Please explain Flash development programs

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KEVINS

Post count: 24,375
Joined
May 24, 2001
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I know NOTHING about programming and a NOOB would be a huge overstatement but I want to try and learn how to create a flash image like this and publish it to a website: Carousel Navigation Gallery for Actionscript 3 and Actionscript 2

Can someone tell me what program at a minimum I would need to create affects like that? Since I'm just learning it I will probably fail at it so I don't want to have a bunch of $$ into a program. Adobe has sooo many to choose from I don't understand which one is needed at a minimum.

TIA
Kevin:confused:
 
Kevin,

I hate to say this but that moving carousel... to do it from scratch is pretty complex if you dont understand how flash works.

your dealing with buttons, movie clips, actions, event handlers, you got keyboard detection, mouse detection, you will have multiple timelines to deal with.

A simple one could be made but without the mouse control of grabbing a pic and pushing or pulling it but its still hard if your new.

Theres nothing drag and drop, you have to understand actionscript.

It would be nice to just drop your pics in and push a button

Maybe Sverble will chime in although he'll prolly say the same thing as I have.

Sorry couldnt help

Mike
 
Thanks Mike!

Yea, one of the images looks pretty complicated using the mouse to rotate the image/video and I don't want to go that far. Having images rotate into the background and blur in the background then being able to click on the front image to activate a larger image would be all I want, similar to the lower video in that link.
I went to Barnes and Nobles and spent a few hours browsing through Flash books (haven't purchased anything yet ~$50) and I think I understand in a basic sense the process of creating the image since I do have photoshop. It seems an Action would be used to create the "clear" image then blur it out in the background but not sure yet. The programming to actually "click" on the front image to show a larger view could take some time to figure out and the book seemed to go into this sort of programming.
That website above also has the tutorial that I can purchase for $15 that shows me how to do it so that may be an option..

I have approx 1 year to learn it so I'm still researching it.

The gent from that website got back to me today and he said I would just need Flash CS3 to do those animations. I also discovered that my Win2000 can't be used so I would have to upgrade to XP Professional..aargg..

Please keep the info/help coming!
KS
 
I think I understand in a basic sense the process of creating the image since I do have photoshop. It seems an Action would be used to create the "clear" image then blur it out in the background but not sure yet. The programming to actually "click" on the front image to show a larger view could take some time to figure out and the book seemed to go into this sort of programming.

Kevin,
The bluring and other stuff are done with filters the same as in PS
The whole thing with flash is that you have to think of it as a hierarchy. Say you have 6 images revolving in a circle, that circle is on the main timeline and each image could be say a button with property's of track as menu item then inside each inside the menu is another movie clip with more pics..

Or lets say 1 of the pics comming around is of your Frame restoration from start to finish...you grab the pic as it comes around then that pulls up the menu of different menus of pics of your frame restoration

And that is all done with action script, target paths blah blah blah

Now the idea is to NOT have all that stored in one movie but you want it stored in separate movies so when you click on a button it unloads the movie your on and loads another one stored on your server.

So you can have gobs of content and have a seemless presentation using very little bandwidth

Mike
 
I found some kewl Flash tutorials including how to do the carousel here: gotoandlearn.com - Free video tutorials by Lee Brimelow on the Flash Platform

I watched two of the vids on how it was done and although the finer points of the coding is beyond me right now I do get the idea of what is involved and some of the coding and I don't think it's too difficult with these tutorials.

I'll have to find more info but so far it's quite interesting!
Props to all of you that know how to do this!

KS:wink:
 
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