For years, the advice has always been that if you want good search engine results, then you don’t want to create your website entirely with Flash, because search engines have no way of effectively indexing swf files. Well, all of that is about to change.
I just wanted to apologize for the long wait between posts. Things have been crazy in the Campbell household lately. We’ve got a kid on the way, we’re in the process of looking for a new house, we just found out that my wife has gestational diabetes, and we recently got back from a week-long [...]
Christian Sparrow is a self taught interactive designer, and after looking at his website, I couldn’t help but share it. The website has what I sometimes like to call a “paper doll” feel to it, and even though that isn’t really the best way to describe it, you’ll see what I mean when you get [...]
To be honest, I haven’t had time yet to check out the new Beta release of Flash Player 10, but there are a lot of exciting new features that every Flash programmer should be excited about. Foremost among the new features is the native support for new 3D Classes within ActionScript. Flash Player 10 still [...]
In this tutorial, we’re going to create a menu with a bar underneath it that moves left and right based on which button the user is hovering over. This tutorial is created with Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3. Here’s what it will look like when you’re done:
In case you don’t already know this, it’s very easy for someone to take your Flash (swf) files off your website and decompile them in order to customize them and use them for themselves. For many people, this isn’t much of an issue, but I’ve gotten several questions lately regarding ways to secure and protect [...]
One of the many things that have changed in ActionScript 3 has been the way that Flash handles depths, or the stacking order of objects on the stage. In ActionScript 2, there was a practically unlimited number of depths into which you could place an object. These depths determine what objects appear in front of [...]
(Also see our tutorial on coding animated Movie Clip Buttons in ActionScript 3 that don’t rely on timeline animations.) Many Flash beginners stick with using button symbols when creating navigation links for their Flash websites. And why not! That’s what button symbols are made for, right? Well, you can also create buttons using movie clip [...]
From time to time, I like to showcase Flash work that other people are doing, and it would be impossible to do so without at some point mentioning Homestar Runner. If you’ve never heard of Homestar Runner, then you’re really missing out. Creators Matt and Mike Chapman have built a small empire on a few [...]
There is very little that will push users away quicker than a bulky Flash website with no preloader. Without a preloader, your users will have nothing to look at but a blank screen until your Flash file has fully loaded. For users with a speedy broadband connection, this may not be much of an issue [...]