Simple Flash Project: Single SWF

Here is a very basic informational package, made with Flash. It has three segments:

1. The introduction, in which you see the bartender
2. The "shaken" segment
3. The "stirred" segment

There are no movie clips, no scenes, no loaded SWFs.

There are four buttons. There are three Graphic symbols. The "Credits" panel is just a simple button.

Download the FLA (1.1 MB) and have fun. Study it. Take it apart. Add sound to it. Add new buttons. Use it to teach other people how to make things with Flash. That's what I built it for. NOTE: Requires Flash 8 or later.

Stuff You Should Notice

1. ActionScript on frames 14, 54 and 80.
2. ActionScript written on the Bartender button, frame 25.
3. No ActionScript used for the Credits button.
4. Position of frame labels (in the labels layer, in the Timeline) relative to the start of each segment.
5. The manner in which the shaker is animated (layer: shaken).
6. The manner in which the stirring is animated (layer: stirred). Compare this to the shaker. Then notice that the pitcher and the stirring stick are not symbols. Why is this okay? Answer: The stirring stick is not tweened.
7. How are the layers arranged? What is on top of what?
8. How are the elements of the package divided among the layers?
9. How are the layers named?

Note that the SWF is only 74 KB, and it contains all the images. To see how the image file sizes were reduced, look in the Library in the FLA. Inside the Bitmaps folder, click the image icons to see their properties.

How Long Does It Take?

This project took me about two hours, start to finish, plus about one hour to find the images and the text and to edit the images.

Updated 25 June 2007.

My blog is Teaching Online Journalism. To contact me, see my home page.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To attribute this work, include my name, Mindy McAdams, and a link to this page.