Shape & motion tween in discrete steps

hi hope someone can help me out. i'm new to flash and haven't used actionscript before.
i put a shape tween on the timeline that shrinks a shape a certain number of pixels in a given time. my problem is that it shrinks too smoothly in the movie - I need it to shrink in a step by step fashion, and i'd like to be able to specify the number of steps. i'm hoping that there's a simple parameter that i can use to do this, may be in AS. or may be there would be a way to slow down this tween ? by changing the fps locally without effecting the rest of the movie?
but i'm stuck
i'm looking for a solution that will work for motion tweens too, but imagine that the principle will be the same
also, as a second question, is it possible to tween a bitmap tint color style so that it changes from say red to green over a number of frames?
i'd be very grateful for your advice
many thanks
adam

Can't you put a timer in between the steps?

hi there, thanks for your message, if i understand you right, you're saying that i could set up a timer object in action script that triggers an event to shrink or move my object by x number of pixels. in which case i wouldn't need a tween at all.
hope i got that right?
i've got a major question about this approach
would it mean i couldn't see the actual position or size of objects on the stage while i build the animation? generally i work frame by frame, its like cell by cell animation, so i need to know exactly where objects are on the stage when i click on any frame on the timeline. as far as i understand, an AS timer driven event would only appear at run time, no?
hope this makes sense
cheers

Something like that. Event --> timer delay --> Next event