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I'd like to preface
this tutorial with an introduction first, some things for you
to try, and then we will get down to starting your first movie
in Macromedia Flash.
When
you first open up Macromedia Flash it seems complex,
intimidating and incredibly frustrating. Being an artist I was
extremely disappointed with the drawing tools. This was unlike
anything I had ever used and I would often open up flash , get
frustrated and shut if off again so if it looks so hard why
Flash?
You
can add animations to your site using GIF's. Unfortunately
GIF's are limited to 256 colours. Another
downside is that GIF's are many images saved in one so
the file sizes get high quickly and GIF's should be used
sparingly if you want to keep your load times
down. You can factor in interactivity that just
isn't an option with a GIF, except for combining GIF's with
Java applets or JavaScript's, even so flash far exceeds the
capabilities of GIFs. You are only limited by your
imagination. Flash is sleek sexah, loads quickly and can add
all kinds of pizzazz to your pages.
You
can do a lot with Java applets and there is plenty of applets
out there to be found but if you want to create your own you
have to learn to program in Java (I have also wrote tutorials
for that available here at Empire). While there's things you
can do in Java that you can't do in Flash, Flash offers more
all around stability in a browser then Java. Don't get me
wrong Java has a place but Flash is worth getting familiar
with and you do not have to be a programmer to use it. Once
you demystify Flash and you have that "AHAA" moment
it is very powerful and can save you loads of time.
If
you are already familiar with flash skip on to the more
complex tutorials. If your a total newbie I am going to
recommend you start with Swish. I can hear Flash enthusiast
gasping because I just said that but the fact is the tutorials
in Flash suck and do little to truly explain what's going on
when you are new to vector graphics. There is a method to my
madness here. Swish lets you create cool text effects and
produce SWF's like Flash except its super easy and you can
have your first one started in a few minuets after installing
the program. The reason I suggest starting with Swish is it is
a very simple way to begin to grasp the concept of layers and
a timeline. It opens up a window into what happens inside
Flash. a gentler introduction that can be used as a
transitional phase.
After
you have played around a little bit with Swish and you are
understanding timelines then I recommend you go ahead
with the tutorials that come with Flash.
There
is loads of sites on the web that offer up free SWF's and
FLA's that you can download and open up in flash. Pick a few
and have a look play around with them see how they are made. I
dont want you to be able to reproduce them here just get a
feel for what is going on inside flash so we can demystify it
and get down to buisness.
Now
that you have played a little bit its time for our first
lesson.
The movie
properties in Flash is where you change the background colour,
size, define the number of units in your movie and the speed
your movie plays at.
Go to the
menu Modify > Movie.
.A new dialogue
box will pop up.
-
The frame
rate is the speed your Flash movie plays.
frames per second or FPS adjust this. You speed up and
slow down the movie by adjusting the FPS. Higher=Faster
lower=slower.
-
This is
also where you pick your background colour.
-
To size the
stage dimensions of the movie down to the contents in your
movie use the Match contents button.
That's it you
just set the ground work down for your first Flash
Movie.
From the
lessons you did with Macromedias tutorials create something
simple for your movie. When your ready lets export it.
go to File >
Publish. Flash will now create the <object>, <param>,
and <embed> classid and pluginspace html tags and attributes.
Open the HTML file that Flash created, right click on the open
file (somewhere the movie isn't nested) try the bottom of the page and
select view source from the dialogue box and copy the
code that looks like this
<object width="500" height="300">
<param name="movie" value="myfirstmovie.swf">
<embed src="somefilename.swf" width="500" height="300">
</embed>
</object>
paste it into your
HTML page where you want your Flash movie. You can also view the
source by opening the file in notepad.
save the SWF file in the
same directory as the html when you upload your creation.
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