I know what it's like. You decide to learn how to use a new program. You spend hours clicking on buttons, trying to figure that all out. Most of it is just trial and error. Sometimes tutorials come in handy but they usually don't - rarely are they basic enough to follow if don't have any experience.
What a waste of time, given that all beginners have a similar idea of what should be learned at first. In Flash these five big subjects are: panels, tools, timeline, top menu, main stage.
So, this tutorial will by no means teach you any advanced stuff. The purpose of this tutorial is to spare you those X hours of trying to grasp "what is where" which can only be the case if you're a total beginner (If you're not only, I suggest choosing another tutorial here).
Let's start
Have a look at this image. Below I'll describe each of these regions. As I mentioned there are five of them (two numbers pertain to the same region). It is crucial to understand the function of each of them. I'm not going to go into details too much about them because I do think that information included below is just enough for anyone to start discovering things by himself, and that's the point of this tutorial.
1. Main stage
This usually a rectangular shape that you can see under Figure 1 is the main stage. Whatever you place within that area will be visible to your viewer. You can adjust the color, size, as well as other properties of the main in properties panel.
2. Menu
Most features of Flash are available from there. So whenever you're looking for something, it's probably accessible from the menu.
Let me describe each of the drop-down menus.
File - the most important options here are: Export (allows you to export your movie as a swf file), Import (allows you to import a variety of media, like music, images, movies). Other than that, it's always good to remember where "Save as..." is :)
Edit - Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts plus several others can be found here, like Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo, Redo (if you don't use shortcuts for these).
View - this sub-menu contains some really cool features. Actually some Flash devolopers seem to forget about these options, thus making their lives harder. For example, depending on the situation a different snapping setting should be turned on (View>Snapping). Or the preview mode, it is sometimes good to enable the "Fast" mode if your computer is running low on memory.
Insert - I don't peronally use this submenu at all because all of these features can be used in an easier way (e.g. by right-clicking on the timeline).
Modify - Contains plenty of features that are categorized in several submenus. To highlight those that I find most useful: Swap Symbol, Convert Lines to Fills, Bring Forward/Backward, Flip Vertical/Horizontal. It goes without saying that having a hotkey for each of them is important.
Text - Settings in this menu can easily be accessed from Properties panel (when a textfield is selected). That goes for everything except "Check Spelling".
Commands - Command features let you install and run commands. Most probably you won't need that.
Control - Features related to the way your move is displayed. You can: test movie, test scene, debug movie, mute sounds.
Windows - Allows you to open panels (more below).
Help - Things related to assist you. Most of them are self-explanatory, it seems.
3 and 4. Panels
They are two areas where open panels should be located. As far as Figure 3 goes, most of the time you'll see properties panel there. On the right side, however, you can put a variety of panels from menu>Windows. Such as: Color Mixer, Library, and many more. Well, actually those panels can be put anywhere in Flash but it's best to keep them on the right side so they don't cover up the main stage.
Library - a panel where our symbols are stored.
5. Tools
Tools are absolutely necessary for anyone using Flash. The most important one is the Selection Tools which is used to select, drag objects around the stage (and not only). You can customize the Tool Panel by going to: Edit>Customize Tools Panel.
When you roll over any of them, you'll be informed about hotkey for this tool.
6. Timeline
Last but not least, there is the Timeline. By default the Timeline contains one layers but more layers can be added by simply clicking on the leftmost icon at the bottom of the image below. Each layers is a row of frames that can be Keyframe, Blank keyframe, or just Frame, which indicates that the frame should display exacly the same thing as the previous one.
Keyframes are also the place where Actionscript code can be put. To do that, right-click on the keyframe and press F9 to open Actionscipt Panel.
That is what Actionscipt Panel looks like.
So that's basically it. Thanks for reading.
