Datasheet

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Chapter 1: Introducing ActionScript
The Flash Platform (continued)
Flash Media Server
Flash Media Server enables you to deploy streaming media
such as video through Flash Player. Flash Media Server
works as an intermediary between a Web server and the
browser to deliver the content seamlessly. Any Flash video
can be deployed to a Flash Media Server.
Flash Lite
Flash Lite is a version of Flash Player designed specifically
for cell phones and other mobile devices. Many new cell
phones allow their users to play games created in Flash
and deployed to Flash Lite; some new phones even use
Flash for all the menus and other interface elements. You
can test Flash applications in Flash Lite using the tool
Device Central, which is included with Flash Professional.
Vector Art
Flash uses vector art to create graphics. Traditional
graphics applications and formats such as JPG and GIF are
known as raster or bitmap art. These images are made up
of pixels. If you think of your computer screen as a large
sheet of graph paper, each square of the graph represents
a pixel. By filling in each square with a color, you can
create full-color images.
However, raster images are dependent on the resolution at
which they were created. In order to double the size of the
image, each colored pixel needs to expand to fill four
squares, or pixels; quadrupling the size of the image forces
each pixel to fill eight pixels, and so on. Eventually, these
ever-expanding squares will be noticeable in the image,
causing the file to become pixelated. In addition, each of
these size increases has a proportional impact on file size:
Doubling the pixel dimensions of an image roughly
quadruples the file size. It is therefore impossible to resize
a raster-based image without affecting the file size and
quality.
Vector programs take a radically different approach. Rather
than fill in squares, you create vector art by defining points
and then having the program use mathematical algorithms
to calculate a line or path between the points. The path can
be either straight or curved, and the space between the
points can be filled with color. In a vector image, resizing is
accomplished by moving the two points either farther apart
or closer together and having the program recalculate the
math. Therefore, you can freely resize vector images
without affecting either the file size or the quality of the
image.
Most graphics programs today lean toward being either
vector-based, such as Adobe Illustrator, or raster-based,
such as Adobe Photoshop. Both, however, contain tools to
work in the other methodology. Photoshop, for example,
contains a set of vector-based tools, whereas Illustrator
contains some tools for editing raster graphics. Flash, on
the other hand, is purely vector-based, and you will not
find any raster manipulation tools in it. Although you can
import raster graphics into a Flash movie, and those
graphics can be animated, you cannot edit the graphic
without first converting it to vector format. The only
exception is that raster graphics can be resized in Flash,
but as they are raster images, they become pixelated if
resized too much.
Creative Suite 4
Flash CS4 Professional is marketed as a part of Creative Suite 4. The suite includes a series of integrated applications that
provide a set of tools designers and developers can use to create Web, video, and print applications. Adobe currently
offers four main editions of CS4 and includes Flash in each of them.
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