Flash Help - a full flash site, pages transition in and out dynamically?

[Zeste]

I need some flash help. I am a graphic designer, and I know how to do all the very basic AS2 flash stuff, but I really don't have a grasp on coding, especially more advanced AS3 stuff. I've always just "used more tweens!" to accomplish what I want in flash with smoke and mirrors, but I need to build something now for a client, and I want to do it right.

I've been searching around for tutorials, but I can't find what I am looking for since I don't know exactly what search terms to use. Basically, I need to build a full browser flash site, and I want the "pages" to transition in AND out when people click on the menu. Basically, each page/section is a movie with it's own "load animation" and "unload animation" My example site is:

Azure Media - When you think mobile, think Azure Media.

Essentially, right now I just need to know where to start looking for tutorials or examples on how to have each section have a "moving in" animation, and a "moving out" animation whenever you click the menu. I've looked into this in the past, but with AS3 and Flash CS4, I am sure the process has been streamlined.

I already know enough to make a site that has "fade in" animations, and when you click the menu, the new Movie just loads in the container, but I am wanting to have an unload animation too, which is going to be more than just having a container movie and a bunch of movie clips that go in there.

Some other examples from Flash Components:
Elite XML WebSite Template - FullScreen

External XML Web Template - FullScreen



What I am asking about is super common, I just don't know exactly what to call it. Pretty much every "full flash" site uses the technique.

Any pointers or links that could help me do this?

[Zeste]

I found this on Kirupa, it's from 2004, but I'm testing it out in CS4 with Flash Player 10 as the target. It works as AS2, but not AS3.

Basically, is it defining the external SWF you want to load as "currMovie", and if it doesn't have the variable defined on each menu button (section1, section2 etc etc...), it plays the "exit animation" of the current movie and then loads the new variable "+ .swf" in the container?

Am I understanding this right?

Also, is there way to do this with non-external movieclips? Instead of making each section it's own seperate SWF, is there a way to have them all just be movie clips inside my main .FLA file? (can all be preloaded when first visiting the site instead of preloading each page as the SWF is called).

on (release) {
	if (_root.currMovie == undefined) {
		_root.currMovie = "section1";
		container.loadMovie("section1.swf");
	} else if (_root.currMovie != "section1") {
		if (container._currentframe >= container.midframe) {
			_root.currMovie = "section1";
			container.play();
		}
	}
}

kirupa.com - Transitions Between External SWFs

[DisgruntledOrangatang]

Does it have to be in flash?

Because you can achieve practically the same thing with jQuery
jQuery TOOLS / Scrollable - Scroll your HTML with eye candy . IDK if the whole site is in Flash or what though so that may not be helpful.

In terms of Flash, I ain't no expert and haven't tried this explicitly, but to me it sounds pretty easy what you want to do. Going off of the Azure example, if you want to achieve something like that, seems like you would just have your movie clips in the library, make them classes to be usable in code, instantiate them and then adjust their properties and/or create tweens for them.

So say you want on a menu button click for one clip to fade into the other. You would just add an event listener to the button, when teh button is clicked call a function that instantiates the move clip, adds it to the stage, sets its alpha (to zero) and x and y coordinates then play a tween that transitions is alpha to 1.

After that it get's a bit hazy for me to explain but you'd have to track which clip is currently shown and shit to make sure if there is one already loaded, it goes away properly. A loop or something would do this but I am not sure how it would look. I'd do it some ghetto ass way instead of the proper way.

Anyway I probably wasn't very helpful since I am pretty newb at AS3 too, but I tried since tons of people (and you) have helped me a lot on here.

I am sure Wigglewood will come in here and bust my shit up. Also if you don't get a good reply in a few, try sending him a PM, he's the flash master.

[Zeste]

I did end up finding this: kirupa.com - Transitions Between External SWFs


It's a pretty old tutorial, but its a start.

[DisgruntledOrangatang]

How's this coming and did you PM Wigglewood?!