In today's class we first learnt how to create a Flash menu with two animated buttons which contained movie clips, and when clicked they loaded images which faded and tweened into the stage.
It was similar to what we did in the last class, but we used all three types of symbols in this one; graphics, movies and buttons. We also had to use ActionScript on the buttons and to make sure the animation stopped when required.
I've used some of these techniques on my website, and they are essential basics if you want to create a website entirely in Flash. I used two images from the My Documents shared pictures folder. We also had to optimise the images we used in Photoshop before we imported them into our Flash animation, to keep the file size down.
We also learnt how to make a preloader using frame by frame animation with text. With each keyframe I added an extra full stop and in total had 6 frames. For the first frame we used the following ActionScript:
ifFrameLoaded (50) {gotoAndStop(10);
}
Which basically means that once the entire file has loaded (the last keyframe being at 50) then go to frame 10 (the start of the animation, after the preloader frames) and stop. To test this out, we went to Control > Test Movie, and when in this window went the View tab and selected Download Settings > 14.4 (1.2kb/s), the slowest speed. By default, the speed is set to 56k (4.7 kb/s). We then went to the View tab again and selected Simulate Download. This shows how long the file would take to load on different bandwith speeds.
For frame 6 we used gotoAndPlay(1); so that the loading animation would start again if the movie hadn't fully loaded. You can download it here:
Download week_8_linking.swf
This week’s class was more advanced than the last, and although I’ve used this technique before I though it was a big step from what we were doing last week. The next class we have is in two weeks, and is our final presentation. I’m a bit pessimistic about the website being good enough by then, we’ll see.
- Jenny McCloskey (Word count: 372 words.)
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