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Explanation of the basic Adobe Flash concepts and terminology. Also refer to movie, scenes, objects, stage, layer, timeline, effect, action, event Swish, Ron Kurtus, School for Champions. Copyright © Restrictions

Basic Flash Concepts and Terms

by Ron Kurtus (revised 26 July 2002)

Adobe Flash uses a movie-making metaphor in how they define their concepts and areas of their interface. The basic terms used to describe the animation are the movie, stage and motion.

Questions you may have are:

• What are the movie terms?
• What are the stage terms?
• What are motion terms?

This lesson will answer those questions. There is a mini-quiz near the end of the lesson.

Movie terms

A Flash animation is called a Movie. A movie contains all the scenes, objects, effects and actions that make up the final animation.

A movie is a collection of Scenes. Just as in a TV show or real movie, each scene may have a different background or camera angle. The plot of the movie flows from one scene to another. A simple animation would have a single scene.

A scene is a collection of Objects that animate over a number of Frames. When a scene is complete, all the objects are removed from the display and the movie automatically moves to the next scene. Typical objects are text objects and image objects, such as a picture of a car or person.

Stage terms

Following the movie-making metaphor, the work area for your Flash animations is called the Stage.

Objects—such as drawings, buttons or animations—are placed on the stage in Layers. This allows objects to be in front of other objects. It is also useful for breaking up effects into simple parts.

The very first layer (and the furthest back) is the Background. This layer is usually visible through a whole scene.

Motion terms

The Timeline is the part of the interface where you can see the flow of a movie.

A Frame is a single time-slice of the Flash movie. It is a similar concept to a frame of a motion picture. Frames are seen in the timeline.

Events and actions

An Event is when something happens at a given time in the movie or as a result of a user action. A frame event occurs when the movie reaches the specified frame. Mouse events occur when the mouse interacts with an object in a scene.

The event will then trigger an Action, which can be used to control the flow of a movie or issue instructions to the browser. Typical actions include stop the movie at the current frame, go to the specified frame (and scene) in the movie, and tell the browser to load a Web address into the specified target HTML frame.

Effects

Effects are animations that change the appearance of an object over time.

A Simple Effect is where all components of an object move in unison. An example is when all images slide into view at one time.

Another simple effect is a Transformation of size, rotation and/or color.

Complex Effects are when several objects in a movie or when components of an object move independently (typically letters of a text object). Complex effects are usually done in layers. Some Flash rapid application development tools—such as Swish—have complex text effects preprogrammed into one layer.

Summary

The basic terms used for Flash animation concepts are classified as movies, stages and motion.

Answers to Readers' Questions

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Resources

The following are resources on this subject.

Websites

Flash Resources

Books

Top-rated books on Flash

Miscellaneous

Mini-quiz to check your understanding

1. What is a Flash movie made of?

2. What is the work area called in Flash?

3. What is a frame in Flash?

If you got all three correct, you are on your way to becoming a Champion in Flash development. If you had problems, you had better look over the material again.

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Basic Flash Concepts and Terms