View Tutorial: Star Flash Preloader

Editor’s Review:

This tutorial has not yet been reviewed. Please feel free to add your own review in the comments below.

Authors quote:

Using this lesson, you will see how to create star flash preloader using the action script code. To make this lesson, we have to use mask in flash.

Additional Info
Level: Intermediate
Version: Flash 5 and up
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Tweening with Code

Editor’s Review:

This tutorial has not yet been reviewed. Please feel free to add your own review in the comments below.

Authors quote:

You have two ways of creating animations in Flash. You can create them using the timeline, or you can create them using code. For code-based animations, I’ve always written about using variants of EnterFrame. One thing I’ve never talked about is using the tween class to create animations, and it’s time to change that with this tutorial….

… In this tutorial, I will explain how to use the Tween class to create an animation using code. Before diving into the code though, let’s look at tweening using the timeline.

Additional Info
Level: Intermediate
Version: CS3
ActionScript: 3.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Interactivity in Flash using hitTest() method

Editor’s Review:

Short, easy tutorial to show how to move a movie clip with the mouse in Flash. Also talks briefly about the how to detect when a clip touches another clip using the hitTest() method in Flash. While this tutorial isn’t meant to show you how to create or draw the clips used for the example, the way it explains how to set up the clips is a little confusing. However, if you know enough about Flash to draw and create symbols, then this is an easy tutorial to show you how to add a little interactivity to your Flash projects. One important note about hitTest (aka collision detection). The “hit” area is the bounding box of your symbol. So, in the case of this tutorial, the hitTest applies even when VISUALLY the objects are not touching (since the tutorial uses circular shapes as it’s symbols). While the tutorial is still relevant, and is still a good lesson on hitTest, I think its important to point that out to avoid users thinking they might have made a mistake

Additional Info
Level: Beginner
Version: 5 and up
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Mouse Dragging

Editor’s Review:

Very short, easy to follow Flash tutorial to create a neat little animation of circles that follow the users mouse as it moves around the Flash stage. Well written with commented code so it’s easy to follow along.

One note is the first step says:

First create two Movie Clip; one is for the smaller circle you can see above and the other for the rest of the circles.

Not sure why you need 2 movie clips… I just used one and changed the size of each one on the stage using the Transform Pallette. Either way, it’s still a short tutorial with a nice effect and leaves a lot of room for user experimentation to create more advanced mouse-trail effects.

Additional Info
Level: Beginner
Version: 5 and up
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Black Shine Animation

Editor’s Review:

Nicely written, well described instruction on how to create a simple shimmer effect to an image. Not really the most exceptional Flash effect, but it’s definitely worth checking out. Personally, I wouldn’t use this type of sparkle effect on an photograph, but it might work well on an illustration or cartoon where a “shine” or “sparkle” effect might be needed (the reason being, it looks illustrated and not natural). So, if you had say a cartoon with woman wearing a diamond ring, this effect might help it shine… if it were a photograph of a diamond ring, this effect might not work as well. That said, it’s a great tutorial for beginners to get into Flash animation without ActionScript.

A couple quick notes… On Step 9 in the tutorial:

Step 9

Go back on the first frame and repeat the previouse step.

You actually want to go to the first frame and repeat the TWO previous steps (steps 7 AND 8).

Also, the steps for creating the “shape_mc” can get a little confusing and there are few images that the author refers to that are missing. My advice is to read each step carefully and don’t try to rush. The instructions are there, you just need to follow them. Once you get through it once, you’ll see it’s really not that complicated.

A lengthy tutorial for a simple effect, but definitely worth the read.

Additional Info
Level: Intermediate
Version: 5 and up
ActionScript: N/A
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Flash ActionScript 3.0 Fountain (particle effect) tutorial

Editor’s Review:

Very short tutorial with some nicely commented code that shows you how to do a colorful particle effect. While this tutorial simply creates a set of colorful circles bouncing up from the bottom of the stage, if you dissect the code a little and experiment a little bit you can probably find some great uses for this type of effect (personally, I’m thinking “sparkler”… I’ll have to play around a little bit when I have the time).

Bottom line, nice effect using a short amount of ActionScript 3.0 code (it only looks like a lot of code since it’s well commented).

Additional Info
Level: Beginner
Version: CS3
ActionScript: 3.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Bouncing text flash animation

Editor’s Review:

Very short Flash tutorial that shows how to create a nice little bouncing text animation. Nicely commented code, and very easy to follow. However, there is one step that the writer didn’t mention that might cause problems for beginners. After you break apart the text, you need to click on each separate letter and convert it to a movie clip symbol (Modify > Convert to Symbol or F8). Now that each letter is a symbol, you can apply an instance name to each, and then follow the rest of the tutorial as stated.

A little self promotion here, but I found this tutorial particularly interesting because it creates a similar effect created in one of my own Flash tutorials on www.mikestickney.com: Flash zoom tutorial. Differences being my tutorial is written for AS 2.0 and uses tween animation, while this animation is done purely in ActionScript to get a similar effect.

Overall, pretty easy Flash tutorial worth checking out to get your feet wet with Flash ActionScript 3.0.

Additional Info
Level: Beginner
Version: CS3
ActionScript: 3.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Creating an XML Gallery with ActionScript 3.0

Editor’s Review:

This tutorial has not yet been reviewed. Please feel free to add your own review in the comments below.

Authors quote:

For any dynamic Flash project, XML will be a powerful tool (…) I will be talking about how to use Flash and XML to make a simple, yet superfly, gallery.

OK, now that we’ve looked at the XML we need to make it work with ActionScript 3. In Adobe Flash CS3 I created a new AS3 FLA doc and a new AS doc. In the FLA I simply created some very basic MovieClips for my left and right arrows and I placed a TextField at the bottom of my stage (which I set to 600 X 700 with a black background). After naming my instances and setting up the Document Class linkage I was done with the FLA side of thing and the rest is ActionScript.

Additional Info
Level: Intermediate
Version: CS3
ActionScript: 3.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes (Flash and XML)
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Custom Scrollbar in Flash AS3

Editor’s Review:

This tutorial has not yet been reviewed. Please feel free to add your own review in the comments below.

Authors quote:

This is a simple and quick tutorial for creating a custom scroll bar. We’ll dynamically load in our text using an array in Actionscript then we’ll connect a custom scrollbar. In the files below we have three Movie Clips on the stage, two hands and a square. The two hands will act as our pointers allowing us to gradually scroll up and down. The square will act as our slider allowing us to slide the content up or down as you would do with a normal scrollbar slider.

Additional Info
Level: Intermediate
Version: CS3
ActionScript: 3.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes (start and finish)
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Loading content in Flash from a XML file

Editor’s Review:

This tutorial has not yet been reviewed. Please feel free to add your own review in the comments below.

Author’s quote:

This tutorial is about how to load some content from a XML file in a flash project. It will be loaded a random text from the XML file.

Additional Info
Level: Intermediate
Version: 5 and up
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No