How easy is it to write a Flash app and what tools are needed?

Question

I have been wanting to learn to write a Flash app so that it can be embedded inside a webpage.

But is it hard to write one, say, just to show a circle bouncing around the walls of the 4 sides of the Flash window (no gravity, but just like the dot in the game "Pong"), and what tools are needed (and are they free?).

P.S. Then after that, I would like to add that I can catch the circle with the mouse, or pick up the circle and let it drop like there is gravity and let it bounce around. So I think probably a programming language is the best.

Thanks very much.

Answer 1

A bouncing circle within a square can be animated using the builtin timeline in Flash. That is pretty easy.

You can also use Actionscript for that. Depending on your programming skills, developing can range from hard to easy.

A free tool for Actionscript is FlashDevelop (using the free Flex environment)

Answer 2

If you are more of a programmer than a designer, I would recommend building pure Actionscript projects or using the Flex SDK (it has lots of standard UI elements)

The Flash IDE has useful features if you want to do timeline-based animation but it really isn't very nice at all for coding.

FlashDevelop (free) or Flash Builder (commercial, previous versions were called Flex Builder) are much nicer interfaces for coding actionscript.

Note that you can use FlashDevelop to code against the Flex SDK API - the SDK is open source, the Flash Builder IDE is closed commercial.

Answer 3

If you want to get your feet wet, the book Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation by Keith Peters is a good place to start. It's all about building animations like the ones you describe.

You can download a trial copy of Flash Builder (formerly Flex Builder) from Adobe to get started. And yes, it'll generate web pages with embedded swf.