Re: FLASH: newbie here!

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 11:52 PM 7/3/99 +0530, you wrote:

>hi there. 

>	just joined the mailing list so i'm not really sure how it works.. just

>mail ur ideas and queries to the address and it auto fwds it to all??


That's right -- the listserve takes care of that. Just send new messages to

flashershocker [dot] com

. For replies, just use your mail program's reply

feature, which will preserve the subject header.  We encourage postings to

be of direct relevance to Flash, however an occasional off-topic posting is

fine (for example, a question about server configurations, or hardware

conflicts) -- just preface the subject with <OT> (off-topic) so those of us

who use filters can decide to filter <OT>'s if we wish to.


Welcome to the list, by the way. Any and all level questions are usually

welcome, however it's nice if you do what homework you can before calling

on the list for help. You'll notice lots of references to online help and

tutorial sites. By all means check them out and bookmark them, they have

information not documented elsewhere. I have no official capacity on this

list, but my advice is to not feel bad about asking for help when you're

truly stuck, and just ignore the occasional RTFM remarks as long as you've

tried to figure it out and have done the basic tutorials that Macromedia

provides with the program.



>1. it is  possible to dynamically resize a movie?   for example have a full

>screen intro to the site from where it reduces to a frame from where i can

>lauch htm pages.


Not that I know of. You could fake it by matching the movie background

color to the background of the HTML page, but the movie would still occupy

the original movie size even though you might make it take up less of the

Flash stage. An alternative is to use Get Url at the end of the intro movie

to call a new page into the same frame or window, and put your smaller

navigational movie on that new page. This of course is not a seamless as

using just one Flash movie.

>

>2. how do i get a movie in a frame to control another movie in another frame? 


Through FS Command and JavaScript (hence, limited to JS-supporting

browsers). See http://www.flashcentral.com/Tech/HawaiiMap/ for a demo with

downloadable sample files and a decent explanation of what's going on.



>

>besides all this i'm purely a techie at heart and i take to making this

>kinda stuff easily enough.. but im' horrid when it comes to colour schemes

>and imaginative animations.. any place or resources for the 'creatively

>challenged'!!??


Some surfing should locate design-oriented sites for you. I don't have URLs

offhand. But another approach is to look critically at the sites you like,

and do what any student of painting would do -- copy the masters. Not

ripping them off, mind you, but experimenting with their palettes or their

general layout.  I'd also advise you to start with a very limited palette

of colors and see what you can do with it. And of course the web-safe

palette will provide plenty of limitations but so many permutations you

still need to reduce the selection. You can also ask here for feedback on

your sites -- be specific about what factors you want us to critique.


Best wishes!


Good luck.



Marc Hoffman

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

Flash3 Portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>, featured 

in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn.


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