Basic Actionscripting for Running Flash Movies

Basic Actionscripting for
running Flash Movies

Assignment: Work on your 4th website--
"Flash Banner ad," which is due on Friday, April 21st

Your final, revised Design Portfolio will be due
during the final exam period Monday, May 8th,
at 10:30. a.m. Be thinking about revising the five
websites in your Design Portfolio:

1) Portfolio page, 2) Web genre website, 3) Image website, 4) Flash Banner ad, and 5) Flash website

a). Basic elements of a webpage
b). Elements of a basic Flash Banner Ad
c). Elements of a Basic Flash website
d). Web Design Criteria for Final Design Portfolios

1.   Web Design Portfolio Site ( due Jan. 30)

2.      Web genre Site (due March 3 )

3.      Image Site (due March 24)

4.      Flash Banner ad (due April 21 )

5. Flash Site (Due May 8th)

1. Criteria for Web Design websites

a). Basic elements of a webpage
b) .Elements of a basic Flash Banner Ad
c) Elements of a basic Flash movie webpage
d). Web Design Criteria for Final Design Portfolios

2. Examples of four basic Flash Banner Ads.

3. Example Flash File to use in class for
examples:

moet4.fla and sewflash2.fla

4. See example of Sewall Flash Banner Ad

5. .Students' Favorite Flash websites

4. Creating Invisible Buttons that when you click anywhere on a Flash Banner Ad the button takes
your to a URL

See Invisible button Flash movie
On the very top layer, create a white box that fills your entire Flash movie stage.
Select this white box and make it a symbol by pressing F8, now make this symbol a button.
Place this symbol at the start and ending of your movie in keyframes.
Now select these buttons and make it work
on release--get URL:

on (release) {
getURL("http://www.colorado.com");
}
Make sure you motion tween between these
two buttons.
Now go in and make the alpha states on these
buttons "0". This will cause the button to
be invisible.
This trick will only work if you first make these
white boxes symbols and then select "button."
And then set the actions for these buttons in Actions.
Put these invisible buttons in Flash Banner Ads
so that a user can click on it to go to the website
the Ad advertises.

3.The Fading Picture within a Picture Flash trick

See Fading Pictures within Pictures example
Use Alpha to make one image fade out into
another image fading in.

4. A simple Flash Pre-loader

See Flashkit.com tutorials for Flash .fla files that
demonstrate how to do certain actions in
flash.
Basic Pre-loaders and Bar Pre-loaders:Tutorials

3. Pre-loaders

5. Use common flash libraries to build Flash
movies from older Flash movies

Go to the "File" menu and select "open as
library" to open a Flash library for another
Flash movie.
You can have several different Flash libraries
open at the same time when you are
creating a new Flash movie.
Flash libraries are easy ways to share symbols,
movie clips, and object and images across
different Flash movies

6. Starting Flash movies inside Flash movies.

See Flashmov1.html for an example of
a Flash movie that loads and plays
4 other Flash movies inside itself.
In order to load Flash movies inside other
Flash movies you need to use "actionscript."
You need to create a button in your first
Flash movie that when pressed will play
another Flash movie.
The Actionscript code for this button is:

on (release) {
loadMovieNum("shapetween.swf", 0);
}
You create this code using the "Actions Panel"
The first action you choose is "on release" which
will cause the button to act when it is pressed.
The second action is to choose "load Movie" and
type in the "flash.swf" file that you want to run.
In order for this to work properly, you must choose
"0" for the level in the "load movie" box. This causes Flash to open up the new movie and replace the old movie that the button is on.
In order for this to work, you must put some
actionscript code in the second Flash
movie you are running. The code says that after
this Flash movie is played, Flash should go back
and load and play the first Flash movie you started
with.
Here is the actionscript code that you need to
put at the end of the second Flash movie in
a "blank keyframe":

loadMovieNum("flashmov1.swf", 0);
This trick is based on looping. Flash is told to
open one movie from another movie and when
that second movie is run, it is told to re-open
the first movie.
In order for this to work you must put this
actionscript code in the last frame of the
second movie in a "blank keyframe." The
blank keyframe causes the second Flash movie
to disappear and not "re-play."
So after the second movie is played the
first movie with the "play movie" button is
re-opened and reappears on the screen.
The actionscript command in the second Flash
movie is simply to "load Movie" and choose
level 0, which will cause flash to close the
second flash movie and then re-open the
first Flash movie.

7.Using "frame labels" to make only certain parts
of a Flash movie loop instead of having the whole
Flash movie loop again and again.

See loop.html as an example of a movie
that loops the last two actions of the movie.
Choose the exact frame you want to label
in your Flash movie. This will cause the
Properties box to open the Frames panel.
In the Frames panel, type the name you want
to give the Frame.
After typing this frame name, and clicking on the
Frames panel, you will see the Frame name
added to the Movie timeline.
Having named the frame, you can now use
actionsript code to cause Flash to loop back
and replay certain frames by using the
"goto" command.
The actionscript code for this action is:

gotoAndPlay("rest");
Notice using the "goto" action you can select
either "go to and play" or 'go to and stop"
In order for this to work, you must choose
"frame label" and the named frame you
want to go back to.
You can order the Flash movie to loop back to
another named frame in another scene in that
movie.
The "goto" command is another example
of how Flash movies can use 'looping"
to control actions.

8. Basic Actionscript commands for Flash are:

"stop" to stop the Movie
"play" to play the Movie
"Goto" to have a Flash movie go to a specific
frame in the Flash movie.
"On" which adds actions to buttons to
get them to work when pressed. The
default action for buttons is "on release."
You can select various states for "On"
such as "mouse over" or "mouse out."
"Load Movie" causes Flash to load and
play the Flash movie selected. Remember
to choose "level 0" if you want the loaded
Flash movie to replace the first Flash movie.
"GetURL" causes Flash to find, load, and
play a webpage. Use this command to cause
Flash movies to open webpages.
In "getURL" you must specific the exact URL
address and choose to open the page in
either self, blank, parent, or top window.
The window variable in 'getURL" refers to
whether you open the webpage in the same
or a new window in your webbrowser. These
are the same options for opening html
files in Dreamweaver.

8. Learning new tricks while during the last
two weeks of class

If there are basic web design tricks that I haven't
covered so far in class, please let me know so that
I can make sure I cover them in the last two weeks
of class.
If, while you are working on revising your Design
Portfolios you need some refresher tips on
doing certain web design tricks, please let me know.

9. Helpful Flash websites

10. Flanders' Two-Step Recovery Program for Web Designers

"There's a tendency to add graphics, frames,
bevels, etc. to a site because it can be
added."
"Just because you can add a technology to your
page doesn't mean you should....So ask yourself this: 'Does adding this new technology really enhance your website?' "
"Two-Step Recovery Program for Web Designers:

             1. We admit we are powerless over new Web
                   technologies and our Web sites have
                   become unmanageable.

              2. We will only add design elements to a page
                    if they help the site make money or if they
                    are appropriate to the theme of the site.

12. Paul Ingram, Flash Web Designer, on when to use Flash:

"The main appeal of Flash is its capability to combine and manipulate objects to make animations called "movies" with astonishingly small file sizes."
See Paul Ingram's website: www.ingramlabs.com/
"We got tons of resistance from customers, but now people come to us wanting Flash. We have to
protect clients from themselves sometimes--
Flash isn't always appropriate."
"Many websites are more informational than an
   entertaining....Because Flash is difficult to update,
   if you need a fully database-driven site, then it's
   more difficult to use Flash."
"We use Flash as a major website element only
when the audience is expecting an extraordinary
visual experience."
If you use Flash in your webpages, always give the
user a choice between a "Flash version" and a
"non-Flash version" of a page.

Shockwave.com
QuickTime--Streaming Audio and Video
Macromedia Flash Showcase
FlashAnimation.net
Thinkmango.com
Paul Ingram Web Design