Subtitles of the Movie

Flash CS3 contains a lot of panels. Every element seems to have its own panel and they can make you dizzy at first. So let me take this opportunity to cover the more important and more often used panels. Most of these can be found under the Main Menu, under Window, see quite a list of panels here but let me start off with the Help Panel, which is accessed via the Help, Flash Help or just press F1 on your keyboard. The Flash Help Panel here is divided into two sections over on the left are a folder organization by Topic over on the right is the actual Help File. Notice you also have a Search Feature here. So if I Search for what is new, click on the Search button. Flash will work to get me the relevant documents here within the Help System. Starting at the top here, New Features, What's New, Backup and Restore Projects, and so on. You'll want to take special note of how the Flash Topics over here to the left are organized so in case you want to dig through the topics here you can find what you're looking for. Notice that there's a Main Section called Using Flash, and then Programming ActionScript 3.0, ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference, Learning ActionScript 2.0. Mostly you'll be using Flash here, as you're learning Flash, notice you've got Choosing the Right Help Documents about Video Workshop. Notice also that it's filtering what I'm looking at related to what is new up there so if I delete that and do a new search I'll get everything here. So, notice that under using Flash, I've got Getting Started Workspace, Creating and Managing Documents, Working with Flash Documents. Notice, each of these folders has subfolders. Creating and Previewing Mobile Content, Working With Projects, Adding Media to the Library and so on. So you'll want to spend some time reviewing the Help Panel in detail. I use it quite a bit as I'm teaching also in preparation of my notes for this recording. Next we've got the Library Panel, very important panel where you're going to have all your symbols and imported items will be stored here including Audio, Video, stuff you're getting from Photoshop or Illustrator, or Fireworks. Notice that if I create an object here, it does not get put in the Library until I convert that object into a Symbol, any of the Symbols here, Graphic Button or Movie Clip. They'll all be stored here in the Library as well as any Imported Elements. Notice that I can import directly to the Library. Here's a couple Audio Files. Let's import those in Flash Works on getting that in there and then once it's done importing it, it'll appear here in the Library, there it is. With also some Playback Features and Information Features you can get about each of the Elements here in the Library. In the case of my Audio file, I have a Play and Stop button. Many of the panels have a contextual menu up here in the upper right hand corner. Notice that I can get New Symbols, New Folders, Renames moved to New Folder, Duplicate, Delete, Edit, Select Unused Items and so on. Quite a number of options there. Next, let me demonstrate the Actions Panel, another very important Panel. And I'll be devoting an entire section of this course focusing on this Panel. There's two main modes of this Panel, there's Script Assist Mode and Regular Mode which we'll be overing a little bit later. In this Panel you'll be Adding, Editing and Modifying your various ActionScripts that you'll be adding to your Flash Projects to add Interactivity. Things such as Navigating from frame to frame or from scene to scene, or from Flash File to Flash File, are all done here, in the Actions Panel. Adding controls to your Timelines, Controlling Video and Audio that'll all be done here from the Actions Panel. Next we have the Behaviors Panel. Behaviors Panel lets you add pre-written chunks of ActionScript based on what object you've selected here. This feature is not supported by ActionScript 3.0. So to use the Behaviors Panel you must target ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0. So let me go ahead and click on my Published Settings here. Go to the Flash Tab and ActionScript version. Change that to 2.0, click OK, and now I can go ahead and add Behaviors, and Behaviors are organized into categories, Data Behaviors, Embedded Video. Hiding, Pausing, Showing, or Stopping, Media Behaviors, So Should Controller, Labeled Framed Q Point Navigations, Slide Q Point Navigation, Movie Clip Behaviors. So these are pre-packaged ActionScript that will bring forward a movie clip. Bring it to the front go to and play at a frame or label. Go to and stop at a frame or label or send the Movie Clip backward. I've got Sound Behaviors, Load Sound from the Library, Load Streaming MP3 file, Play Sounds, Stop All Sounds, Stop a Particular Sound, and then one of my favorites, probably the one that Ill cover the most detail here in the Behaviors Panel is a Behavior to write the ActionScript to allow you to go to a web page when a button is clicked or frame is reached. The Movie Explorer is another very handy panel. Probably best to demonstrate this with a file that has a little more in it like this one here. This panel can be accessed via Window, Movie Explorer. This will show you a snapshot of your current file. This is very useful for finding text elements so you can show text or hide text. Show Movie Clips buttons in graphics. These are all the movie clips buttons in graphics in this particular file. I use it mostly to show ActionScripting. To find ActionScript perhaps in a student's file that's not working or if I'm using an existing Flash file and I want to modify it and I wanna get to the ActionScript to change it. This is the best way to do this. But it also has buttons for showing Videos, Sounds and Bit Maps. Show frames in layers as well as the customize items to show here. So I'll be covering the Movie Explorer in more detail later in the tutorial. I'll move on to the next movie. Talk more about some of the more common Panels, such as the Alignment Panel, Color Info, Transform and Components Panels.