Flashvalley - Flash articles - Optimizing your SWFs

So you have decided, you tried the demo of Flash and you really want to learn more about it ? Good choice. Flash is a wonderful piece of software. It is a door that opens on a land of wonders. Now all you need is to unlock that door. This article will hopefully help you to find your own keys.

Left or right brain ?

Flash is the software that tries to reconciliate the big divide that exists in the IT world : between the left brain developers and the right brain designers.

If you are coming from a hardcore programming world like C++, java or other programming languages, you will find some reassurance in the fact that Actionscript is an ECMAScript-based programming language.

If you are coming from a more artistic background, you will be pleased to know that Flash is packed with tools that are very similar to the ones you might have been using in Fireworks, Photoshop or other graphic software.

If you are not belonging, yet, to any of the two categories mentioned above it's very good too, maybe it's even better because Flash is a software that will release its full potential in the hands of people who are part of both worlds. Flash reconciliates the duality. If they want to become more efficient, developers will have to get their hands dirty and learn to use, to some extent, the drawing tools and learn the concepts of Flash animation. Designers will have to get that left brain working and try to grasp the basic concept of programming in actionscript if they want to be able to inject a bit of life in those static graphics.

An Object Oriented based software : Timelines and Movie clips

Flash is, in itself, an Object Oriented software. Working with Flash is working with objects. An object in Flash is a container that can hold other containers. A timeline contains Movie clips that contain other timelines that contain Movie clips.... and so one. You can see it a bit like the famous russian dolls. It is very important to understand the concept of Timelines and Movie clips. What we call a Flash movie can also be called a Flash movie clip. It is the main movie (which can be seen as the Flash player) that contains all the other Movie clips. Each movie has a main timeline and each movie clip had its own timeline with its own independent timeline activity. In a way it can be seen as a universal concept; the universe contains other smaller universes that contain planets that contain creatures...etc and each of those living entities have their own parameters (called properties in actionscript) and activities, but they are all inter-related.

Actionscript : An Object Oriented programming language

Once you have grasped the concept of timelines and movie clips you shouldn't have too much difficulty to understand how OOP applies to actionscript too. OOP rotates around :

Objects
Instances
Properties
Methods

Talking to your movie clips is like talking to an animal or a human it's easier to refer to them if you give them a little name (an identifier). You can see the original movie clip sitting in your library as the original Object, when you drag it on the stage you actually create an instance of that movie clip. To refer to that instance in actionscript you need to give it an instance name. Once it has a name you can access its properties and you can assign actions to it called methods. In the following line of actionscript myMovieClip is the name we gave to the Movie clip and _width is a property of that movie clip, gotoAndPlay() is a what we call a method:

myMovieClip._width = 200;
myMovieClip.gotoAndPlay(2);

Actionscript is entirely based around OOP, therefore it wouldn't be a bad idea to read some articles about these concepts before starting to jump in actionscript itself.

Self-taught or courses ?

Some people will find a lot more motivation to learn when they are in a group than when they are on their own, therefore there is no best option to learn Flash. But if you decide to really learn Flash you are going to need to put efforts into it; no one can reach the top in one day or a week. A lot of patience is needed when it comes to learning a new discipline. Now with the internet you have a 24/7 access to millions of pages that will teach you something about Flash. Asking yourself the right question is getting closer to the correct answer. There are a lot of forums on the internet full of friendly individuals that will direct you in the right direction if you have any questions. The Adobe Flash support forums are a good place to start.

If you had just one book to buy to learn actionscript I would go for Actionscript for Flash MX : The Definitive guide from Colin Moock
If you want to grasp the concept of actionscript 2.0 and Object Oriented Programming I'll go with Essential ActionScript 2.0 from Colin Moock. These two books are very respected in the Flash community. There is a lot of good books to learn Flash in general and the best is to pop in a book shop and browse though a couple of them to see which one is best suited to how and what you want to learn.