first flash site

[m gunesch]

Here's my $.02 on building a full site in flash:


Tip #1:  Large movies with a lot of interaction should not be built

primarily in the scene1 timeline.  I am a big fan of containing every

element, no matter how large (sometimes the entire thing) in its own movie

clip, then using the scene1 timeline as a minimal skeleton that does, say,

transitions.  Read: __Infinite_Flexibility___.  Scenes are a pain in the ass

for complex projects, but by keeping all elements in their own mc's you can

use scene1 to basically do active 'scene transitions', a sort of overarching

storyboard.


           It was mentioned that when you keep everything in the scene1

timeline that it's critical to label frames just so you can keep track of

where things are (in a huge mess of layers and tweens it's likely) - when

using the mc method all you have to do is use either the library or the

pulldown library (next to the scene changer button on the upper right) and

go into your chosen mc for editing.  Each mc can internally have its own

giant mess of tweening and independently be able to jump around its own

timeline using its own navs without worrying ever about how that will affect

the 'flow' of the main movie.  (Then you can do cool alpha fades on it or

move it while it's playing from scene1!)  You'll find the flexibility this

allows is pretty much unlimited, you just have to get used to flash's most

powerful feature, the ability to name mc's and reference them from anywhere

(far easier in 5 than 4 by the way).


One tip when using this general approach: be sure to always align everything

you create with the center of the stage to make it easy to manipulate from

the main scene.  It's great that you can double-click an mc and build it

right there where it will be played in case you're working with bitmaps that

you don't want to have to rescale it.


Big tip #2:  the surprisingly easy-to-use and massively efficient loadMovie

command.  (Use a blank mc positioned on the stage at the upper left corner

of where you'll be loading in your swf, and give it a name so you can

specify it as the loadMovie target.  You can load all other movies into this

target as well - the previously loaded swf will stay in the user's cache).

It isn't too much of a hassle for building - I mean, you can have several

fla's open safely, so it's not that big of a deal to go between them.

Remember that the swf that's loaded can contain all the same actionscript as

it would if it were just another mc in your main fla, so don't feel there's

any limitation.  Heck, you could even create it all as one big movie, then

later extract certain main mc's (ie site sections) to separate fla's and

update your code to load them as appropriate.  You could even have a chunk

of code that would wait for the main clip to load and then preload each swf

sequentially if you're worried about lag times (you'd have to make the swfs

not play until told to obviously).In the end the user will be so much less

pissed off than if you try and load an entire web site's content in advance,

which goes against people's normal expectations of html sites.


Both of these methods require more patience and difficulty to use in the

end, but we're builders, after all. If you've ever built a house you might

know that it's taking the extra pains to do the small things well that makes

the finished product valuable.


Hope that helps!


Moses Gunesch

www.mosessupposes.com

503 249 1651