Composing a Project

[Inspired101]

Hi all.. I'm currently a beginner in studying flash. I've been reading up on Flash MX H-O-T (Hands on Training) by Kymblee Weil and Lynda Weinman and its been helping a lot. However, I have this project and I'm not sure if I am composing it right. I was wondering if you guys can tell me if I'm doing it right.

The website is 6 pages + the homepage = 7 pages.

They are:

- Homepage
- About us
- Staff
- FAQ
- Recently Funded
- Calendar
- Application

So my 1st question is... can I put these in one file? Each page on its own scene or is it too much?

My 2nd question is... on the Staff page, my client wants faces of their staff in bubbles.. and once the bubble is clicked, the background fades, and the bubble is enlarged and a popup of their profile description appears.

Are the bubbles graphic or a symbol? Can this background be a scene? I have NO IDEA how to do this. Any ideas?

[Flash Gordon]

most developer tends to not use scenes but movieclips that function as different scene. You tend not to want a website over 250kb, so pay attention to that. If it starts getting larger, consider loading stuff at runtime.

Sorry that wasn't what you were asking, but I don't have a standard approach for making a website. For me, it just depends on the situation.

Best wishes.
:)

[Cota]

Also, be mindful of the fact that Flash has to listen to every movieclip on the stage for timeline changes. Too many movieclips cause system slowdown. Pay attention to what can just be a graphic and what needs to be a movieclip. (insert as3 sprite benefits here)

[jayjay2007]

i would just do each page as a frame label and navigate between them with simple actionscript.

http://www.free-webmaster-resource.com/tutorials/flash/basics/tutorial001/index.php?tutorial_id=460&tPage=1

[matbury]

I wouldn't put them on different frames. I reckon, even with just a few photos, that your swf size will be fairly substantial.

I'd have a bare-bones container movie with just a MovieClipLoader script on it to load in your main movie, just use system fonts for a percentage loaded display to stop those twitchy-fingered users from clicking off to another site.

Then you can decide if you want to load the whole kaboodle at once or just load in the pages as you need them, with the MovieClipLoader class.

If you have the main site as a self-contained movie, i.e. load the whole kaboodle at once, I'd have the pages as MovieClips in the FLA library so that you can attach/addChild() to the stage when the user clicks for it and unattach/removeChild() for the previous.

If you go for the composite approach, i.e. loading in external pages, you just have to add a MovieClipLoader preloader again.

I think this approach gets around all the most common problems people have with multi-page Flash websites, and the coding isn't too difficult.

...and Robert's yer mother's brother!