Macromedia^R Flash^R has been around almost as long as the web. For this reason some webmasters feel that, after all this time, it is relatively safe to build an entire website in Flash and to assume that most, if not all, the visitors to their website will be able to view it. On the other hand, others feel as long as some people are still using dial up connections, those visitors will be "left out" and that Flash should not be used to develop a website. They deem that it is acceptable to only build some components of your website, such as the navigation menu, with Flash and write the rest of the webpage in HTML.

In my view, both are correct depending on your audience. If most of your visitors are still using dial up, it would be best to limit or omit your use of Flash. On the other hand, if this is your business website and most of the visitors will be using their computer at work with a broadband hookup to access your site, then you might want your business website to make a "Flash splash".

I've had several requests to do a series of articles about how to build a complete website with Flash. So in an effort to make everyone happy, this series of articles will be about just that, how to make a Flash website. But each article will be as independent as possible from the series for those of you who wish to add just one Flash component to an existing HTML based site. Never the less, when this series is completed, you will be able to build an entire website with Flash.

Let's take a look at some examples that are out there on the web right now. The DIY^TM Network site has a great example of how to use a single Flash component for promotional purposes. They are promoting a group of articles about scrapbooking. The promotion begins with their latest newsletter that contains a link to the webpage containing the promotion. The Flash component on the webpage is an interactive image of a book entitled "Scrapbooking 101". When you click and drag on the corner of the pages of the book, the pages turn. This is, of course, a Flash animation. But also, on each of the pages is a list of links to the scrapbooking articles on the DIY site. Therefore, this component works as a Flash animation and a navigational tool.

https://www.diynetwork.com/diy/pac_ctnt/text/0,2019,DIY_14161_29076,00.html

Here is the website that we will build in this series. I created this site especially for this series of articles. Although, I must confess my old site needed to be updated to reflect my new series of ebooks that I am presently working on and I also added on the website my assistant in these ebooks, Fred the Frog.

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Workspace

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