I recently completed a book with with star animator Chris Georgenes entitled Animation with Scripting for Adobe Flash Professional CS5 Studio Techniques. My wife AJ, the other half of Ajar Productions, also served as Technical Editor on the book. As you can imagine, we’re very excited about this book’s release!

Here’s the info from the back cover:

In Animation with Scripting for Adobe Flash Professional CS5 Studio Techniques, top animation designer Chris Georgenes and designer/developer Justin Putney reveal how to create and successfully animate characters in Adobe Flash Professional CS5 and how to push the limits of timeline animation with stunning visual effects using ActionScript® 3.0.

This Studio Techniques book is designed for intermediate or advanced users who understand the basics of Flash and want to create a more immersive interactive experience. The book includes coverage of storyboarding, 2D character design and rigging, character animation, visual FX with code, workflow automation, and publishing your animation on the web and to mobile devices.

You can order the book from these fine retailers:

Peachpit | Amazon | Adobe Press

Let us know if you have any questions about the book. We hope you find it useful!

I’ve had a number of users contacting me regarding ways to learn Adobe Flash Professional. There are a lot of great resources available for users interested in animation, design, and development in Flash.  Whether you’re an advanced user, or totally new to Flash, there are tons of resources available. Over the years, I’ve read dozens of books and visited hundreds of sites. So, I decided to put together a single page with many of my favorite Flash learning links. Enjoy!

Version 1.1.0 now has the ability to batch-merge textframes within every page of the current document. I had several requests for something like this (including from a recent donor). Here it is! The download links above have been updated.

The new version now has the “Apply to” and “Ignore locked layers” as shown in the image below.

Note that any warning messages about having too few textframes selected have been delayed until after the dialog box appears to reflect the new options.

Downloads of the new version are available on the original post.

Want a good way to move your extension request to the top of the list?

Here’s a quick extension by request. This extension adds a command that can batch name instances in multiple frames. Just select the frames and run the command.

Download

• INSTANCE – multi-name.mxp (Flash MX 2004 & later)
• INSTANCE – multi-name.zxp (Flash CC & Later)

Point text in Illustrator is a text field that is generated by a click of the text tool. Area text is generated by dragging a rectangle with the text tool. You can scale a area text to make room for more text or to control where the lines end. When you try to scale point text, however, the text itself grows or shrinks to fill the rectangular area. If you inherit a file with lots of point text, it can be difficult to edit.

This script will convert point text and text on a path into area text. You select multiple text fields and the script will convert them all. It does not take into account stories (linked text fields), so use with caution in those cases.

Download

(Compatibility: Illustrator CS & up)
Convert to Text Area.js
[right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) and choose Save Link As…]

Installation Instructions

Place the Convert to Text Area.js file into the Scripts directory within your Illustrator application directory:

Windows > C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator {version}\Presets\Scripts
Mac OS X > Applications/Adobe Illustrator {version}/Presets/Scripts

Note: In CS4, the directory path will include a region directory (e.g., Adobe Illustrator CS4/Presets/en_US/Scripts).

Usage

Select text field(s), choose File > Scripts > Convert to Text Area.

Looking for the reverse?

Don’t worry we won’t leave you hanging. Download the file below. Installation and usage are similar to above.

Convert to Point Text.js
[right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) and choose Save Link As…]

Another Utility Script

If you want to select only text frames, to scale them or otherwise you can use the script below. If you already have a selection, it deselects anything that is not text (i.e. it selects within your selection), otherwise will search the entire document.

Select Text Only.js
[right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) and choose Save Link As…]