Flash Animation

Macromedia Flash is known as an animation tool. This tutorial will introduce you to the basics of Flash animation. Do keep in mind that Flash has the capabilities of doing a lot more than you will cover in this tutorial.  
Timeline
Keyframe Playhead Blank Keyframe Frame View
Keyframes define the moment in the timeline where actions or animations occur. The playhead shows the current frame that you are viewing in the timeline. A blank keyframe is an empty location on the timeline that is ready to have content placed. The Frame View allows you to change how the timeline is displayed.

Layers

Current Frame Frame Rate Elapsed time
Layers organize your work from back to front on the stage so that one object can move in front of another one. This displays the current position of the playhead This shows the number of frames per second (fps) your animation will play in the browser Shows the time elapsed from Frame 1 to your current position at the selected fps

Flash movies can refer to three different kind of files:
mymovie.fla

File type: Project

This always has an extension of .fla and is the master authoring file used to create content

mymovie.swf

File type: Movie

This always has an extension of .swf and is the only kind of file you will upload to the Internet. It is a compiled version of your project.

mymovie.exe

 

mymovie projector

File type: Windows projector

A stand alone projector file for viewing on a windows computer

File type: Macintosh projector

A stand alone projector file for viewing on a Macintosh computer

Flash Interface | Flash Tools | Animation | Tweening | Symbols/Instances | Buttons
Timeline | Properties | Keyframes | Onion Skinning | Frame Rate | Adding and Deleting Frames | Copying Frames | Testing

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