Understanding Swish2 Environment

This tutorial is for Swish beginners. Swish is defined as simple outline. You can easily get started working with swish after reading this tutorial.

Lets get started:

Outline:

Swish contains:

• Levels.
• Menus.
• Tool bars.
• Tabs.
• Designing tools.
• (Swishmax is capable of scripting).

Levels:

Like every software, swish has 3 levels, beginner, medium and advance.

• On beginner level you must learn tool bars, tabs and designing tools.
• On medium level, you need to work with tabs.
• On Advance level you will work on the above two levels jointly.

Beginner level:

Menus:

Swish contains 9 menus which are:

• File.
• Edit.
• View.
• Insert.
• Modify.
• Control.
• Tools.
• Panels.
• Help.

Try them practically.

Tool bars:

They allow you to:

• Work with new file.
• Save.
• Open.
• Cut.
• Delete.
• Play.
• Play Scene.
• Insert Scene.
• Insert Text.
• Insert Image.
• Insert Content.
• Insert Button.
• Insert Sprite.
• Export to SWF.
• Publish to HTML.
• Export to AVI.

You can understand the above tool bars by their headings.

Tabs:

6 tabs:

• Movie.
• Scene.
• Transform.
• Actions.
• Color.
• Export.

Movie:

To control the whole movie including:

• Width.
• Height.
• Frame Rate.
• Background Color.
• In Grids and Rulers:
  • Horizontal:
  • Vertical.
  • Grid Color.

Scene:

• Name: you can change the scene’s name.
• Link:
• URL: To write any URL.
• Target Frame: It allows you to specify default URL.
• Background Color:

Transform:

In this tab you have each and every object’s properties including:

• X:
• Y:
• W:
• H:

Actions:

You can add action for any object. It contains :

• On Press
• On Release
• On Roll Over
• On Roll Out
• On Drag Over
• On Drag Out
• On Release Outside

After inserting an action for an object, you will be allowed to use:

• Goto URL
• FS Command
• Javascript
• Mailto

Color:

In this tab you have every object’s separate options which are 2 in number:

• Alpha: Transparent, Custom and Advanced
• Color: Black, White, Custom and Advanced

Export:

In this tab you have following options:

• HTML
• Base
• Quality
• Scale
• Align Movie
• Align Window
• Window Mode

You may try them practically.

Now tabs have been defined.

Designing Tools and their usage:

Select: This tool is for selecting any shape or any other tool while working in swish.

Rotate or skew: As its name shows, this is to rotate the shape.

Reshape: To reshape something even ellipse, bezier, line or rectangle.

Motion path: For preview frame.

Fill transform: This tool is used for selecting the real image or the shadow of the shape. You can also select the shadow of gif, bmp, jpeg or whatever.

Line: Simply to draw the line.

Pencil: For making the sketches. If you finish the pencil point where you have started then it would be the solid shape, otherwise that would be simple sketch.

Bezier: The most powerful tool for vector graphics. That has the same quality as pencil tool. Finish the point where you have started. Also can be reshaped.

Rectangle: To draw rectangle and also can be reshaped.

Ellipse: Is also used for vector graphics as it has many options to reshape and provide you a grip over the design. Can be reshaped.

Zoom: To zoom in the whole movie.

Pan: For selecting the movie.

Groups and Sprites: Are used to group several objects. Them both have almost same functions but also have major differences:

Differences:

Group: You can covert several objects in one group and again in another group, this grouping does not affect any action. If you will insert any effect in the timeline then the whole group will follow it, remember not each object separately.

Sprite: You can convert many objects in one sprite and can put any effect on a specific object’s timeline.Each and every object will work separately.

You can convert one sprite in another but it may loose functions due to sequence.

Hope it will be helpful for beginners.