Animation and Effects with Macromedia Flash MX 1002004 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 9. Creating Menu Effects

What you learn

How to plan websites

About flowcharts and flowcharting software

How to use the Drawing API

About scripted menus

About the Debugger panel

How to create and attach dynamic menu buttons

How to construct and organize the website'116 files

Lesson Files

Start:

09/start/menu_start.fla

09/start/bg.png

09/start/lorem.txt

Finish:

09/complete/menu.fla

09/complete/menu.swf

09/complete/men118

09/complete/site

Chapter 3, "Using ActionScript," or by using prewritten ActionScript that's built into Flash. It's usually easiest to animate menus primarily using ActionScript because the animation that's involved is usually repetitive and needs to look exactly the same. If you use code, you can guarantee that the animation looks the same much more easily than if you tried to animate on the Timeline.

This chapter constructs a hybrid website that uses a Flash menu to help users navigate between pages. The buttons you add are dynamic and are almost entirely created and controlled by using code. It's much easier than it sounds, and it means you can ensure that the buttons are uniform and evenly spaced and consistently animated in the menu. The finished product is a menu that's both attractive and intuitive for your users. The best part is that the menu is incredibly easy to update as well! You don't need to try and manually create a button while trying to remember how you did so originally. All you have to do is update the ActionScript, and the menu has additional buttons or subnavigation sections for your website. This is particularly useful if you have clients who haven't yet made up their mind about what to call the parts of their website, or if you decide to add a new section to a website later on.

Website: