Macromedia Flash 3

Philip Moore shows you the way to some truly impressive Web site design. 

This month we're very pleased to bring our readers the full working version of Flash 3 on the PC User cover disc. Flash is the tool Web site designers use for creating vector-based animation on the Web. It can help you make full-screen animations and interactive screens such as menus with hyperlinks or simple online games -- all within a Net-friendly file size.

What exactly is Flash? Beyond these guides there are some basic principles you need to know. Flash is a vector-based program. This means it uses lines and shapes to define an image, unlike a raster or bitmap-based program (such as a paint program) that uses a collection of pixels or dots. JPG and GIF images are raster. JPEGs in particular can offer a full range of colours, making them well suited to photographic and detailed pictures. Vector images, on the other hand, are better suited to illustrations and cartoon-style pictures and animation.

It sounds like raster is better, so why use vector at all? There are two key reasons: vector images take up much less space, and they are not restricted to a specific image size. In other words, they look just as good at any screen size -- and file size isn't affected at all. That's how Flash can achieve very small file sizes for what appear to be large and complex animations. The next important fact about Flash is that it is first and foremost an animation program. While it offers a good range of tools to help you draw shapes and objects, it is not trying to be a paint or illustration program. And while it does offer some very useful interactivity features such as rollovers, hyperlinks and action triggers, it is not really a multimedia authoring or presentation program. You can also import a wide range of image formats from other vector or raster imaging software. The images and animations produced in Flash can be exported to a wide range of other file formats, including raster still images and AVI or animated GIF files. However, Flash is primarily designed as Web tool, and its animations are mainly intended for use on the Web. It does a superb job of making truly impressive Web pages that download quickly and always look sharp and clean. Finally, while you can certainly do a lot in Flash with little artistic talent, a bit of designer expertise and flair do help. Forget about animated GIFs, they're old hat. Flash is the new de facto standard for animation on the Web. 

Further Resources

Want more try these Macromedia books and forthcoming conferences.

Getting started

The first step to learning Flash is a run through the tutorial provided with the program. This will come up automatically when you first run the program, loading the file lessons.fla. You will find it in the \Program Files\Macromedia\Flash3\lessons folder if you installed to the default location. 

This tutorial is itself a Flash animation, and there are links here to run the Guided Tour (another Flash animation) in your Web browser. I can do no better than direct any new user to this informative guided tour and tutorial. Macromedia has also provided PC User two special prepared tutorials, that you will find on the cover disc in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (see below). This uses Apple Mac screenshots throughout, but it will work just as well on the PC version of Flash supplied here. Just imagine it is Window 95 with some perverse desktop theme. 

Follow the tutorial and guided tours supplied with the program to learn the basics of Flash 3.

How to unlock your copy of Flash 3

Please note, Macromedia products are for web users. If you don't have a regular account, you can still register by establishing a temporary HotMail account (http://www.hotmail.com) via an Internet cafe, if necessary. 

Up to 30 March 2000, all PC User readers can unlock their copies of Flash 3, by registering it for free on the net at http://www.macromedia.com/ap/flpromo/  . 

Some fields such as name and e-mail address, are needed to ensure you receive your serial number to unlock the program. Others, such as Postcode and Phone Number, are being used by Macromedia for market research purposes only, treated in confidence and will not be passed to any third party without your explicit approval. 

Furthermore, you can indicate whether you would like to receive further marketing information from Macromedia upon registering for your serial number at the Macromedia website.