Macromedia Flash 8: Advanced Design provides Flash designers with prior ActionScript experience the knowledge and hands-on practice they need to build more flexible and dynamic design-based Flash content. This course focuses on teaching students more advanced ActionScript topics that will remove a reliance on Timeline-based visual tools. Students will learn to generate dynamic design and navigation elements that cannot be created without ActionScript.

This course is for Flash designers who have some experience with ActionScript but want to learn more advanced topics and features to enhance their designs. To gain the most from this class you should already have:

• Experience creating Flash designs and animation using the Timeline.
• Equivalent knowledge from the Macromedia Flash 8: Rich Content Creation course.
• Equivalent knowledge from the Macromedia Flash 8: ActionScript course.
• At least one year of Flash design experience.

Unit 1: Introducing the Course

• 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: Importing 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 Clips
• 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 Advanced Animation with ActionScript

• Introducing the Tween class
• Handling Tween class events
• Introducing the Transition classes
• Using Delegate to create a component listener

Unit 9: Styling and Skinning Components

• Styling components
• Skinning components with themes
• Skinning components manually