Linking

Sometime or another, you are going to be linking your Flash animation to another page through your Web browser. In Flash, only buttons can be used to link to another page when the user clicks the mouse. This tutorial will teach you how to link to another page and the various window states that can be used.

Click the button to see what you will have created by the end of this tutorial:

Creating And Making The Button Work:

First, download the partial FLA for this tutorial by clicking here. The partial FLA only includes the button with no actual coding. You will add the small portion of code yourself!

Here's How:

1. Once you have opened the partial FLA, right click on the button and select Actions. Next, click the plus sign ( + ) and select Basic Actions | Get URL.

2. Once you select Get URL, you will see the current Object Actions window display the various fields for creating and modifying a URL (Uniform Resource Locator).
    
3. In the URL field, enter the address http://www.yahoo.com. When the button is clicked, it will take the visitor to Yahoo's home page.
    
4. Publish the animation and preview it in your browser (File | Publish Preview | HTML). Once the button is clicked, Yahoo's home page will load in the current browser window.

Opening in a Separate Browser Window
When the button was clicked, Yahoo loaded in your current browser window. Most of the time, you would rather have people stay on your site while visiting another site at the same time. To accomplish that, many sites open links pointing to pages outside of their site in a separate browser window. You too can do that to your animation.

Right click on the button and select Actions. You will see the Object Actions window. Select the second line of code that says "getURL". The URL fields will be displayed again. Click the Window drop-down menu and select _blank. The _blank setting will allow the link (URL) you specified to open in a new browser window.

Below you will find an explanation about each selection in Window drop-down menu:

• _self
  Loads the link in the current page or the current page in a Frame. This is the default selection used by Flash to open any link.
   
• _blank
  Loads the link in a separate browser window. You selected _blank in the tutorial above.
   
• _parent
  Loads the link into the frameset file of a frame. The frameset file controls all the frames, and setting the window to _parent will eliminate frames in the subsequent links. As you may have seen, often times, links get loaded inside frames unintentionally. Setting _parent will solve the misuse of frames!
   
• _top
  Loads the link on the top frame.

To see how my FLA looks like compared to yours, download my FLA by clicking here. Also, if you are interested in making a new window open without having to display the browser buttons, address bar, etc. you should look at the JavaScript Window Open tutorial by clicking the following link:

Opening a New Browser Window in Flash

Just a final word before we wrap up. If you have a question and/or want to be part of a friendly, collaborative community of over 220k other developers like yourself, post on the forums for a quick response!