Hi everyone,

I am happy to announce our new Flash CS4 video tutorials are finally ready! It only took me a year to get Santo (the author of the video tutorial course) to finally do it – better late than never I suppose.

… I have to tell you, wrangling up good video authors is like herding cats!

Check out this sample video on using the Flash Bones tool:

You can find more sample videos on the Flash CS4 video tutorial home page and in this coming months Web Designer Magazine.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com

I have read or watched a few of the items about flash, but still have not gotten an answer to a big question I have.

Here is the question with a little of my background first. I’m a career programmer/developer having gotten my degree in 1972, I have been in the business ever since.

… I have done some web development for the last 4 years. Not full time, just part time. I spend most of my time developing and maintaining MS Access databases, using VBA to control whatever needs to be controlled. With that background, I would like better control over the UI within a web page and have the feeling that Flash is the tool to use, but I have not been able to find a good summary of what is possible with flash, from an interactive standpoint.

The short answer to this question is: YES.

Flash has evolved from being an web animation program to a full fledged application framework. It includes built in drag-and-drop UI components, data binding along with a powerful object oriented language that looks like a cross between Java and Javascript: Flash Actionscript.

Since Flash is a vector based engine, it provides a pixel accurate layout capability … that means you can produce any type of layout / UI you could possibly want for your application.

Adobe has created a framework for Flash called Flex. This extends Flash and provides a very rich set of tools for building applications for both the Web and the desktop. To get you Flash based applications on the desktop, Adobe has created the Air framework.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I’m happy to announce this great new video on Actionscript.

A few points:

Actionscript has gone through a few major changes that make it increasingly more powerful. But, on the downside, Actioscript has gotten a little more complex along the way.

The following video is designed to introduce you the major differences between Actionscript 1, 2 and 3.

Check it out.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Hi,

This is just the first of many new video tutorials on Flash CS3 (and the upcoming Flash CS4) and Actionscript 3.0.

Video: Nested Movie Clips in Flash CS3

Summary of the video tutorial:

Using Nested Animations in Movie Clips with Flash CS 3
By: Santo Romano
Tutorial level: Beginner to intermediate Flash users.
Flash version: Flash MX, MX2004, CS2, and CS3

When creating simple animations in Flash, the main timeline is often the best place to position your animations. However, when these animations are repetitive, the best way to handle them is to utilize the movie clip symbol in Flash. Unlike the other symbols you’ll find in the Flash environment, the Movie clip symbol is perfectly suited to handle this kind of work. Rather than creating multiple key frames over and over again, it is much better to nest the simple animation inside of a Movie Clip, and to let it handle most of the work.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

… This means that it now makes more sense for web developers to learn Flash technology. I go over some of the details below.

A little background

I won’t go into the long history of Flash, since I’ve briefly covered it elsewhere. But let me just quickly recap that Flash started out as a way to create lightweight interactive animations on the Web.

And then the people in charge of Flash, tried to position it as an alternative to HTML.

… This did not work out too well.

The death of Flash ‘Intros’

At one point there was this Flash ‘intro’ fad, where web designers forced people watch a Flash animation before they could actually see the website! This we know now, was simply a crazy bad idea.

Once the Flash intro fad died in 2001, Flash slowly slipped into a niche. Most websites didn’t need animations and Flash was not really easier to work with than HTML and CSS.

Flash CS3 breaths life into Flash

Now all bets are off, Flash CS3 and the new ultra fast Flash player 9 make Flash (once again) a very important technology on the Web … and now, even on the desktop!

Flash is actually useful – for real this time!

Now Flash has a whole bunch of improvements that make Flash an interesting addition that can complement HTML/CSS based websites. Flash also provides useful tools that will make developing great Flash based web sites much easier than before.

… In my opinion, Flash development was too time consuming in the past to be compelling enough for people to want to switch over.

So what are the improvements to Flash CS3?

I won’t go into too many nerdy details here, but I think I can reduce it to these key points:

1. Flash development tools now have all the features that programmers expect to have in an IDE.
2. Actionscript 3 is very powerful and has a rich API that takes a lot of the work out of your hands.
3. The Flash 9 engine is blazingly fast – it almost feels like the Flash applications are running at native speed!
4. Flash now has the Flex framework that allows you to easily build interactive database driven Flash applications very quickly.

For a Flash designer, these developments may seem boring. But the fact of the matter is that this could spur interest in Flash … making both Flash design and Flash programming skills, much more valuable.

Because of these new Flash developments, I’ve decided to create a whole new section on killersites.com with a bunch of Flash tutorials and articles.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook