Flash Explained

In this easy lesson made for Flash MX 2004 and Flash 8, I will show you how to give custom speech bubbles to characters featured in a classical painting. Have a look at the Flash example below — roll your mouse over the women and men in the picture to get a clear idea of what you’re going to learn to make in this tutorial. Specifically, you will see:

• How to make a speech bubble in no time,
• How to create custom invisible buttons very quickly,
• How to write ActionScript code that will make the speech bubble appear and disappear,
• How to script a single function that will handle all buttons’ rollover events,
• How to use the coordinate system in Flash and more.

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In this easy lesson you will learn to use the switch/case ActionScript conditional logic. You will see that in some cases it has many advantages over the if/else conditional statement. You’ll also learn:

• How to read the Instance name of a movie clip dynamically via ActionScript,
• How to extract a specific part of a piece of text,
• How to pass a variable to a function,
• How to make Flash display text in a text field,
• What are the best practices when placing ActionScript code into your movie,
• How to choose good Instance names and more.

The simple example below shows the switch/case conditional statement at work. Try clicking every of the four icons and see what gets displayed in the text field.

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In this Flash 8 Pro tutorial, I will show you how simply it is to create an interactive image with camera blur/sharpen effects that appear as the user moves her mouse over it.

In this easy and comprehensive lesson, you will see how to:

• Use the Pen tool to create a precise mask,
• Make invisible buttons with custom shapes that cover specific parts of your image,
• Create a motion tween that uses the blending filters available in Flash 8 Pro,
• Make a slow or quick change of focus with ActionScript and a lot more.

Below is the finished example of what you are going to achieve at the end of this detailed tutorial. Move your mouse over the various parts of the picture to see the change of camera focus.

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In this detailed tutorial made for Flash 8, you will see how easy it is to create a preloading system that is gradually displaying an image as your site loads. I will show you the following:

• How to import an image into Flash,
• How to create a rectangular movie clip and turn it into a mask,
• How to write ActionScript that will power the preloader and more.

You can see the example of what you will learn with this lesson below. This is only an animation showing what the preloader will look like at the end, it is not the actual preloader that you will be building in this tutorial.

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In this really simple Flash 8 tutorial, I will show you how to create an old monitor readout. It is easy: you will only have to set up a dynamic text field, tweak it a little bit and then write a few lines of ActionScript to give it life.

You will see how to:

• Set up a Dynamic text field with all the necessary adjustements,
• Power the text field and manipulate it via ActionScript,
• Make a button that repeats the text effect,
• What is a conditional statement and how it works,
• How to repeatedly call a function,
• name your objects properly in Flash, and more.

Below is the example of what you’ll do in this lesson. Just press the “Restart” button if you missed the effect.

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In this lesson, I will explain to you what the ActionScript if/else conditional statement is and how to use it in your Flash movies through a visual example. You will learn:

• What is a conditional statement,
• What is a circumstance,
• Various comparison operators and more.

Click on the dark area in the Flash movie below to see how the conditional if/else statement works behind the scenes to turn the light on and off.

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In this lesson, I will show you how to create a an interactive sketchpad on which you and your users can draw. The sketchpad features an interface which allows you to change the thickness and the color of the line.

With this tutorial, you will learn:

• How to create simple buttons and tell them what to do via ActionScript,
• How to easily duplicate them,
• What are the drawing functions in ActionScript,
• What are movie clip and button events and how to use them
• and more.

Play around with the sketchpad below to see what you’ll learn to create!

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In this lesson, I will show you have to make a very useful and widely used element: an interactive map. Whether it be a country map, like the case is here, or an anatomical map of human body, city plan, an engine schema, etc., the method applied is the same. It is very simple, as you’ll soon see.

Click the buttons on the right side of the map situated below and see what do they show you.

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In this really easy tutorial, I will show you how to set up a mask via ActionScript and make it draggable.

Click on the rectangle in the Flash example below and drag it around to see what you’ll learn to create.

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Ever seen this small piece of interface that can look really cool? A little crosshair-like cursor that shows the mouse coordinates in real-time? Or a similar design in sci-fi movies, like some cyborg’s targeting system, for example?

You’ll see in my tutorial that it is really, really easy to make. Move your mouse over the Flash example below to see an example of that.

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