Hi all.
I have some experience in flash, but its from sometime ago and I feel like rehreshing my skills a bit on a project.
I am trying to build a custom flash gallery and learn the basics while doing it.
Hopefully someone can:
A. point out any mistakes in my “strategy” which I am going to lay down at the end of this post
B. give tips or links to tutorials which could be useful in building this.
Hopefully this will turn into a helpful thread for anyone else willing to learn the basics of a making gallery.
By the way I am planning to use flash 8.
My flash skills are very basic. Some tweens and go to’s. I can adjust some actionscript I find in a tutorial. I would like to learn to piece it together better.
Please view image below, it is the basic layout of the gallery I had in mind.Size and placement is not an issue of course.
Black=the whole flash
Black also = the whole canvas to display the images. ( not sure if need to have some resizing function? maybe just set a fix size) - images load from folder.
White boxes = category thumbnails. Load from folder, link to category.
(I think fix total max number of, depending on how difficult the code is to allow infinite and still manage to display nicely)
gray boxes = current category name + current image name, from the same xml file that defines the folders I suppose, thats how I have seen it done.
controls = next; previous; pause/play/stop (maybe just 1 single button for those)
“FLOW” = Preloader - welcome image (not from any category), then auto timed to show first image from category 1, usermay use category thymbnails and controls to navigate, when no command by user, continue from where ever you are.
My strategy:
1.source a simple preloader.
2.then source a tutorial for using xml to load images from folder
(similar to here:
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx2004/xml_flash_photogallery.htm
&
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flashcs3/loading_image_as3_pg1.htm)
(I have done the first one a practice previously, and some simpler version from kirupa also, awhile ago)
into this movie clip I would also have to incorporate a preloader, and some effect in&out.
I would also have to find a bit of script/tutorial that puts in a time effect and goes through the list of images in the xml file. Also the movie clip would start with a a image from a folder other than any of the categories, then go to cat 1, img 1 and move forward, but at the last image in last category go back to cat 1 & img 1,
The next/previous… controls shouldnt be that tricky, other than skipping to the next category, this I havent seein a tutorial yet.
3.maybe use the same tutorials to load the thumbnail images. preferably into movie clips that act like buttons, with hover and clicked states. Also somehow have the “active” state show/trigger when on that catgeory in the rotation.
4.find a way to enable the category buttons to control the gallery rotation as well.
Way back when, when I used a little flash, I would have done it all in 1 long movie clip, with controls jumping from example 124 to 639 and so on the time line to achive these effects.
I dont think thats the way to do it anymore. Instead I should have a few small compacy movie clips similar to this:
CLIP A1
preloader+fade in+timer+fade out, which loads the image to use, and is repeated for each image.
CLIP B1
Also a movie clip that is for the categories would load image to display, and have 1-3 effetcs to display the states and some code that triggers action (and maybe some code that determines what is current state of that button)
CLIP C1
Then the main movie clip that plays current CLIP A1 and for each category a CLIP B1
C1 could have the controls (next/previou/pause…)in itself?
If anyone made it through this post, and knows flash comments would be appreciated. Also I am not sure if I can pice this together from a variety of tutorials, if you have actionscript knowledge, your opinion on that would be very useful as well.
I am trying to break out from copying 80% of a tutorial and making small changes only into building something myself. It may not be possible the way I attempting to do it.
Thanks and all the best.
Sami
