Learning Flash - where to start?

caff · 10 Oct 2006 at 14:46

After years of making HTML / ASP websites and trying to avoid it, I'm now interested in creating and incorporating flash content into my sites, where should I start?

I've got background in VB6 / C# and a couple of basic languages, plus a decent graphical ability.

Please recommend any good books and software tools please - is 'Flash 8 Professional' a requirement these days, or is there other decent software capable of making flash?

Also how do videos work in flash?

Echo toxin · 11 Oct 2006 at 12:20

I got the training DVDs from Total Training (http://www.totaltraining.com).
There is a from scratch set and an advanced actionscript set. I believe there is Flash video training at lynda.com.

Unfortunately, they are not cheap these things.

xirokx · 11 Oct 2006 at 13:32

I purchased quite a few of the lynda.com tuts and if any one would like them can post them if required...

caff · 11 Oct 2006 at 17:19

Thanks will check them out

Sirrel Squirrel · 11 Oct 2006 at 17:23

The tutorials built into Flash are pretty good, I started from there and then just played around with different things and got info off the net. It's not that difficult really. To play videos in Flash, you need to encode them to FLV format (an encoder comes with Flash 8). You then basically stick a media player object in your flash swf and link it to the external flv file, you can also make a playlist using an xml file, have a look at the one I made http://www.mia-media.co.uk/miatestred/media.html (not all the vids are uploaded, think I uploaded to GTA Liberty City)