Macromedia Flash is a key technology for designing and delivering low-bandwidth animations, presentations, and web sites. More recently it has become development environment, complete with scripting capabilities and server-side connectivity. Flash has the ability to easily integrate with, and add interactivity to, complex media types with powerful and intuitive tools. Developers can rapidly develop high performance, accessible content using pre-assembled building blocks and expand their authoring capabilities with custom extensions from independent developers.   Macromedia Flash MX Unleashed covers these high-end topics, providing you with a solid and complete reference for building Flash websites and applications. Fundamentals are covered quickly in the first part of the book, with the majority of the content devoted to coverage of ActionScript and how Flash works with varied middleware. You'll also learn how to integrate Flash with several other technologies, including XML and PHP.

Table of Contents:
Introduction. I. GETTING STARTED. 1. What's New?     The Interface     Tabs on the Mac     Tabs in Panels Are Back     One Library to Rule Them All     Bigger Pasteboard     Two Levels of Undo     Object Drawing-The New Grouping     Content on the Go     Hide and Seek Is Over     Welcome Back, Normal Mode     The Fastest Flash Player Ever     FlashType     Cache as Bitmap     Blending     Filters     Stroke Improvements     Video in Flash     New Dynamic Content     BitmapData     File Upload     Summary 2. Getting Started with Flash Professional 8.     Humble Beginnings-Where Flash Came From     The Interface     The Stage     The Properties Inspector Panel     Flash Panels     Check Your Spelling     Preferences     The General Category     The ActionScript and Auto Format Categories     The Clipboard Category     The Drawing Category     The Text Category     The Warnings Category     Shortcuts     Making a Better Workspace     Summary 3. Creating Graphics in Flash.     The Toolbar     The Colors Section     The View Section     The Tools Section     Colors and Gradients     The Color Swatches Panel     The Color Mixer Panel     Grouping and Drawing Objects     Groupies     Drawing Objects     Stacking Groups     Importing and Working with Bitmaps     Creating a Bitmap Fill     Tracing Bitmaps     Swap Bitmap     Summary 4. Flash Animation.     Welcome to the Timeline     The Layers Section     The Frames Section     Frame by Frame     Your First Animation     Tweening     Your First Tween     Shape Hints     Summary 5. Symbols, Instances, and the Library.     What Is a Symbol?     What Is an Instance?     The Graphic Symbol     When Should You Use a Graphic?     Converting to a Symbol     The Button Symbol     An Interactive Button     Memoirs of an Invisible Button     The Movie Clip Symbol     The Library     Back to the Timeline     Your First Motion Tween     The Tween Editor     Nested Animation     Motion Guides     The Mask Layer     Summary 6. Working with Sound and Video.     Why Sound?     Adding Sound     Sound in the Properties Inspector     Sound Effects     Creating a Custom Effect     Syncing and Looping     Compressing Sound     Sound with ActionScript     Video in Flash     Importing Video into Flash     Summary 7. Publishing.     The Publish Settings     Publishing Profiles     The Formats Tab     For the Web     Graphics     Projectors and QuickTime     Flash Player 8 and SWFs     The Flash Tab     The Version Field     The Sound Settings     The HTML Tab     Detect Flash Version     The GIF Tab     The PNG Tab     The JPEG Tab     The QuickTime Tab     Summary II. ACTIONSCRIPT. 8. Welcome to ActionScript 2.0.     What Is ActionScript?     Object-Oriented Programming     What Is an Object?     Properties of an Object     Methods of an Object     Events of an Object     Where Do Objects Come From?     Prototyping an Object     Introduction to ActionScript 2.0     Declaring Variables and Instance Names     Strict Data Typing Variables     Strict Data Typing with Functions     The Actions Panel     Actions Panel Preferences     Reference/Help Panel     Behaviors and the Behaviors Panel     ActionScript Fundamentals     Comments     Code Hints and Naming Conventions     ActionsPanel.xml     Triggering Code Hints with Comments     Strict Data Typing to Trigger Code Hints     Dot Syntax     The Movie Clip Object     Functions     Conditionals     Loop Statements     Summary 9. Strings, Numbers and Variables-In Depth.     Types of Data Types     The String Data Type     Creating a String     Empty Strings     Quotes     Escape Sequences     Manipulating Strings     Joining Strings     Indexing Characters in Strings     Unicode-Style Strings     The Number Data Type     Creating a Number     Solving the Problem of Repeating Decimal Points     Predefined Values for Numbers     Bonus Numbers     Boolean Data Type     Null Data Type     Undefined Data Type     Array Data Type     Variables     Making a Variable     Changing Data in Variables     Incrementing and Decrementing Variables     Empty Variables     Comparing Variables     Combining Types of Values in Variables     Converting Variables Using Functions and Methods     The Scope of a Variable     An Applied Example     Summary 10. Arrays.     What Is an Array and How Does It Work?     Deconstructing an Array     Creating an Array     Retrieving Information from an Array     Adding Elements to Arrays     The push Method     The unshift Method     The splice Method     The concat Method     Naming Array Elements     Removing Array Elements     The delete Operator     Removing Elements Using the length Property     The splice Method Revisited     The pop Method     The shift Method     Changing Elements in Arrays     Advanced Nested Arrays     Additional Array Methods     The toString Method     The join Method     The slice Method     The reverse Method     Sorting Arrays     The sortOn Method     Applied Example     Summary 11. Statements and Expressions.     Statement Syntax     Statement Block     Object Statements     The with Statement     The for in Statement     Flow Modifiers     Conditional Statements     Comparison Operators     The if Statement     The else Statement     The else if Statement     switch, case, default, and break     Loop Statements     Summary 12. Functions.     Creating a Function     Running the Function     Using Parameters in Functions     Functions That Return Values     Nested Functions     Function Scope     Mapping to a Function     The global Identifier     Variables and Functions     The Arguments Class     The length Property     Functions as Objects     Functions as Methods     Functions Built In to Flash     The call Function     Conversion Functions     Mathematical Functions     Deprecated Functions     Summary 13. The Movie Clip Object.     Creating Movie Clips     Creating Movie Clips Manually     Creating Movie Clips with ActionScript     Manipulating Movie Clips     Animating Movie Clips with ActionScript     The cacheAsBitmap Property     Using Math to Help Animate Movie Clips     Using the Color Object     The blendMode Property     Filters     Depth and the Stacking Order     Duplicating Movie Clips     Removing Movie Clips     The removeMovieClip() Method     The Drawing API     The lineStyle() Method     The moveTo() Method     The lineTo() Method     The lineGradientStyle() Method     The beginFill() Method     The beginGradientFill() Method     The curveTo() Method     Summary 14. Events.     Handling Events     The Callback     Listeners     Duplicating Effort     Callbacks Versus Listeners-The Showdown     Button Events     Movie Clip Events     Movie Clips Handling Button Events     Events of the Mouse Object     Events of the Key Object     Events of the TextField Object     Cross-Object Events     Summary 15. Working with Text.     The Text Field Interface     Spell Checking Text Fields     Creating Text Fields     Static Text     Dynamic Text     Input Text     Creating Text Fields in ActionScript     Formatting the Text in Text Fields     The TextFormat Object     Cascading Style Sheets     Scrolling Text Fields     The Mouse Wheel Event     HTML Text in Text Fields     The Image Tag     HTML Text Fields and JavaScript     Multilanguage Text     Unicode-encoded Strings     The Strings Panel     Summary 16. Components.     What Is a Component?     Getting Started with Components     The Components Panel     Adding Components to the Stage     The attachMovie() Method     Setting Parameters     The Properties Inspector     Changing the Parameters of a Component     The Component Inspector Panel     ActionScript     Capturing Component Events     Getting Data from Components     Skinning Components     Manually Skinning a Component     Using the style Property     The dataProvider Property     Data Binding     Creating a Version 2.0 Component     Summary 17. Debugging.     What Is Debugging?     Planning Ahead     Names That Make Sense     Documentation     Strict Data Typing     Prototyping and Testing     Tools of the Trade     The trace Function     List Options     The Error Object     Sizing Up Your Project     The Debugger     Remote Debugging     Summary II. OUTSIDE OF FLASH. 18. External ActionScript.     Why Use External ActionScript?     #include Versus Classpath     Getting Started with External Class Files     Defining a Class     Public, Private, and Static     Declaring Properties with a Constructor Function     Creating Methods     Creating Getter/Setter Methods     Creating Events     Creating Callback Events     Creating Listener Events     Bringing It All Together     Summary 19. Loading Visual Content.     Why Load External Content?     What Content Can Be Loaded and Where?     Loading Images Dynamically     The loadMovie() Method     Inheritance     The loadMovieNum() Method     The unloadMovie() Method     The removeMovieClip() Method     The unloadMovieNum() Function     The Loader Component     Loading SWF Files into Flash     Manipulating Loaded SWF Files     Loading External Content into Text Fields     Manipulating Embedded Content in Text Fields     Preloaders     The getBytesTotal() and getBytesLoaded() Methods     The ProgressBar Component     Summary 20. Introduction to Data Integration.     Why Dynamic Content?     The getURL() Method     The MIME Format     The escape() and unescape() functions     The loadVariables Method     The onData Event     The loadVariablesNum() Method     The LoadVars Object     The load() Method     The onLoad Event     The Undocumented onData Event     The ExternalInterface API     The Call Method     The addCallback Method     Summary 21. ASP and Flash.     What Is ASP?     How Does ASP Work?     Getting the Server     Intro to ASP Scripting     Your First ASP Page     Sending and Receiving Data     Receiving Data in ASP     Sending and Receiving in Flash     Accessing Access     Summary 22. PHP and Flash.     Setting Up Your Server     Installing Apache Server     Installing PHP     Installing MySQL     Now That It's All Installed     Learning More About PHP     PHP and Flash-Receiving Data     Example 1-Hello World     Example 2-Hello, Goodbye World     Example 3-Multiple Values and Multiple Variables     Example 4-Sending Mail with Flash and PHP     PHP and Flash-Sending and Receiving Data     Example 5-Confirming sentMail     Incorporating a MySQL Database     Example 6-Address Book     File Uploads-Flash 8 Specific     Example 7-File Upload     Summary 23. Flash Remoting with ColdFusion.     What Is Flash Remoting?     The Application Server     Technical Requirements     ColdFusion and Flash Flowchart     Flash Remoting Setup Process     Setting Up the Server     Installing IIS     Installing ColdFusion MX7     Setting Up Your Database     Creating a ColdFusion Data Source     Reviewing the Application     Let's Begin: ColdFusion Components (CFCs)     Flash Remoting and ActionScript 2.0     Import Flash Remoting ActionScript Classes     Establish a Gateway Connection and Service     Communicate with the CFC and Handle the Results     Building Your Application     Summary 24. XML and Flash.     What Is XML?     Formatting XML     Rules of XML     Attributes     Elements Versus Attributes     XML and Flash     The XML Object     The XMLConnector Component     The trigger() Method     The result Event     The Tree Component     Summary 25. Web Services and Flash.     What Is a Web Service?     Why Use Web Services?     Creating a Web Service     Consuming Web Services with Flash     Using the XML Object     Flash Remoting     The Web Services Panel     The WebServiceConnector Component     Data Binding     Consuming Outside Web Services     Absorbing the Amazon Web Service     Summary 26. Streaming Media.     Why Stream Media?     Creating a Flash Video     The NetConnection Object     The NetStream Object     The play() Method     The pause() Method     The close() Method     The seek() Method     The setBufferTime() Method     The onStatus Event     Properties of the NetStream Object     The Video Object     The attachVideo() Method     Streaming Video     The FLVPlayback Component     The Camera Object     The get() Method     The activityLevel Property     Summary 27. Extending Flash.     Why Extend Flash?     Commands     The History Panel     Saving Commands from the History Panel     Creating Commands Manually with JSFL     Managing Commands     XML-to-UI Controls     Creating Behaviors     Creating Your Own Panels     Creating Custom Tools     Creating Custom Effects     File I/O in JSFL     Summary 28. Beyond Flash.     Flash Alternatives     SwiSHmax     SwiSHpix     PowerCONVERTER     Wildform FlixPro     Sorenson Squeeze     Swift 3D     Captivate     Enhancing Flash Files     Optimaze     Action Script Viewer 4.0     SWF Encrypt(tm)     Beyond the Web     ScreenTime     SWF2Video     SWF Studio 3.0     MakingThings     Summary IV. Appendix. A. ActionScript Reference.     The BitmapData Class     Properties     Methods     The ExternalInterface Class     Properties     Methods     The BevelFilter Class     Methods     The BlurFilter Class     Methods     The ColorMatrixFilter Class     Methods     The ConvolutionFilter Class     Methods     The DisplacementMapFilter Class     Methods     The DropShadowFilter Class     Methods     The GlowFilter Class     Methods     The GradientBevelFilter Class     Methods     The GradientGlowFilter Class     Methods     The ColorTransform Class     Properties     Methods     The Matrix Class     Methods     The Point Class     Properties     Methods     The Rectangle Class     Properties     Methods     The Transform Class     Properties     The FileReference Class     Properties     Methods     Events     The FileReferenceList Class     Properties     Methods     Events     The TextRenderer Class     Properties     Methods Index.