whom it will be distributed. When planning a movie, it's important to accomplish the following: Determine the purpose Is it for training? Sales? Entertainment? Informing? The answer will determine the types of features you may want to include or exclude in the movie. If the purpose is to cre- ate a training site, you might want to include simple navigation, easy-to-use instructional material, and a help system. On the other hand, if the purpose is to create a sales pro- motion, you might want to include eye-catch- ing graphics, videos, and audio to get users' attention and draw them into the presenta- tion. Identify the audience How you create your movie will depend on how you classify the intended audience. If the intended audience consists of novice com- puter users, you will have to concentrate on making the navigational controls and layout as simple to use as possible. If the users are experienced computer users, you can include more advanced features and interactions. Develop the content and organize the structure The most beneficial planning tools for the multimedia developer are the script and schematic flowchart. The script tells the story of your movie production in text form. Just like in the movies, a script is used to describe each section, to list audio or video, and to provide a basis for the text that will appear onscreen. Schematic flowcharts are the best way to sketch the navigational structure of a movie and make sure that each of the sec- tions is properly connected. After you have the script and schematic flowchart mapped out on paper, you will quickly see the correla- tion between what you have developed and what you will begin to set up in Flash. Develop the layout and design of the movie The storyboard tells the story of your movie in visual form. It helps you design the layout of each screen in your movie. The storyboard follows the script and develops visual frames of the movie's main transitional points, which help you develop the Flash media elements Creating a Project Plan From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Chapter 1 Getting Started with Flash CS5 9 you will use to create your movie. A story- board can take a long time to develop, but the media elements you assemble and create in the process will shorten the overall develop- ment time. As you develop your layout and design, be sure to keep: ◆ Navigation easy to understand and consistent from page to page, such as navigation bars or drop-down menus ◆ Text easy t o read ◆ Sound and animation limited ◆ Movie file sizes as small as possible for fast downloads. Break up large files into small ones for easy management ◆ Color consistent and appropriate for the audience ◆ Content accessible to users with visual or auditory impairments Identify the delivery computer system and browser to be used for playback Some computers are more up-to-date than others. You need to determine the minimum computer hardware and software require- ments in which your movie will be delivered. The hardware and software requirements will determine what types of media you can use and how the movie will play back. Some hardware requirements you need to consider for the delivery computer system are (1) CPU (central processing unit), which deter- mines the speed with which your computer can compute data; (2) RAM (system memory), which determines how fast files load and how smoothly they run; (3) Sound cards, which determine if you can use sound files; (4) Video cards, which determine the quality and speed of the graphic and video display, and (5) Monitor resolution, which determines the color display (number of available colors), size (1024 x 768 is typical, while 1440 x 900 is becoming more and more available), and overall look of your movie. Some software requirements you need to consider are the operating system version and supported browser type and version. See “Preparing to Install Flash” on page 2 for spe- cific details about these requirements. Sample script Sample flowchart From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg 10 Chapter 1 After you develop a project plan, you can use Flash to create a movie according to the plan. Creating a movie involves six main steps: set- ting up movie properties, assembling media elements, positioning the media elements on the Stage and sequencing them in the Timeline, adding custom functionality and interactive elements, previewing and testing the movie, and finally publishing or exporting the movie for distribution. Build a Movie with Flash Before you start creating a movie using Flash based on your project plan, it's important to understand the process of developing Flash software. The basic steps for developing inter- active multimedia software with Flash are listed below. Step 1: Set up document properties Before you start a Flash project, you need to create a new document and set up initial doc- ument properties, such as the user’s viewable screen size, for how your movie looks and operates. It is important to specify document property settings that affect the entire movie at the beginning of the project, such as how colors are defined and the size and location of the Stage, so you don't have to redesign the movie later. Step 2: Create or import media elements Media elements include graphics, images, buttons, videos, sounds, and text. You can cre- ate new media elements in Flash or import ones that have already been developed. Flash provides several tools for creating media ele- ments, including shape and paint tools, and text creation tools. You can also add media elements from the Library, a media storage area. Media elements are either static or dynamic. Static media is an element, such as text or graphics, created or imported into a movie that doesn’t change unless the author makes the change and republishes the movie. Dynamic media is an element, such as data, MP3 sound, a JPEG image, or Flash Live Video (FLV) video, stored outside of the pub- lished movie and loaded when needed or changed by scripting, which makes updating easy, keeps file sizes down, and provides per- sonalized information to the user. Step 3: Position the elements on the Stage and sequence them in the Timeline The Stage is the viewing area you use to dis- play where media elements appear in a movie, and the Timeline is the area you use to organize what you want to occur at the time and duration you specify. You use the Stage to create the look and feel for your production; you use the Stage and Timeline together to arrange the media elements in space and time. The Stage represents the media ele- ments' position in space (where) and the Timeline represents the media elements' position in time (when). Step 4: Add navigational components, interactive behaviors, and motion effects Scripting allows you to add custom function- ality to your movie, such as moving objects on the Stage, formatting text, storing and managing information, performing mathe- matical operations, and controlling the movie in response to specific conditions and events, such as a mouse click. In Flash, scripts are written in ActionScript, a Flash-specific pro- gramming language. To help you get started scripting and save you some time, Flash comes with built-in components, and scripts called behaviors . Components are elements you can use to quickly create a user interface. For example, components can include Building a Flash Project From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Chapter 1 Getting Started with Flash CS5 11 buttons, arrows, or other navigation elements that move the viewer to different parts of a movie or to different locations on the Web. After you add a component, you can use behaviors to add functionality to the compo- nent to make it do what you want. In addition to behaviors, you can use built-in Timeline effects to add motion to elements. As you build in movie navigation and organization, it’s good design to break up large projects into smaller movies, which can be quickly accessed from a main movie. This keeps Internet download times to a minimum, and it makes projects easier to update, and more manageable for a team to produce. Step 5: Preview and test the movie After you create your project, you use one of the Test Movie commands to preview and test the movie to make sure it runs the way you want it to. It's important to test the functional- ity of your movie early and often during the development process to catch problems while they are still minor. Step 6: Publish the document as a movie file for use over the Internet When the movie runs the way you want it to, you can publish your production as a Flash movie that viewers can play on a Web page, using a browser with the Flash Player. Flash publishes the movie file (.swf) and creates an HTML file with information to display the movie file. Viewers can't change the movies in the SWF format; they can only play them. Step 2: Create or import media elements Step 4: Add navigational components, interactive behaviors, and motion effects Step 1: Setup document properties Step 6: Publish the document as a movie Step 5: Preview and test the movie Step 3: Position the elements on the Stage and sequence them in the Timeline From the Library of Wow! eBook . software requirements you need to consider are the operating system version and supported browser type and version. See “Preparing to Install Flash on page 2 for spe- cific details about these. function- ality to your movie, such as moving objects on the Stage, formatting text, storing and managing information, performing mathe- matical operations, and controlling the movie in response. Building a Flash Project From the Library of Wow! eBook ptg Chapter 1 Getting Started with Flash CS5 11 buttons, arrows, or other navigation elements that move the viewer to different parts of