Getting started with Flash

Okay, so Rye's flash animation (http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62612) inspired me to learn Flash.

I've checked out the web and there are plenty of tutorial out there, but I'm getting overwhelmed at the number of products to use for Flash development. For example, the Macromedia downloads page (http://www.macromedia.com/downloads/) has 1,001 product downloads, and I can't differentiate between them.

Does anyone have any suggestions as far as what toolkit would be a good starter toolkit? Seeing as I'm just starting I have no care to spend $800 on a toolkit and I don't want to use the $800 toolkit's 30 day free trial because if I like doing Flash development after 30 days I'm stuck without a toolkit. So are there trimmed down versions that run cheaper, like in the $20-$30 range?

If I were you I would just go for the single product "Flash MX"

That's probably a good choice if you're just wanting to learn and do flash based animations and interactive swfs. Don't pay the extra for the studio package if you're not planning on using any of the other software, it's just a waste of money.

What other software is included?

The Macromedia Studio packages usually come with:

• Flash
• Dreamweaver
• Fireworks
• Freehand
• Coldfusion

I honestly suggest just getting Flash, Flash MX was a really good version, the ones after that seem to be heavily developer based thus more requiring you to know your way around actionscripting. For animation purposes, you won't need to worry about actionscripting.

Also, once you get your hands on Flash I suggest dabbling around in it a bit and then trying some tutorials, http://www.kirupa.com/ is a really good tutorial site for learning cool stuff you can do with flash. Good luck!

Thanks for the suggestions. :)

Wow, $500 is still a steep price tag. I guess I'll have to try out the 30 day trial and see what I think.