Confusion over cs4 please help

[Pangaea]

Hi there folks
I have recently started to experiment with CS4, however I am not new to flash by any means, and have quite alot of experience with it in the past using it mostly as a visual/animation tool to produce either flash websites, or general flash web content (but not at the action script level,, although "HAD" to use the bread and butter stuff, but must stress im NO programmer)

Anyway, I have not really done anything of significance with flash since Flash 8. I had quick goes of CS, CS2, CS3, but never took the time out to familiarise myself with the consecutive changes and improvements from previous versions. In a nutshell my head is still in Flash8 Mode.

Anyway I tried to start an experimental project the other day with CS4, but have run into a little confusion already at this early stage regarding what for me is essential and fundamental functions of flash, that despite me knowing how to do in flash8 cant seem to work out how to in cs4.

First problem i came to was with keyframes, in particular how to select and copy individual or more frames from within a tweened range of frames.
On flash8 if i create an animation tween from frame 0 to 10 , it lets me select frames within the tween (blue area).. and copy them. For me its quite common to copy first and last frames of animation tweens so i have a frame template (so to speak) of correct ending or starting position/effects i can then copy into other parts of the scene. However in CS4 when i try to select the last animation of a tween, so lets use my 0 to 10 example, if i select frame 10 (or indeed any frame in the tween) CS4 selects the whole tween range. It dosent seem to want to let me select individual frames. Now after looking about i discovered the "create classic tween" option which i was very relieved to find, so started using that instead. My general question is what are the differences in using Classical and Normal? I know I ended up using classic , but since im starting to learn flash all over again ide like to familiarise myself with the normal cs4 tween method, but im quite confused as to the way it works in terms of being able to setup tweens between 2 keyframes easily (like flash8)... and other things like the selecting frames from a tween i already mentioned above.

The 2nd problem ive having is really really frustrating me. and i cant see what on earth im doing wrong. Its an issue regarding setting a symbol to move to a certain frame/label when clicked on with a mouse. Again i cant tell you how many times ive done these simple things in flash8 or under.. but CS4 is just either doing things in a completely different way or there is a bug somewhere.... So ...as an example i create a scene,.. whole scene is 20 frames. I have an anim tween on frame 2 to 19..
i have 4 layers
labels
actions
ball
ground

labels = (@10 "start")
actions = (@1 stop() ..... @20 stop()
ball = (@1)
- ball timeline: 2 layers
dummy / button symbol
ball

(@10)
- ball start of animation
(@19)
- ball end of animation

ground = (@1 to 20)

On the actions the symbol dummy from the ball (not the keyframe) there should contain the actions code of :

on (release) {
	_root.gotoAndPlay("start");

}

however CS4 wont let me click into the action box.. all the right click menus to add code are ghosted out too. I try recreate the exact same steps in Flash8 and its no problem. Now I know that code is ac2 .. and i am aware that cs4 uses ac3,.. but before attempting to put the code in I set the pull down compatibility options to ac1-ac2.. but still it wont let me type in the code box.
So i decided to Copy over the dummy from the Flash8 and bring it into cs4.. it worked . and for some odd reason cs4 now lets me edit the ac on that dummy. Anyway i go test the movie, it runs ,, ball is un-clickable.. and there is this error:

"WARNING: Actions on button or MovieClip instances are not supported in ActionScript 3.0. All scripts on object instances will be ignored.

First of all I was under the impression that cs4 had at least "some" back compatibility.. Is it not possible to use ac2 in cs4? If not why dose cs4 have an option to set it to ac1/2 mode?

Anyway, as you can see im totally lost here, all this was like 2nd nature to me in flash8.. trying cs4 is like almost a completely different way of doing things.

just to rehash
1. Why is it not possible to select key frames in a tween

2. why when creating a key frame on frame 1 then another keyframe on frame 10 with diff position, and right clicking in-between those frames and selecting create tween dose cs4 not create an animation between the two key frames (like flash8 / classic tween mode)

3. Why will cs4 only let me enter action script on keyframes of symbols rather then the symbols themselves

4. Why is ac2 giving me errors in cs4 despite cs4 having options to select ac1/2 compatibility mode in the action scripts window and when starting a project.


any hints on these specific areas would be great.. im sure I can swat up on the rest.. but those issues up there are kinda bread and butter, and to be honest i cant make much early progress in a project while there is confusion surrounding those areas.

hope some can give me some advice
regards
pan

[rynoe]

AS3 was the last thing Macromedia did to upgrade flash before they sold the company. AS3 is a full on OOP language. There is a huge difference between as2 and as3, pretty much 2 completely different languages. The changes on the GUI from old flash 8 to CS4 are also completly different. Flash 8 was a Macromedia product while CS4 was the second iteration of an Adobe Flash.

Never really was a big Adobe fan. Your limited experiences with flash really bears that out.

In a nutshell...your really going to have to forget what you learned and treat the product as though it is completely new.

[Pangaea]

Hi rynoe

After looking around the general gui and other things, i see that, yes indeed you are right... it looks like im going to have to hit the books with this, big time.

always the case with me tho... late to the party, as usual

thanks for the reply/advice
regards