Today, we will discuss the foundation of the Flash workspace, take a peek at different styles, and learn how to customize your own Flash layout so that it works best for you and of course looks the way you want! This is the fun part of workspaces. Give your new one a chance: save your custom layout and jump back into the action! Before we begin coding it is important to get a basic understanding of the Flash workspace. Learn all about the panels and study which shortcuts will make coding easier and faster for you.
You can change your workspace to your favorite layout. You want your panels in a different place? Drag them there. Don't want a particular panel (or panels cluttering up your workspace?) Close it/them. Everything is very fluid, so tinker with them and move things wherever you'd like. If you want to add panels, go to the window tab, and click on the panel of your choice. You can save your new layout, and it will not affect your actual file in any way. Set up several different ones to try out - have fun!
So in this video we're going to essentially dig
into our workspace. By default, the workspace
in both CS4 and CS5 is the essentials workspace.
While in CS3 the layout is probably more similar to
something that was coined in CS4 to be called classic.
If you're in CS3 right now then you don't
really have this panel, and what you have is your
window>workspace, which you don't even have access to
before you create a new file.
So, because of that we're going to first create
a new file, also because it just makes sense
because almost everything here is disabled and
greyed out
until we actually have a working file.
We don't have access to many different
libraries, or panels,
that are available
as soon as you have your flash file opened.
When I'm saying my Flash file, I'm referring
to an FLA, in our case an AS 3.0 FLA.
So I'm going to click on
a new FLA, a new Flash file, an ActionScript 3.0 file.
(It doesn't really matter if you're in CS3, 4, or 5,
just open up your file.)
Now that we have our file open
let us talk about the layout.
Personally I'm just used to working in CS3
and I kind of ported the same kind of
methodology: I just liked the way
I worked in CS3.
Nothing bad about the new essentials view
in CS4 or CS5,
I was just comfortable with it and what's
brilliant about adobe, is they didn't take away
my control of setting it up the way I like to set
it up.
And the way we could do that
is just by clicking on our essentials menu
or going through our window,
workspace, and selecting the classic view.
By selecting the classic view we're going
to be in a mode that's more similar
to the older way where your timeline was on the
top, and your content was in the centerfold,
and your tools for designing and
illustrating, and so on, would be on your left hand,
and all the other panels would be minimized
on your right side.
With that said,
let's revisit the essentials for a second
just for the sake of playing around with the layouts.
You don't really have to keep
the layout the way it is. Even if you like
essentials or you like any one of the other layouts,
you could just check them and see which
makes more sense to you.
If you like this layout, or you're
never going to work with the motion editor,
why not get rid of it? So just drag it out, close it.
Maybe you want your timeline on the top or minimized.
If you want it on top, grab it, put it on top. If you want it minimized,
double click on it.
Double click to open it. You want to give it
less space, give it less space.
It's really about tinkering with it. Everything
here is very fluid which is really
brilliant. So you could grab your library as well.
Let's say we want our library to be on the side here,
so we stick it here.
Now obviously this is starting to look
really ugly, but
I hope the point is here that
you can play around with this as much as you want.
In CS3, by default, our properties panel
will be down here, and chances are you
won't really move it around, but obviously
you are more then welcome to move anything anywhere
you want. It's up to you really, it's just about
where you're comfortable and
how you like things to be set up.
Well I'm not going to save this because it's a really
bad layout. But if we like this layout
and we're comfortable with it,
we could go into our window again, into
our workspace, and create a new workspace.
By clicking on "new workspace,", it's going to prompt
and ask me to give it a name,
and then it will enable me to save this layout,
which I didn't save because I don't even like it,
so I'll click on cancel.
Now I could, on the other hand,
create a layout that I do like. A layout that I do like
is "Ben,", which I preserved a little earlier, which is
kind of similar to the classic view where my
timeline is on the top.
The big difference, which is not that
big, is that my properties panel is right here.
For me, I like that my output is right
here, my compiling errors are right here, so as
we're running the application, for me that's the most organized view.
Obviously when you're watching the videos,
if things don't look exactly the same, they
don't have to look exactly the same as long
as you could find the different output windows
at the different
panels that are important, and we're
going to touch on all those panels
in this intro video.
Next thing I wanted to talk about is,
let's see how you could create your own
"Ben" panel, or your own panel, if
you want to work in a panel or something similar.
So I'm going to pick "classic" because it is
close to what I like.
What I'm missing here is my
properties.
I'm actually not missing my properties,
my properties are there. Let me reset classic.
Here we go, so this is how classic looks like by default.
I already tinkered with it earlier so
that's the reason why it looked different. So what
I've done is dragged out
my properties,
and just added it
into the top.
Now it's on the top of my list, and I got
my properties,
and I could probably make it a little bit bigger so
it's easier to see all the content inside, as we click
into it and click it out of that.
That way it keeps my main center
area cleaner.
Now I'm missing a few panels here. I'm missing my trace, so
I'm going to go to window,
and I'm going to look for trace-where is trace-
we want compiling errors output as well,
so output is our trace, sorry.
It's called "output" but we trace into it, and you'll
see what I mean in later videos.
In this course we're going to see what that means.
So we have our output panel,
and I just want to add in as well, my
compiler errors, when no one is
perfect, this is exactly where I want it, and this is the
layout I like having.
Now I could save it but I already saved it
before so I don't need to save it.
OK, so I could just reset it back to "classic"
(the way the classic is supposed to be,) go
into my Ben view and we are in my Ben view.
And that's all we really need to do to
be in the same similar layout as I'm working on.
And that's basically all we really need to
know about working with workspace.
Just find the workspace that you're comfortable
with; it doesn't affect anything else, it's not
saved into the file itself, it's actually saved
into your configurations of your editor,
and it's really unique for you, so you can
do anything you want, it doesn't effect anything but
your computer, and it doesn't affect the files
that you're saving.