Er, um... While flipping through my Flash search feeds today I came across a post by Jean-Francois Arseneault at ArseNealt.ca blurting out how he didn't realize how complex Flash is. He downloaded the 30 day trial of Flash 8 recently, installed the app and opened the IDE to its shinny new GUI in OSX. He was quickly over powered by the shock of panels and all sorts of options to be found once inside and almost immediately had to close down the program. He says he will grab a beginner's guide soon in order to get into Flash for real in the future.
Reading this reminded me of the first time I jumped into Flash with Flash 4 on a Mac G3 workstation with OS9. My hardship involved jumping from Windows to Mac and jumping from limited Director 7 and Photoshop 5 experience into the new Flash world. Though my jump from Director to Flash was probably easier than my original jump from straight web design (only Frontpage and Corel, please forgive me, it was 1998) to Director. I lucked into jumping into the IDE via an art class on Digital media and immediately jumped into scripting (using my background in Java and other object oriented programming languages really helped here) and animation(Director and experience with art in general helped here). And now I'm here... What about you? How was your first time? Did you get thrown off track till finding that perfect starter guide? Did you dive right in and push out that first site or game or what ever? Let me know in the comments below.
InformIT put up a sound tutorial earlier this month that shows how to create a control a couple of sound buttons that
mute and unmute audio that is playing from your library. The tutorial is meant as a starting point for new Flash users
who want to integrate sound into their projects and want to give their users a little needed control of the audio. New
Flashers can extend this tutorial by flipping to the 
Back in August we discussed the possiblity of moving 
On
Monday Adobe grabbed a DRM company that creates lock downs for PDF files via a client-server method and document
encryption. This seems old hat in the textbook and business documentation world, but I wonder if Adobe will use this
method to create a new SWF based DRM. For more clues I sat at work listening to the 
So I'm sitting online reading a little Wikipedia (yes I am that nerdy) and I think to myself, I wonder what the wiki world thinks about Flash. One quick 'Macromedia Flash' search later and I see an unbelievably long page describing almost everything about Flash. But, what's missing? Should the Wiki include a direct link to FlashInsider.com? Should it have a link to the LiveDocs? Or maybe, just maybe, we need a link straight to MXNA. What do you think is missing from the Wiki? Check out the link below and register to change it yourself, but make sure you let us know in the comments below.
Yes, I went all old-school SAT on you with the analogy. Shutterbook is a full Flash photosharing service that allows you upload your own pics via pc or picture phone. The service is similar to Flickr before Yahoo and while it is in an open beta at the moment, there will be a cost for the premium version of the service when the site goes live in the future. Beta-testers will recieve a free Premium level account though. It will be interesting to see if a future version of Shutterbook will take full advantage of the new Flash 8 file upload feature and possibly use the bitmap features to capture live photos for albums. The site also includes quick moblogging direct from you album. There is a free desktop uploader available for download directly from the site. Unlike some other services, this site actually provides a PC and Mac version of this photo upload tool. Now is the time to sign up for your free beta tester account, so hop over to their site via the link below and let me know what you think in the comments below.
This really would have helped when I made my full Flash wedding site, but at least now I can start promoting full Flash to synagogues all over. FlashRTL adds right to left language support to all text areas (dynamic or not) in a Flash project and makes it possible to build Flash-based sites for all right to left languages like Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and more. The developer is offering the package of ActionScript classes for free to the public. Because the package was originally developed to display Persian, the classes may require some editing to incorporate into your latest project.
As strangely satisfying as 
The AP is currently using Zoomify to allow users to view Katrina's damage upclose via large satelite photos. We have 
So you want to give your design that clean and modern look with smooth rounded edges that constrain the use in a smooth and inviting way, but you hate having to click the round corner button for each box and each size. Alan Musselman says holding the mouse button while creating a rectangle on the stage and tapping the up or down arrows on the keyboard will round your corners as you drawn. This will be a great help to designers looking to quickly whip up sites while the client looks on. On a side note, this does not seem to work within Fireworks.
Rickdog found and easy way to test out the 
So you made a really cool animation in Flash, but your boss wants it as an avi or other movie format. Now you can easily convert that SWF to a format for a new animated DVD. You could create your own HomeStarRunner.com! The best part about this kind of software is it frees Flash designers from having to learn other programs. Why start learning Adobe Premiere if you can create Full featured video in Flash, using the new On2 codec and then export that new video to DVD formatted MPEG?
We're all about the hurricanes here at FlashInsider, so just to get you a little hurricane in Flash history here's a couple of our older posts:
