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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.Making your site interactive with ActionScriptThe thought of writing code strikes fear into the heart of any Web designer — with the exception of card-carrying geeks, also known as Web developers. Flash ActionScript, however, is a non-geek’s answer to code. All you have to know is which action to use to pull off an effect. With Script Assist in Flash 8, you select the action and then fill in the parameters. You don’t have to know how to enter code with Script Assist, which is a blessing after having to manually script everything in Flash MX 2004. You’ve probably seen plenty of Web sites with Flash intros. Virtually anyone with the slightest bit of Flashpertise can put together one of those. But what separates the men from the boys is the clever use of ActionScript.
The first place you’ll use ActionScript is creating a preloader. A preloader is either a graphic, animation, or text that displays while enough content loads for the main Flash movie to play without interruption. Are preloaders necessary? Well, sometimes. If your audience accesses the Internet via a dialup connection, a preloader ensures that enough information loads to view your design without interruption. Some Flash designers go over the top with preloaders that contain so many bells and whistles that it loads slowly and needs a pre-preloader of its own. How’s that for redundancy?
If you want a unique menu, you can use ActionScript to create a drag-anddrop menu. Whether you create a cool drag-and-drop menu or a conventional navigation bar, when your visitors click a button, you can literally show them where to go. And when they get there, you can up the ante with ActionScript. You can use ActionScript for games, to create animated banners, to create moving menus, to add the time of day to your Web site, and much more.
Get a move on with animationThe clever use of animation gets the attention of your visitors and has them returning on a regular basis. If you create a tricked-out navigation menu, you can use animation to instruct your visitors how to use it. And if you’re really adventurous, you can use animation to create a text banner with text that dances or flies into position.
Animation takes place on a timeline. The timeline is broken down into frames. The number of frames that occupy one second of the timeline is determined by the frame rate of the movie. The more frames you have, the smoother the motion. However, a higher frame rate increases the file size.
If you’ve created animation in the past, you may have meticulously made changes on every frame to get it to work. However, with Flash, you can automate your animations. All you need to do is create a symbol, a few keyframes, and let motion tweening do the rest. Another cool way to attract attention is with an animated banner.
Flash has another form of automated animation known as shape tweening. Shape tweening can be used on editable shapes to change them into different shapes. Shape tweening isn’t sophisticated enough to morph your ex-significant-other into a donkey, but it can create interesting animations.
Soundtracks and other operatic delightsFlash soundtracks can be a joyful noise or irritating enough to make your viewers hightail it without ever looking at your site. Everyone has different musical tastes; that’s why there are so many music genres. Instead of subjecting your visitors to your personal taste in music, you can give them a choice. And to go with the choice, you can put the viewer in control of the experience with a sound controller. Now how cool is that?
You can also add sound to buttons. If you’re a photographer showing off your portfolio with a Flash Web site, what would be cooler than a shutter click when one of your visitors clicks a button?
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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.