Flash Tenth Anniversary

Tom Green

http://www.tomontheweb.ca

Tom Green—educator, author, raconteur, chief cook, and bottle washer—is professor of Interactive Multimedia in the School of Media Studies and Information Technology at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Building Dynamic Web Sites with Macromedia Studio MX 2004 (New Riders, 2003). He also wrote Macromedia Captivate for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide (Peachpit, 2005) Press, Macromedia Flash Professional 8: Training from the Source (Macromedia Press, 2005) and Foundation Flash 8 Video (friendsofED, 2006). Tom is a partner at Community MX and is a regular contributor to the Adobe Developer and Design Centers. He also speaks at conferences and community gatherings on a regular basis.

How and when did you get started with Flash?

I can still remember that day. In February of 1998 I was walking down the hall to my office at the College when the boss yanks me into his office, tosses a box with weird red swirl on it and asks, "You know anything about Flash?"

Being a Director user, I had heard of it but explained to him my knowledge was about zero. He said, "Get yourself comfortable with it because you are teaching it next week." That was Flash 3 (I think) and I have been using the app practically every day since then.

How has Flash contributed to your creativity, or taught you about design and the web?

I have always had a fascination with the environment around me and with technology. I watch how water ripples, a sign blink on and off in Times Square, titling sequences at the movies, how crowds move, and how people interact with each other. Then I start wondering, "How can I do that in Flash?" What never ceases to astound me is how rarely I come up with the answer but how often others post their solutions to their sites or lay it out in a tutorial in a book.

My current fascination is Flash Video and I am exploring its relationship with Adobe® After Effects®. My explorations are taking me into rather interesting territory because it is now possible to create a Flash site that is a combination of video and Flash and the user will be unable to tell which is Flash and which is video on the web page. When you really think about it, the lines are now blurred between the video and the web mediums. To me this is well beyond exciting and something I never thought I would see when my boss tossed Flash 3 across his desk to me eight years ago.

Please share one or more favorite tips, lessons, or cautionary tales about Flash.

This is a simple one, but is one that never fails to elicit a reaction when I demo it at conferences and User Groups.

Create a three-state button symbol in Fireworks:

1. Drag and drop the Fireworks web layer onto the Flash Stage.
2. You will see the button. It is nothing more than a flattened bitmap. Delete it.
3. Open the Flash Library and open the Fireworks Objects folder.
4. Drag the button symbol onto the Flash stage.
   If you select Enable Simple Buttons in the Control menu you will see you have created a fully functioning Flash button in Fireworks.

The other "knock ‘em dead" one is did you know that you can apply a Drop Shadow to alpha video, such as a talking head video clip? Simply place the FLV Playback component in a movie clip. Drag the movie clip to the stage and apply a Drop Shadow filter to the movie clip.