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Adobe Flash Tutorials - Best of

smashingmagazine.com — This article provides hand-picked professional Flash tutorials which can enrich your design skills and improve the quality of your works. Most sources can serve as the entry point for further tutorials.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 18, 2008

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  • mikedaul, on 01/18/2008, -0/+11My favorite flash resource by far is http://www.gotoandlearn.com

    A couple of other good ones are:
    http://www.actionscript.org
    http://www.kirupa.com
  • dshPls, on 01/18/2008, -0/+11The ***** AJAX on THIS WEBSITE freezes my computer every time I try to view 100+ comments. Bad coders create freezes, not Flash or AJAX alone.
  • cosmotic, on 01/18/2008, -0/+9These tutorials are pretty bad. =/
  • richardPM, on 01/18/2008, -0/+4lee brimelow is grandmaster flash
  • mossblaser, on 01/18/2008, -2/+6Those were rubbish! Most looked very ammeter only a few stood out as being good looking and even then, most of those were using tweens for things that really should have been done with action script!
  • heartcoldfusion, on 01/18/2008, -1/+5Meh. Bad design is bad design, no matter what the medium is. There are good and bad flash sites, just like there are good and bad web 2.0/dhtml/ajax sites.
  • redhotkurt, on 01/18/2008, -4/+7Spam submission + spam comments = more meat than you can fit in your mouth. Or something. Ew.
  • Joab, on 01/18/2008, -0/+3Best of ??? I gotta say these are beginner level tuts, mid at best. Show me something thats gonna teach you how to build a tween manager class for 100 product objects all in the Eclipse IDE and not Macromedia and I might be interested. Hard core flash developers do it all in AS with only the skins being in the library.
  • SmpleJohn, on 01/18/2008, -2/+5A hell of a lot more coding than HTML. Lazy web design leads to lazy web design. Plain and simple.
  • ha1f, on 01/18/2008, -0/+2Yeah it does. The 90's is the point. Websites should be getting faster, not slower. Faster lines, faster machines, faster browsers... slower websites?
  • ha1f, on 01/18/2008, -0/+2I can't believe you're missing the point here dude. Poor design choice is exactly what I'm blaming. Flash makes it so easy to put garbage out that its getting annoying. I'm not saying I want Flash abolished, I just don't want idiots to know how to make the internet slow. Loading 10 huge graphics is exactly the problem, because it's often the easiest way to get something done. A lot of "developers" will take the easiest way out and run. It's a shame. Good code begets a good result. Bad code does the exact opposite.

    And I dugg you up for that comment.
  • inactive, on 01/18/2008, -1/+3I can confirm this is a spam submission.
    Caught this link on subvert and profit (digg cheating system).
  • heartcoldfusion, on 01/18/2008, -6/+8Flash is a very fun environment to program in: It's very visual and there's instant gratification.

    Another general good flash tutorial site that I used a lot when I first started flash: kirupa.com
  • Joab, on 01/18/2008, -1/+3*sigh* It's the web designers who don't know how to program who are the real issue with flash adaptation and design. Yes there's a lot of ***** out there but what can you expect. The program was originally created for designers so its stupid-easy to generate content. Now with the advent of AS 3 its true power is for the developer. Right now people are just starting to build 3D engines for flash. I'll admit they suck, but the draw back comes from the memory limits of modern browsers not really flash itself. In 10 years its going to be common for some sites to break the 2D standard and have a true 3D environment to navigate. The potential for flash is really amazing and as computation power goes up and the desire to push the limits increase, your only shooting yourself in the foot if you ignore flash/flex.

    For you web developers. Flash's ability to market products has been proven ( banner ad's the only example you'll need ). Even if you don't like it your average 'Look something shiny!' customer is more likely to purchase product that has been displayed to max potential and they are more likely to send the link to a friend. This being the "year of e-commerce"... again ... , the market is just starting to want flash developers to create e-comm stores. And when I say developer I'm not talking about a tween developer ( some who creates a dynamic animation component ), I'm talking about someone who develops a flash swf that pulls all the site data dynamically from a web service, manages the data, and can handle any errors that might be throw at it. This type of person can make some serious cash if they are dedicated to it, I know I am.

  • inactive, on 01/18/2008, -3/+5You have no idea wtf you're talking about. Good flash design is anything but lazy and requires equal and maybe even more coding than html.
  • dshPls, on 01/18/2008, -1/+3Flashkit.com is another great resource, their forums are ultra helpful if you hit a roadblock coding. They also have a bunch of sound effects, tutorials, and a cool sites index.
  • ha1f, on 01/18/2008, -0/+2If you think that lazy programming revolves completely around how many lines of code you put out... well, i sincerely hope you aren't a programmer.

    It's about how much you think about the code you put out.
  • OsiVert, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1kirupa.com uses some of the vids from gotoandlearn.com, which has some excellent tutorials as well
  • simoose, on 01/19/2008, -0/+1now i feel like 1999 again
  • etx313, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1I give this a big slow jerk. Pickup a Colin Moock publication and do it right.
  • dshPls, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1There's no need for that until you're really advanced, e-peen man.
  • stealthrocket, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1These suck. The first one where the car was "animated" would be easier to achieve by simply shaking a print in front of a camera.
  • polyGone, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Yeah, AS3 is a great deal different.
  • cesig, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Where I work we're drawing most of the interface in AS too. Talk about tedious!
  • krnldmp, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Gratification for the programmer doesn't necessarily translate into that for the user. In the case of Flash, rarely.
  • jameskachan, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1why is it that flash tutorials are always lame "this is how you animate something"
    I haven't once found a good site that goes though the steps and reasons for how to DESIGN A WEBSITE in flash.
    How and why and when do you use movie clips? when and how do you use actions to load/unload content into them and navigate a site hierarchy. If anyone has any really good references for this kind of thing please send my way.
  • automan, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1I have to say, the two lynda.com ruby on rails CBTs are very good. I never liked 99% of the CBT sites, but if lynda.com's other tutorials are as good as the RoR tutorials... it would be money well spent.
  • tehnico, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1I was impressed by the size of the list, and then I started following the links, yeah, pretty bad.
  • dshPls, on 01/18/2008, -1/+2So your qualm is that it noobs make coding look bad? Who the ***** cares, if everyone was a genius a college degree would be required to get entry-level jobs at the local design firm. Right now if you can prove your skill to a potential boss, you're (in most cases) shoe in. And corporations realize Flash is a valuable tool too, from my experience, they praise it, not fear it.
  • chitlin, on 01/18/2008, -1/+2If you're really serious about learning complex programs like this, by far the best resource is www.lynda.com. You'll have to shell out some money, but they have the best tutorials I can find.
  • ha1f, on 01/18/2008, -1/+2Holy ***** now I really hope you aren't a developer. You're using Flash to do DB work? At the enterprise level? Jesus christ, why don't you just put a grenade next to the database machine and walk away. Thanks for proving my point. Anyone dumb enough to use Flash for a database application needs to be fired, and possible banned from computers all together.

    Kids: dshPls is a perfect example of how not to be a good programmer.
  • ha1f, on 01/18/2008, -1/+2Yeah, but bad coders become more apparent because of the technology you give them. Don't even get me started on what AJAX.
    The main thing is that Flash is overused and misused. Lazy programming doesn't have to do with how much code you put out, it's how much you think about the code.

    ***** web developers.
  • Joab, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Erggg.... don't program in the flash IDE man it sucks, just use it to create movie clip skins. Get Eclipse going with FDT, MTASC and swf mill for 8. There's command line for 9 so you just need FDT.
  • dshPls, on 01/18/2008, -1/+2If you knew much about flash, you'd probably blame the slow Flash sites out there on poor design choices, not Actionscript. Things like 10 oversized graphics all spinning on your screen at once will slow the player to a crawl, not to mention they could be 250k each and make you wait to load them all. But Actionscript can load in images dynamically, it's however harder than just dropping them in. So you can make a 20kb Flash movie that loads in images as the user needs them, which is the better idea obviously.
  • DanOnTheMoon, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Kirupa.com FTW!!
  • ha1f, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Uh, no. A newbie programmer can still produce well thought out code. "Proving your skills" means nothing if the person you're proving them to isn't asking the right questions. Design and development are two separate things (even though they do mix on the web). Flash is one of those tools that makes good designers think they're good programmers. No offense to designers.
  • dshPls, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1You're damn right about designers trying to be programmers. But I can point you to some horrendous examples of programmers trying to be designers too. It happens all the time with Flash, but it's spawned the "rounded corner" fad that every retard with a wordpress account or myspace profile has raped and pillaged.
  • tehnico, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Moock. Colin Moock.
  • kneelB4zod, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1I'm new to flash and even I can tell those tutorials where utter crap!
  • zionKing, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Too little focus on Actionscript and too much focus on timeline. Any newcomer needs to get comfortable with the idea that Actionscript and architectural best practices outweigh any cheese ball 3d effects and vector trickery. That said, Flash is full of pitfalls with functions (like removeMovieClip) and methods (shared libraries) which are common but buggy across versions.
  • dwcharn, on 01/18/2008, -1/+2Yeah, good design is good design, bad design is bad design. Flash got a bad rap from the beginning, for the most part because it was new and not many people had any idea how to develop for it... well a lot has changed both in the program and in the way people develop for it. Flash allows many tools and a blank canvas and it's up to the designer to create quality or not. Stop dissing it cause you don't know how to use it and stop looking at ***** sites that make you think Flash is a bad platform.

    On that note, these tutorials are not that great for the pro but for the starter they have some good info.
  • matriculated, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1So who else paused while scrolling over the Monica Belluci site?
  • solid12345, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1I ***** hate Flash. I got my degree in graphic design and unfortunately we didn't get much web/flash training it was all print. And every job out there is wanting me to be fluent not only in photoshop/illustrator/indesign, but also dreamweaver, flash, after-effects, final cut pro etc.

    I think Flash is not very intuitive and is horribly designed as a program. And I don't get why I have to be a jack of all trades to get a decent job, I know you want to stay competitive, but programmers are never asked to go out of their realm and design advertisements, brochures, packaging, etc., so why should I have to dabble in programming? Web/multi-media should be a completely separate realm in my opinion. How many of you web guys know anything about CMYK, over-print, bleeds, etc.?
  • tehnico, on 01/18/2008, -1/+2I agree with ha1f in that flash presents the potential for abuse. But in the right hands, flash has a very intense programming nature. None of this tween ***** like is seen in the ***** list of tutorials. We would disagree on 'acceptable uses of flash' in some areas I imagine. But agree on most of the overuse and abuse.
  • stouffer67, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Alright, now I'll just go on over the The Pirate Bay and download Flash.
  • iheartrendering, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1I agree those are pretty lousy tutorials.
  • Televari, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1.
  • mossblaser, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Difference is I don't claim to be teaching you how to spell...
  • dshPls, on 01/18/2008, -1/+1It depends on the situation, drawing a box in html takes all of 2 seconds with a table, in flash if you want a dynamic box, you need to define the style, all the corner points and scope. However I can just draw a box in the Authoring environment in 1 second.
  • iluvhatemail, on 01/18/2008, -3/+3this isn't the 90's and that argument doesn't work anymore.
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