Graphic Designer wanting to learn Flash to make Websites.... Where to Start ?

[cdelbertsanders]

Not sure where this goes, so a mod can feel free to move it.

When I was in High School looking to become a Graphic Designer. Years later I'm still here and I've achieved that but now I'm looking to do more. I want to become a Web designer. With recent economic developments I'm thinking it's a safer career path, and quite lucrative.

I took a class online but it didn't really click much and I walked away knowing how to make buttons, play short movies and make a ball bounce at best. I'm no where near designing websites though. I'm quite confused as to where to start with that process.

I'm also confused as to how to embed it within CSS and XHTML (or do i even need to ?)

I am totally confused and unsure. I know xhtml and a little CSS (still learning). I'm not sure how it all works together.

 

[shig]

I am a website designer and here is exactly how I learned....

I went to bgsu and majored in video production so I had no development skills just an eye for professionalism.

I got my job by making a portfolio with one big image and a bunch of spot colors to navigate... lol

This is the key...
Experience - Intern for free part time. EXPERIENCE and skill is everything.

W3schools - learned xhtml - tableless website...

If you want to learn flash learn flex too... the next great thing. FLEX IS AWESOME.

BUT - start off doing something simple - make a website with dreamweaver using tables so you get use to the structure of developing websites. (folder structure, ect..)

Once your done editing text styles, bg colors, ect... go to design view in dreamweaver and find your css styles script in the header and cut the script out. Open a new css file in dreamweaver and paste the styles you copied. Now link the original page to the css style sheet by putting the following code in the head
<LINK REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css" HREF="MyStyles.css"> replace href with your path. (i normally put my css files in a folder called "css")

Once you accomplish this go to w3schools and read the xhtml tutorial. But you must master tables before you can go tableless in my oppinion. Otherwise there is too large of learning curve.

 

[Erdy]

Hi There,

You are on the wrong path to begin with.

1. Firstly, don't design websites with flash. Flash is designed to create animations and adverts that you put on a webpage. While it is possible to create the whole website with flash, this is not recommended. The texts on flash websites are not crawled by search engines. Also you can not select or copy texts either. Some people use bigger text sizes with their browsers but with flash websites this won't work. Some disabled people use text to speech programs, again this won't work. Translations services provided by google translate, altavista etc. won't work either. Basically nothing will work with flash websites that makes the website more accessible.

Flash websites can be a good idea for portfolio sites for artists, designers, photographers etc. I would not create a website with flash other than that.

If you indeed want to create a flash web page / website, you don't need any css at all. Simply go to 'publish settings' in flash and set it to publishe a html file along with the swf file. Keep these two files in the same directory and open the html to view your flash page. If you upload them to your webhost, upload both files. If it is yur homepage then rename the html file to index.html.

2. Another way is to create websites with photoshop. This is also called the slice technique. While this is very populer, it isn't a recommended way either. It lacks the flexibility needed to create websites that look good on smaller devices as well as bigger screens.

While I don't like the slice method it is a much better option that a flash website. Also the slice method makes more sense if you have a dynamic website where the content is pulled from a database and put on the web page. For instance a php website.

The slice method is simply to create a huge picture or the entire website and then cut it into pieces and arrange the pieces inside a table. Using tables for site layout isn't recommended anymore. So how do you create websites without a table layout?

3. The answer is to use CSS to create the layout. The CSS method is surprisingly easy. Basically you start with an empty box called a 'div'. Then you give the box definitions like, width, height, paddings, margin, position, border, text colour, text size, background colour, background image etc. A typical web page could have 5 to 20 divs on one page. The good things is that css allows you to use internal or external styling. This means you could put style codes on the html page itself, but you also could tell the html to read styles from an external css file. You put the divs to the html page itself and you put the definitions (css rules) on a seperate file. This file is usally called styles.css.

This allows you to seperate styling from content. Lets say you have a div that you used on 20 different pages. You can simply change one value in the css file and all the divs will be updated.

Trust me, you don't want to create websites with flash. You want to create tableless sites with css.

I suggest that you study more css and use dreamweaver to create web sites with xhtml and css. Some basics about css layouts can be found here:
http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/html-training/css/positioning/

4. There are video traning sets for everything you need. You can find dvd sets or online traning for flash or dreamweaver. There are two places to look at:
lynda.com
totaltraning.com

 

[hostbuddy]

try to search in google

 

[dezinerite]

The best way to start is bit by bit, little by little. Creating a 100% HTML site would be slightly different from creating one that's HTML/CSS.

A great method for beginners is using a WYSIWYG editor like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage. Create the design you want with a click of a button and then view & understand the HTML code that gets you there.

Another method you can try is by downloading free templates and studying their codes.

 

[lizmarcus7]

I learned Graphics designing at school.
Flash animation is what i usually do and picture editing.
Right now, im already checking online tutorials about Flash.
There are many sites you can choose from.
If you already know Animation try to see templatemonster.com
i am really impressed with the Websites designs they have.
If i have projects in Animation I always check that site to get some idea on how to do it

 

[vanesaJac]

Before joining some online class or online tutorial
start asking guidance from Expert Graphic designers
Do you have some friends you know who has the
broad knowledge on that?
you can ask for their suggestions.

 

[kiezerrence]

thanks

can you share more knowledge for that topics i want to learn also on graphic designig thanks a lot.

 

[Sheikh Ahsan]

Hello,

I will prefer you to go to youtube and start from the tutorial there as they are really easy and will help you a lot to get to know flash! I gained a lot from there when I was a beginer!! Now I am quite professional playing with flash! If you have any question please do not hesitate to ask me!
Thank you!
Cheers!

---------- Post added at 01:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:33 PM ----------

kiezerrence I can help you a lot more then java in other graphics designing works, for example adobe photoshot and fireworks!

---------- Post added at 01:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:35 PM ----------

kiezerrence if you have any question in graphics designing I will be able to help you out specially in photoshop, fireworks and corel. I have good grip in these three. I will be happy assist you!