It seems this thread has got stuck :B

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sineout.com</sub>

Just to throw it there: any students (teachers too) out there can get Flex Builder 3 for free. [link]

Great way to type ActionScript, code hinting and what not, especially when working with downloaded imports. I know there are alternatives but here you go.

FAQ: Some Basics

1. 
   I'm interested in Flash, how can I make Flash movies?
   
   The two main programs you can use to make swf files (compiled Flash files that play in the browser) are Flash and Flex Builder. These two programs have different focuses, however; Flash is aimed towards the designer, and includes graphical authoring tools, and Flex Builder is aimed toward the developer, and is Actionscript oriented. The differences, however, are more than just the tools available. Flex builder has a number of namespaces (we'll get namespaces later) that aren't available to Flash, and visa versa. Basically this means that Flash has some Actionscript capability that Flex Builder doesn't have, and Flex Builder doesn't have some Actionscript capability that Flash has.
   
   The latest version of Flash is CS 3, and the latest version of Flex Builder is v3. As noted already by ~Yillb, you can obtain Flex Builder for free if you're a student or a teacher.
   
   There are legal open-source alternatives to these authoring environments, but we'll cover that later.
   


2. 
   What's Actionscript?
   
   Actionscript is the programming language that Flash uses to define behavior, but it can also be used to draw graphics. It comes in 3 flavours, Actionscript 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Actionscript 1.0 is very much depreciated and isn't really that prevalent. Actionscript 2.0 is on it's way out, but many people still use it. Actionscript 3.0 is the latest standard.
   
   Actionscript started out as an ECMAScript language that closely resembled Javascript up to Actionscript 3.0. With Actionscript 3.0 they completely overhauled the language and it now is closer to Java & C# than anything. More information here.
   


3. 
   Ok, I have Flash & made a swf. How to I put it on the internet?
   
   You need to embed the swf into a webpage. Flash has a publish option that will embed it in the page, but from my experiences this is often ugly and sometimes will choke w3c validators. However, it works, and if you don't care much about w3c standards, using that should be fine. Upload both the swf and the html page to your website. If you change the path of the swf, you must change the paths (there'll be multiple references) in the html. Same with dimensions and background colour.
   
   If you are worried about w3c standards, however, the most commonly used method to place a swf on a page is swfobject. Swfobject is a Javascript based solution for detecting the Flash plugin and injecting swf file references into pages, and presenting some static html if the user agent doesn't have Flash (or doesn't have Javascript on, which is an unfortunate side effect).
   
   Please note that swfobject will prevent your swfs from being indexed by search engines, and while search engines still don't index swf files very well (but they do, and thats something to remember), in the future that may become an issue.
   

PS: All these posts will be eventually reviewed for accuracy and mirrored on my site flasht.asia when I eventually get around to it. So if you want, you can check it out there. </shameless self plug>

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_{The DataGrid control is intended for viewing data, and not as a layout tool like an HTML table - Adobe}

Cheers, thats an excellent thing to mention.

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_{The DataGrid control is intended for viewing data, and not as a layout tool like an HTML table - Adobe}

Thanks

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_{The DataGrid control is intended for viewing data, and not as a layout tool like an HTML table - Adobe}

Knowledge Bite: Open source alternatives

If you want to get into Flash, but don't want/don't have the money to buy official Adobe software, then there is some good news and some bad news.
The good news is there are open source alternatives to creating swf files. The bad news is, these all pretty much revolve around Actionscript. If you want to use Flash's graphical authoring tool, as far as I'm aware, you're stuck with having to buy Flash.
However, this is a programming forum, and as such, my posts will concentrate on the Actionscript side of Flash. So, onwards with the free Flash.

Going back to my last post, I said there were 2 main programs used to create swf files: Flash and Flex Builder. However, at the heart of these programs lies the swf bytecode compiler, which will turn all the graphics, sounds, Actionscript, etc into bytecode that can be used by the Flash plugin. This compiler has been open sourced (limited; I won't go into the details, but you can read the license yourselves) by Adobe, and is available for free download on most platforms.

You can get the SDK here, and you can read about the open-source initiative from Adobe here.

Now, before you go around jumping for joy, there is a sobering fact about this SDK - it's a Flex SDK. While this won't mean much at this point, back when I discussed the Flash vs. Flex Builder, I mentioned that Flash had some namespaces that weren't available in Flex. These namespaces are also not available using the SDK.

So now I have the SDK, how do I use it?
The best way to learn is to read the documentation and visit the Flex Developer Centre. But, in a nutshell, it's a command line compiler. You write your .as files full of Actionscript (and .mxml files if you want, but that's more of a Flex thing), and you compile them into a swf using the command line compiler.

Boo, that's too hard to be useful, you say.

And you're right.

Enter FlashDevelop (Windows only folks, sorry). FlashDevelop is an open source alternative to Flex Builder available on the Windows platform. To use it, you need to download the Flex SDK and tell FlashDevelop where it is. More info on FlashDevelop is available on their site.
It features a full text editor IDE with some code hinting, but don't be fooled - it's not as good as Flex Builder, but for the price, it's excellent.

So, now that you've started down the rabbit hole of open source Flash, where to next?
OSFlash is an excellent resource for all your open source Flash needs. Head on over there and take a look, they have a wide range of open source projects that are pretty cool.

(eventually mirrored on flasht.asia)

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_{The DataGrid control is intended for viewing data, and not as a layout tool like an HTML table - Adobe}

I'll add that while Flash is only available on Windows and OSX, there is a Linux version of Flex Builder. It's still in alpha and doesn't quite have all the bells and whistles of the Mac/Win versions, but it's got everything I've needed so far.

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I would love to see this town in the autumn. I think Crabbeville in autumn would look quite magnificent. I would have made tiny little leaves — oak, poplar, maple, chestnut — and spread them across the town of Crabbeville. Magnificent.

Adobe's ActionScript 3.0 language reference:

• Flex-specific
• Flash-specific

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I would love to see this town in the autumn. I think Crabbeville in autumn would look quite magnificent. I would have made tiny little leaves — oak, poplar, maple, chestnut — and spread them across the town of Crabbeville. Magnificent.

The livedocs suck, try the javadoc formatted docs.
[link]

Much faster and easier to find what you need.

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SupaShaD: sometimes i think im too stealthy for my own good
Smurf: she ask "is it in yet?" again?

Proud to have made a stripper cry.