Datasheet
14
Part I: A Blast of Flash
✓ Animate graphics and make objects appear and disappear by using
the transparency feature. Objects can move, get bigger or smaller, or
rotate. Flash also lets you morph — that is, transform — shapes into new
shapes.
✓ Fill shapes and text with gradients, which are colors that gradually
change into new colors. You can even fill shapes and text with bitmap
images that you import into Flash. For example, you could fill the let-
ters of your name with dozens of flowers. (You aren’t a flower child any
more?)
✓ Create Web page buttons that not only lead your viewers wherever
you want them to go but also change shape or color at the same time.
You can make buttons change when you pass your mouse over them.
People who view your page can click a button to display a movie (anima-
tion) or start a small application.
✓ Add sound or video to your movie. It’s easy to add sound effects in
Flash. You can control how long the sound or music plays and whether
it loops to play continuously. You can play video files as well.
✓ Create menus that viewers can use to navigate your site. You can
create navigation tools as well as forms, check boxes, and other inter-
face elements that look a lot more stylish than plain HTML ones.
As you can see, you can go far with Flash if you want. And why not? It’s
great fun!
Determining When Not to Use Flash CS5
If Flash CS5 is so wonderful, why doesn’t every Web site designer use it? Why
aren’t most Web sites created completely with Flash?
Here’s the other side of the story.
Although the vector graphics and animation of Flash load quickly, they don’t
load as quickly as plain text and simple graphics. Adding a movie to your
Web page adds to its loading time. There’s no point in using Flash if you want
simple pages consisting of mostly text and a few graphics that you want to
stay put and not move.
You can create certain graphic effects more easily by using bitmap graphics.
Painted brush stroke and textured effects are examples. Artists create these
types of graphics by using graphics editing software, and the results are bit-
maps. Similarly, to add photographs to your Web page, you need to insert
electronic image files. Flash creates vector graphics (defined mathematically),
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