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Keep this window open and follow the each step of the tutorial.
Simple text effects
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Create a new movie by choosing 'New Flash Movie' from the 'File' menu,
or by clicking the 'New flash movie' button on the main toolbar.
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When the 'New Flash Movie' window appears, choose 320 x 240 and
leave the background color and frame rate unchanged.
Then press the 'Create flash movie' button at the bottom of the window.
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A 'Flash Movie' properties window will appear on the right hand side
of the main window and a corresponding graphics window will appear on the left.
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You are now ready to begin building the movie by adding some text.
Click the 'Add some text' button in the element toolbar of the movie properties window.
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A 'New Text' window will appear.
You can immediately begin typing in your text.
You will see the first 5 letters appear in the preview window.
You can change the font type, size and color.
Press the 'Create text' button at the bottom of the window
to add your new text to the movie.
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The new text element will be added to the movie's list of elements,
a text properties window will open with more options for the appearance of the text,
and the text will appear in the middle of the graphics window.
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When you have finished playing around with all the different text options, then close the text properties window.
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If you were to play the movie now, then the text would appear and nothing else would happen.
To make the movie more exciting, you should add an event to make the text fly onto the screen.
To do this, click the 'Show selected elements' button in the event toolbar of the movie properties window.
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A 'Show element' window will appear.
If there was more than one element in the movie then you could select the element that you wanted to show from a list of elements.
There is usually no need to change any of the other options in this window.
Click the 'Add event' button at the bottom of the window.
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The new 'Show' event will be added the movie's list of events,
and a 'Show' properties window will open with more options for how to show the text.
These options can be alot of fun to play with.
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At this stage, you can test your movie by pressing either the 'Play' button
in the movie properties window, or the the 'Play' button on the main toolbar.
The movie will play over and over until you press the corresponding 'Stop' button.
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Now lets have some more fun by exploding our text element using an 'Explode' event.
Click the 'Explode selected elements' button in the event toolbar of the movie properties window.
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An 'Explode element' window will appear.
Click the 'Add event' button.
The new 'Explode' event will be added the movie's list of events,
and an 'Explode' properties window will open.
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Now the movie will not play properly until you set a delay between the time that
the text starts to be shown, and the time that the text starts to explode.
Four seconds delay should be enough.
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The default duration for a new movie is 10 seconds. A more appropriate
duration for our new movie would be 7 seconds.
Change the 'Time' value in the movie properties window.
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You should now test the movie again by pressing the 'Play' button.
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When you are satisfied with your new movie,
press the 'Export flash movie' button to export the movie as a flash file.
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A flash compatible SWF file will be created and saved to the program directory.
A corresponding HTML file will also be saved.
Now press the 'Play flash movie in browser' button.
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Your default internet browser will open and play the movie.
The SWF flash movie file can now be used on any web page.
Simply insert the corresponding HTML into your web page.
Vector painting
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Start a new movie by going through the steps in the first tutorial until
you have a 'Flash Movie' properties window and a blank graphics window.
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Click the 'Paint some artwork' button in the element toolbar of the movie properties window.
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A new 'Paint' element will be added to the movie's list of elements
and a paint properties window will open.
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Choose one of the following paint tools and draw some lines and shapes by
dragging the mouse cursor across the graphics window.
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Choose one of the following paint tools to draw an irregular or curved shape.
Click on the graphics window to draw each new point of a continuous line.
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Click one of the following buttons to close the shape, or to close it and fill it.
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If you change any of the brush details now, it will change the appearance
of every shape currently drawn.
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You will need to create new brushes before you can draw new shapes with different colors.
Click the 'Create a new brush' button.
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A new brush will be added to the paint element.
You can change the details of this new brush without
affecting the appearance your previous shapes.
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You can now begin to draw new shapes using the new brush.
Moving selected objects
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Start a new movie by going through the steps in the first tutorial.
Add some text to the movie so that you have a movie with one text element.
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Now select the text element by clicking on the text image in the graphics window.
Drag handles will appear around the image.
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Make sure that the 'Move selected object' button has been pressed on the far left toolbar.
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Now grab the selected text by one of its drag handles and move it to a different position
on the graphics window.
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We will now move each separate letter of the text.
Click the 'Element children are selectable' button on the far left toolbar.
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Now select an individual letter by clicking on its image in the graphics window.
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And drag the selected letter to a new position.
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Do the same to all of the other letters.
Try using the 'scale, sheer and rotate selected object buttons' to change the appearance of each letter.