Chapter 13: Creating Animation - MACROMEDIA FIREWORKS 8-USING FIREWORKS Use Manual

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CHAPTER 13
Creating Animation
Animated graphics add an exciting, sophisticated look to your website. In Macromedia
Fireworks 8, you can create animated graphics with banner ads, logos, and cartoons that
move. For example, you can make your company mascot dance across a page while the logo
fades in and out.
One way to create animations in Fireworks is by creating symbols and changing their
properties over time to produce the illusion of motion. A symbol is like an actor whose
movements you choreograph. The action of each symbol is stored in a frame. When you play
all the frames together in a sequence, you get animation.
You can apply different settings to the symbol to gradually change the content of successive
frames. You can make a symbol appear to move across the canvas, fade in or out, get bigger or
smaller, or rotate.
Because you can have multiple symbols in a single file, you can create a complex animation in
which different types of action occur all at once.
The Optimize panel lets you set optimization and export settings to control how your file is
created. Fireworks can export animations as animated GIF or Flash SWF files. You can also
import Fireworks animations directly into Macromedia Flash for further editing.
This chapter contains the following topics:
Building animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Working with animation symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Working with frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Tweening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Previewing an animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Exporting your animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
Working with existing animations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .322
Using multiple files as one animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .323
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