flash - and the only idiot who doesnt know by now

[manifesto]

Yes, that idiot is me. When it comes to flash I am totaly clueless. I have a few questions, but Im sure they will make me sound like a complete moron, so be nice.

1. do you need macromedia flash to make "flash" animations
2. is it hard to use macromedia?
3. what kind of files are flash saved as
4. will flash work within yahoo.store templates?
5. why am I such a complete moron?

[Ian]

Hey, you're not the only one. I tried to make something with flash once about 2 yrs ago. I had one hell of a job and I could never create what I wanted to make so I thought "this is a waste of time" and deleted the program off my HDD. Thats my one and only experience and have no intentions of trying it again. So I'll join your idiots club I guess :D

As for your answers....
1. can't remember, but probably.
2. I would say yes, but others will tell you it's easy
3. .swf files
4. pass/dunno/no idea :)
5. Um, well....blame your parents :)

Sorry I can't offer you any help on the subject. :D

[manifesto]

lol...thanks anyway man.

[Dr. Web]

1. do you need the flash program to make flash animations? Yes and no. There are a couple of programs out there... swish, and the flashtyper...see http://www.flashkit.com/ for more.
You can use these to create flash animations in minutes.
2. Macromedia was easy for me, but I spent some time with online tutorials, and some books. Flash is a great program-but with any cool-tool you'll have to spend some time in the trenches, getting your hands dirty before you whip out that "movie" which makes everyone stare in awe! Online tutorials and more (links) at... http://www.volcanic-design.com/volc_links.htm/
3. Flash files are saved as: .fla (flash) which is in an editable format...and uncompressed-meaning this is the file you work on, make changes, and work on again tomorrow. Also, the files you see on the web (the finished product)are saved as .SWF (shockwave flash) and these are compressed, and uneditable. The reason for the two types of siles is that flash uses file compression to reduce the files overall size, making it download faster.
4. Any HTML page is capeable of rendering a flash movie, since the flash movie is simply embedded into the page...something like <embed src="emovie_flash.swf" height="100%" width="100%" loop="true" bgcolor="#cccccc"> this one line of code will put a flash movie on the page, size it, and give it a background color. Browsers require the flash Plug-In to play the animation, but the plug in has been included in IE and Netscape since 4.0 versions were released. This means more people can view flash animations (over 90%) than can view JAVA applications (86%).
5. Flash is a great app, but it takes work to get the results you want. The best way to begin is to ask questions, figure out what the app is capeable of, how hard it is, what it does....and so on. Good questions.

One more thing...Flash is a visula editor...you will do very little coding at all to get your flash animatins running. Its more akin to a graphics program, like...photoshop, or a visual editor like DreamWeaver. Good Luck!

[manifesto]

wow, thanks alot man...that helped alot. I am going to try to get Macro. Flash sometime this week.

[Ian]

WOW, my "Most Helpful Post Award" for this week goes out to you Doc, great post and I learnt something. Thanks. :)
award.gif

[Dr. Web]

Thats quite a compliment, Thanks!