Another 20 Adobe Flash and Actionscript tutorials ment to help you learn easier some useful techniques and improve your skills. This week there isn’t any flash game tutorial but there is an mp3 interface tutorial and some serious stuff instead.

Smoke/Steam Effect In Flash

In this tutorial i’ll be showing you how to achieve a smoke effect using flash, no actionscript needed for this effect as we’ll be doing it all on our timeline. This effect can be used for smoke or steam in this case I’ve used it as a steam effect. On the stage we have a coffee cup, we’ll use a simple motion tween with some blur filters to give it a nice steam effect so lets get to it.

Animated Signature

This flash tutorial shows how a realistic animated signature is made.

Turning Animation into Code in Flash CS3

Flash CS3 comes with an exciting new feature that will make both developers and designers very happy. A designer will typically create animations using the Flash Timeline with keyframes and layers. This becomes problematic for developers, as they usually have to attempt to translate those animations into code so they’re dynamic. In CS3, designers can now instantly transform a Timeline animation into code that a developer can use. This is a huge step in helping designers and developers to work better together to produce the best possible output.

A Demonstration of Customizable Features of Our 3D Surfaces

In this tutorial we build on the last example from our previous tutorial “Simple 3D Drawing in Flash CS3″. We use the 3D engine we created there to build a collection of highly customizable 3D surfaces. We show on the next page how to begin by openning a file from the previous tutorial and adding examples to it. Then, in order to make our code easy to use and customize, we encapsulate the Timeline code in a custom AS3 class, SpinSurfaceBoard. The applet below highlights some of the customization tasks that can be easily accomplished using the class.

Using ActionScript 3.0 to retrieve MySQL data using a server-side ASP script

The impetus for this article came about one day when I was tasked with porting over an MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) application that I had written many years back from dynamic ASP pages to Flash. The original ASP code talked to a Microsoft SQL database and, of course, used server-side ASP scripts to access the data in the database. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I set about rewriting the interface in Flash CS3 Professional and writing ActionScript 3.0 code to talk with my team’s database, which is a MySQL database rather than Microsoft SQL. By the way, that team is the Flash authoring team at Adobe.

Moving Illustrator Art in Flash CS3

Adobe has done a lot to improve the integration between Flash CS3 and Illustrator CS3. The workflow between these two applications has moved from almost nonexistent to one that’s powerful and user-friendly. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through a typical project workflow from preparing graphic symbols in Illustrator CS3 to importing and animating those symbols inside Flash CS3.

Billboard Effect

In pursuit of interesting Flash effects, we present in this experiment billboard-type transitions between images. You can change the number of billboard segments and choose a horizontal or a vertical transition. For number of slices equal 1, you obtain an image flip of the playing card type.

Creating movie clips with reflections in ActionScript 3.0

You’re probably aware of those nice reflections appearing in some of the latest websites, online ads, and even software. It’s an effect common to “Web 2.0″ designs, in which something like an album cover or video player appears to reflect some sort of virtual floor beneath it. This tutorial steps you through the creation of the Reflect class, a custom ActionScript 3.0 class that you can apply to reflections on movie clips (and use to modify them) in your Flash CS3 Professional projects.

Flash Animation Tutorial

A tutorial on the basics of frame by frame animation in Flash. Some useful tools in the process, as well as keyframing and inbetweening basics are covered. I hope it proves useful to you.

Flash Sound Tutorial

This tutorial covers the basics of adding and editing sound in Macromedia (or is it Adobe now?) Flash.

Creating a 3D button animation for Flash

Throughout our book, From After Effects to Flash, we concentrate upon the creation of QuickTime movies that are then subsequently converted into an FLV file and used on the Adobe® Flash® stage. This exercise is going to show a couple of different ways of using an animation created in Adobe After Effects®.
Though we are quite adamant throughout the pages of the book that embedding an FLV animation on the Flash timeline is evil, this is not necessarily true. Short animations of up to about 5 seconds can be embedded in Flash movies. The key, though, is to keep the physical size of the video as small as humanly possible.

Flash Video the Easy Way

In this three-part video series, Tom Green demonstrates the three ways to get Flash video up on the web using Flash CS3 and Dreamweaver.

Kinematics Tutorial, AS2

Learning Flash in a flash

“Flash in a flash” is a series of training videos that I designed to get you going with Adobe Flash CS3—in a flash. In this series I take you through a fun Flash project from start to publish. Learn the fundamentals of working with Flash including working with symbols, creating and controlling animations, adding audio, creating buttons, and video. Even learn some basics of working with ActionScript 3.0 to make your project come alive.

Loader vs. URLLoader in ActionScript 3

This short tutorial is written in response to a question on the Flash and Math Discussion Forum: “How can you load a random image from a list of images specified in an external XML file?” The question presents an opportunity to show a simple example that illustrates the difference between Loader and URLLoader classes. According to Flash documentation, the former class is for swf and image formats (gif, jpg, and png) while the latter is for text and binary data. Hence, we will use URLLoader to open an XML file that contains a list of names (URLs, technically) of image file, and then use a Loader to load an image from the list.

Flash 8 For Noobs Tutorial

Hey evryone, this is a tutorial i did for my IST (computing) assignment in year 9, so i decided to submit it
Firstly, i have to say… if u don’t have Flash Player 8+, u suck! and chances are u wont be able to properly view this tutorial, so plz get it from adobe.com if u don’t have it.
Right-click menu ftw! Right-click for chapters ‘n crap. try it!
This tutorial shows off my electrified intro, with TSM logo. Turn up the bass for an audio “experience”! (ie. turn down ur sound if u don’t want a hearing aid any time soon)

Remember, this tutorial is aimed at a noob to the Flash program, someone who has never used Flash before and wants to learn. So don’t go complaining to me if its boring

Flash 8 For Noobs Tutorial

Flash CS4 Motion Easing

In this Flash project tutorial, designer David Stiller works with the new CS4 motion editor and its easing functions to adjust the speed of movement in a simple animation. The easing graphs allow for adjustments to motion speed to be made visually.

Saving Flash graphics as image files at runtime

Have you ever wanted to dynamically convert graphics into static image files at runtime, either for rapid display on your website or to allow your site visitors to download and save images to their computers? This tutorial describes the process of creating the Snapshot class, a custom ActionScript 3.0 class that accomplishes this goal.

Create a Card Flip Effect For Flash Player 10 using ActionScript 3

It surprises me that one of the most commented upon and downloaded classes from my blog is a card flipping effect. With that in mind, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to recreate this effect targeting Flash Player 10. As of the writing of this article, Flash Player 10 Beta (Astro) and the corresponding API documentation have been released. This article will step you through the classes used to achieve a card flipping effect using the new rotationY property that exists in Flash Player 10.

Set up a Flash MP3 interface

Using a bit of ActionScript and XML we’ll show you how to create a veritable stereophonic playground. These MP3s can be safely left to their own devices without screaming too loud, getting out of order or losing their name tags. You can even choose to stop them in their tracks should you feel the urge.