In the next few tutorials we will build the portfolio for your Flash website. The portfolio is really a second Flash movie that will load into the main Flash website. This portfolio will be built in the same way as we built the main website. It will have three layers; Background, Content and Actions. On the Content layer will be the images for your portfolio and on the Background layer will be two simple buttons for the back and forward navigation. Because the portfolio will take a little more time to download than the other webpages of the website, we will add a ProgressBar component to display the progress of the download. Open a new Flash document and let's get started.

Step 1. Set the stage. The height and width for the portfolio should be just large enough to accommodate the images and the navigation buttons. Remember that this portfolio is really a small Flash movie that will load into your main website. Therefore the dimensions for the portfolio will need to be small enough to fit into the space that you allotted for it on the Portfolio webpage in your main website. In the example portfolio, I set the width to 300 pixels and the height to 275 pixels. The largest image in my portfolio was 300 pixels wide and 245 pixels high. So I added 30 pixels more for the total height to accommodate the navigation buttons below the images. Click on the Stage to open the Property Inspector for the Document settings and set the Background color and size dimensions of your choice.

Step 2. Background layer. Rename Layer 1 to Background. We will add the navigation buttons to this layer in the next tutorial.

Step 3. Content layer. This layer will hold the images for your portfolio. In the example I used eight images but you can use as many as you want. However, remember that there is a delicate balance between the number of images and the download time for the portfolio. Too many images will cause the portfolio to take a long time to download.

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