I've seen more and more companies use Flash based web sites and was wondering how hard Flash is to learn. Is there anywhere online that I can learn it for little or no cost? Is it really worth it to have these skills?

Thanks
Chris

I don't know if there is anywhere online to learn it, but you might try finding some adult learning classes in your area. The local school district here has adult extension classes and some of them are in web design. You just might get lucky and it shouldn't cost much.

Well you could certainly download a trial of Flash CS3 from the Adobe site. This would give you a while to give it a try, and there are tutorials around to help you learn your way around..

There are always online tutorials, as well as nice thick books you can buy from bookstores or pick up used online. Thats how I learned Flash as well as everything else I know about programming and design. Adobe also offers some nice online classes free, which are really top notch and offered by amazing industry professionals.

Thanks for all of the information. I've downloaded it and started playing with it a bit. It will take a while for me to get any good at it and I'm hoping that in the long run my time and efforts will not be wasted.

Chris

My advice would be to pick up a couple of basic flash books from Amazon. Learn the ropes this way, then begin working up tutorials you see online.

If you are a web designer then you just cannot do without it. If you are thinking that you will not invest anything and learn from some free turotial site I don't think it will ever work out. It is easy to learn but you will need to put in the effort. And buy some good books on how to use flash. It does not matter how much it costs.

http://www.gotoandlearn.com has some great flash tutorials. http://www.learnflash.com also has some tutorials but it will cost you some money there.

flash is not so hard if you are eager to learn it as I was.... you have to understand basics , how to create buttons , how to manipulate movieClips how to use each instrument ... it'll be enough to create some simple sites or banners ... but if you want to do big interesting projects you certainly have to learn ActionScript !

The reason why not many people uses flash is because of the loading time and more importantly not all computers are flash compatible (although this is slowly changing). Flash is definately a useful skill to learn.

Flash has two streams to learn1) Animation Creation and (2) ActionScript Programming for Rich Internet Applications.

First one is little easier and you can be master in it with few weeks efforts. However for (2) you need quite extensive training. Here is a link to downlaod for CD of Video Tutorials,

<<URL removed for copyright concerns.>>

Here is another one that help you create Music Player in flash,

<<URL removed for copyright concerns.>>

I hope these will help you.

I taught myself & anything I needed along the way I googled. Google is always your friend

This could be useful for learning flash;
http://www.w3schools.com/Flash/default.asp
http://www.sitepoint.com/subcat/flash