Environment and Keyterms

Flash is formost an animation tool for the web. You can use Flash to create vector-based interactive animations or a vector graphic, plus you can incorporate sound. The Flash authoring environment is made up of:

• The Stage where you create and view individual frames
• The Timeline, where you define the movie over time
• Drawing tools, are within the toolbar, you use these to create graphics
• Windows, are used to make adjustments to objects or your movie

Important keyterms for Flash:

• Action: An action is a property assigned to a graphic, button or frame which enlisits a specific response.
• Frame: Frames define each moment in the Flash movie. A frame may be a keyframe if it defines some type of change on the timeline or the animation.
• Import: Import is a general term used to pull an image etc. into the current Flash file you are working on.
• Interactivity: Interactivity is created by assigning an action to a frame or symbol and allowing someone to "interact" with your Flash movie.
• Layer: Layers help with the organization of your Flash movie, such as, keeping symbols and other objects separate.
• Layer pop-up menu: allows you to create, rename, or change settings for the current layer.
• Loop: Loop refers to an animation or sound clip which runs over and over continuously.
• Stroke: A stroke is the outline around an object, in Flash the stroke is a seperate object.
• Symbol: A symbol is a reusable object in Flash. These can be a graphic, button or movie clip. This becomes important when using tweening to create animation and to keep your file size small by reusing objects from the library.
• Tweening: Tweening is an animation of images and or text over time.
• Library: a storage facility to reuse symbols in order to keep your Flash movie file size to a minimum.