Jimco Software Reviews - Macromedia Flash MX Professional and Macromedia Video Kit(continued)
Flash animation is performed using one of two different methods; keyframing or tweening. These methods are closely related to each other, but one is significantly easier than the other. Keyframing is the process of changing properties in small increments over a series of frames. (Claymation is an example of what keyframing is like.) The results are great, but it can take a long time to create an animation using this method.
The other way to animate in Flash is to use Flash's tweening capabilities. Let's say that you wanted a box to move from one edge of the screen to the opposite edge. To create a tweened animation for that, you would insert a keyframe (a special type of frame on the timeline that marks a particular event) at the initial location of the box and another keyframe at the point where the box ends up. After both keyframes have been inserted, you simply tell Flash to tween the in-between frames. The result is smooth animation at a fraction of the time of keyframing the animation.
Flash has the ability to motion tween and to shape tween. (Shape tweening is an impressive function because it allows you to change the shape of an object over time.) Flash can also tween properties such as colors. Suppose, for example, that you wanted a color to fade from green to red. Tweening can accomplish that with little effort on the developer's part.
We've created a simple example of a shape tween in Flash. To give you an example of just how easy it is to create shape tweens in Flash, we created this demo in about 10 seconds. In this example, we've morphed a circle shape into a square. Creating complex shape tweens is just as easy using Flash's powerful drawing tools.
If you don't want to take the time to learn how to create your own animations, Flash offers effects at the click of a button. In figure 3, you can see an example of this in the Explode transformation effect. These customizable effects make it a snap to add complex and amazing effects without any special knowledge.
If you want to extend these effects to add your own customizable effects, you'll need to spend some time learning the intricacies of Flash. How long will that take? It differs for different people. Some people catch on to Flash right away while others struggle with it. Macromdia offers a trial version so that you can take it on a test run before you buy.
Figure 3 - The Explode Effect
Flash Applications
Flash also has the ability to create the interface for an entire application. In figure 4 , we've shown a simple example. The example shown in figure 4 ships with Flash so that you can fully examine the functionality that Flash offers. In this example, Flash is pulling data from an XML file and binding it in real-time to the Flash movie. Configuring this kind of interactivity is a lot easier than you might think thanks to the powerful components (such as the XMLConnector Data Component) that ship with Flash.
Figure 4 - A Data-Bound Application Created with Flash