Learning Actionscript at all was a jump I had to make to feel I was going to be able to create the high-quality presentation media that I felt was up to standard for my caliber of clients and for my company.  This came along with learning PHP/mySql, which put me enough in touch with programming to be competent, but hardly expert.

Learning Actionscript 2 is not easy for a non-programmer, but I found lots of online tutorials and was able to grind my way up the ladder and become able to create pretty advanced animations and controls.  When Flash CS came out, and Flash’s capabilities to create full web sites with great interacitivy, there was no turning back.  The road I travelled became one of a “no mans land” between art & design and programming.

I suppose this article and those that will follow are part of my version of “pay it forward,” as I got lots of free help from others on the Internet (Adobe’s documentation is clearly NOT written to help non-programmers and typically uses convoluted and advanced examples to illustrate simple basics) in learning how to get results with code.  Hopefully, some of the comments I make here will help others to face the somewhat overwhelming wall of “data intensive” learning curves that accompany this highly useful medium of multimedia presentation.

Actionscript 3 forces one to pretty much learn things all over again up to a point.  I purchased about three different books JUST to get a handle on the subject, especially to help me translate things over from Actionscript 2 to AS3.  Being someone who was already struggling to push my way into programming anything very advanced with AS3, it was REALLY difficult to face up to the learning curve with AS3.  A tip I would give anyone new to this – forget what ANYONE says. Unless you are an EXPERIENCED programmer, learning the new Actionscript 3 is going to drive you have nuts, especially if you hope to depend on Adobe’s convoluted documentation to give you practical guidance on how to proceed with learning it.

BUT – IT’S WORTH THE TROUBLE!  The cool features and new methods ARE really cool.  The over-all code strategy IS easier to deal with once you get over the shock of having to learn about clases, the Document Class, and the completely new system where practically every interaction is based around event-listeners. 

Also, the error checking system is confoundedly strict.  BUT again, it’s also helpful because the error messages are very specific and most of the time actually point you to the exact thing you need to fix to debug your code.  So guidance is built in to that degree.

I’m now successfully working with code for XML playlists, music players, video players, photo galleries, external loaders and full dynamic web sites, all using AS3.  I have to say it’s getting pretty cool and my clients are happy with what they get for their money!

I’ll try to point out tips and successful ways to handle the learning curve and perhaps some of the sources of information that have helped me, as I have time, on this blog. 

-R

Back when Macromedia owned the web designer/developer tools (Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, etc) I got the whole suite and started creating web sites for people.  Soon it became my business.  Flash was always a pretty advanced software package and was essentially a frame-based animation program (which it still is) that created cool intros for web sited, banner ads, etc.  The file sizes were quite large if you really did anything major, and this was also a time when broadband web access was relatively new and a great many people were still using dial-up.  Between the two, Flash was kind of an innovation that hadn’t landed as a really useful tool.  You ran the risk of having people have to wait a long time for your Flash movie to load – I remember that back then, the rule was that your ENTIRE web page was supposed to be no more than about 50kbytes, includingimages!  For me at that time, Flash just wasn’t anything I felt like I should work at learning.  Dreamweaver and a good dictionary were what I used to learn the ropes of HTML, which led to CSS, which led to PHP/MYSWL and dynamic web design (a mainstay of everything I do today for clients) and years went by.

Well, now, several versions of Flash later, (now ADOBE Flash CS3) and with the vast majority of web users having some form of broadband access, Flash is everywhere just like cell phones.  The Flash of today allows VERY powerful animated presentation content with small file sizes and, due to the advances of Actionscript, the programming language “under the hood” of Flash, we can now enjoy complete web sites and web applications that are fully animated and interactive.  AMAZING!! Presentations that were only possible through major production studios at six figure budgets can now be created for any individual or business, and are VERY cost effective. 

YouTube of course, as well as MySpace and a host of other online networking and distribution communities depend on Flash for deployment of music and video.  The video player technology of YouTube is simply a nicely designed video player created with Flash using Actionscript to interface with a highly sophisticated database system.  Really cool.

For what I do, the full range of aesthetically driven design materials can be integrated into a Flash web site, or a “hybrid” site that is created using HTML along with Flash elements.

One key point I’ve found really vital in building online presentations for people is that whatever type of web site it is, it HAS to navigate well.  The visitor has to be able to experience whatever the owner wants to present, with an aesthetic package that is “transparent” to the visitor and helps show exactly how to find whatever the owner of the site wants to get accross. Navigation of a web site is probably the single most important area in creating any kind of web site.  With Flash, I’ve often found that designers make these really esoteric and “hip” design schemes that actually confuse (read piss off) the viewer because he has to play some kind of “mystery game” with whatever the designer thought was a “cool” idea. It’s sort of like super virtuoso music – it may sound cool for a little while, but after a fashion the listener just wants to feel or experience something from the music and the virtuoso aspect starts to become a distraction.  Flash definitely has that danger – there are SOOOOO many things you can do with Flash!!!!  The foolish designer with “pure art” in his veins does things “because he can” and he may fail to embody the actual presentation “message” that the design is suppost to get across.

One area I’ve noticed where Flash gets utilized really well is advertising banners.  Barring the really annoying “popup” style adverts or “strobe” effects that assume the only way to get someone’s attention is to assault them with complete visual noise, Flash gets used to create really nicely presented advertisements.  Skillful commercial Flash artists are routinely utilizing the advantages of Actionscript to keep things animated and interesting without creating a huge file size.

But I digress a bit.  The earlier point had to do with this idea of “transparent” presentation of something using the medium of Flash.  An entire web site can now be created in Flash, with excellent and engaging animated navigation, transitions between pages, moving pictures, slide shows, video, music, etc.  It’s quite similar to what one sees on network television, only the “flow” is actually better to the eye.

One thing I always look for in creating Flash artwork or web sites for my clients is that the actual “vision” or “message” the client wants to present actually makes it across.  Another really important aspect of this is the idea of “creating reach.”  Flash seems to really help by putting “aliveness” into presentation as well as interactivity.  You don’t have to rely on just images along with text, or static graphics either. You can animate your text, put in graphics that accent the communication of the text, and utilize a much smaller visual “footprint” to get a lot of presentation done.

I suppose it won’t be long before I’ll be doing a lot of content for smart phones  – it’s certainly coming up more and more, and the issue with smart phones is that it’s really a pain to sit there scrolling down a long page of text – but with Flash, you can animate transitions between sections of text, show animated examples of things, or just at that “glitz” factor to whatever you’re presenting.

As a sort of “tag end” to this post, I always liked the idea of learning video, videography, edigin and post-production, but I never really thought it would be any part of my career until I got into building a lot of Flash stuff.  Video has become such a part of Flash, that they are almost the same thing now.  Flash kind of mirrors what someone might do with video and Adobe After Effects.  The video contains animated graphics, titles, etc.  With Flash, the video is part of a presentation that contains animated graphics, titles, text. etc.  So one kind of mimics the other. Flash really shines as a medium of presentation for the web, and now for smart phones and other types of “micro-computer” based electronic communication devices.

Flash is, in my opinion, one of the most innovative and powerful software inventions ever created.  Adobe was VERY smart for buying out Macromedia.  I hope that Adobe continues to add to and develop what already is one of my most powerful deisgn/development tools.

Multimedia production is my life – I’m what you would call a digital presentation media artist/producer.  I make people’s message come to life using a combination of aesthetics and technology.  Most of my work appears on the Internet in the form of web sites.  I do a considerable amount of work in Flash (currently CS3) which now includes a lot of scripting using Actionscript 3.  The amount of cool animations, interactivity, ability to integrate music, verbiage, video, static and animated graphics along with all the traditional things normally associated with an HTML web site have made Flash a really great asset for me and for my clients.

I intend to keep this blog working and growing.  If you find this here due to a search for information about multimedia, Flash, web sites, online promotion, Internet related subjects, etc., I welcome you.  You will need to register as a user here in order to add any comments to posts.  Unfortunately, the amount of SPAM marketing and abusive or malicious code around the Internet has made the climate a bit “tense” in some ways.  Beyond that, you are welcome here, and I hope you find this blog helpful in some way.