Creating Flash for Website

[Craig Laughlin]

Our web host will support flash. I would like to have a rotating set of 4-6 announcements of upcoming events on our front page but need to create a flash vid to do this. Anyone know of free or cheep software to do this? I was thinking I would create the pictures in PowerPoint but I am open to ideas.

Also, I have noticed that many of the churches that do this have a different aspect ratio than Power point. (Much wider) I like that look but have no idea how to do it.

Thanks for any help.

www.Marysville-Nazarene.org

[Billie Goodson]

I looked a while ago and could never find something that was free that didn't seem to want to add something to the flash to demonstrate where it came from. I think there were some lower cost options. I follow give away of the day (I think either Hans or Scott initially got me pointed in that direction) and have downloaded a few tools that will allow it. You could also do it with JavaScript, which is the way I started it out on our site. If you have any interest in the JavaScript side, then let me know and I can dig up the old source. My one complaint (albeit small one) about flash is that it is not supported by the IOS' for the Iphone and iPad, so you are missing that generation (as if they are important).

(The generation comment is strictly in joking, I myself would not belong to that generation, thereby demonstrating it's importance...or maybe the lack of it...)

[Jim Chabot]

Just a thought. From what I understand, mobile devices, i.e. smart phones (Droid, iPhone, Blackberry) iPad etc. generally do not support flash.

Do you have folks that would be checking the site via phone?

[Wayne Paul]

It should also be noted that textual material contained in Flash will not be indexed by search engines. That was a real problem when it was used at College of Idaho. (That was six years ago, maybe things have changed.)

[Craig Laughlin]

We certainly want the page to be accessible to as many as possible and our target audience is families with children. I'm open to other formats but right not the site looks pretty plain so I need to get that changed.

How difficult is Javascript?

Another direction... if it comes down to paying what program is the easiest to use?

[Zach Wingo]

The best way to do this is with jQuery (A javascript library) and it's accessible to almost all virtually all major smartphones and browsers. Javascript is used to manipulate regular HTML so it's also easy to make updates. There are hundreds of tutorials around the web and javascript is pretty easy to learn.

[Billie Goodson]

Craig, is it a small group of pictures you want to rotate? How often do you want them to change, as in how often would you change the pictures you want rotating? Do you want them to change during a single visit? Or just a new pic each time the page loads? Who maintains your current site? Is your web maintainers pretty savvy?

[Craig Laughlin]

Craig, is it a small group of pictures you want to rotate? How often do you want them to change, as in how often would you change the pictures you want rotating? Do you want them to change during a single visit? Or just a new pic each time the page loads? Who maintains your current site? Is your web maintainers pretty savvy?

Probably 4-6 pictures, probably changing once a week. I would like them to change pictures every few seconds. Currently I have a person to put up basic info who could be trained for more. The person who does it is not terribly savvy but her husband is very high end technical person and she is pretty motivated.


Examples of the sort of thing I am thinking of. It would be REALLY cool if they could click on it when it is up and go the the corresponding web page, but I am guessing that is beyond me.

http://www.turningpointchurch.com/

http://www.marshillchurch.org/

http://www.crossroadsnazarene.org/

[Zach Wingo]

The Crossroads Nazarene site doesn't use flash, it's using the jQuery library I mentioned above to animate their slideshow. That is still your best option and is easy to learn...far easier than Flash and much more accessible.

[Craig Laughlin]

I'll have to find out of our host supports jQuery.

[Billie Goodson]

I'll have to find out of our host supports jQuery.

jquery is just a library of javascript functions/routines. About the only hosts that don't allow it are those where you build your pages through templates on their site and never really get to upload anything (which is very very rare). You can point your person to this site http://jquery.com/

Would your person be willing to get into a discussion here?

[Zach Wingo]

Every host can support jQuery, it's simply a text file that gets downloaded and processed by the browser just like HTML.

In fact, you can even create an HTML file on your desktop and link to the jQuery file and play with it on your own computer. Just search jQuery tutorial on google and start going through them. There are literally hundreds of them.


Edit:

I would first recommend you first work through the W3 Schools tutorial on Javascript (http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp) then this tutorial (http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/jquery-tutorials-for-designers/) then either the official jQuery tutorial (http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials) or the W3Schools jQuery tutorial (http://www.w3schools.com/jquery/default.asp)

[Zach Wingo]

About the only hosts that don't allow it are those where you build your pages through templates on their site and never really get to upload anything (which is very very rare).


I guess this is more accurate than my statement that all hosts support it...

[Zach Wingo]

BTW, those are usually referred to as 'sliders' so a Google search of 'jquery sliders' will bring up lots of ones already made. Check out this one:

http://www.dreamcss.com/2009/04/create-beautiful-jquery-sliders.html

Scroll to the bottom just before the comments to see the demo.