[p2mob]

Hello mates,

I have my web site made in dreamweaver using html and css. Recently I have started playing around with flash, I have made an Intro for my page.

The whole concept of my intro is to play the intro as soon as the web is accessed and then get redirected to actual html web site.

Now my question is, how in a world do I do that? How do I upload the flash files and have it as an intro and when done playing get redirected atuomatically to actuall web site.


I am using dreamweaver, photoshop adobe flash cs4

Thank you for help
-Peter

[terydinho]

Hi Peter - my advice would be to NOT use a flash intro - it is seen by many in the industry as horrible and tacky... you should focus on things like great user interface design, information architecture etc... and make your site look awesome without the use of whizz/bang animations

However, that being said... if you are just practising with flash then you will need to do this...

1. Open your flash file...
2. Add a new layer on the timeline and call it 'Actions'
3. Make a new blank keyframe in the very last frame of your movie
4. Open up your code view (actions) and type the following:

stop();

getURL("http://www.yourwebsite.com/homepage.html");

and that should do it - obviously replace the URL with your own page

Hope that helps

Tel

[p2mob]

Thank you very much for your time I will take the first part into consideration as well.
Your post was very helpful.

btw: is that your real tattoe in your avatar?

edit://

I get a following error:
Warning: 1060: Migration issue: The method getURL is no longer supported. For equivalent functionality, see flash.net.URLLoader. The flash.net package also contains package-level functions navigateToURL() and sendToURL()..

does that mean that getURL does not function aymore in cs4?

[terydinho]

Ah, you must have your file set up as Actionscript 3.0 instead of 2.0 - that is something I know NOTHING about - sorry mate...


No - the tattoo isn't real

[p2mob]

I'm pretty sure it is set up as action script 3.0

If anyone can help I would be thankful

[empek]

In actionscript 3, make a new blank keyframe at the end, and in the actions type:

var url:String = "home.html";
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);
try {
navigateToURL(request, "_self");
} catch (e:Error) {
trace("Error occurred!");
}

On the first line, home.html is a relative link, so you could have your flash intro on index.html, and then redirect to index2.html which will hold your content.

Nevertheless, as mentioned above, it's not a good idea to have a flash intro. Search engines begin crawling the site's index page, and a flash index page is virtually a dead end, exposing no content whatsoever.

Hope this helps!

[p2mob]

Would it be a better idea to have logo/banner made in flash? The thing is I need my site to include a bit of flash, first thing I thought about was an intro, but since it's not such a good idea, would logo/banner be better?

[empek]

To be honest, I would recommend that you don't use flash at all. Depending on how complex you want the animation, you could look into jQuery (a JS framework).

[p2mob]

Well I will take a look at jQuery, could you tell me what is flash best used for? Where would be the best place to use flash?

[empek]

Although it's a very opinion based argument, technically, you could design anything in flash.

The argument between flash and new school javascript (jquery, mootools) is that flash is not visible on mobile (for the most part... not even the ipad!), not everyone has flash, or the required version of flash to view the files. When developed by a novice, it can be very messy to update, and can get very confusing when developing something more than a flash banner, or a navigation.

To answer your question, you can create a flash header, banner, or a navigation, but you should also provide an alternative for visitors without flash. Same goes for the jQuery features.

Hope that made sense, it's 3am and I just came back from a couple of parties...