I’ve been self-learning Flash for a little while now. I’ve built presentation portfolios for myself to be used on CD. Now, I plan to stick a portfolio site up on the web. I’m sure my inquiry is a basic question, but it’s something that I’ve apparently missed or don’t quite understand.
Let me give you a visualization. Let’s say I have a menu on the page with menu titles such as “About Me”, “Portfolio”, “Resume”, etc. Now imagine the user has clicked on “About Me”. Effects happen, and that section loads. Okay. Now the user clicks on the “Portfolio” menu item. (This is where my question resides.) Before the “Portfolio” section loads, effects happen while exiting the “About Me” section. Then and new set of effects begin leading into the “Portfolio” section. How do I create this?
I know several sites include this feature. For example, New Ezra uses this. See how there are effects occurring while the site enters the “Home” section. Then, when you click on a different option, such as “Portfolio”, there are “exiting” effects from the “Home” section, then new effects occur while entering the “Portfolio” section.
I hope I’ve explained myself clearly enough. In the past, I’ve created separate scenes to display these transitions. That is a long and tedious process, and I know there is a much simpler method.
For each section, create your animation effects going into it, then add a stop command and then add your exit animation. This way, when the animation loads, it shows all your animations, then stops on the main screen. Now, on the button that loads another area, add the “play()” command for the current section. This way, the animation continues past your stop command and shows the exit animation. Now, just load up your next page.
Okay, makes sense. Easy enough. Now, how do insure that the animation will load the correct section after it plays the exit animation? For example, say the user clicks on the “Portfolio” button while in the “About Me” section. I understand to add a “play()” command to the “Portfolio” button to continue where the animation has stopped. But how do I direct it to go to the “Portfolio” section after it plays the exit animation from the “About Me” section? Is there more AS to add to the button? Or should more be included in the timeline?
This is what I see that would happen: The animation would continue from the “stop()” command when a button with “play()” attached to it was pressed. Then once it reaches the end of the exiting animation, I envision it always going to the same place, namely the next scene, no matter which button was pressed. How do I make sure it goes to the correct section when the respective button is pressed, and after it completes the exit animation?
Am I reading too far into this? I appreciate your help and am truly sorry because this seems like an easy task. For some reason, though, I just haven’t grasped it. A little more detailed info, and I should get it.
