In order to create a well-built webpage, it is essential to make a login page that is both aesthetically appealing and intuitive for your users. Flash CS3 provides users with a simple interface that allows them to customize their login page to their liking and individual needs. While creating a login page using this software may sound difficult, it is actually quite simple if you follow the proper instructions.

1. On the top menu, select “File,”"New” and “Blank Page” from the available options to open a blank page. Using your Dreamweaver tools, create the layout of your page according to your individual needs and preferences. Place the insertion point for the HTML form where you want it to appear when the page is opened. An empty form will appear on the page.
2. Step 2

   Name the HTML form by selecting the <form> tag at the bottom of the screen. This will open the Property inspector and will prompt you to enter a name into the box. Note: You do not have to enter an “action” or “method” attribute to this form as the “Log In User” behavior is already preset.

3. Step 3

   Enter a “username” and “password” text field into the form by selecting “Insert,” “Form” and “Text” from the top menu. Add the necessary labels to each field and line them up by placing them inside of the HTML table and setting the border attribute to zero. Add a “Submit” button to the bottom of the form using the same methods used to enter the “username” and “password” fields.

Flash CS3 is an animation program that is developed by Adobe. This is the same company that makes other popular software such as Premiere and Photoshop. Creating a vapor effect is easy, as you’re simply creating a hazy look to put over the movie. It’s almost like adding a slight fog to the movie. This can be done to add realism to the animation or help illustrate the background of the animation. If you’re willing to invest a little time, you can create a nice vapor effect.

1. Launch Adobe Flash CS3. When the program opens, under the words “Create New” click on “Flash Document 2.0/3.0.” The difference between the types deal with coding only. Either one will work for this project.
2. Step 2

   Select a light blue color by clicking on the square next to the icon that looks like a bucket tipped sideways (this is the “Fill Color” tool). Click on the Rectangle tool on the Tool palette to the left. Drag it to make a rectangle just big enough to cover your entire stage (the white square in the center of the flash animation).

3. Step 3

   Move the mouse over to the Tools palette and click on the Selection tool. It looks like a black arrow icon and is in the top left corner. Click once on the square you just created. Click on “Modify” and select “Convert to Symbol.”

4. Step 4

   In the dialog box that pops up, name your symbol. Under “Type,” select “Graphic” then click “OK.”

5. Step 5

   Reselect the Select tool. Click once on the square. At the bottom right, under the “Properties” tab, is a drop-down menu that says “Color.” Click on this and select “Alpha.” You will see a box with a percentage inside, and an arrow that can be dragged up and down will appear. The arrow and box control the opacity of the square. The lower the number, the more invisible the square you made becomes.

6. Step 6

   Pick a good percentage for your vapor effect. A good estimate would be between 10 and 30 percent. This will create a hazy vapor effect over your stage.

Flash templates provide a quick and easy way for both beginning and experienced artists to begin new projects with ease. Unfortunately, Adobe Flash CS3 does not provide an obvious way to delete templates from within the program. This poses a problem after months or years of regular use, as template libraries grow in size and locating individual templates becomes difficult. Thankfully, with just a couple of minutes and a few mouse clicks, you can easily delete some or all of your Flash CS3 templates.

1. Locate the Adobe Flash CS3 template on your hard drive. From your computer’s desktop, double-click the “My Computer” icon (simply labeled “Computer” in Windows Vista or Windows 7). Next, double-click the icon for the “C: drive.” From there, open the “Documents and Settings” folder, then double-click the folder with your user name. Click through to the following folders: “Local Settings,” “Application Data,” “Adobe,” “Flash CS3,” “En,” “Configuration,” and “Templates.”
2. Step 2

   Once you find the template you want to delete, right-click its icon and choose “Delete.” If Windows asks you to confirm this action, click “Yes.”

3. Step 3

   Confirm template deletion by restarting Adobe Flash CS3. From the menu bar at the top of the screen, click “File” and then select “New.” Click the “Templates” tab at the top of the dialog box. The template you deleted in the previous step should no longer appear as an available option.

What would any programming language without the ability to test a condition and then act upon that test. Adobe’s Flash ActionScript 3.0 programming language gives that ability with the the IF-ELSE statement.

Here is how you write an IF-ELSE statement in Adobe’s Flash ActionScript 3.0 programming language.

1. The IF-ELSE statment is read as “if some condition is true then do something, if the condition is not true, then do something else”. The first line of the IF-ELSE statement is written as:

   if (some condition) {

   That’s “if” open parenthesis, followed by the condition you want to test, a closed parenthesis, then an opening curly brace which signifies the code after that brace is to be executed if the “some condition” is true.

2. Step 2

   The next series of lines is the code to be executed if the condition is true. It can be a series of lines of code, a call to a function and so on. So you code now looks like:
   if (some condition) {
   Some code
   }

   When you are finished with the code that you want executed if the condition is true you simply end it with a closed curly brace as shown above.

3. Step 3

   Finally, although not required, we add in our ELSE statement. This gets exceuted if the condition in the steps above is false.

   else {
   execute this code if condition is not true
   }

   Just like the first part you open your code block with an open curly brace, put in your code and close it with a closed curly brace. So you final code looks like this:

   if (some condition) {
   code
   }
   else {
   more code
   }

Adobe Flash provides visual and motion content rather than textual content. For some users, especially those with screen reading Internet browsers, the lack of text makes Flash inaccessible and unusable. Recent versions of Adobe Flash have included an Accessibility panel that will help screen reader users gain access to your content. Read on for how to use it.

1. To bring the Accessibility panel into view, choose Window > Other panels > Accessibility.
2. Step 2

   In Flash CS3, the Accessibility panel offers the opportunity to select options to Make movie accessible, Make child objects accessible, Auto label, name and write a text description of each object.

3. Step 3

   In Flash CS4, the panel includes options to Make object accessible, Make child objects accessible, provide a name, a description and add shortcuts and tab index options if desired.

4. Step 4

   Always choose Make object accessible, as this option instructs the Flash player to provide the textual alternative information you include to screen readers. Also, be sure you check Make child objects accessible so that buttons, text and other material in child objects is accessible to screen readers.

5. Step 5

   The Name option gives the object a name. This information will help users understand what the object is and what purpose it serves in the movie. Name is comparable to the alt attribute in HTML.

6. Step 6

   Description is a longer description of what the object is and tells more about what is happening in the movie. It is comparable to the longdesc element in HTML.

The addition of interactive buttons can add a bit of style and fun to your website. These buttons, created using Adobe Flash, can be designed to change colors, play sounds or generate any combination of special effects. Using Flash to create these buttons is fairly simple, and results can be extremely gratifying.

1. Know what you’re going to create before creating it. Flash interactive buttons are actually four frames of movie clips laid out in a timeline, so it’s important that you know in advance what you want each frame to do.
2. Step 2

   Open Flash and choose Insert > New Symbol from the dropdown menu. enter a name for the symbol in the Create New Symbol dialog box and for Behavior, choose “button.” A timeline header will open up displaying four frames, showing the four states needed to create the button: Up, Over, Down and Hit.

3. Step 3

   Create the Up state image by either drawing, importing or selecting another symbol from the menu, or Stage. Use the movie clip symbol if you want the button to be animated.

4. Step 4

   Hit the “Over” frame and choose “Insert Keyframe,” which duplicates the image you created in the Up frame. At this point you can change the image’s color, or other aspects of the button you created in the Up frame.

5. Step 5

   Repeat the process for the Down and Hit frames. The Hit frame defines the area of the image that will respond when clicked, so it’s important that its graphic be larger than those displayed in the three previous stages.

6. Step 6

   Move the button in the Hit frame to a different location to create a rollover effect, which changes its appearance to another graphic on the Stage. Or add a sound to the button by selecting the frame in the timeline, choosing Window > Properties and selecting a sound from the sound menu in the property inspector.

7. Step 7

   Choose Edit > Edit Document and drag the button you created onto your page or movie.

Designing a Flash component requires some practice. ActionScript is the language that provides instructions to your Flash file. Any variation in Flash requires ActionScript to tell it what to do and where to go. Most ActionScript writes automatically as you create the symbols and tweening properties. However, the default for Flash movies is looping. In other words, a movie will continue to play repeatedly while it is open on the screen. If you want the movie in your Flash file to run just once and then stop, you must use ActionScript to control it.

1. Open Flash CS3 and open the Flash movie.
2. Step 2

   Move to the Actions layer of the timeline of the Flash movie. Well-designed Flash uses a separate layer on the timeline for action scripting.

3. Step 3

   Click on the last frame of the timeline in the Actions layer.

4. Step 4

   Press “F6″ on your keyboard. This will create a new keyframe.

5. Step 5

   Open the Actions panel. Select “Windows” from the top of the screen and then “Actions.”

6. Step 6

   Click on the keyframe you created and type a stop command in the actions window. Syntax for stop commands looks like this:

   Stop();

   This command will stop the action of your movie, preventing it from looping.

Adobe’s CS3 was the first in the Flash versions to introduce ActionScript 3.0 compared with its predecessors, which were using ActionScript 2.0. Although 2.0 is still supported and in wide use today, it is slowly being marginalized by acceptance of the 3.0 language which is, in some ways only slightly different. You can use either 2.0 or 3.0 code in CS3 or the more recent Flash CS4, but certain features of the program will only work if you code in 3.0.

1. ActionScript are the commands that control the timeline. With CS3 open, your timeline extends across the first visible layer, stretching toward infinity. Right now, there is only one keyframe in that layer, so if you tested your movie, nothing would happen because there are no other frames for Flash to go to. Right click on frame 40 and choose “insert Keyframe” from the menu. Now if you tested your movie the movie would start at frame 1 and play to frame 40 then start over, looping indefinitely.

   Right click on keyframe 20 and insert a keyframe there as well. Then with the keyframe selected, press “F9″ on your keyboard to bring up the actions panel. In the actions panel type:

   “stop()”

   without the quotes. This will cause the playhead in your movie to play from frame 1 to 20 and when it reaches 20, it will stop the movie and do nothing else.

Event Listener

2. If you wanted to get your movie going again, you would have to use the “play()” command, but putting that on the keyframe after “stop()” would essentially negate your “stop()” in the first place. Let’s add a quick button on the stage in keyframe 20 that a user could press to get the movie going again. First add an EventListener, which will “listen” to the button and wait for it to do something:

   Use the drawing tools to create a button on the stage. Press “F8″ to turn it into a symbol and name it whatever you want. Give it an instance name in the Properties Inspector of “myButton” so that the ActionScript may work on it.

   Select the keyframe itself (not the button) and press “F9″ to bring up the actions panel and type in this code without the quotes:

   “myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, startMovie);”

   This tells flash to “listen” to “myButton” to see if it is ever CLICKed. And if it is, to run the function called “startMovie” which we will write next.

“Play” Command

3. Beneath the code typed above, which tells Flash to run a function “startMovie” whenever your button is clicked, type in the following code, again, without quotes:

   “function startMovie(event:MouseEvent):void
   {
   play();
   }”

   This code creates a function called “startMovie” that simply starts the playhead running again. Your movie will continue playing from wherever it is.

“gotoAndPlay” command

4. There are times in Flash you will want a button to cause the movie to jump to a specific frame or scene in the movie and continue playing from there. Instead of using “play()” you would use “gotoAndPlay()” and inside the parenthesis, you put the scene name (in quotes) or the frame number (without quotes) that you want the movie to go to. For example, change the “play()” command in the function you’ve created to “gotoAndPlay(30)” Insert a new keyframe on 30 and put an object (text, drawing, whatever) on the stage so you can see once you’ve reached keyframe 30 and test your movie.

   Alternatively, you can also use “gotoAndStop()” to make your movie jump to a frame and stay there.

The “Timer”

5. One of the best things about a well designed Flash movie is that some things seem to happen automatically or in sequence. One way of doing this is timers, bits of code (functions) designed to go off at a specific interval set by you. Paste the following code below your EventListener and function.

   “var eggTimer:Timer = new Timer(8500, 1);

   eggTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, egg);

   function egg(event:TimerEvent):void
   {
   gotoAndStop(30);
   }
   eggTimer.start()
   ”

   This code creates a timer and names it “eggTimer”–though you can call it what you want, and says that in 8.5 seconds, run the function called “egg”

   “egg” tells the movie to gotoAndStop frame 30. The last bit of code “egtTimer.start() starts the counter on the Timer running. Without that last line nothing would happen. Test your movie, and you should see that when you reach frame 20, if you don’t press the play button in 8.5 seconds, the movie will jump to frame 30 without you.

Tying it All Together

6. Various functions and snippets of code in this tutorial are only a very basic beginning to ActionScript 3.0. They can be taken, modified and used in literally hundreds of ways to create interactive movies, websites or training programs. Keep playing with them and trying different things is the one of the best ways of learning. If you get something to work, save your file in a new name with a description of what the code is doing. This way also, if you do something that “breaks” your code and it no longer works, you can go back to something that works.

Adobe updates its free downloadable programs and applications from time to time. If you are running an old version of Adobe Flash Player, or it is giving you any problem, then uninstall it first before installing the current or latest Adobe Flash Player with all the enhancements and added features.

1. Click the “Start Menu” button located on the left bottom of the task bar of your computer.
2. Step 2

   Scroll to “Control Panel” and click on it.

3. Step 3

   Click on the “Uninstall a Program” link under Programs from the list of control menus or features displayed on the Control Panel window.

4. Step 4

   Select “Adobe Flash Player” from the list of programs which open ups. Right-click on “Adobe Flash Player.” Click the pop-up that says “Uninstall. ” Uninstalling Adobe Flash Player will take a few minutes.

With the Adobe Flash CS3 professional design application, you can create dynamic websites with interactive content and even animations. Web designers can use the Flash program to create layouts with text, images and Flash content and then export their designs as web page files. Once put on an active web server, these Flash websites can be viewed on any web browser that has Adobe Flash Player installed.

1. Open the Adobe Flash CS3 program by clicking on the Dock icon on a Mac or using the Start menu on a PC.
2. Step 2

   Go to “File” in the top menu bar and select “New.” Then choose “Flash File” from the list of document options and click “OK.”

3. Step 3

   Select a size for your new Flash website from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. By default, the new site will be 550 pixels by 400 pixels.

4. Step 4

   Select a background color for your Flash web page from the toolbar on the left side of the screen.

5. Step 5

   Add desired animations, images and text to the current layout using the toolbar on the left side of the screen. The timeline above the Flash layout indicates how long animations will last.

6. Step 6

   Go to “File” in the top menu bar and select “Publish Settings.”

7. Step 7

   Check the boxes next to “Flash” and “HTML” in the pop-up window to export both an .swf and an .html file. Click the “OK” button to save the settings.

8. Step 8

   Go to “File” in the top menu bar and select “Publish.” The Flash website will be saved to your web server, then exported as an HTML file that can be viewed with any web browser that has Adobe Flash Player installed on it.