Flash authoring?

Gandalf_the_Crazed

Working on a project with a friend, and pretty soon we'll need a website for it. We'd like the website to be flash-based, or have other similar interactivity. However, Adobe's flash authoring program, even with the student discount, is $250. Any way to do this without spending quite that much?

peterdevore

First you have to be real sure you actually need flash for your website. Putting all of your text content inside a flash file will make your site unable to be indexed by search engines. You can do a whole lot with Javascript and CSS nowadays in a cross browser way by using libraries like JQuery. So, tell us why you think you need flash.

If you really need flash and if any of you can program, you can do flash for free using the Flex SDK. You don't get the fancy IDE, so it's no good for animating anything complex, but you can make flashy menu's and stuff.

Gandalf_the_Crazed

Well the project we're working on actually consists of numerous different elements -- an animated series, a couple of flash games, some artwork, etc. We'd like a graphical "hub" to connect these elements, so what we're planning is a splash page with just our logo, which links in to an index page that has links to the different sections of the project. Basically, picture a white page with several gray circles spread out across the space, and clicking on any of the gray circles will bring up a menu of options related to that section of the project.

That's not exactly what we're wanting to do, but close enough for horseshoes, so to speak.

peterdevore

Splash pages are pretty unfashionable nowadays, but it would be not that hard to make something like the Homestarrunner navigation or things like clickable fancy floating orbs in the Flex sdk even if you have just a bit of programming experience. Making full on animation is pretty much impossible with flex alone though.

I do have to say the splash page/flash navigation combo is a bit dated approach to building a website. It gives a very static face to your webpage. If there are going to be updates you really need to build your site around a content management system (CMS). Updating the flash frontend every time there is something new is a chore and would be something that requires a programmer instead of just anyone if you use a CMS. A CMS will also allow you to manage user permissions and easily add things like a webshop, an RSS feed, a comments thread on each episode/artwork/etc.

Gandalf_the_Crazed

OK, so I guess this thread is now a question about CMSs. ;-)

There seem to be a lot of free, open-source ones out there (yay!). I've heard good things about Joomla in the past, but it and most of the others seem to be very blog-centric, in terms of design. Are there any good ones that are more diverse in that way?

EDIT: I guess what I mean is, there will definitely be a blog, as part of the larger project, but a simple sidebar menu attached to the blog seems entirely uninteresting and uncreative. Is Joomla (or another CMS) capable of generating a more free-form graphical menu?

peterdevore

I'm not much of a web designer to be honest. Most CMSs have plugins to let you add picture and video galleries. Put some good style on those and you are set. A good CMS doesn't necessarily restrict you to a blog style layout, you can usually add elements like a comments thread or a gallery to any HTML web page that you have built.

I don't know how experienced you are and I'm sure other people here will know more about CMSs than me. What I can tell you though is that it's better to lay down some design before choosing the platform on which to build it. So talk to your friend and flesh out the design, what kind of features are a must, which are optional? CMSs are only worth the effort if you're going to do regular updates and want to have comment threads or other dynamic content. Otherwise I'd say just go with HTML.

Gandalf_the_Crazed

OK, so far JQuery seems pretty badass. Someone who knows more about it than me, here's what I'm thinking I could do with it...am I right?

-Split the browser space into a main area and a sidebar
-Spread the circles across the main area, and associate them with dialog functions in JQuery
-When the circles are clicked, the dialog, containing the relevant menu of links for that section, appears in the sidebar

illig

here's a quick test you should take whenever considering flash for a website:

http://www.doineedaflashintro.com/

Jasconius

There is no reasonable alternative to Adobe's software to produce SWF's.

The grounds you present for needing Flash on yours site seem at least worthy of discussion since money is in the equation. As you can see and will no doubt learn, there are decent, free alternatives to do about 80% of what Flash can do in a similar amount of time.

Consider those first before spending money.

Gandalf_the_Crazed

Yeah, I've been playing with JQuery all night, and I'm pretty convinced that it's capable of everything I need to do. It's just that I haven't touched any kind of code in close to a decade, and so I'm having to re-learn all the little fiddly bits of it.

Goddamn commas.

So yes. A Javascript interface on a Joomla CMS looks like something I can learn to handle.

Thanks, folks.

Jasconius

You might want to investigate alternatives to Joomla. Unless it's changed radically in the last year, it's really middle of the pack at best in the world of CMS's.

Unless you are building some unholy web portal then you'd almost be better off just doing basic PHP includes for headers and footers, etc.