Animating the Page with Flash 5
You have totally re-created the Shelley Biotech homepage graphics with Flash. Now comes the fun part: animating it! In this chapter you will learn the basic concepts you need to create animation in Flash movies. You will gain an understanding of what an animation is, the difference between the speed and the length of your animation, and what interface elements the Flash editor contains to help you create and control your animation.
Timelines and Frames
Before we begin animating the page elements, we need to do some clean-up work, including converting some graphics to symbols and reorganizing and creating layers. You can download the current project from the Chapter 2 section of http://www.phptr.com/essential/flash5 or directly from http://www.phptr.com/essential/flash5/shelley/shelley1-12.html.
Creating the Link Text Symbol
Take a look at the current page, Figure 21. The links on the page will all appear to move together in our animation. To allow us to do this easily, we can create a single graphic symbol that contains all of them grouped together.
FIGURE 21 Current Shelley page.
We need to select all the text links. Use the Arrow and hold down the Shift key to select the seven text links: about us, vendors, investors, products, contact us, research, and press releases.
Choose Modify → Group.
Choose Insert → Convert to Symbol.
Name the new symbol "Link Text" and set its behavior to Graphic. Click OK.
Creating the Logo Layer
Flash requires that any symbol to be animated must be in its own layer. The lines connecting the circles need to be moved to their own layer, since we will be animating them. To do this:
Select the top layer in the layer list and click on the Insert Layer button, shown in Figure 22.
FIGURE 22 Flash interface with the Add Layer button.
Name the new layer "Logo."
If you haven't already done so, move the Link Text layer over the Circles layer.
Click on one of the lines connecting the circles. This will select all the lines and circles, because we grouped them earlier.
Choose Modify → Ungroup.
Choose Edit → Deselect All.
Use the Arrow and the Shift key to select all of the lines. If you accidentally select something else, just click on it again with the Shift key held down to deselect it and leave everything else selected.
Choose Edit → Cut.
Select the Logo layer.
Choose Edit → Paste in Place. You have now moved the lines to the new layer. They are in front of the circles, but we'll be moving them in a moment.
With the lines still selected, choose Modify → Group.
Finally, make the lines into a symbol by selecting Insert → Convert to Symbol. Name this symbol "Lines" set its behavior to Graphic. See Figure 23.
FIGURE 23 Symbol Properties dialog box.
This would be a good time to save your work. Choose File → Save As, and save this file in the directory of your choice as shelley.fla. Download the project at this point from http://www.phptr.com/essential/flash5 or view it directly at http://www.phptr.com/essential/flash5/shelley/shelley2-1.html.
Adding an Additional Background Layer
Both the white and the brown curves making up the background will be animated. We need a separate layer for each.
Click on the Background layer. This layer currently contains both of the background curves.
Choose Insert Layer from the Layer menu. This will place a new layer immediately above the Background layer.
Rename this "Background 1."
Select the white curve. Choose Edit → Cut.
Select the Background 1 layer and choose Edit → Paste in Place.
Rename the original Background layer "Background 2."
Creating Some Layers for the Circles
The last organizational change you need to make involves moving each of the seven circles to separate layers so each can be animated separately.
Select the Background 1 layer and create seven new layers.
Name them as follows: Press Releases, Research, Contact Us, Investors, Vendors, About Us, and Products. Don't worry about the order; we will adjust that in a moment.
We need to move each one of our current circles to one of these new layers. For each of our seven circle