ChaoofNee is Making a Flash Site and Could Probably Use Your Help

I think I may ask for some help in Flash, if anyone would be so kind. I'll even do it in a far less annoying fashion than usual.

I'm probably going to have MANY questions about Actionscript 3.0 and Flash CS3 (which I use on the iMac we... well, I have at the art magazine office in school) as I make the flash website for my senior project between today and Thursday. I can get the grasp on this rather easily if pointed in the right direction, but this will be my first time making anything this major.

Here's my basic premise: The name of the magazine is Loomings and I'm making what is to be the online gallery. The adviser wants some insane, graphical showcase. As the name comes from Moby Dick's first chapter, when Ishmael talks about life getting him down and wanting to escape to the sea, I decided to make the website somewhat of a modern interpretation. The user is presented with a desk in a bland, gray office. Everything is grayscale, aside from the various, clickable things that lead to sections. Loomings bends reality as the transitions tear or destroy the scene to allow for the viewing of the content, usually in the guise of a picture gallery, a list of links, or some video.

I'm planning on doing just what was described in this thread here. The stage has one frame and the script and movie clips to the rest. Here is what I'm not sure of: How do I allow for preloaders and transitions and how should I structure the galleries that appear after clicking?

Here's a visual:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/a...1&d=1208920682

Missing are the vector version of the magazine itself that I'm going to add there and some sort of publication (newspaper?) to represent print design work. Sadly, most of the design department in my school is dedicated to print, which means many of the graduates aren't going to get much in the way of work. Good show, Post. Anyways, also missing are the movie clips that I'm hoping will be in the poster on the wall, the screen, the picture frame and the window on the wall (yes, that's what that is on the right).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChaoOfNee

The stage has one frame and the script and movie clips to the rest. Here is what I'm not sure of: How do I allow for preloaders and transitions and how should I structure the galleries that appear after clicking?

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This is a simple and straightforward question, but the answer is really anything but simply because there are a ton of different ways you can approach building a site. I'll try and break down your options as best I can, and what direction you want to take your site in is completely up to you.

There are multiple ways to create a preloaders, and how, where, and when you use them depend on how you are building your Flash file. If all the content for the site is predetermined (i.e. not dynamically driven by database/XML), and is all brought into the library by hand, you would only need a single preloader, for the beginning of the movie. On the other hand, if you are loading images and content from a server (SWF's, images, videos, etc..), you would need a reusable preloader instance that is called whenever you want to load content.

There are positives and negatives to each option. Having all the content included in the file is much easier and requires less programming, there is zero loading time when accessing content on the site, but the initial load time for the Flash movie will be far greater than if the content was loaded up externally. Having content loaded up from an external location requires a lot more programming and planning, but ends up being a far more flexible solution if you want to go and change any content. Being that you do not need to actually go inside the Flash file to change something, you can just change the piece of content that is being pulled. Also, load times initially will be far shorter, but will have small loading periods for pulling the content from the server.

Since you're not all that well versed in Actionscript, my recommendation is to stick with animated transitions. Put frame labels on your frames and when you click a button tell the timeline to gotoAndPlay("yourframelabel"). Otherwise you will end up getting into some procedural event based Actionscript, and while not complicated to do, it takes far more planning because of the coding required. If you're interested in doing code based transitions I recommend you check out TweenMax.

Lastly, your galleries. First you need to decide how you want your gallery to work, this comes down to the loading external resources vs including all of the content inside of the Flash movie. If you are loading it up externally, like I mentioned before, becomes a far more complicated process. Requires a ton more planning, but in the end is the most flexible solution. You would end up using a combination of XML and Actionscript (and powered by a database + server side scripting if you really want to make it as flexible as possible, but not required). If you're not loading it up from an external resource, you just need to give your content in the library instance names, call them by their instance names and say addChild("instancename"), and that will add them to the screen.

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of little details, but I figure this should be enough to get your brain moving about how you're going to go about this. Anymore questions you have I'll try and do my best to answer them without getting as wordy as I did here.

edit: After rereading your post, and my long winded response, I may not have helped you at all. Hopefully I did at least a little bit. :sweat:

It did give me a few things to think about, yes. Thanks.

Some clarification, though:

• XML galleries are definitely what I'm going for, as this school won't let students NEAR the servers. It's great, 'cause we could really learn from that kind of interaction, but whatever.

• I'm actually unsure of how to even do transitions, to tell you the truth. Say I had paint splotches rain down for clicking the poster in the back. I know how to make the animation, but where do I put it?

Transitions are simple. Just make an animation on the base timeline, or your base movieclip with whatever you want your transition to be, give the beginning frame a frame label (or just use the frame #, I use labels for organization), and when you click the button tell the timeline to gotoAndPlay("your frame label"). You can do this any number of times with any number of different animations. You can do this with movieclips you placed on the stage too, by creating the animations inside of the movieclip, giving it an instance name, and telling it on your mouse down to go to a specific frame (MCinstancename.gotoAndPlay("your frame"); ).

As for XML galleries, I recommend you check out some tutorials before you just head first into it. AS3.0 has made parsing XML files far more intuitive in comparison to AS2.0, but it still will take you some time to get used to if you haven't done it before (if you have, it should be a cinch).

http://gotoandlearn.com/ has great video tutorials, and this is a solid XML tutorial that can show you how to parse stuff up in plain text.

Alright, the thing that's scaring me most here is the galleries. I understand XML, but I'm still not sure how to go about it. I've even been trying to find code to just throw in, but nothing good in 3.0.

You're not really going to be able to find code that will fit exactly what you want. Generally the code for XML based galleries is pretty specialized in terms of being built around the specific functionality of a site. This site may have something along the lines of freely available AS3.0 image galleries, but they will most likely need to be customized to fit your site and how you want them to function.

My personal recommendation, if you have the time, learn how to use AS3.0's XML class. It's not too difficult to use, and if there is the possibility of doing any more Flash projects where you are pulling from external resources you will need to use it again.

Hey Chao! My only advice is on the visual side. Scuff it up a bit!

Well, the whole point of it is that the office space is supposed to be very "sickeningly" clean and boring until the art comes in and tears it asunder.

I did some ActionScript practice on another assignment. I think I'm getting the hang of it.
http://www.joesartgoeshere.com/things/flashbanners.html

Great start man. Actionscript is a lot of fun once you get used to the work flow and how things function. It seems like you're well on your way. :)