Section 1: Welcome to Flash

I knew that Flash was a major contributor to many Websites’ interactivity, and there are Websites that display some pretty heavy duty interactive features. After taking an HTML class that touched on some JavaScripting, I had some trepidation about taking this class. My fingers bled as did my eyes as I typed what seemed like thousands of lines of code just so that I can add a countdown clock on my Website. After watching the introductory section of Flash, I am looking forward to creating interactive features into a Website project. I did not realize how this application makes a typically laborious task easier while producing results that are professional looking. 

The first section introduces the user to what Flash does and its uses as well as giving us a tour of the interface and workspace. Although there were parts that appeared over simplified, I really appreciated that they did take this much time to go over what is often an overlooked part in many other training environments, the Welcome Screen.

This is what you see when you first execute Flash.

Above is a screenshot of what the user will see when they first open Flash. From here the use can navigate to what task they want to employ; for our first lesson we were instructed to choose ActionScript 3.0. However, this view also gives you the option to open previous projects, other scripting languages, and templates. I would highly recommend that a beginner not disable this feature yet.  

Default View with Essential Workspace chosen.

Veronica's Work space view.

This second screenshot displays the default view. Please note that the workspace is named Essential (located in the upper right hand of the tool bar) and only show the most commonly used panels and tools. In the next screenshot, I customized my workspace and named Veronica Work Space. 

In addition to the work space and interface, the first section covered the type of file extensions that can be used for Flash documents including open standards such as gif, jpg, and html.  With this knowledge, we will make a go at it and see what we can create.