Building Web Sites All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Incorporating Flash Creations

In This Chapter

• Adding Flash interactivity

• Adding Flash navigation to a Web site

• Creating Flash animations

• Creating a Flash presentation

If you need to kick up a Web design with some multimedia, Flash is an excellent tool to use. With a bit of imagination, you can use this powerful tool to create Web sites that make those of your competition look positively lame. This chapter gives you an introduction to the all‐singing, all‐dancing Flash 8 workspace. Here you find out how to use it to create flashy navigation in a flash, add animation to your designs, and produce stellar presentations. Let the games begin.

Introducing Flash 8

Flash has been used in the past to create introductions and full‐fledged Web sites. However, Flash intros are no longer in vogue, and Flash Web sites are not search‐engine friendly. Despite all this, Flash is as strong as ever; Web designers are just using it in different ways.

Designers are able to control the user's experience in a Web site by how they place items on the Flash timeline. They can also control the flow of the Flash movie using ActionScript. Flash navigation menus consist of buttons that can transport the visitor to other parts of the Web site.

Whether you're creating an animation or a menu in Flash, the end result is an SWF file, which is also known as a movie. When constructed properly, Flash movies are relatively small files. Yet a designer can go over the top by adding so many graphics and other bells and ...