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Last week I did some Flash work. By that I mean I did some work in Macrodobe Flash 8, not that I did some really bling-tastic work. I was basically adding some Actionscript based functionality to a simple presentation created by someone else. As a result I thought it might be useful if I chucked up here what I think are eight useful tips when working in Flash. Important: These tips have not been tested with Flash Gordon, Flash cleaner, The Flash or any other non-Macrodobe Flash.

Don't Use Scenes

Scenes are a throwback to the days when Flash was mostly an animation tool. They allowed users to arrange their animations in sensible blocks that automatically hopped from one to the next. These days Flash is so much more than animation and using scenes is unecessary (you can acheive the same on one timeline using movie clips from your library) and can lead to some really horrible problems with Actionscript.

Break your Flash down

Linked to the above. Instead of putting everything on the main timeline and using 50+ layers, break your Flash down into seperate movies, using script to trigger events. This is not only more efficient but makes navigating your workspace in Flash itself a lot easier.

Learn Actionscript

Actionscript is the built-in scripting language for Flash. Now on version 2.0 it is where all the hidden power of Flash comes from. If you can code a button press, you can do Actionscript. If you know Javascript, you have a massive headstart. Not using Actionscript is like buying a Ferrari even though you only ever drive to the shop down the road - you are not using anywhere near all the power under the bonnet. You should also get your hands on Colin Moock’s book, Actionscript for Flash MX (there is no Flash 8 version at time of writing).

Use the Help System

Flash has so much stuff waiting to be discovered. Go through all the tutorials and then don't be afraid to use the help system. As help systems go, it's really good and gives you access to the entire Macromedia Flash Reference library. It also links into the LiveDocs version that allows you to leave comments and ask questions. Very help-full (sorry).

Use FlashObject to Place Your Flash

When you export your .SWF from Flash, it chucks out some HTML for you to use when placing your Flash on a web page. This HTML isn't great because it uses deprecated tags and isn't standards compliant. It is also not great if users don't have the Flash player installed. This is where FlashObject comes in. You simply create a DIV that has some static content in and then a small Javascript runs to replace this with the Flash content. If the user doesn’t have Flash, the static content stays there. Simple and effective.

Sound Objects

Take some time to really work out how these work. Flash is awesome at video, interactivity and animation but not great at sound. It has over-complicated things as far as I can tell. A great set of tutorials can be found over at FlashKit. Get to grips with sound before you need to use it - it'll take you a while just to figure it out!

Jugglor

If you create standalone applications in Flash you might know about this already. Jugglor, from Flash Jester, is a third party program that takes your completed .SWF or .EXE files and allows you to customise how they appear, link to external files outside of the fscommand restrictions in Flash and generally get your Flash looking and working how you want. It does so much more than that too, take a look at their site. In fact, Flash Jester do a whole load of tools that are great add-ons for your Flash creativity. Their customer support is pretty good too.

Pro vs Basic

If you are thinking of buying Flash but struggle with the price difference between Pro and Standard (currently £206) then let me tell you that the first time you want to do video in Flash, you will thank the day you bought Pro with it's Video converter and built-in FLVPlayer component. Pro is much more like a development environment and allows you to do clever stuff like linking to datasources. Pay the extra £206 becuase it's worth it (even if it does take the price to a buttock-clenching £556)

There you go, my 8 tips on using Flash. I am sure that more will come but these are things that I have found to be true/useful/important in the time I’ve been using Flash. I guess number 9 on the list would be a surprising Don’t build Flash websites. I like Flash but it is not a tool for building a website due to problems with accessibility, usability, standards compliance and search engine indexing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Web/Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.