In recent years, Flash has emerged as one of the leaders for building Rich Internet Applications. This has lead many people from different backgrounds to develop with it. Maybe you are a developer with a different background and you have now found yourself needing to learn Flash because a client or project requires it. Maybe you are a designer trying to increase your skillset and portfolio. Maybe you’re none of the above and want to see what Flash is all about. Either way, Flash has entered your life and you need to know how to work with it, not against it!

I have found in just some of the recent projects that I have worked on how invaluable it is to understand how Flash and its scripting language relate to other languages, such as Java or C#. What is the equivalent to a HashMap? How do you work with resources? Where is the compiler? If you are a designer, you may have felt intemidated by learning ActionScript 2.0 or some other feature, but are now realizing that if you don’t start picking up some programming skills, you may be left behind.

Regardless of your background and skillset, there are some fundamentals that are important for you to know in order to benefit from using Flash as your development platform. Getting Back to the Basics will not be your ordinary, how-to video tutorials. It is not just for beginners. It is meant to go over features you must understand in order to accomplish certain tasks. These tasks may include working with a timeline to connecting to a database to developing applications and components that can dispatch events when needed. All will be taken from a programming point of view. And like with all the previous tutorials, these methods will help increase your workflow if you start implementing them.

My goal here is to get you up to par with many of the features that are available in Flash 8. This is a good opportunity for you to voice any topics in particular that you would like to see explained or demonstrated on a given subject.