CS3 Tips and Tricks

BH took some great notes on a seminar given by Paul@paultrani.com www.paultrani.com www.designupdate.com:

Tutorials and Source Code examples:

www.friendsofed.com

Pattern Resources:

www.squidfingers.com

www.stripegenerator.com

www.brusheezy.com

www.vectoreezy.com

Audio Clip Resources:

Resource Central (from Adobe Labs?)

&

www.SoundRangers.com

Video Encoding Hints:

Less pixel change over time as possible

D1 professional is better quality than DV

Data Rate Calculation: width x height x color depth x fps

------------------------------------------- = data rate

Compression value

Preferences in Flash CS3:

Drawing Preferences:

Enable “Show Pen Preview” to show Bezier curve BEFORE laying down an anchor point

Enable “Show Precise Cursors”

Edit / Keyboard Shortcuts:

Hint: use number pad to set shortcuts since these are not mapped by default

Locking layers in Flash CS3:

CTRL + Click on layer lock will lock all layers in one click

ALT + Click on layer will lock every layer except layer clicked

Registration Point:

Rotation happens around this point

Registration pt by default is placed in the center of a symbol

Double click to place on the reg pt location that object is built around (within the symbol itself)

Hold Alt while clicking on a point adjacent to reg point and rotating (Q) will allow you to rotate around pt opposite of reg pt

Windows / Other Panels / History

Processes are listed as you perform them

Select all the actions you like to include in “macro”

Right click and “Save as Command”

Under Commands menu select the Command to apply to other instances or objects

Copy Motion

Tweens can be copied to multiple instances without having to tween each individual object

Right click on MC symbol within Library allows option for “Enable buttons for 9 – slice scaling”

When sizing buttons, the corner radius will stay the same when a buttons scale or dimensions are changed, instead of being stretched or radius increased / decreased

Save as Template

Allows you to use fla file with objects as a default starting point

FLV Skins (AWESOME)

You can break apart most the FLV components such as volume and playback sliders

Simply apply a skin look to FLV component (AS3)

A folder is added to library which references skins which you can modify

Note: I also saw an option to define an external skin URL (good for our software design updates)

Look into Tween Class in AS3 for coding different styles of motion

“onComplete” with regards to FLV Playback can be modified to look for next FLV