Flirting with Flash Class at Dickinson Lifelong Learning Center in Missoula, Montana with Nora McDougall

Flirting with Flash

This syllabus is being updated

Overview
This course was designed to help you decide whether Flash is a tool you want to use for your web site or presentations. You will have first-hand experience with how Flash works and how to develop a simple Flash movie. To fully use the capabilities in Flash, you will need to have animation experience or hire an animator, but you may find that creating simple Flash movies is all you need to spruce up your site.

Note: the following schedule roughly corresponds to our class sessions. However, based on class discussion and questions, this schedule should be considered flexible.

Session	Class Description
1	Introduction - To FLASH or not to FLASH Splash page - analyze the structure A site that figured out that a splash page is a problem Flash Discussion - usability Flash Discussion - searchability - see Photo Gallery example below How does Google see that Flash page? The Flash Environment - Understanding the file types - The timeline panel and frames - Layers and the importance of naming layers Using the tools - The choices in File -> New - Use the text tools - Add a Motion Tween - Do Exercise 1 Building with a Timeline - Adding Layers - Animation in Layers and Symbols - Do Exercise 2 Analyze the parts of the Class Example - Where do the following features come into play - Timeline - Layers Web references - History of Flash - Analysis examples: IKEA, Photo Gallery , http://www.pmcc.com.do/, http://www.losilegales.com/
2	Adding Layers to your Flash Movie Drawing Objects and Gradients - Understanding the drawing objects - Using gradients - Do Exercise 3 - Do Exercise 4 - Try at home
3	Importing Graphics into your Flash Movie - Importing photos into Flash - Do Exercise 5 Manipulating Text - Formatting Text - Making Text Symbols - Animating Text - Importing images - Do Exercise 6 Analyze the parts of the Class Example - Text animations
4	Adding Text to your Flash Movie - Review basic steps to making a slideshow with imported graphics and text - Go through example: falconipuig.com for text animation - Working with scenes - Using skills from Day 3 use example for slideshow intro - Finish Slide Show