THOUGHTS ON NOOBS...

First of all, welcome to flashden and maybe more importantly, welcome to Flash. Speaking from over 10 years of Flash experience, starting with Flash 4, I have known exactly what it feels like to not know what the hell I am doing on more than one occasion. It has seemed that every iteration of Flash that has come in out has had either a completely new interface, coding language, and myriad of new tools and possibilities.

I’ve noticed a lot support questions on many of the boards and file comments go something like this:

Noob: How do I do something?

Noob: Got it! Never mind.

These kind of posts always make me smile because it shows that resourceful trial and error approach that I feel is ABSOLUTELY necessary to succeed at anything…especially Flash. I am always willing to help out with anyone who may have purchased one of my files, but it seems like these self proclaimed Noobs should be helping themselves. If you are building something in Flash, you owe it to yourself to understand how things work and to learn the skills needed to solve your own problems. This will not only open up doors of possibility in Flash if you are just playing around, but also increase your rate and the range of jobs you can take on if you are, or want to be, a professional.

I guess the point of this post isn’t to complain, but instill a greater confidence in those Noobs who often resort to posting questions to things that have answers to them scattered all over the internet. Don’t hesitate to dig through the code and actually read the comments. Understand how Flash works and try to decipher what you need and where it is. Once you understand how Flash thinks, try google to find your answers or use the Flash help files that come with your copy of the software…free of charge! There are also a bunch of great books out there, but the biggest thing you need to apply to learning Flash is time.

I’m not saying you need 10 years of time to understand everything (there is always something else to learn). Set aside a few hours for a problem. Knuckle up and really try to understand it. Dig in and follow the code line by line, as if you were reading a “choose your own adventure book”. By building up your Flash vocabulary and grammar, you will no longer be able to call yourself a Noob. Good luck!

I’ve never heard it put better

To Noobs:

Flash is great to buy and use as stock, but no matter how ofter the author is willing to help you, you will never be able to do as much as if you understand a few of the core concepts of flash (and programming in general).

Trust me, it seems pointless and hopeless, but one day you’ll be messing with something, and some big concept will click in your head! It’s beautiful, and you can do so much more every time that happens (cuz it keeps happening, over and over, with more and more knowledge, the more you mess around with Flash).

as a flash nooby it is so cool to use files on here that are very complex and tweek them and trouble shoot them. While I can not write much code from skratch I like to think of myself as a mad scientist of experiments in flash. I just change things publish see results if bad I undo it if good I keep it.

I like to think I can trouble shoot the problem area in any complex system from all the trouble shooting of bugs and new customazations in flash. It helps me solve any problem in life my finding the week link or bug. Great article. Gives me hope to one day understand the flash matrix