 |  | animate your Web site with Flash |  | | By Holly Cunningham | | (8/18/03) |
Making slick-looking Flash animation sequences used to require tedious hours of work, not to mention the technical savvy needed to wring the best effects out of the more-than-somewhat-daunting Flash program. The merciful intervention of SWiSH, with its fancy text handling, rollover buttons, sprites, and sound effects, puts Flash animation within reach of the dilettante designer. You can animate your heart out without tearing out your hair, and, thanks to our quick tutorial, all in a flash.
Decide what to show and say
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SWiSH |
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When you open SWiSH, a blank new movie file opens by default, letting you jump right into the action. The Movie Panel, on the right side of the interface, shows you the properties for your movie. Here you can select background color and display properties, making sure you get the appropriate width and height for insertion into your Web page.
To get an accurate idea of the size of your movie, click the Zoom 100% button in the lower left of the main editing screen. Let's start by adding some text. Note that youre automatically creating Scene 1 in the outline panel to the left of the interface. First, click the Insert menu and choose Text. A text box appears in the middle of your movie. You can type in your text in the Text properties tab on the right side of the interface. You can also use the pull-down menus to change fonts, sizes, and colors.
Right-clicking your text box in the movie editing screen brings up the submenus for special effects, such as Fade Out, Blur, and Explode. Choose an effect, and a properties dialog box pops up, letting you control positioning and duration. Each effect you add gets appended to the previous on the Timeline. To preview your scene or your entire movie, right-click the scene name, Scene 1 by default, in either the Outline panel or the Timeline.
Import a graphic
As you build your first scene, make sure to get the placement of your objects and the properties of your effects just right. SWiSH lets you copy entire scenes so you can use the first one as a template for all the rest, saving a considerable amount of time. To import a graphic into your scene, select the Insert menu and choose Image, then navigate to and select your graphic. SWiSH can import JPEG, JIF, GIF, PNG, BMP, and DIB formats. Your graphic appears in the center of your scene, and the Shape panel, on the right, opens. Here you can select border treatments and other properties. Right-click the image to add effects in the same way you did for your text. Once you've positioned and tweaked your image, right-click the image name in the Outline panel, select Order, then click Send to Back from the pop-up menu. Send to Back makes sure your image doesnt block your text message. Repeat this process for any other images youre using.
Add actions to your action
In the quest to make our graphics work harder for us, we use graphics as clickable links that open a Web page or an e-mail form. To link a graphic, click on its occurrence in the movie or its name in the Outline panel, then choose the Actions tab from the panel on the right. Click Add Event from the Actions panel. This is your opportunity to do something cheesy, such as adding a rollover sound effect, or something useful, such as a link. But why not do both? Once youve clicked Add Event, select an event type, such as On Roll Over or On Press. Then click the Add Action button that appears in place of the Add Event button. SWiSH guides you in the process of adding sound effects or links. You can add as many actions as you can stand by repeating this process, linking multiple actions to a single event. To undo an action, simply highlight it and click the crossed out action button.
Repeat, edit, and enjoy
What you have right now is a nice interactive graphic, but not exactly the animated extravaganza we promised. This is where the timesaving bit comes in. Right-click the scene name in the Outline panel and choose copy. Then highlight the movie name above it, Movie1 by default, and right-click again to paste. Paste it as many times as youre going to change the text and graphics. Rename the scenes sequentially or by any other scheme that makes sense to you in the Outline panel. Now choose a scene and change the text and its special effects to suit your animated message without copying individual elements to create each scene. To export your movie for the Web, click the File menu, choose Export, then HTML. SWiSH will create a Flash file and an HTML file that you can upload to a Web server.
Holly Cunningham, a frequent contributor to CNET, is a freelance Web designer working primarily to keep her Chihuahua in furs.
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