Duration
2 days
Course Description
Macromedia Flash 8: Advanced Design provides Flash designers with prior ActionScript experience the knowledge and hands-on practice they need to build more flexible and dynamic design-based Flash content. This course focuses on teaching students more advanced ActionScript topics that will remove a reliance on Timeline-based visual tools. Students will learn to generate dynamic design and navigation elements that cannot be created without ActionScript.
Target Audience and Prerequisites
This course is for Flash designers who have some experience with ActionScript but want to learn more advanced topics and features to enhance their designs. To gain the most from this class you should already have:
- Experience creating Flash designs and animation using the Timeline.
- Equivalent knowledge from the Macromedia Flash 8: Rich Content Creation course.
- Equivalent knowledge from the Macromedia Flash 8: ActionScript course.
- At least one year of Flash design experience.
Day 1
- Introducing the course
- Understanding the course format
- Discussing the course objectives
- Reviewing the course prerequisites
- Reviewing the course outline
- Architecting with layers
- Architecting with Movie Clips
- Placing code in external ActionScript files
- Introducing object oriented programming concepts
- Working with Flash classes
- Writing methods, functions and event handlers
- Referencing dynamic variables using bracket notation
- Extending the Movie Clip class
- Detecting Movie Clip interactions with hitTest()
- Learning about Flash drawing models
- Using filters
- Using blends
- Creating filters and blends with ActionScript
- Introducing bitmap caching
- Learning about XML
- Using XML in Flash
- Accessing XML data
- Looping through XML data
- Implementing advanced anti-alias rendering
- Introducing the TextFormat class
- Formatting text with cascading style sheets
- Resizing text fields
Day 2
- Creating reusable instance-based code
- Loading external media with MovieClipLoader
- Creating instances of the Flash Object class
- Introducing listeners and event handlers
- Understanding the MovieClipLoader event handlers
- Using createEmptyMovieClip() and getNextHighestDepth()
- Attaching Movie Clips
- Positioning visual elements dynamically
- Understanding swapping depths
- Creating Timeline-based custom easing
- Animating with ActionScript
- Interacting with the mouse location
- Adding easing via ActionScript
- Creating a mask with ActionScript
- Introducing the Tween class
- Handling Tween class events
- Introducing the Transition classes
- Using Delegate to create a component listener
- Styling components
- Skinning components with themes
- Skinning components manually
Programme scope, delivery arrangements and suitability are confirmed during enquiry.