ActionScript 3.0 for Adobe Flash Professionals provides experienced Flash designers with the knowledge and hands-on practice needed to create dynamically generated event-driven animation and interactive projects with Flash. Through a combination of instructor-led demonstration and hands-on practice, you will learn fundamental programming techniques, including core concepts such as instance names, variables, functions, properties, and methods. You will also learn about conditions, loops, event handling, and animating with ActionScript.

Certification:

This course prepares you to earn the Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) designation. Becoming an ACE means you have demonstrated a professional level of proficiency with one or more Adobe software products. To become an ACE, you must pass one or more product-specific proficiency exams and agree to the ACE terms and conditions.

What You'll Learn

• Key techniques for working in Flash CS5
• Ins and outs of the Flash CS5 interface
• How to use all of Flash CS5's essential features, such as text, graphics, and animation
• How to use video and sound effectively in Flash
• Using Illustrator and Photoshop files in Flash
• Basics of ActionScript 3.0
• Building Flash user interfaces rapidly using components
• Optimizing and publishing your Flash movies
• Best practices

Who Needs to Attend

Developers with extensive experience in Flash who want to learn to program Flash content using ActionScript 3.0.

Prerequisites

• Flash Complete course or equivalent experience
• Experience working with video is recommended

• Adobe Photoshop CS5 Fundamentals: An Introduction to Photoshop
• Adobe Flash CS5 Fundamentals: An Introduction to Flash

Follow-On Courses

• Adobe Photoshop CS5 Advanced: Print and Photography
• Adobe Illustrator CS5 Fundamentals: An Introduction to Illustrator
• Adobe InDesign Fundamentals: An Introduction to InDesign
• Introduction to Adobe After Effects

Course Outline

1. Using Code Snippets and Navigating the Flash Timeline

• Placing code on the Flash timeline
• Adding ActionScript using Code Snippets

2. Working with Events and Functions

• Creating event listeners and event handling functions
• Creating navigation with a button click

3. Creating Animation with ActionScript

• Controlling MovieClip properties with ActionScript
• Creating animation with Actionscript

4. Creating ActionScript in External Files

• Creating an external ActionScript file
• Creating instances of a class file in Flash
• Building a painting program

5. Using ActionScript and Components to Load Content

• Using Components to quickly build a portfolio site
• Using the UILoader component
• Using the List component
• Loading SWF files into a UILoader component
• Adding scroll bar component to a text field

6. Creating Preloaders in ActionScript 3.0

• Creating a text field and progress bar to track loading
• Inserting ActionScript to track progress of the UILoader component
• Building a custom progress bar

7. Using Arrays and Loops in ActionScript 3.0

• Using for loops to automate processes
• Working with arrays and loops
• Adding MovieClip instances to the stage from the Library
• Generating multiple instances with a for loop
• Creating animation using ENTER_FRAME
• Creating drag and drop functionality
• Testing for collisions
• Building a simple game

8. Creating and Formatting Text with Actionscript

• Creating a TLF TextField with Actionscript
• Loading external documents in a Textfield
• Formatting text with the TextFormat class
• Creating a ScrollBar with Actionscript

9. Controlling Sound with ActionScript

• The Sound, SoundChannel, and SoundTransform classes
• Setting the song titles using a for loop
• Making the sliders invisible until needed
• Programming the buttons to select songs
• Controlling the visibility of the volume and pan controls
• Adding a listener for the ID3 tags of an MP3 file
• Adding the slider controls

10. Working with an XML Playlist

• Building a reusable, custom MP3 player
• Basic structure of an XML file
• Using XML instead of an array for reusability
• Loading an external playlist using the URLLoader class
• Creating hyperlinks using XML data
• Navigating through the song list

11. Using ActionScript and Components to Control Video

• Adding the FLVPlayback component to play video
• Configuring the FLVPlayback component
• Adding ActionScript control of FLVPlayback properties
• Adding the FLVCaptioning component
• Playing multiple video files from an XML playlist
• Using the full-screen publish settings

12. Delving Deeper into Graphics and Animation with ActionScript

• Inverse kinematics in Flash CS5
• Working with IK animation in ActionScript
• Creating Sound and SoundChannel instances
• Playing and stopping the sound effects
• Accessing the user's webcam or video camera using ActionScript
• Using the Bitmap and BitmapData classes
• Examining the Pixel Bender Toolkit

13. Printing and Sending E-mail with ActionScript

• Adding a simple e-mail link
• Sending e-mail from Flash
• Adding printing capabilities with the PrintJob class

14. Creating Adobe AIR Applications with Flash and ActionScript

• Creating an AIR desktop application
• AIR-specific ActionScript
• Flash publish settings for an AIR project
• Including a file in the AIR application

15. Using Third-Party Libraries to Extend Actionscript

• Going beyond the classes built into Flash
• Downloading and installing Papervision 3D and Caurina Transitions
• Using Papervision 3D to create a 3D video cube
• Using Caurina Transitions to add transitions to 3D objects