Oak Park Elementary School District #97

Animation of a bird on a skateboard doing tricks. "Superbird" becomes a Flash-er, as he prepares to learn about the program Flash.

Link to Adobe Flash 30 day free trial:

www.adobe.com/downloads/ choose FL and Try

Link to Adobe Flash Forums:

forums.adobe.com/community/flash

Flash Examples
Bones - put a skeleton back together correctly
Careers - "Game" board is Flash
Faces of Africa - self contained Flash
School of Kindness - Opening page
SuperHeroes - look at the opening and individual heroes
Bembo's Zoo You won't believe what you can do with just letters!

How do you best work? If you find it helpful to know the tools, where things are, what they do, then start with this section:

If you're one who likes to just start and find out about tools when you need them, start with this section:

Other good places:
http://www.webmonkey.com/ - Everything about everything web

http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/ - many specific tutorials for everything from "first steps" to sophisticated Action scripting.

A Few Basic Terms

Flash: is an interactive vector graphic animation program.

Movie: is the completed Flash. While the Flash can be resized without "jaggies", the finished movie needs to be proportional. The size can be set from Modify - Movie.

Stage: is where the action takes place. One frame at a time is displayed. Drawing can be done off stage. Resizing the movie resizes the stage. The default is 550 pixels X 400 pixels.

Timeline: is when an action takes place on the stage. It allows you to see the change over time.

Layers: allow different things to happen at different times to different objects during the movie. Layers organize the content of the movie.

Library: stores flash symbols

Windows/Mac

If a command uses the Apple key on Mac - Use the Control Key on Windows.

If a command uses the right mouse click on Windows - Use the Control Key and click the mouse on Mac unless you are using a mouse with a right click function.

Janet Barnstable
updated August 18, 2009