Macromedia Flash 8 Advanced Design

Macromedia Flash 8: Advanced Design provides experienced Macromedia Flash users with the hands-on instruction to extend their Flash applications beyond the limitations of the Timeline. By the end of the course, you will be able to use what you learn to build richer, more easily updatable Flash pieces that can load graphical assets, XML data and cascading style sheets from external sources as well as improve and optimize your designs with new Macromedia Flash 8 features like filters, blends, bitmap caching and text anti-aliasing. You will use the Tween and Transition classes to easily create effects that would traditionally take much longer to build. You will also perform tasks in Flash, like creating complex masks and mouse-controlled filter animations, which are impossible to do on the Timeline. This course will additionally introduce you to a methodology of architecting your Flash movies that makes it easy to update and reuse elements and take advantage of built-in Flash functionality.
Unit 1 Introducing the Course
Understanding the Course Format
Discussing the Course Objectives
Reviewing the Course Prerequisites
Reviewing the Course Outline
Unit 2 Architecting a Flash Application
Architecting with Layers
Architecting with Movie Clips
Placing Code in External ActionScript Files
Introducing Object Oriented Programming Concepts
Working with Flash Classes
Writing Methods, Functions and Event Handlers
Referencing Dynamic Variables using Bracket Notation
Extending the Movie Clip Class
Detecting Movie Clip Interactions with hitTest()
Unit 3 Working with Graphics
Learning about Flash Drawing Models
Using Filters, Using Blends
Creating Filters and Blends with ActionScript
Introducing Bitmap Caching
Unit 4 Loading XML Data
Learning about XML
Using XML in Flash, Accessing XML Data
Looping through XML Data
Unit 5 Working with Text
Implementing Advanced Anti-Alias Rendering
Introducing the TextFormat class
Formatting Text with Cascading Style Sheets
Resizing Text Fields
Unit 6 Implementing Advanced Graphic Loading
Creating Reusable Instance-Based Code
Loading External Media with MovieClipLoader
Creating Instances of the Flash Object Class
Introducing Listeners and Event Handlers
Understanding the MovieClipLoader Event Handlers
Using createEmptyMovieClip() and getNextHighestDepth() Attaching Movie Positioning Visual Elements Dynamically
Understanding Swapping Depths
Unit 7 Reviewing Animation Basics with ActionScript
Creating Timeline-Based Custom Easing
Animating with ActionScript
Interacting with the Mouse Location
Adding Easing via ActionScript
Creating a Mask with ActionScript
Unit 8 Learning Advance Animation with ActionScript
Introducing the Tween Class
Handling Tween Class Events
Introducing the Transition Classes
Responding to Transition Events
Unit 9 Styling and Skinning Components
Styling Components
Skinning Components with Themes
Skinning Components Manually