Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The code is now complete and will execute the link to the main navigation page.
Now that we have created the flash button, we need to place it at the end of our
animation on the main stage of
splash_intro.fla.
This is our animation. We
need to add the
logo_btn
at the end of the animation. Somewhere around frame
125 would be a good spot to place the button. Align the button to the center
of the stage and be sure that you move the stop action in the actions layer to the
same frame number as the button. This will cause the playback head to stop and
let the user click the button. If the stop action is before the button, the user will
never see the button because the playback head will stop short of the frame that
holds the button.
Once the stop action is positioned, you can now publish and test the entire intro
animation movie.
As we mentioned earlier, publishing a Flash file, by default, creates two files
from the flash movie. The FLA file should be saved in images and moved for
archive before upload. This is the proprietary Flash file that has layers and
scenes in editable form. When
File>Publish
is selected, Flash creates an SWF
file and an HTML file. The SWF file is the Shockwave Flash file that gets placed
on the Web page and uploaded to the internet. The HTML file is created simply
act as a container for our SWF file. Flash does this in anticipation for the need
of Web page to play the SWF movie. You can delete the HTML file Flash
generates later. We only need the SWF file. It will be an embedded object in
a Web page we create in Dreamweaver.
Publish all flash files to the root
directory folder (jdimarco).
This is not the most organized way, but it is the
simplest way to keep track of your flash files when you place them up on the
internet. When you get more experience, you can begin to make sub directories
for each component in the site you are creating. Such as “Flash” for all flash files.
When complete, your published files will be
splash_intro.swf
and
splash_intro.htm (the HTM file can be deleted).
In Dreamweaver, we need to rename our main navigation page which may be
named index, to index2.htm. We need to create a new index page in
Dreamweaver. This page will hold your introduction animation and will be the
first page the user sees when they hit your site. Be sure to set the home links in
your site to the appropriate page.
After creating the new index page, go to
Insert>Layout Objects>Layer.
Then you need to position the layer on the page to where you want to place your
Flash animation. After positioning, go to
Insert>Media>Flash. Press
F12 to
preview the page in the browser. Check to see if the button brings you
