For the TOTAL Beginner! - A Step by Step Tutorial for Making a Flash Website

[that mike guy]

So I finally made a tutorial for building a Website in Flash for Beginners.

I've noticed that its almost impossible to find a good step by step guide to making a Flash website.

So here's the link to the tutorial:
http://www.dieselshack.com/a_tutorial-02.php

Easy to follow steps and with screenshots. No crazy action script knowledge required.

Its taken me about 3 hours to put this together, so let me know how it works out for you, and feel free to tell others about it!

Mike

[captain spanky]

woooooooooo
that is cooool.
I've not really worked with flash much and i've never made anything interactive so that has been VERY helpful! I understood the concepts involved and will apply them to other things i will feature on the site... I'm hoping you might want to make a second step to the tutorial maybe expanding on a few things? or including other things you could do?
The only thing that struck me was that this tutorial was obviusly written for a pc user so i had a little confusion finding the actions dialogue box etc on the mac, but once i found it, no problems.
Thank you for doing this and here is my first attempt at making a site with your tutorial. The design needs looking at and i'll also have to come up with some content but not bad for an hour's work.. :)
Higg's test site (http://www.higg.co.uk/test/higgflash.swf)

[NewEra]

very good work
although it's not for the beginner, let us say people familiar with flash will be more accurate
keep coming of this great tutorial
thank you

[reuber1]

This seems different than how I've been told how to do this. Typically, wouldn't you want to load different swfs onto a specified layer on the main swf? It seems that this way you'd get a pretty large file size by having all of the pages/links in one swf unless you keep it as bare-bones and basic as possible with almost no animation whatsoever.

In any case, I haven't got a site up yet so take my comments with a grain of salt. I will agree that there are almost ZERO resources for doing this online; at least last time I looked...someone will probably google it and find 9,000 results now. I'm sure if someone kept things basic and not too fancy, this would still be helpful.

[captain spanky]

i can't work out how to animate the pages?
if i use that action on the buttons where it means go to and stop, obviously you cant have it animate as it just jumps to a specific frame... so how toy i get it to animate between pages? :)

[reuber1]

You can create a movieclip symbol rather than a button with a specific animation when you rollover, and give it an onRelease gotoURL or gotoFrame command on the instance of the clip; it'll require some basic actionscript knowledge. I don't know the exact code this moment.

EDIT: I just re-read and I thought you were talking about the buttons themselves. For doing a transition animation between each page, you would have to create that either directly on the time line or use movie clip symbols that load immediately when the "stopped" frame loads.

[that mike guy]

This seems different than how I've been told how to do this. Typically, wouldn't you want to load different swfs onto a specified layer on the main swf? It seems that this way you'd get a pretty large file size by having all of the pages/links in one swf unless you keep it as bare-bones and basic as possible with almost no animation whatsoever.

basically ya,
I think that will probably be my second tutorial - how to use loaded swf's for your pages to keep the file size down.

But doing it the way i illustrated in my tutorial is still ok as long as you dont let the file size get out of control.

Thank you for doing this and here is my first attempt at making a site with your tutorial. The design needs looking at and i'll also have to come up with some content but not bad for an hour's work.
.....
i can't work out how to animate the pages?
if i use that action on the buttons where it means go to and stop, obviously you cant have it animate as it just jumps to a specific frame... so how toy i get it to animate between pages?


Thanks for going through the tutorial; im glad it helped.
As for your question about having it animate as it goes to a specific frame, you can do that in the main time line as long as you keep your file size low. (later I'll do a tutorial on how to do this with a loaded swf.)

Let's say you want to click your button and have it jump to frame 30, because that is where the next page is. For your button actions, make it 'Go to and PLAY' to frame 20 or something. So you would have your animation effect on frames 20 to 30, and on frame 30 you apply the 'STOP' action to it.

This is the easiest way to do it. Later when you get into loaded swf's, you would have this sequesnce in the loaded swf rather than the main timeline.

For all you more advanced Flash users reading this, I know this way sounds pretty 'low-tech', but its great for learning the basic skills to apply to more advanced functions later.

[reuber1]

I suppose if you don't get too crazy with it, that tutorial would be fine. I did something similar to that methodology in school, though it wasn't necessarily for a web site, so I understand it. As long as you manage your assets, don't have content by the assload, and don't get too crazy, that will work well for beginning flash designers.

I can't count how many times I said "I wish someone would explain how to do this online". Well, I can, but I'd get tired of counting after an hour. :D

[captain spanky]

well thank you muchly mister mike for the tutorial... and feel free to make the second one whenever you get some free time.. (read: NOW NOW NOW!!!) :D
looking forward to loaded swfs... :)

[NewEra]

This seems different than how I've been told how to do this. Typically, wouldn't you want to load different swfs onto a specified layer on the main swf? It seems that this way you'd get a pretty large file size by having all of the pages/links in one swf unless you keep it as bare-bones and basic as possible with almost no animation whatsoever.

In any case, I haven't got a site up yet so take my comments with a grain of salt. I will agree that there are almost ZERO resources for doing this online; at least last time I looked...someone will probably google it and find 9,000 results now. I'm sure if someone kept things basic and not too fancy, this would still be helpful.


loaded SWFs in the main swf isn't the way you should start with if you are a beginner
i guess
i think the way illustrated in the tutorial for people that are beginner but yet familiar with flash environment :rolleyes: (you 'll have to find your way to the action script panels)

[reuber1]

That's fine, but as I said if you want something more robust, that's how you're going to have to do it. I'm not saying his way is wrong, but if you want to go bigger, it isn't the most efficient method.

Then again, if you're just a beginner with flash, why would you want to develop a website using Flash technology to begin with? If someone is still uncomfortable with Flash, stick with HTML when putting a site online. Mediocrity will show. I've been working with Flash for several years, and I am still hesitant about putting a Flash site online. But I still understand how it works.

[cre8tor]

So I finally made a tutorial for building a Website in Flash for Beginners.

I've noticed that its almost impossible to find a good step by step guide to making a Flash website.

So here's the link to the tutorial:
http://www.dieselshack.com/dieselshack_tutorial-01.htm

Easy to follow steps and with screenshots. No crazy action script knowledge required.

Its taken me about 3 hours to put this together, so let me know how it works out for you, and feel free to tell others about it!

Mike

Thanks so much Mike!
I've built flash sites before but I've always wanted a more detailed tutorial to help me.

I'll really use this a lot!

[chris_bcn]

nice tutorial.

HOwever, I'm not at all convinced of the idea of teaching people to make 100% flash websites. Especially beginners - as it merely reinforces poor design principles. Large files size - inaccesible websites... Flash is a great technology if used well. I'm afraid this would be an example of it being used poorly. (if anyone created a site using the tut I mean)

I'm sure that people will find this useful though and introduce them to the fundamentals of using flash.

Maybe your next tutorial could be on integrating flash within a CSS framework - which would make more sense.

[Meganpru]

Thanks Mike,
I've been looking for a good beginner tutorial. It's been bookmarked for later use! :)

I must agree with Chris, though, that a basic site shouldn't be made in Flash, but in HTML, but everyone's gotta start somewhere, right? You rock!