This Flash Web Design course focuses on dynamic content. The tutorial series is broken into 10 video lessons....
Lesson 1 - Interface Design and Illustrating in Flash 8 -84 minutes
The series kicks off with some easy methods for developing interface type objects. For anyone totally unfamiliar with the Flash environment this lesson has you in mind. The basics are covered, and we finish with a little animation and some simple Actionscript.
Lesson 2 - Publishing Tricks - 60 minutes
Instead of delaying this topic until the very end, I decided it best to show everyone how to publish their upcoming Flash masterpieces early on. The new Active Content update is discussed, as well as some publishing tricks. Like creating Flash pages where certain elements widen, lengthen or change location based on the Stage.
Lesson 3 - Using XML to Build a Dynamic Menu - 253 Minutes
Actionscript junkies, this is your fix!! Over 4 hours of coding awaits behind these doors. XML data is loaded into Flash, parsed, and used to dynamically create a top menu with submenu items. The best part: fonts, colors, sizes, spacing, links, are all customizeable!
Lesson 4 - Loading Dynamic Text - 94 Minutes
Here we discuss loading variables in from a .txt file then displaying it in a dynamic text box. This makes it easy to update the text of a Flash site, without editing or even republishing the .swf. We also create a couple different types of scrollable text areas: one programmed by us, another is set up using the UIScrollbar Component. Actionscripted Text formatting and using CSS formatting is also discussed. Last, we use Input text to create a password protected portion of the SWF file.
Lesson 5 - Loading External SWF files - 83 Minutes
Got a big Flash project? Consider this, you can load unlimited SWF files on top of each other. Think of it like stacking sheets of transparent paper. Loading and controlling elements within swf files is the major topic in this lesson. Also in the beginning of the lesson, we create the main interface for your our finished site.
Lesson 6 - Animation - Controlling Scripted Tweens - 68 Minutes
Early on in this series we do some Actionscripted Motion tweens, but in this lesson we really get into ways of controlling them. Stopping, resuming, yo-yo-ing them, and most importantly, initiating other actions when a motion tween ends. Toward the second half of this lesson, we get into creating simple animation effects.
Lesson 7 - Animation 2 - Shape Tweens and Looping Effects - 59 Minutes
More animation is discussed in this lesson. Mostly liquid effects which involved shape tweening and some regular ol' key framing. Toward the end of this lesson we incorporate these effects into the main site we've been creating.
Lesson 8 - Setting up a Gallery for Displaying Images -47 Minutes
Lesson 8 and 9 focus on methods for creating an image gallery or what you could think of as your main content area for the site. Most everything else discussed so far has been applied toward the "wrap-around" for your main content. Obviously images play a big part in the main content of most sites, so thats the first topic here. As with everything else in this site, the images are loaded externally, so there's no need to delay visitors to your site with long loading times.
Lesson 9 - Loading Thumbnails and Preloading Images - 92 Minutes
For those of you loading in many images, a thumbnail gallery comes in handy. The gallery set up in this lesson, brings in names of the images from a txt file, then uses those variables to populate the gallery with thumbnails, and finally sets up their corresponding larger images to be loaded when clicked. Also a "Loading"
movieclip is created to show the progress as each image is loaded.
Lesson 10 - Loading Mp3's and Adding Finishing Touches - 87 Minutes
Finally, Lesson 10 discusses how to load external MP3 files. A basic player is setup for loading more than one track, a volume slider, stop button, and simple visualizer is created. And last but not least, a short review on how to add more content to the site framework, as well as, a quick reminder on changing colors and fonts in the finished file seen above.
