Flash Tutorials and Templates for New Media Journalists

By Russell Chun
Russell_Chun@yahoo.com

Author of Flash CS4 Advanced Visual QuickPro Guide and Flash CS4 Classroom-in-a-book
Adjunct, Columbia University Graduates School of Journalism
Adjunct, City University of New York, Graduate School of Journalism
TEMPLATES (ActionScript 3.0)

TUTORIALS
(ActionScript 2.0)

Animated Review: Create a Photo Slide Show

Tutorial 1: Creating Buttons
Tutorial 2: Masking
Tutorial 3: Loading External Content
Tutorial 4: Video in Flash
Tutorial 5: Progressive Download Video
Tutorial 6:Navigation with Movie Clips

TEMPLATES
(ActionScript 2.0)

1. basiccontrols_mx04.fla


This template contains buttons for rewind, fastforward, a stop/pause toggle, and a return-to-start.

2. media_controller_mx04.fla


This template contains a progress bar to track the current position within the whole timeline. It also contains a stop/pause toggle, a return-to-start, and a seconds counter.

3. preloader_mx04.fla

The preloader shows the download progress as a percentage of a horizontal growing rectangle and a numeric value. Copy and paste the movie clip into the first frame of your Flash movie.

4. simpleNavStructure_mx04.fla

This template gives you the basic structure of a simple navigation (home + 3 content pages) using buttons to tell Flash where to go on the main Timeline. You can use this structure for maps, graphs, timelines, and in all sorts of different contexts.

5. movieclipNavStructure_mx04.fla


This template gives you the basic structure of a simple navigation (home + 3 content pages) using a movie clip. The movie clip contains all your content and the buttons target the movie clip and tell Flash what frame of the movie clip to display.

6. scrollingmenu_mx04.fla
This template shows you how to create a scrolling menu. You can replace the buttons inside the movie clip with static graphics, your own buttons, or add or subtract objects in the movie clip.

7. slideshowcontrol_mx04.fla

This template has a simple slide show with a stop() command after each transition. The user must click on the button, which contains the command, play(), to advance to the next slide.

8. loadDynamicSound.fla

This template automatically loads an MP3 file and provides controls for pausing, playing, an interactive progress bar, and buttons to load additional MP3 files.

9. loadDynamicCaptions.fla

This template automatically loads captions from an XML file and displays the text in a dynamic text field for use in a slide show. Just copy and paste the XML here and save it in Dreamweaver as "data.xml". Keep the file in the same folder as your published SWF+HTML.

<data>
<caption src="This is the caption for the first slide."/>
<caption src="This is the caption for the second slide."/>
<caption src="This is the caption for the third slide."/>
<caption src="This is the caption for the fourth slide."/>
</data>

 

TOOLS

Autoslide: Automatic slideshow generator (BETA version):
-Flash based
-Dynamically plays JPG, SWF, FLV, and MP3 files
-External XML document contains the directions as to transition type, duration of each slide, etc.
-This version is limited to 400x300 pixels.

XML structure:

<autoslide>

<audio src="trueromance.mp3"/>

<transition how="wipe" miliseconds="2000"/>
<URL path="images/"/>

<slides looping="true" controls="true">

<media src="01.jpg" seconds="2"/>
<meda src="02.jpg" seconds="3"/>
<media src="rocketlaunch.FLV" seconds="4" videowidth="400" videoheight="300"/>
<media src="04.jpg" seconds="4"/>
<media src="textslide.swf" seconds="3"/>
<media src="03.jpg" seconds="4"/>
<media src="embeddedvideo.swf" seconds="4"/>

</slides>

</autoslide>