Introduction to FLASH

Have you ever seen a movie on computer? If yes, you might have seen a progress bar below the movie with a head moving forward. It shows the progress of movie. Similarly in flash, we create a movie having progress bar and a head which moves forward during Play. Each movie comprises of different frames. When these frames are displayed at certain frequency we feel a movie is playing. This default frequency used in flash is 12 frames / second. Finally the flash movie is embedded in HTML and flash player plugged in a browser displays the embedded movie.

What we need to learn FLASH?

We shall need two tools for learning flash.

1. Macromedia Flash Player

Flash player is used to view flash web sites in a browser. Flash player plugs into the browser when browser loads. You must have flash player installed to view flash web sites. To check that whether your browser has flash player installed or not, please visit this website http://www.shahkam.com/. If your browser is able to view this site, you have already flash player installed otherwise download it from the Macromedia's site http://www.macromedia.com/downloads/. It has file size of approximately 200Kb.

2. Macromedia Flash Program

Flash program is a basic tool for building flash web sites. This is a program in which you will design your web site by using different tools like in other graphic programs. You can download 30 days free trial version of flash program from the link http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash... Flash program for Macintosh users is also available on Macromedia's site. Flash 5 is a latest version available and is also available on CD.

Flash player is already present in flash program so there is no need to download it. During installation of flash program, it will invoke you whether you want to install flash player or not.

How to install FLASH?

Installation of both flash player and flash program is similar to the other windows installations. Installation instructions are also available step by step on Macromedia's site and along with the downloaded software. If you are experiencing any difficulty, I'm here to teach you every thing.

Summary

After reading this article you must be able to answer the following questions.

1. What is Vector Graphics?
2. What is the basic reason of using Flash instead of Java Applets and animated pictures?
3. What is difference between Flash player and Flash program?
4. What is the latest version of Flash?
5. Which two browsers are widely used?
6. What is the default frequency of displaying frames
   The copyright of the article Introduction to FLASH in FLASH Programming is owned by Umais Ahmad. Permission to republish Introduction to FLASH in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

   Go To Page: 1 2 3

   Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic