Simon C

I want to rebuild my website, but I want to do it in flash or shockwave but know nothing about them.

Whats the best way of learning them.

Cheers
Simon

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Other than go out & get loads of expensive books or do expensive courses, the Flash Tutorial in Flash MX is a pretty good starting point (or whatever version you have - thats mine)

GaryK

tell everyone you're an expert and go and get some paying work!! There's nothing like a bit of pressure to make you learn something! Seriously though I don't think learning something unless you have a specific goal in mind will work. To perhaps put a more realistic slant on my first sentence perhaps you could approach people and be honest, say its something you are learning but will do small pieces of work for free initially, that way you have to learn it but more importantly you then have reference work.

Good luck!

Gary

angrynorth

Okey doke, here's my advice

Flash ethics first

Firstly, no offence intended, but if this is a serious site rather than just a homepage with some pics of your cat on then get a professional to build it for you. Don't use your site to learn things, learn them and then do the site.

2nd piece of advice, there are very few sites out there that can justify being 100% flash, it takes years of practise to create a practical / usable all flash site. Only use flash as something to enhance a site rather than control it. Despite what Macromedia claims there are a lot of people out there who don't have flash installed and even more who come out of a site as soon as they see something in flash loading in.

3rd. Do not over do it. Flashy effects and wizzy woo war pop bang eyeball bashing stuff all over a site does not keep people interested, it makes them go ow in the eye and move along.

------

Now for the how to learn it.

If you really want to learn flash, its best to learn Actionscript from the beginning.
Watch lots of telly and study how things move, watch animations and real life objects carefully and in slow motion as things don't always move how you think they do until you get right down to it. This will help whatever you do look real.

The flash tutorials in the programme are reasonable but can over simplify things and end up confusing you when you move into more complex stuff. So treat them merely as a guide to show you where each tool item is.

Lastly, go to somewhere like www.flashkit.com and download built movies and reverse engineer them, you can really see how things are build in the real world then. Although this site has hardly anything new added to it in about a year the old stuff is still very useful

Hope that helps and good luck

Simon C

Its just to do a home page, and give me something to add to my CV. More of an experiment than anything else.

Something like www.rossb.co.uk

Simon

Boyakasha

iTrader: (2)

Well if it is anything like that page I wouldn't bother, people are so wrapped up in flash etc that they forget what the purpose of the site is.

Stick to what you know best and create a good site that gets the information across to the user in the best fashion, you don't need all the bells and whistle to make a good site.

angrynorth

I can only see one piece of flash there and that is the bouncing ball, seeing as though it loads in quick its OK. But considering that most people won't see it then is there any point?

If you are looking for a simple to make flash site to gain inspiration from then this ( http://philippmaan.net/ ) is a good place to start. Not too difficult to do but looks great and loads fast.

Simon C

It makes this look fantastic.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/verminhunter/homepage.htm

Simon

angrynorth

Arrgh! Java navigation Someone needs to get off the internet

Simon C

No mate, thats my homepage as it stands, does it answer why I started this thread??

GaryK

Yep simon I cant see the menus at all (running mozilla) on the web less is usually more and also as angry said not everyone has flash you should always work with lowest common denominator.

Gary

angrynorth

Well, I suggest that getting yourself a copy of flash and using the tutorials to familiarise yourself with it. It won't take you long to come up with something tangible if you stick with it

SJ_Skyline

Echoing the comments of Angrynorth and Gary - A site should degrade gracefully across mutiple browser platforms.

You can achieve many fancy effects without the use of image swapping, animated gifs and flash by the clever use of stylesheets and layout. Careful use of colour and shading is also paramount, colourblind people see reds and greens as greys, some colours contrast well, some just make your eyes bleed

http://www.w3schools.com/ is a good place for resources and tutorials.
http://www.internet.com/ is another great place
http://www.w3c.org/ is the place to visit if you want to apply any standards to your site.

Rich

Coldcutt

Would say same as angrynorth, www.flashkit.com is the daddy for free movies you can pull apart and play with, this will teach you no end on the way to perfecting flahs techniques!

teajunkie

i tried flash once it took ages so i scrapped it and tried SWISH brilliant program quick easy to use and then you get the basics of flash.
great for begginers.
loads of features really worth a look.

www.swishzone.com

Try it you might like it.