Flash MX Application And Interface Design

By Peter Aylward, Ken Jokol, Jamie McDonald, Paul Prudence, Glen Rhodes, Robbie Shepherd, Todd Yard

The days of Flash as a creative luxury are long gone. After months of downsizing, Flash creativity has been on a huge rationalization program. It is no longer enough to present animation in millions of colors and a hundred transparencies. It is no longer sufficient to provide interactivity and dynamism for their own sake.

The purpose of this collection is to show how designers have taken Flash and made it work for its supper. What we discover is a series of creations that place Flash at the hub of cutting edge web content.

The end result is a snapshot of Flash as the Ideal Medium.

In these amazing examples we see the software pushed to its limits to create unbeatable applications - a collapsible family tree, an interactive video learning system, and a drawing tool, capable of running online!

Beyond this we dip into the back-end capabilities to look at how to improve Flash still further. Some staple XML and PHP routines are brought in to add a bit of spice, while Flash's mysterious sharedObject command is hunted down and tamed to create a hybrid Tamagotchi houseplant - perfectly suited to lure surfers back to your website!

Table of Contents:

1:: Designing Preloaders
2:: Creating interfaces with the Drawing API
3:: Real-Feel Sites
4:: A Flash Family Tree
5:: Making XML work for your Interface
6:: A PHP Site
7:: Promoting Site Stickiness
8:: Interactive Video: Karate!
9:: Drawing on the fly -- t-shirt designer