The best way to avoid web development projects that become disorganized, cluttered, and downright confusing is to take advantage of the project management tools available in your development environment. The Project panel is the primary means to manage your projects quickly and easily in Flash CS4 Professional.

Actually, the Project panel has been around for a while in Flash. However, developers often overlook this utility, which was completely updated in Flash CS4 Professional. The Project panel helps you do the following:

• Create, manage, and visualize projects
• Switch between project folders quickly
• Open files for editing
• Create files and folders
• Test and publish project files
• Bind external resources to your project

This article provides an overview of the Project panel in Flash CS4 Professional and includes a tutorial to help you begin using the tool quickly. The tutorial guides you through the creation of a photo gallery slideshow project from a series of supplied assets (click Figure 1).

Figure 1. Completed Photo Gallery project (Click to view)

Requirements

To make the most of this tutorial, you'll need the following software and files:

Flash CS4 Professional

• Try
• Buy

Illustrator CS4 (optional)

• Try
• Buy

Sample files:

• flash_project_panel.zip (ZIP, 3.5 MB)

Prerequisite knowledge

Some prior experience with Flash CS4 Professional and ActionScript 3 is recommended. However, the steps in the tutorial are designed to get you up to speed on working with the Project panel whether you're an experienced developer or new to Flash. ActionScript 3 knowledge is required to extend the supplied templates beyond the scope of this article.

When you import the sample Adobe Illustrator file into Flash CS4 Professional, Flash automatically builds out the timeline and library structure. You can edit the graphics in Flash from there, although more experienced designers might prefer editing directly in Illustrator. You can also open and edit the file in Adobe Fireworks CS4.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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