Flash Explained

Before starting, please note that this is a tutorial made for Flash 8 Professional. Some effects, like drop shadow and other blending fx, are not available in previous versions of Flash.

While making this button, you will learn to:

• Make a nice colored gradient effect,
• Create a button label with some modifications,
• Apply a drop shadow effect to the label to give it more depth,
• Create masks so that the button looks more compact,
• Make a rollover state with animation inside it,
• tips and tricks related to Flash design and much, much more.

You can see the final result that you’re going to achieve at the end of this tutorial below. Roll your mouse over the buttons and click on them to see how nice they behave.

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In this tutorial I will show you how to create a slick sliding effect that reveals an image while covering another one.

As is shown in the example below, this slideover is done with easing. Move your mouse over the movie and see how the imaginary line between the two images is slowing down as it approaches your mouse.

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In this tutorial, you will learn a cool thing that Flash can do: to load an external JPG (or JPEG, as you wish) image while the main SWF is running. Loading external JPG images in Flash has many benefits:

• You don’t have to put the images in your SWF, so that its size will be much smaller and it will load much faster,
• If you ever decide to change a picture, you just change it and upload it without having to modify the SWF movie,
• You can make a simple interface which will be used to load as many different images as you want.

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There is a certain type of preloader often seen on flash sites: the one where the text showing the percentage of the movie loaded changes color as the loading bar passes over it. This is done with the use of a mask.

To see what I mean, look at the flash movie below. This is the one you’ll be making in this tutorial. The size of this preloader, including the image of the sparrow and the logo, is just 5 KB! Now isn’t that just extra cool? 🙂

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In this lesson you will see how easy it is to create a nice Flash website menu interface and make it work also! Particularly, you will learn how to:

• Create simple buttons and duplicate them,
• Make your link text look crisp and readable,
• Make mirror copies of your buttons easily,
• Design and code a simple navigational system.

In the Flash example below you can see what you are going to create with this tutorial. Try clicking the buttons!

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I have received many requests to explain how to create an mp3 player in Flash, so here it is! You will learn to create the following (please note that this is a Flash 8 tutorial):

• A visual equalizer with colored bars,
• A Sound object for external mp3 loading,
• A play / stop button for your users, to turn the music and the equalizer on and off,
• How to make your mp3 player a part of your Flash or HTML site.

You can see the player in action below this paragraph! Click on the stop and play buttons to see how easily a user can switch the music on or off. The is just a proposed design. Once you learn how to create this kind of a player, skinning it and making it blend in with the rest of your site design is an easy task.

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Create a digital alarm clock with lcd screen following this tutorial. It will be a clock which enables the user to set the alarm for a certain time and then turn it on or off.

Check out the example below to see the clock. Turn the speakers on to hear the alarm. You can see the explanation on using this clock at the end of this page.

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Learn to create the basic preloader with a loading bar showing how much of the movie has loaded. The advantage of a graphical preloader of this kind is that is the most intuitive for a user to see how much more she or he must wait to acces your site. Here’s a nice preview of what you’ll be creating in this tutorial:

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In this tutorial you will learn how to create buttons that show an animation when you roll your mouse over them. The animations inside the buttons will be frame by frame animations, standard motion tween and guided motion tween animations.

On top of that, you will see how to design the buttons so that they convey that old-school gaming look. See below the final result of this tutorial – roll over the buttons to see the animation effects.

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This tutorials shows you how to create a cool, hi tech looking floating menu in Flash. I will teach you here to design it to look awesome, like all those nice sites look.

Before you begin, please look at the finished hi tech menu to see what you’ll be building in this lesson.

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