MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-GETTING STARTED WITH FLASH, Начало работы

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6 Introduction
Flash is extremely well suited to creating content for delivery over the
Internet because its files are very small. Flash achieves this through its
extensive use of
vector graphics . Vector graphics require significantly less
memory and storage space than bitmap graphics because they are
represented by mathematical formulas instead of large data sets. Bitmap
graphics are larger because each individual pixel in the image requires a
separate piece of data to represent it.
To build an application in Flash, you create graphics with the Flash
drawing tools and import additional media elements into your Flash
document. Next, you define how and when you want to use each of those
elements to create the application you have in mind.
When you author content in Flash, you work in a Flash document file.
Flash documents have the file extension .fla (FLA). A Flash document has
four main parts:
The Stage
is where your graphics, videos, buttons, and so on appear
during playback. The Stage is described further in “Flash Basics”
on page 49 .
The Timeline
is where you tell Flash when you want the graphics and other
elements of your project to appear. You also use the Timeline to specify the
layering order of graphics on the Stage. Graphics in higher layers appear on
top of graphics in lower layers.
The Library
panel is where Flash displays a list of the media elements in
your Flash document.
ActionScript code allows you to add interactivity to the media elements in
your document. For example, you can add code that causes a button to
display a new image when the user clicks it. You can also use ActionScript
to add logic to your applications. Logic enables your application to behave
in different ways depending on the user’s actions or other conditions. Flash
includes two versions of ActionScript, each suited to an author’s specific
needs. For more information about writing ActionScript, see
Learning
ActionScript 2.0 in Flash in the Help panel.
Flash includes many features that make it powerful but easy to use, such as
prebuilt drag-and-drop user interface components, built-in behaviors that
let you easily add ActionScript to your document, and special effects that
you can add to media objects.
000_Getting_Started.book Page 6 Friday, September 2, 2005 12:22 PM