Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

As you know, Adobe Flash is a robust platform for creating web and desktop applications as well as simple animations. IT Training & Education currently offers three workshops focused on Flash:

• Flash CS4: The Basics -- Basic instruction on the interface, drawing, and Flash concepts.
• Flash CS4: Interactivity Basics -- Introduction of ActionScript 3.0 to create interactivity using buttons in a Flash movie.
• Flash CS4: ActionScript Programming Basics -- Basic concepts in ActionScript 3.0 such as the use of control structures, collision detection and animation.

While these workshops give you a great foundation in Adobe Flash, there are many, many topics that aren't covered in-depth. Lynda.com can be used to fill in and augment the topics in these workshops. From now until December 20th, IU community members get FREE access to lynda.com. As of this writing, lynda.com offers 10 courses in Flash CS4 and 7 courses in ActionScript 3.0. Remember that the Flash platform isn't limited to the Adobe Flash software. In addition to the Flash specific courses, lynda.com offers 4 courses on Adobe Air and 10 courses in Flex. That's 31 courses about or relating to the Flash platform. To simplify things, this article will focus only on the courses related to the Flash application as well as ActionScript 3.0.

Continue after the jump!
(more...)

When installing the CS4 applications available from IUWare, you might have missed some important additional content that is also available.  In this post, we'll explore what is available in these Extra Content installers, and which items should be considered essential. If you have purchased the disc version of Design Premium, this extra content will be available on the Content disc.

First of all, let's find out where to get this Extra Content.  It is available from IU Ware at the following address: http://iuware.iu.edu/list.aspx?id=196

NOTE: You should have any CS4 applications you wish you use installed before downloading and installing these files.  Fonts in these packages can be installed without installing CS4 applications.

Here you can download all of the Extra Content that is available. It is separated by program, but we will see shortly, that some of the files inside are duplicated.  First, let's list what programs have Extra Content available, and what can be downloaded.

(more...)

With the announcement that IU had acquired free Adobe software for all of it's employees and students, your first thought was probably "How do I get it?" Now that we've all had a couple of months to get the software downloaded and installed, you're likely thinking now: "What do I do with all of this stuff?"

Adobe is one of the largest software companies in the world, and while most people are familiar with their core apps, like Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash, there are many applications included in the suite that you might not be familiar with. In this post, we'll take some time to examine all the different applications that you can install with the various Adobe suites. We will focus on the applications in Design Premium CS4 and Production Premium CS4. There are many add-ons and extra technology included in the installers, but we will look only at the applications included.

(more...)