Book excerpt: Unlock the power of Flash and bring gorgeous animations to life onscreen. It's easy with Flash CS4: The Missing Manual. You'll start creating animations in the first chapter, and will learn to produce effective, well-planned visuals that get your message across. This entertaining new edition includes a complete primer on animation, a guided tour of the program's tools, lots of new illustrations, and more details on working with video. Beginners will learn to use the software in no time, and experienced Flash designers will improve their skills. Expanded and revised to cover the new version of Flash, every chapter in this book provides step-by-step tutorials to help you: Learn to draw objects, animate them, and integrate your own audio and video files Add interactivity, use special effects, learn morphing, and much more Check your work with the book's online example files and completed animations Discover new Flash toolkits and features such as Frameless Animation Use every timesaving aspect of Flash CS4, such as Library objects and Symbols Learn how to automate your drawings and animations with ActionScript 3.0 With this book, absolutely no programming is necessary to get started with Flash CS4. Flash CS4: The Missing Manual explains in jargon-free English exactly what you need to know to use Flash effectively, while avoiding common pitfalls, right from the start.