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Flash Printing Tasks - Part 1: Building a Certificate Template in Illustrator and Flash

By: Robert Reinhardt

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More and more Flash content creators are discovering the power of printing from the Flash Player. Since Flash Player 4, you've had the tools to print content from a Flash movie. Starting with Flash Player 7, a powerful ActionScript class named PrintJob has been on the scene to enable exacting control over printed output from a Flash movie. In this multi-part series, you learn how to build a printable certificate from a Flash movie. In this first installment, you learn how to create the certificate template in Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Flash 8.

TIP: If you'd prefer to learn the PrintJob API from the ground up, read Joey Lott's Printing Flash 7 Content series on Community MX. My series focuses more on a task-based approach, where you learn how to build a specific Flash printing application. Not all features of the PrintJob API will necessarily be covered.

Building a Certificate Border in Adobe Illustrator CS2

In this section, you learn how to build a creative border for your certificate in Adobe Illustrator CS2. If you don't own this software, you can download a trial version here. Illustrator CS2 has many drawing utilities not available in the Flash authoring environment. Specifically, the options for strokes and fills within Flash 8 are somewhat limited. If you want to create a decorative border for a certificate, you should try Illustrator CS2's Brush Libraries.

  1. Open Adobe Illustrator CS2, and choose File > New. As shown in Figure 1, you should automatically be setup for an 8.5" x 11" page size. In the Name field, type certificate_border. Choose RGB as the color space. Click OK to view the new document.

    Figure 1 - The new border applied to the rectangle
    Figure 1 - The New Document dialog box in Adobe Illustrator CS2.

  2. Now, change the default preferences in Illustrator to work within inches instead of pixels or points. Choose Edit > Preferences > Units & Display Performance (or Illustrator > Preferences > Units & Display on Mac). In the Units area, change the General menu to Inches, and click OK.
  3. In the Tools palette, choose the Rectangle tool. On the canvas of the new document, hold the Alt key (or Option key on Mac) while clicking with the mouse. In the Rectangle dialog box, type 7 in for the width and 5 in for the height, as shown in Figure 2.

    Figure 2 - The Rectangle dialog box.
    Figure 2 - The Rectangle dialog box.

  4. Choose the Selection tool and move the new rectangle to the top half of the page.
  5. Open the Borders_Decorative brush library by choosing Window > Brush Libraries > Borders_Decorative. With the rectangle artwork selected, choose one of the borders in the palette. For this example, I used the Gold Leaf border shown in Figure 3.

    Figure 3 - The new border applied to the rectangle
    Figure 3 - The new border applied to the rectangle.

    TIP: You can peruse hundreds of line styles to apply to the rectangle artwork by selecting another library shown in the Windows > Brush Libraries menu.

  6. Choose File > Save to save the document as certificate_border.ai. After you specify a filename, you'll be presented with the Illustrator Options dialog box. Save the file as an Illustrator CS2 document, as shown in Figure 4.

    Figure 4 - The Illustrator Options dialog box.
    Figure 4 - The Illustrator Options dialog box.

  7. Close the document in Adobe Illustrator.

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Keywords
Flash printing, PrintJob API, Illustrator CS2, Flash 8, Movie Clip instance, AI files

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