'tis the season to be holly, jolly, and cold as all get out - but you don't have to freeze your fingers or soak your gloves to make this holiday snowman. This group of beginner Flash lessons shows how to apply basic animation principles in a Flash environment, then upgrades to add interactivity and sound to make a create-your-own snowman game that's not only easy, but fun.

Lessons:

• Flash Animation 14: Gravity, Squash, and Stretch
• Flash Animation 15: Starting and Stopping Sound Effects
• Flash Animation 16: Adding Sound to Buttons
• Flash Animation 17: Controlling Movie Clips With Buttons and ActionScripting
• Flash Animation 18: Controlling Movie Clips II
• Flash Animation 19: Drag and Drop ActionScripting Commands

I live with eyestrain. My job requires that I spend most of my time either on the computer, or with my nose pressed up against a light table squinting at little detail lines. Some days it's bad enough that I have to wear reading glasses on top of my contact lenses, and everything's still blurry. That can make tracking frame sizes on the Flash timeline a little difficult after a long day; I've actually clicked on the wrong frame and did something wrong more times than I can count just because my eyes won't focus on what I'm doing. Luckily I can avoid that by just making the frames larger. Or smaller - but I'm blind enough already, so I think I'll pass on that.

Ask the magic 8-ball: Will it be socks from Grandma again? Is Uncle Ron going to get drunk in the front yard this year? Am I going to throttle my mother-in-law with a Christmas ham? (The answers: Definitely, not sure, chances don't look good. Don't look good for what? My sanity, or her survival?) All these questions and more can be answered with a little judicious application of Flash animation, Actionscripting, randomization, and whatever your creative little imagination can come up with.

It's hard to believe we're coming to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The past ten years have seen technology blossom at an unparalleled rate, including animation technologies. Flash has grown in leaps and bounds, from its humble (yet breakthrough) beginnings to a full-scale content authoring, collaboration, and interactivity tool. In that time we've seen Flash used to produce some amazing things, from the Erin Esurance commercial spots to the Nota tool and any number of the Weebl animations. We've also seen it used to create some godawful things, like unnavigable websites, unnerving interactive porn, and about 95% of the content on Newgrounds. What's your pick for the Best & Worst of Flash for the past decade?