Chapter 1. Getting Started in Flash CS5

In This Chapter

  • Creating, saving, and opening documents

  • Getting familiar with the workspace and tools

  • Creating and saving 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.

Flash can create full Web sites, complex games, and highly functional, rich Internet applications. One or more of the sites you visit each day is likely to use Flash.

Creating Your First Flash Document

You can start creating a new, blank Flash document and set up your workspace in one of two ways:

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

  • Choose File

    Creating Your First Flash Document

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

Creating Your First Flash Document
  • Frame Rate: Because Flash files behave like movies, the frame rate is an important setting ...

Get Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Design Premium all-in-one for Dummies® now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.