You are in: Home > Adobe Training > Adobe Flash > 3 day Actionscript

 

 

Adobe Flash Actionscript.

 

Flash - 3 days
actionscript

 

Scheduled training

• 2 day Flash Introduction
• 3 day Flash Designer + Adobe Certified
• 5 day Flash Masterclass + Adobe Certified
• 3 day Flash Actionscript
• 2 day Advanced Flash Actionscript
• 5 day Flash Actionscript Masterclass
• 1 day Adobe Certified Prep + Exam
• 5 day Dreamweaver and Flash Masterclass
• Roadmap to building a rich internet application

 

Private training

• 2 day Flash Introduction
• Customised course

 

 

 

scheduled training.

3 day Actionscript.

 

 

Introducing Actionscript

• Introducing Actionscript
  
• a brief history of flash
  
• Actionscript 123
• building a flash file
  
• exploring the document settings
  
• adding code on the timeline
  
• layers, organization and good structure

 

The Actionscript Syntax

• adding comments
  
• variables and assigning memory
  
• data types and assigning values, String, Number, int, uint, Boolean
  
• complex data types, instantiation an Date
  trace - your best friend in flash development
  
• breakpoints, debugging and the downloads

 

Controlling our Visual Design with our Code

• the importance of instance names
  
• feeling your way in the dark
  
• strong typing and defining aliases in code
  
• using getChildByName to access the ‘named’ objects
  
• casting - giving flash a hint
  
• modifying a movieclip’s properties, x, y, alpha, scaleX, scaleY, rotation
  
• saving time (but not effort) with with

 

All the Worlds a Stage

• the width and height of the stage :some useful properties, frameRate, fullScreenWidth,
• fullScreenHeight, displayState, wmodeGPU

 

Using the Stage Dimensions

• randomizing properties, x (Math.random() * this.stage.stageWidth) etc
  
• its no fun with just 1 - the for loop and numChildren
  
• that’s great, but what if we want 142

 

Tidying up the Code

• functions to do stuff
  
• call the functions
  
• passing an object to a function

 

If you can do it in Design

• we’ve seen alphas, what about a tint, importing extra libraries
  
• filters such as bevel, drop shadow and blur,
• introducing arrays, some simple shorthand and
• more formal instantiation

 

Adding Mouse Interaction

• asking questions ‘an if and an is’
  
• the buttonMode property
  
• adding event listeners (the trickiest of all)
  
• event handling functions and the game of catch
  
• back to trace
  
• event.target

 

Controlling the Flow

• stopping the movie
  
• making it start again and designing a button
  
• changing the mouse pointer
  
• adding an audible click using the code

 

Making Interaction More Interactive

• mouse down and mouse up
  
• enabling drag and drop
  
• limiting the drag area
  
• watching out for classic problems
  
• bringing our item to the top
  
• adding and removing a drop shadow

 

Scripted Animation Using the Tween Class

• importing the necessary
  
• on drop. plummet
  
• its ok, but where’s gravity gone? - easing to the rescue

 

An Orientation to Object Oriented Development Drawing is so passed

• when we draw we create an object, can we do it in code?
  
• our first class
  
• extending code to save time and effort
  
• the constructor function
  
• shapes and the drawing api
  
• this is all a bit conceptual, let’s put one on the stage
  
• making our shape randomly position itself
  
• applying a gradient fill with code
  
• applying a tint in a random colour

 

Perhaps this is a bit Extreme

• Design <-> Develop workflow
  
• draw in the library, control behaviour in code
  
• our second class
  
• public and private instance variables
  
• reintroducing our randomness
  
• add many from the stage and see the code take charge

 

So if we can Inherit Behaviour

• the concept of inheritance
  
• a simple UML diagram
  
• sneaking something in the gap
  
• writing a ‘drag and drop’ movieclip class
  
• applying this to our class using inheritance
  
• testing the behaviour

 

Controlling the Whole Movie

• if we can control each library item, can we control the movie?
  
• getting the code off the timeline
  
• the document class - a massive movieclip
  
• loading and playing an mp3 bed
  
• controlling the volume of the audio
  
• event listeners and the id3 meta data in the mp3

 

Allowing Our Objects to Move

• can we give an object motion?
  
• instance variables and introducing setters/getters
  
• waiting until our object is on the stage
  
• the ‘enter frame’ event
  
• handling the event in a protected function
  
• using the Point class to help with the trigonometry
  
• checking we’re still on the stage
  
• apply the behaviour to some library items as the
• ‘base class’

 

Keeping Track of Each Other

• instance versus class variables
  
• maintaining a list in a static variable
  
• iterating through the array on enter frame
  
• performing a hit test
  
• handling the collision
  
• notifying the parent container
  
• handling this notification

 

Watching Some Video

• building a simple interface
  
• toggling the play/pause button
  
• displaying the flv filename
  
• allowing our movie to change the filename
  
• getting the video to work

 

Watching Ourselves

• using the camera
  
• taking a snapshot
  
• bitmaps and bitmapdata
  
• using the UILoader class to display the snapshot

 

Working with an Entire Project Working in a Project

• creating a flash project
  
• creating and setting our default document
  
• coming up with a design
  
• building our scene
  
• working in layers
  
• buttons, movieclips and navigation
  
• splitting out our pages into modules
  
• loading them in with the UILoader
  
• adding our document class and working in folders
  

 

Building a Preloader

• building a preloader animation
  
• adding a scene for it
  
• the bandwidth profiler gives it all away
  
• ‘export for Actionscript3’ and the compiler settings
  
• writing the ‘PreloadedDocument’ base class
  
• implementing the base class with inheritance
  
• testing the movie and simulating the download

 

Tracking the Progress

• creating the ‘ProgressDisplay’ movieclip
  
• discussing the design
  
• building the components and naming the
• instances
  
• adding it in and naming it!
  
• writing the code to control it
  
• testing the movie and simulating the download
• Building Our Pages as Separate Movies
  
• working with multiple swfs
  
• adding the movies to the project publish list
  
• designing the scenes
  
• implementing our preloader and progress
  
• testing the movies individually

 

Implementing the Navigation

• listening for mouse events
  
• event.target and the switch statement
  
• getChildByName and the UILoader
  
• loading the correct page
  
• testing the movie and simulating the download

 

Dynamically Loading Text

• The Home document class
  
• changing our static text to be dynamic
  
• getChildByName and setting the text
• programmatically
  
• font embedding
  
• extracting our text into an external file
  
• adding some html formatting to the text
  
• loading the text from the file
  
• tracking the load complete event
  
• displaying the text in the dynamic text box
  
• exploring the html formatting
  
• revisiting our font embedding
  
• adding scrollable functionality to the text box

 

Going Even Further

• we want to build a list of products
  
• building the list in another fla
  
• implementing the preloader
  
• using a scroll pane to load the content
  
• testing the project and simulating the download

 

*Bonus Topic - Loading XML Data

• loading some xml, after all its only text
  
• breaking it down and grabbing what we want
  
• looping through and tracing out the data
  
• homework - try and build the products list
• dynamically