Chapter 1. Getting Started with Macromedia Flash

Flash is a term used to refer to both the vector-based animation format (Flash movies) as well as the authoring tool that is commonly used to create the aforementioned content. Flash Player is the program that is capable of playing back Flash content. ActionScript is the scripting language that is encoded into Flash content and interpreted by Flash Player when that content is played back. You can use the Flash authoring tool to add ActionScript code to Flash content. As such, it's particularly useful to learn how to use the Flash authoring tool for that purpose as a first step when learning about ActionScript. In this chapter you learn about how to work with the Flash authoring tool for the purposes of writing ActionScript.