How Flash works with FrontPage 2000

 

Contents:

   1) Overview of Flash and what it is
   2) Files that Flash uses
   3) How to use Flash animations in FrontPage
  
     * What files you need
  
     * How you insert the Flash HTML into FrontPage
  
     * Using the FrontPage Active X control

1) What is Flash?

    Flash is a Vector based graphics and animation program made by Macromedia. Vector graphics are great because you can expand and enlarge them almost indefinitely without increasing the file size. Other programs that use vectors are Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Fireworks (among other graphics formats), Macromedia Freehand, and CorelDraw. With the introduction of Flash4, a scripting engine was introduced, and opened the door for many uses.

2) What files does Flash use?

    The working file that Flash uses has a .fla extension. This cannot be used in the website and can only be opened by Flash. The actual file Flash outputs is an .swf file. This is the file that the webmaster will have to import into his web to get the animation to show up. Flash will also output an HTML file with the < object > and < embed > tag, which is what the browser will look at to embed the plug-in. Here is a sample of the output code that Flash will output:

Notice that Flash will output an entire HTML page, when all you need to insert in the page for the animation to work is the section between the < object > and < / object > tags. Don't get confused and copy the entire page into another page, which can cause problems for browsers.

3) How to use Flash with FrontPage

Flash integrates with FrontPage very well and should not give webmasters any problems. To insert a Flash animation into FrontPage, you need to first export the HTML that the movie will use (described above) and the .swf file that is the actual Flash animation. To do this you can open your movie in Flash, go to FILE, PUBLISH SETTINGS,...and choose what quality you want it to store your images, if you want it to loop, etc. (There are many settings). Once you choose the settings you want, go to FILE, PUBLISH and it will output the files into the same directory as the .fla file. Once you have the .swf file and the HTML file needed, you can open your web in FrontPage. Go to FILE, IMPORT and import the .swf file and the HTML file that was exported from Flash. Make sure they both go into the same directory! Once this is done, you will be able to open the HTML file in FrontPage and view the animatiion. Note that the animation will show up in Normal view when importing the animation this way. If you try to modify the animation while in FrontPage, you can break it and may have to insert the HTML code into FrontPage again. If you are inserting the animation onto an existing webpage, you can copy and paste the code that is on the imported HTML file and paste it into the HTML view of Frontpage. If you try to modify the setting of the animation in FrontPage, it will modify the HTML code, and you may need to paste the HTML into FrontPage again. 

Also, to insert a Flash animation in FrontPage, import the swf file into your web, then you can use INSERT, ADVANCED, PLUG-IN, and browse for the imported swf file, then add size and layout preferences. Done.

You can use the "INSERT ACTIVE X COMPONENT" from FrontPage, but this will not work in Netscape - also if you modify your movie while in FrontPage, it may still work in IE, but FrontPage will strip the closing embed ( < / EMBED > ) tag and the animation may have some problems with some of the older (or newer) browsers.

- suggestions by Sūdaunykas

 

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~ in memory of Jeannette DeBusk Cox ~