The 3 major areas of Flash that you will be working with are the Timeline, Stage, and Tools area:

The Timeline shows the movement of the animation
the Stage (the big white space with the arrow) s where the images will appear
The Tools Palette is on the left.

Important Items:

Frames: Each frame makes up a moment in the Timeline of the animation.

Keyframes: These consist of many frames and mark the place where a change occurs.

Playhead: The red line going down the Timeline plays the animation. Dragging this back and forth with show how the animation proceeds.

Layers: For more complicated animations, different objects and functions go on different layers.