If you haven't heard of Macromedia's Flash 5, you've at least seen their product in use many times. At first glance, an animation made in Flash may appear to be a normal animated GIF. Not so, however, as it would be impossible to make animated GIFs that appear to be so smooth, such high resolution, and at such low bandwidth requirements. Flash is a revolution in animation and interactivity on the Internet. In this article, we will examine what Flash is, how to use it, and how to implement it in EZ-NetTools™.
A Sample Banner Made in Flash
What is Flash?
Look at the banner above. Notice how the EZ-Net rotates so smoothly. The reason why Flash's animations look so smooth is that they are vector-based. That's why you can right-click on a Flash animation and choose to zoom-in and find that the quality is almost the same even at the higher resolution. The JPGs and GIFs that we use on the web are raster-based and thus more pixelized. This means that you will not want to use your Photo Impact or other raster-based graphics tool to make the graphics that you will use to make Flash animations. Flash 5 does have the ability to make vector-based images, but it is somewhat limited in this area. So, as you progress and wish to make more complicated images, you will want to upgrade to a more sophisticated graphics program. For this purpose, Macromedia offers a bundle that packages Flash 5 with their Freehand program which is very well suited to the task.
In essence, what Flash allows you to do is take images that you have drawn or imported and manipulate them through motion, color changes, size changes, etc. to make "movies" that can range from the very simple to the remarkably complex. These movies can be used as banners, splash graphics, headers, presentations and even entire sites. The animations that Flash produces are smoother and faster loading than anything that was previously available. In addition, Flash 5 includes expanded ability to develop highly interactive applications and web sites. That is why you will see that so many of the very high-dollar sites out there (i.e. disney.com, nickjr.com, etc.) are built completely in Flash.
How Do I Use Flash?
Understand that Flash is very different than what you're used to if you've only used Photo Impact, and if you've never made any graphics before, you'll have a long learning curve ahead of you. For the purposes of the article, I wanted to find out just how long it would take to become proficient with the software. I decided to become a guinea pig and experiment with it myself. So you know, I have only made graphics in Photo Impact 5.0, and I only started making graphics less than one year ago when I began working for ICServ. Before I began this article, I had never used any vector-based graphics program, and I had no prior experience with Flash.
The first thing that I did was to go to www.flash.com and download a free 30-day trial version of the software. This is nearly a 20MB download so it takes quite some time on a dialup modem, but it is the full version of the software with all of the support features included.
Included in these support features is a series of samples and lessons that take you step-by-step through the beginnings of how to draw, animate, and make your creations interactive. These lessons were perfect for me. I can't say enough about how helpful they were and how much I was able to learn from them. They went slow enough that I was able to understand, yet fast enough that they didn't put me to sleep. Including the installation, I went through the 8 lessons in about 2 hours. They gave me sufficient base to make the banner you saw on the first page of this article in about 2 more hours. Within 4 hours of installation, I was feeling pretty comfortable with the software.
So, while I can't give you a real step-by-step "How to Use Flash" guide right here, the best news is that it isn't necessary. Flash includes the best guide that there is in its tutorial lessons. The most practical advice I can give to anyone who is interested in learning Flash is to download the trial and go through the tutorial. You may just surprise yourself (as I did) at how fast you can learn to use this very sophisticated piece of software.
How Can I Implement Flash?
After my success with making my first banner, I wanted to stretch myself a little bit and see if I could make some interactive elements. The result was the "1,2,3" buttons that you see at the bottom of each page of this article. In Flash, I was able to define the numbers as buttons, make them glow when a mouse hovered over them, and add in the pop-up titles. To make them link, I defined the URL of the links within flash and pointed them to their respective pages (te2apr101.html, etc.).
With the buttons created and working the way I wanted, I just needed to figure out how to use them in EZ-PageBuilder™. It turned out to be easier than I thought. In Flash, I chose Publish from the File menu. This created the movie with Flash's proprietary .swf file extension. Using using EZ-FileManager™, I uploaded buttons.swf, the actual movie file that contains the buttons. At the same time that Flash was publishing the .swf file, it also created a sample HTML file. I viewed the source and copied its contents into a HTML Block in EZ-PageBuilder™. That was it! It couldn't have been easier.
All in all, I was very pleased with my first experiences with Flash. I can't say that it wasn't hard work to learn it and create even the two simple objects that I did. However, I can say that you needn't be a graphics expert or a programmer in order to create and implement simple Flash elements that can be used to spice up your web sites or add much needed content.
[Editor's Note, May 13th, 2003: the "1,2,3" butons on the above flash file will not work, as the document location has been modified since the original article was written.]
