There are two questions that get
asked of me the most: How do I publish a Flash animation?
How can I make my animation transparent? After having spent
more than 10 hours in Flash, I created a small
program/animation that allows you to enter the various
values for an animation. Best of all, after you enter your
values for the movie, the HTML code gets generated
automatically. Copy the HTML code into your Web page, and
your animation will work.
Use the following animation
to aid you in your goal of publishing an animation. The file
is only 12k in size:
Online
Help: A Guide
The animation's content
is fairly self-explanatory. You fill in the values for the
fields displayed and press the Display code. To ensure that
there is no doubt in your mind as to what each setting
accomplishes, the following guide explains what each feature
accomplishes:
-
Address to Your SWF FileSpecify the address to your Flash
animation. I highly recommend you enter the full path to
your animation instead of using a Relative URL. For
example, use: http://www.kirupa.com/movie.swf
instead of .../movie.swf.
-
Movie
Width and Movie HeightEnter the values for your
animation's width and your animation's height. The values
correspond to the pixel width of a movie. To enter a
percent value, add a "%" after the number. For example:
75%.
-
Movie
Background ColorYou will need to specify the
background color of your movie. The best method of adding
a background color is by creating a bottom layer in your
Flash movie that contains the background color. The color
for the background you specified in the Modify Movie
dialog box is in fact a HTML setting. Therefore, unless
you enter the hexa-decimal value for the color in the 'Movie
background color' field, your animation will
feature the standard, white background.
-
Loop
MovieThis setting asks whether you want
the movie to repeat continuously or stop playing after one
run. If you want the movie to play repetitively, click the
button marked "yes"; if you don't want a loop, click the
button marked "no".
-
QualityAdjusts the quality of your movies.
Best is the highest quality setting because it smoothes
edges of vectors by using anti-aliasing and by smoothing
the edges of images. High is the same as Best except
images are not smoothed. Medium and Low are just the
lesser variations of High and Best. The lower the setting,
the less processing power is needed to view the animation.
The higher the setting, but more processing power is
needed to view the animation, but the animation will look
great. Recommended, default, setting is High.
-
TransparentSpecifies whether the background of
the movie should be transparent. While the transparency
feature is great, there are some visible drawbacks:
-
No support
for any Netscape browser. Even Netscape version 6.x
cannot render this simple HTML setting correctly.
-
Internet
Explorer in a Macintosh will be unable to display
transparency animation with the transparent background.
You should
understand, however, that the animations will display
perfectly; the animations just won't be transparent. If you
use a background layer by filling in a large rectangle with
the color of your background, you will be unable to view the
transparency. The transparency applies to the portion of the
movie that is "free space" and not filled with objects such
as large rectangles, text, etc. The transparency will not
eliminate a color from the alpha channel like a GIF either.
So specifying a red background and making the movie
transparent will not make all the red colored objects
transparent.
Just a final word before we wrap up. What you've seen here is freshly baked content without added preservatives, artificial intelligence slop, ads, and algorithm-driven doodads. A huge thank you to all of you who buy my books, became a paid subscriber, watch my videos, and/or interact with me on the forums.
Your support keeps this site going! 😇
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