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

Planning Menus and Site Structure

In this chapter, you build a website that contains a Flash menu. You can choose to present the bulk of the website (the part that contains the content) usin104 or Flash. This tutorial use116, but explains how you could use Flash instead using techniques covered in earlier chapters.

Before you build a complete website, you can benefit from planning the site's structure. This might be simple, but drawing a diagram or flow chart of the structure on paper or using software can still help you by clarifying the pieces necessary to complete the site and foresee any problems that you might encounter. A clear plan can save you time and money in the long run because of this, much like making thumbnails before animating a scene (as discussed in Chapter 4). In this section, you look at the structure of the website that you create for this chapter's project.

Creating flow charts

You can create flow charts on paper, or you can use software to create the diagram. There are several tools available to build flow charts that range greatly in price and features. If you need to plan a website or even just a menu, you should consider creating a flow chart; often doing this on the computer is faster than a pen and napkin. You might want to check out some of these programs, which make building diagrams, flow charts, or organization charts quick and easy. They also contain precreated graphics and let you install customized or downloaded graphics so you can create attractive and professional diagrams and charts.

Microsoft Visio

SmartDraw

OmniGraffle

iGrafx FlowCharter (Corel)

There are many inexpensive programs available to try or purchase if you search [www.download.com].

You first need to consider all the main areas for the website. These areas probably contain related areas within them. Each area requires a navigational element, such as a button, that users typically click to navigate to that area. For example, you might have a main area called Products that contains several different topics inside it (subareas). These particular subareas might contain information on each product or type of product. For example, you might plan for the Products area to link to three types of products you sell: Coffee Beans, Mugs, and Accessories. Or, your Products button in the menu might display the three products after the user clicks or rolls the cursor over the button.

So, for this chapter's extremely simple website, there are two main areas that each have subareas within them. The main subjects are News and Tutorials. And each area of the site contains a few topics on each subject. You can see how this is organized in the following diagram.