Wrapping Up

Serving Up Web-Friendly Animations: In a Flash

Always save your movie as a Flash Movie as this will allow you to return and edit the file (like a .psd file retains Photoshop layers). After doing that, you'll want to choose "export movie" and the file format in which you want your web movie saved.

Plug it into your HTML page, and your banner is ready for action. The finished product looks like the one below (this one has been saved as an animated gif).

There's a lot more that could be done on this banner. A click-here button or a transition to a blank screen where "Let me get your site moving" appears are just two possible enhancements, and Flash can handle both. But creating this banner has given you some of the basics from which to begin your Flash animation work. From here, you can move to buttons, symbols, advanced tweening, importing bitmaps, autotracing, and more. For a simple tool, Flash has a lot of power.

As you continue to work in Flash, don't forget the power of text. Flash allows you to turn text into a dynamic tool that can have a life of its own in the movie. Don't underestimate this low-bandwidth, to-the-point approach!

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Amy Cowen is web guru and writer for E Business Magazine. An English major with no traditional computer programming experience, she's a true product of web culture and is on a continual quest to master what's hot before it cools. She can be reached at acybercow@bigfoot.com. Learn more about her work at www.cybercodes.com.