Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter 1. Getting Started in Flash CS4

In This Chapter

• Creating, saving, and opening documents

• Getting familiar with the workspace and tools

• Creating and saving your workspaces

• Introducing Flash Player 10

• Understanding layers

• Importing and exporting files

• Understanding the publishing process

Welcome to the world of Flash, one of today's hottest applications for creating eye-catching motion graphics featuring sound, video, and visual effects. In this minibook, you explore the whole process, from basic graphics creation and animation to complex effects and user interaction.

Creating Your First Flash Document

To get started, create a new blank Flash document and set up your workspace. You can create a new document in two ways:

• From the Start page, choose Flash File (ActionScript 3.0) under the Create New column.

• Choose File

  

Your new document is created, and the workspace appears. Before you get to work, specify some important settings, such as width and height, for your file by using the Document Properties dialog box.

To open the Document Properties dialog box, choose Modify

• Frames Rate: Because Flash files behave like movies, the Frame Rate is an important setting that impacts the performance and playback speed of your movie. The default setting of 24 fps (frames per second) should do fine.

• Dimensions: ...