[henry_norman]

Hi,

I have started doing web development as a freelancer. I want to create flash intros and website on my own. But I have a problem. I do not have knowledge of Flash. Can anyone please tell me some place or software from where I can get readymade flash intros or similar stuff at some nominal price?

Henry Norman

[Big-K]

It would probably be better to learn it plain. I dont know of any sites that do that.

[Sequal7]

Build it yourself is what I always say...


http://www.finerdesign.com/flash_templates.htm

[henry_norman]

Hi there,

Thanks for your advice about learning Flash. Although I know basics of flash but designing flash intros is really time consuming. Due to shortage of time I am in search of readymade stuff.

I have visited the link http://www.finerdesign.com/flash_templates.htm

Although the templates are good but they a very costly. Template costs about $60 each which is very uneconomical.

I invite more suggestions for some tools that would help me in creating customized flash intros and websites.

Henry Norman.

[Sequal7]

Sorry, but flash is costly, Macromedia liscencing is expensive, and tru flash movies arent simple built with flash, they incorporate a ton of different macromedia products to create them.

60.00 is actually very reasonable for flash, each movie takes several hours to create and at a dollar per hour figure, those prices are really affordable. I have created allot of flash movies, and trust me, $60 is a rediculously cheap finished price.

Perhaps you could go to your local high school or college and seek out flash kiddies and have them create it for you. That way you can probably give them 20 or so to create a flash movie for you, so you benefit, and they could get some of their work published, which benefits them too.

Or you could hire a web desing company for 45/hr to create the movie for you exactly as you like it.

[fade011]

tough it were cheaper its not easy to edit a flash template, you need to know a little of programming for buttons and other stuff

flash sites are composed by editing file .fla (scene with movie timeline, code and objects: draws, pictures, texts, etc) that generates .swf (compiled file for browsers, not editable)

whole flash sites are often complicated to reedit for your purposes, but you can build yours if you learn some basics

try

http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/index.shtml
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx/index.htm#1
http://www.developingwebs.net/flash/

you got some lab templates and stuff at flashkit too, all open source (you get the .fla file) and most free for using them in your projects

good luck, fade

p/s: it requires some knowledge to built nice sites as those you mention... and if you want to build a light bandwidth site youll need someone who knows about coding and webstuff, try to use the less animations in timeline as you can, optimize your images, use standard windows fonts (they dont need to be embeeded: this means included as extra weight in the swf final file), etc...

[CoasterFreak]

I do "simple" flash intros, buttons, etc. Not whole sites as like everyone else said it requires some pretty good knowledge, some costly software, and time. I would just go with the simple. A really good program to design "simple" flash is SwishMax. www.swishmax.com

[Big-K]

Even if there was a way to get a readymade intro for free, or for a low price, lots of people would probably have them. Would you really want a generic introduction to a site? That's one of the reasons I hate those little cursor followalong things on lots of personal sites, theyre just too generic(and annoying).

[starchild]

Coffee Cup Software has a program that makes simple flash (like for intros- having letters explode, come together, etc) Firestarter.

I bought it when it first came out for 1/2 price ($25) at that time it was $50 full price.

I played around with it some, but never really learned it. You can probably do more with it than I found out about. I'd set up a picture and put text on it, and have it move around (like come sliding in)

I just checked and they still have the free trial download

http://www.coffeecup.com/software/

I've tried to learn "real" flash. In a way I don't like too much of it on a website, I don't think most people (with dialup) have the patience to wait for
it, to get into the site.

But it would be fun to make movies (as movies, where people would expect to wait for them to load)

~ Carrie

[bobbyray]

Good info, can anyone add to it. I'm new to flash and would luv some more info.

[Gibble]

Originally Posted by henry_norman

Hi there,

Thanks for your advice about learning Flash. Although I know basics of flash but designing flash intros is really time consuming. Due to shortage of time I am in search of readymade stuff.

I have visited the link http://www.finerdesign.com/flash_templates.htm

Although the templates are good but they a very costly. Template costs about $60 each which is very uneconomical.

I invite more suggestions for some tools that would help me in creating customized flash intros and websites.

Henry Norman.

You'll pay at least $60/hr for someone good to design one.