MAY 2005
Over the last couple of weeks I have been working to syndicate the Tiger Studios newsletter to various online news feeds. As of this publication, I am still awaiting approval from a few news sources. So keep an eye out for our newsletter in various news sources, and please shoot me an email if you do find reference to Tiger Studios.
Happy Spring!
Kim Adams, President, Tiger Studios, Inc.
Ask Tiger Studios
A: Unfortunately no. If you want to change the URL link that the animated banner goes to you will need to go into the original Flash file, make the change under "Actions" and then republish the animation. |
Using Flash To Create An Animated Banner
Macromedia Flash is used in a variety of applications on web sites; from advertising to slide shows and full web sites. Today we will talk about creating animated banners for web sites using Flash and hopefully give you some handy tips for the next advertising banner you create. Keeping an animated Flash banner within 20K but still making it look nice is an art form.
What is Flash?
Flash is a timeline based application that allows you to create animations, like dissolving pictures on and off the screen, and interactions, like buttons, quizzes, and drag and drop actions. Flash accepts JPG, GIF and SWF graphic file types and these graphics are brought into the application and manipulated to create animation. Sound and video may also be used but not for animated banners.
Make the file size low.
How do you keep the file size down, especially for animated banners that need to be no larger than 20K for a 468 x 60 pixel banner? Make sure all of the text in the animation is created in Flash and not brought in as a graphic. Reuse graphics or have a limited number of them in the animation. The more graphics (GIF or JPG) that you have the larger the animation's file size will be. Also, try to use as many files as you can that were created using Adobe Illustrator and exported as SWF files. Their image quality is high while their file sizes stay low making them good graphics to use.
Make a simple button.
If you are using Flash to create an advertising banner then you will need to create a button in Flash that will cover the whole banner. Create a simple box button that matches the background of the animation and use ActionScript's "Get URL" action to link the button to the web site of your choice.
Test your banner.
When you "Publish" your animation, make sure you create both an HTML file and an SWF file. Test the HTML file in your Internet browser before you send the files to get posted on a web site.
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A Little About Tiger Studios
Tiger Studios was established in 1999 by Kim Adams and created to help clients by being a one stop shop for all aspects of web site design, graphic design and web site development. We are proud of our professional attitudes, custom graphic and web site design, and proven customer service records.
To learn more about Tiger Studios and our services, check out our web site www.Tiger-Studios.com or contact Kim Adams at mail@Tiger-Studios.com for a free estimate of your next web site or graphic design project.