Anyone got any experience of learning Adobe Flash?
If so, what books/resources and what IDE did you use?
If so, what books/resources and what IDE did you use?
[Tech] Learning Flash
- Thread starter Ronin Storm
- Start date
before i give any advice i'll pose you a question:
what are you wanting to do with flash?
flash is a very powerful tool when used well, in my opinion there are 3 main uses; animation, presenting rich media on the web, and script based front ends. Although the 2nd and 3rd options are similar they require a slightly different approach
what are you wanting to do with flash?
flash is a very powerful tool when used well, in my opinion there are 3 main uses; animation, presenting rich media on the web, and script based front ends. Although the 2nd and 3rd options are similar they require a slightly different approach
I have two answers to this question, which may be at odds with each other.
First, professionally I'm enjoying doing a bunch of web development and design work. One of the skills that would improve the range of jobs I can go for in that area is proficiency with Flash. As to what any particular company is going to want to do with it, I can't be certain. However, given my other core skills I anticipate that I'm going to want to know a bunch of ActionScript along with anything else.
Second, a good friend has suggested I look at Adobe Air, which, as I understand it, is Flash brought closer to the desktop and out of the web sandbox it usually resides in. While this isn't a primary focus for me just now I am bearing this in mind.
I guess the overarching consideration is that I want to be able to produce convincing and stylish front ends for applications. I guess that puts it beyond the realm of just pretty web sites with a flashy rotating widget and into more traditional interface design realms.
That make sense?
Wol
In Cryo Sleep
I started learning flash a fair few years ago (mx 04 pro stage). Suprisingly enough, I used Flash as the IDE ;-).
Have done bits of animation for some people, and have also used it to make little interactive things on websites. Also is handy to use with VJing for effects.
I never used any books to learn it, and I just went through at some small tutorials on the macromedia site for some bits (lip synching was an interesting one), and am now fairly proficient at it.
What kind of languages do you know already. Bearing in mind actionscript is fairly similar to JS, and its just a matter of grasping the specific syntax and functions available to you to control MCs and suchlike.
I have to goto work, so thats about all I can write
.
Have done bits of animation for some people, and have also used it to make little interactive things on websites. Also is handy to use with VJing for effects.
I never used any books to learn it, and I just went through at some small tutorials on the macromedia site for some bits (lip synching was an interesting one), and am now fairly proficient at it.
What kind of languages do you know already. Bearing in mind actionscript is fairly similar to JS, and its just a matter of grasping the specific syntax and functions available to you to control MCs and suchlike.
I have to goto work, so thats about all I can write
.
Looking at programming languages...
I'm decent at all of: C#, XSLT/XPath, JavaScript, PHP, SQL
I also know some: C++, VB/VBA
I'd heard that ActionScript was based on ECMAScript languages so I figured that'd be largely learning the function calls but sometimes it's a matter of knowing what is possible, which is where I look to books/tutorials.
Books I learnt from were:
Foundation Flash 5
Macromedia Flash MX actionscripting
New Masters of Flash
The first is a good intro into the Flash UI and gives a good insight into movie, sound and actor use throughout time lines.
The second book is the guts of learning actionscripting.
The final is for inspiration.
All those books are old now (its been a while since I learnt flash) so there may be updated revisions on them all. Of all of them the second will be most use to you given your background.
Foundation Flash 5
Macromedia Flash MX actionscripting
New Masters of Flash
The first is a good intro into the Flash UI and gives a good insight into movie, sound and actor use throughout time lines.
The second book is the guts of learning actionscripting.
The final is for inspiration.
All those books are old now (its been a while since I learnt flash) so there may be updated revisions on them all. Of all of them the second will be most use to you given your background.
Wol
In Cryo Sleep
Now I are back from work.... :-D
Youre right regarding AS. Its fairly easy to pickup, and flash does have a pretty good inbuilt help to go through all the functions. Also helpful stuff like gotoAndPlay(framenumber), can easily be recalled by pressing <escape> g p. Most of the mainly used functions have these shortcuts which makes it nice and easy!
The main problem with some books is that the basic stuff of learning how to draw lines, the fact that once you draw something, you generally have to make it into an object to start manipulating it, and that moving stuff around is called tweening, is fairly simple to pick up, but I've seen some books which draw on this an awful lot. Ive had a poke around in waterstones occasionally when im in town, but all the books I see are covering these basics, which to be honest aren't that hard to pick up, or even find tutorials on google for. Its usually a fair chunk into the book before I start finding vaguely helpful stuff, and even then , its still covering things that can easily be googleable.
Best bet is to start playing around with makeshift scenarios, and working out how to do it. Learning by experience, and having your own goal in mind, rather than reading a book/looking through one of its tutorials, i feel is a better way to get to grips to it.
The chances are , that whilst searching through websites looking for answers on how to do certain things, youll come across other interesting things to try/learn and you can easily go off on tangents and learn those bits too.
Learning flash>html/js interaction is handy (in flash: "getURL('javascript:myjsFunction();');", and in the html page containing the flash swf, you can have the "function myjsFunction(){ alert("ARGH"); }" and huzzah you can talk between them), as well as learning how to manipulate XML (which again, is fairly standard xml scripting calls, which I am assuming that you know from AJAX stuff).
Youre right regarding AS. Its fairly easy to pickup, and flash does have a pretty good inbuilt help to go through all the functions. Also helpful stuff like gotoAndPlay(framenumber), can easily be recalled by pressing <escape> g p. Most of the mainly used functions have these shortcuts which makes it nice and easy!
The main problem with some books is that the basic stuff of learning how to draw lines, the fact that once you draw something, you generally have to make it into an object to start manipulating it, and that moving stuff around is called tweening, is fairly simple to pick up, but I've seen some books which draw on this an awful lot. Ive had a poke around in waterstones occasionally when im in town, but all the books I see are covering these basics, which to be honest aren't that hard to pick up, or even find tutorials on google for. Its usually a fair chunk into the book before I start finding vaguely helpful stuff, and even then , its still covering things that can easily be googleable.
Best bet is to start playing around with makeshift scenarios, and working out how to do it. Learning by experience, and having your own goal in mind, rather than reading a book/looking through one of its tutorials, i feel is a better way to get to grips to it.
The chances are , that whilst searching through websites looking for answers on how to do certain things, youll come across other interesting things to try/learn and you can easily go off on tangents and learn those bits too.
Learning flash>html/js interaction is handy (in flash: "getURL('javascript:myjsFunction();');", and in the html page containing the flash swf, you can have the "function myjsFunction(){ alert("ARGH"); }" and huzzah you can talk between them), as well as learning how to manipulate XML (which again, is fairly standard xml scripting calls, which I am assuming that you know from AJAX stuff).