blog

I’ve been giving the following list of resources to clients and students over the years, to help aid in their learning goals. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a good start. I’ll update this post whenever I come across good resources.

Full disclosure: All of these books listed, except Digging Into WordPress, lead to Amazon.com. None of the Amazon.com links are affiliate links, so I don’t benefit from purchases made through them. I am an affiliate for the Digging Into WordPress book, and I earn a commission from purchases made through the link below.

(more…)

This screencast was a question/request from a participant in a training I recently did in Yakima, WA. The question was how to create a still image with a play button that will start a video’s playback. That image is also known as a poster image. Using Flash and Actionscript 3.0, I’ll walk you through creating a poster image for a Flash video.

Files used in the video can be downloaded here: video poster files (6.11mb)

Click on the image to view the video. Flash 9 player or higher is required.

Creating a Flash video poster image

If you’re starting your journey into the world of Flash with the current CS4 version, the changes in the product probably don’t effect you, but if you’re upgrading from any previous version of Flash, you may find yourself wondering where certain, long-standing elements are. I know I’ve been in that position, and as a result, I had to do some digging for things.

One of those things is how to create a motion guide while using what’s now called a “classic motion tween.” Like a lot of long-time Flash users (I’ve been using Flash since version 3), I wondered why the motion guide was removed, and after doing a little digging, found out it hasn’t been removed, they just removed the button from the layers area of the timeline that makes it easy to apply one to a classic motion tween layer.

I figured it would be easier to demonstrate how to add a motion guide to a classic tween layer, than write it out in a series of non-visual steps, so click on the image below for a video walk-through. You’ll need the Flash 9 player or higher to view the screencast.

Creating a classic motion guide in Flash CS4