General 13 May 2004 02:42 pm
[Feedback] Learning Flash - in the tool
I’d like to know if any of you have some great, innovative ideas for things that could be done inside of the Flash authoring tool that will make for a better learning/getting started experience for new users. We have our own ideas, but I’d love to hear your feedback.
Take a look at things like the Start Page. Can you imagine a “Super Start Page”? What would it do? Also consider the workspace, UI, etc.
Feel free to post your ideas in the comments or email me directly at mdowney –at– macromedia.com.
No ideas are too crazy, so have fun!
on 13 May 2004 at 3:33 pm 1.Felix said …
How about a cute animated dog that barks whenever you complete a menu action, and who generates randomised funny quips based on the action you are attempting. You could call him Bob. Make sure to enable him by default, and to have no way to turn him off.
on 13 May 2004 at 3:50 pm 2.Mike Downey said …
We’ll put that on the “Z” features list. ;- )
on 13 May 2004 at 4:06 pm 3.Jonathan Kaye said …
I think a hugely underexplored area is using the interactivity of Flash itself within the Help files or through some of the extensibility features (WindowSWF’s, tools, etc.).
I don’t have a specific idea, but I’ve been thinking there’d be an opportunity to leverage RoboDemo within the authoring environment, with some extra stuff added to the SWF output to tie into JSFL and actually perform assistive actions within the authoring environment. For lack of a better term, kind of like a “wizard instructor”; it teaches you to do something, so explains things along the way, but also does some actions for you to make sure you’re not too lost. I added the word “instructor” because it’s not just a wizard to accomplish a goal; the goal is to teach some concept or application along the way.
There always seems to be a gap between reading something in the Help files and then actually doing it in the real program. Code hints help a lot, but they are pretty much task-insensitive.
Maybe example code from introductory articles could be packaged as WindowSWF’s (and indexed through the Help system), that actually lead people through exercises.
The whole system could be written in Flash, I suppose, so you might get away with not having to modify any of the authoring environment code itself (perhaps you might have to extend the JSFL to areas of the authoring environment it’s not covering yet, but I don’t really know).
on 13 May 2004 at 9:43 pm 4.Peter Witham said …
How about the option to have the help panel as a tab across the top with a full window just like when working with flash and actionscript files?
I’m always digging in to the AS library and hate having to either have a docked or floating panel for it……….would be nice to have a tab open like Visual Studio or something.
Not a biggie but a nice workflow help for me anyway.
Regards,
Peter Witham
on 14 May 2004 at 3:18 am 5.david doull said …
OK, your not going to like this…..but if your talking new users with no programming experience then flash 4 was the easiest to get started with (specifically the actions pannel)… it was easy to use and hard to make mistakes and more flexible than behaviours…
I know you probably think Im nuts, but get some non-flash non-programmer people from your company and sit them down with flash4 for 2 hours to play, and then mx2004 for 2 hours and ask them which they prefer.
on 14 May 2004 at 6:39 am 6.Ron Phillips said …
It really puts people off to start with a blank slate. Especially newbies.
We want to be able to DO something, right away. How about a start page:
Caption: “I want to make something like ….”
Body:
a row of animation swfs, running. Then a row of database swfs, “running”. Then a row of games, running.
When clicked, a save dialog box pops up and makes the user save a copy of the chosen template to a .fla file. (Don’t bother a newbie with protecting the original! Just do it for them.) The template has “how-to’s” or “try-its” in a box off-stage, with pictures, for each frame. The first try-its just edit a text box. Then alter a graphic. Then add a graphic. Then change the animation, etc. by steps.
The whole goal is that a newbie can make something of their own without making any decisions, and without trashing the original.
on 14 May 2004 at 9:39 am 7.steve w said …
I’ve always thought that a more extensive AS code snippet library panel with reference/help, Flash-based tutorials and FLA examples in action would be a boon to designer/newbie types who need “visual” instruction methods to go beyond timeline animation. Code for designers/non-programmers conjures up many phobias. Maybe more customizable templates. In short…make it easy to do cool stuff!
on 15 May 2004 at 10:45 am 8.Andres Felipe said …
flash has to become a desktop applications developing tool to reach new markets !
on 16 May 2004 at 2:51 pm 9.Anonymous said …
Learning Flash
on 16 May 2004 at 3:49 pm 10.Steve Flowers said …
I’ve considered using some Projector Wrapper like Flash Studio Pro to float instructions, coaching and support above the IDE, always focused. This kind of functionality, built into the tool, for Macromedia and other third party (commercial and community support) to take advantage of would be grand.
Steve
on 16 May 2004 at 5:24 pm 11.GriLLo said …
I think that the new flash page need to have options to the user set the size, frame rate of the movie, this is not intuitive for a newbie the way it is now …
on 16 May 2004 at 7:41 pm 12.Mark Badger said …
Having taught beginning Flash for a couple of years now, I would love to see the ouput window redesigned for beginners. My students shut it so fast when it appears they have no idea it contains any useful information at all.
For developers it’s clear something important has been said. For students it’s often the first time a program has responded to them in a technical way and it’s often meaningless. Even if I have pointed it out, demonstrated a mistake shown them the window and made them walk through it once or twice. It takes them almost fifteen weeks to begin to see it as a tool.
on 16 May 2004 at 11:40 pm 13.Julian Sander said …
I could image that a visual difference between symbol types could be useful. I am thinking along the lines of the difference between static and dynamic text fields. This might make it easier for newbies who tend to get lost in the nesting of mc objects and timelines.
what could also be very cool it a second selected clip timeline window. Sort of like the property inspector, but for a clips timeline.
cheers
on 17 May 2004 at 9:41 am 14.moly said …
i think just bundling a couple of quicktime movies along with flash that VISUALLY show how to accomplish the usual tasks that flash newbies must learn would be extremely helpful. this would be a boon for designers, since every designer is a visual learner.
another need is showing & explaining to newcomers the metaphors tha flash encompasses — they are extremely confusing to newbies; i can remember being really frustrated at flash because i didn’t understand the true purpose of a movie clip, for example — like that i could use it to my benefit by reusing it and such. address common questions like, shape tweens vs. motion tweens — which always seem to cause a lot of frustration.
just some ideas.
-moly
on 17 May 2004 at 1:16 pm 15._codedone said …
—
Hi Mike,
I have seen alot of confusion concerning
the timeline itself and the proper usage.
(unless one was a videotographer in a previous life)
How about more timeline tools in the IDE….
automating the ‘insert frame’ and
‘insert blank keyframe’ and ‘add layer’
and ‘add folder’
such as (off the top of my head)
- default timeline layout
- custom timeline layout
- standard animation timeline layout
- standard form timeline layout
- standard application timeline layout
- maybe even an invert layers function
- alphabetize layers?
- or move layer to next scene
- or whatever
? might make things alittle easier
_codedone
—
on 17 May 2004 at 2:04 pm 16.Michael van Leest said …
Hi,
I remember from flash 5 (that’s how I learned flash!) the beginner tutorials with a motion guide and a bee… You probarly remember
That are some good start tutorials for the REAL beginners!
Michael van Leest
http://www.wantonline.com
on 19 May 2004 at 2:58 am 17.Matthew Phillips said …
I used to teach Flash to complete beginners and I noticed they all fell down at the same point.
Everyone could create an animation with using tweens and layers and most were comfortable creating actions for buttons that effected the main timeline. However working with MC’s and multiple timelines seemed to throw everyone, particularly addressing one MC from another.
Maybe using some kind of pointer thing (like in dreamweaver) would be useful. So users could specify an action and then drag the pointer to indicate which MC they want the action to effect.
As mentioned by Jonathan I think the development of the interactivity of flash it self could be extremely useful. Rather than putting tutorials outside of flash they should be available on-the-fly and within flash.
e.g. you want to add and action to button, So you click help, select ‘add a button actions’, then flash demonstrates inside your movie what to do, promoting you for necessary info. But as above this is not a wizard, it is more like a teacher demonstrating something to a student.
on 20 May 2004 at 1:09 pm 18.Eric said …
Hey,
May have been said before, but way not throw in some sort of ‘bonzi-buddy’ (I’m sure you’ve heared of that). Let him/her/it guide users trough tutorials, where the user still has control over the mouse, and should be following up instructions this little creature says.
That way people don’t only read about how they should do it, but are doing it themselves at the same time.
… Only skip the annoying ‘acting funny’ part, make it more straight-forward (in a friendly way of course). heck, you could even open up some sort of competition as who can create the best character suitable for this job.
In any way, I don’t think you should make the techniques more accesable, focus on the training (then again you can wonder; what do you actually think MM’s job is, making the programmes, or explaining the programmes, + if you leave training more to third parties more people can benefit from Flash)
on 23 May 2004 at 5:17 am 19.mani said …
I don’t have any extensive experience of complete beginners as some of the above contributors do, but my feeling is that the sort of people who want to learn Flash would be resistant to a buddy-type wizard popping up to explain stuff to them.
I definitely think that the introductory tutorials that were included with Flash 2, 3 and maybe even 4 (?) were useful, straightforward and informative. But then again, Flash is far more complex now.
I think it’d be easier for beginners if the authoring tool were more structured in general (might benefit all of us) - so that the timeline was organized more like Director as one example - with specific layers for frame labels, timeline ActionScript etc. This could be extended to other areas - all in all making for fewer options to achieve the same result (and thereby less rope to hang with…etc).
Then why not have a panel with easy to understand buttons that achieve certain tasks: select some articles on the stage then press the “Make this an animated MovieClip” button - with a pop-up to tick options like “Animate once” or “Control this MovieClip with Behaviors”… etc
Workspace: I personally find that the areas that one interacts with the objects on stage are too distributed - with transforms, properties, Actionscript, names, references, dimensions etc all spread around different panels. Again, a Director-like translucent panel that attaches directly to the object with all of these attributes would make it easier to see what each object is/does/has.
on 27 May 2004 at 7:12 am 20.Al Lemieux said …
I think the tutorials and resources at the Macromedia Developers site are fantastic. But, they do tend to lean toward experienced users. Perhaps it would be great to have a subdomain: http://www.flashusers.com, that speaks directly to new users. Take them through all of the major concepts and give them options for downloading tutorial files including pdfs for directions and exercise files.
The resources at the Macromedia site are great, but they are a bit scattered. The help feature is an excellent resource and I loved the tutorials that came with Flash MX application. That gave me a full sense of what was possible with the application.
Overall, I think Macromedia is doing an excellent job in providing materials for their users, and the Macromedia community is very helpful when it comes to issues. For first time users though, they need some hand holding and prompting, so I think anything you do will be good as long as you keep that in mind.
on 10 Nov 2004 at 9:20 pm 21.Mario said …
How about a tutorial with only the most basics tools and panels. As you gain knowledge other “areas” become available. e.i. The animation section displays only the animation tools and panels. Show a demo and have the user practice using the tools. Once the user gain expertice, they can advance to the next level. That way new users don’t feel overwhealmed by all the tools and capabilities of the program.
on 13 Feb 2005 at 11:45 pm 22.Muhammad Ali said …
Good Morning , I am new to Flash I want begniner’s material so that i would easily quickly learn Flash MX.
some guide me with some videos.Thanks a lot.
on 13 Nov 2005 at 2:14 pm 23.google左侧排?? said …
help panel as a tab across the top with a full window just like when working with flash and actionscript files?
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