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Chapter 2: Workspace
The Adobe® Flash® CS3 Professional workspace includes tools and panels that help you create and navigate your
documents. Understanding these tools will help you maximize the application’s capabilities.
Flash workflow and workspace
General Flash workflow
To build a Flash application, you typically perform the following basic steps:
Plan the application.
Decide which basic tasks the application will perform.
Add media elements.
Create and import media elements, such as images, video, sound, text.
Arrange the elements.
Arrange the media elements on the Stage and in the Timeline to define when and how they appear in your appli-
cation.
Apply special effects.
Apply graphic filters (such as blurs, glows, and bevels), blends, and other special effects as you see fit.
Use ActionScript to control behavior.
Write ActionScript code to control how the media elements behave, including how the elements respond to user
interactions.
Test and publish your application.
Test to verify that your application is working as you intended, and find and fix any bugs you encounter. You should
test the application throughout the creation process. Publish your FLA file as a SWF file that can be displayed in a
web page and played back with Flash Player.
Depending on your project and your working style, you might use these steps in a different order.
For video tutorials about the Flash workflow, see the following:
•
Flash workflow:
www.adobe.com/go/vid0132
•
Creating your first interactive Flash file:
www.adobe.com/go/vid0118
For a text tutorial about creating an application, see Create an Application on the Flash Tutorials page at
www.adobe.com/go/learn_fl_tutorials
.
