Flash 5 Tutorial – Part 1 – Introduction multimedia on web pages,

Introduction

Flash is one of the most popular technologies on the internet, with thousands of websites using it for introductions, animations and advertisements. Although many people feel that these animations are sometimes unnecessary, Flash has created a way of including multimedia on web pages, which will run over a standard internet connections. The recent release, Flash 5, has brought many changes to the creation of Flash animations. Many of the techniques covered in this tutorial will also apply to past versions of Flash, as well as Flash MX, the very latest version, though. If you are not sure what a Flash animation is like click here for an example. If this does not work you will need to download the Flash Plugin.

Why Use Flash?

Flash is one of the best multimedia formats on the internet today for several reasons. Firstly, the Flash plugin (required to view the animations) is installed on nearly every computer connected to the internet. All the major browsers come with it installed by default and, for those who don’t have it, the download is very small. Secondly, Flash is a ‘vector based’ program, which means the animations and graphics created by it have much smaller file sizes than a video or streaming media version of the same animation would be. You can also include sound, graphics and dynamically created information in your animation.

Flash provides a versatile and easy way for webmasters to create animations for their users.

What Do I Need?

As mentioned above, all you need to view a Flash animation is a modern web browser with the Flash plugin. To create Flash animations, though, you will need some software. Although there are other Flash creations on the market, Macromedia’s Flash 5, is by far the best and, as Macromedia created the Flash format, it always has the latest features in it. Unfortunately, the software costs $400, but you can download a free 30 day trial from Macromedia.

Once you have downloaded and installed the trial (or bought the software) you will be ready to start creating Flash animations.

The Flash Interface

When you first open Flash you will find an interface that looks something like this:

I will quickly cover the different aspects of this screen.

In the centre is the large white ‘Stage’. This is the actual movie where you will place all the objects you want to include in it.

Across the top of the screen is the timeline. This is where you insert all the actions that happen in your movie so that they happen at the correct times. It is split up into frames.

Down the left hand side of the screen is the ‘Tools’ pallette. This is where you will find all the tools for inserting objects and text into your animation.

There are also four floating pallettes on the screen. The ‘Mixer’ pallette allows you to choose the colours you will be using in your animation. It will change the colours of the currently selected object. The’ Info’ pallette will allow you to find out a bit of information about the object you have selected and will allow you to make changes to the properties of a tool you are using. The ‘Character’ pallette contains all the text formatting tools. Finally the ‘Instance’ pallette contains all the tools for changing objects when you are animating them, including sound and several other tools for making changes to your animation.

Each of the parts of the Flash window does many different things. Instead of going through each tool explaining what it does, I will show you examples and explain how to create them, showing you how to use each tool while doing so.

Learn PHP yourself by this tutorial – Introduction to PHP

Introduction

Up until recently, scripting on the internet was something which very few people even attempted, let alone mastered. Recently though, more and more people have been building their own websites and scripting languages have become more important. Because of this, scripting languages are becomming easier to learn and PHP is one of the easiest and most powerful yet.

What Is PHP?

PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and is a server-side language. This means that the script is run on your web server, not on the user’s browser, so you do not need to worry about compatibility issues. PHP is relatively new (compared to languages such as Perl (CGI) and Java) but is quickly becomming one of the most popular scripting languages on the internet.

Why PHP?

You may be wondering why you should choose PHP over other languages such as Perl or even why you should learn a scripting language at all. I will deal with learning scripting languages first. Learning a scripting language, or even understanding one, can open up huge new possibilities for your website. Although you can download pre-made scripts from sites like Hotscripts, these will often contain advertising for the author or will not do exactly what you want. With an understanding of a scripting language you can easily edit these scripts to do what you want, or even create your own scripts.

Using scripts on your website allows you to add many new ‘interactive’ features like feedback forms, guestbooks, message boards, counters and even more advanced features like portal systems, content management, advertising managers etc. With these sort of things on your website you will find that it gives a more professional image. As well as this, anyone wanting to work in the site development industry will find that it is much easier to get a job if they know a scripting language.

What Do I Need?

As mentioned earlier, PHP is a server-side scripting language. This means that, although your users will not need to install new software, you web host will need to have PHP set up on their server. It should be listed as part of your package but if you don’t know if it is installed you can find out using the first script in this tutorial. If you server does not support PHP you can ask your web host to install it for you as it is free to download and install. If you need a low cost web host which supports PHP I would recommmend HostRocket.

Writing PHP

Writing PHP on your computer is actually very simple. You don’t need any specail software, except for a text editor (like Notepad in Windows). Run this and you are ready to write your first PHP script.

Declaring PHP

PHP scripts are always enclosed in between two PHP tags. This tells your server to parse the information between them as PHP. The three different forms are as follows:

PHP Code In Here

All of these work in exactly the same way but in this tutorial I will be using the first option (). There is no particular reason for this, though, and you can use either of the options. You must remember, though, to start and end your code with the same tag (you can’t start with <? and end with for example).

Your First Script

The first PHP script you will be writing is very basic. All it will do is print out all the information about PHP on your server. Type the following code into your text editor:

As you can see this actually just one line of code. It is a standard PHP function called phpinfo which will tell the server to print out a standard table of information giving you information on the setup of the server.

One other thing you should notice in this example is th
at the line ends in a semicolon. This is very important. As with many other scripting and programming languages nearly all lines are ended with a semicolon and if you miss it out you will get an error.

Finishing and Testing Your Script

Now you have finished your script save it as phpinfo.php and upload it to your server in the normal way. Now, using your browser, go the the URL of the script. If it has worked (and if PHP is installed on your server) you should get a huge page full of the information about PHP on your server.

If your script doesn’t work and a blank page displays, you have either mistyped your code or your server does not support this function (although I have not yet found a server that does not). If, instead of a page being displayed, you are prompted to download the file, PHP is not installed on your server and you should either serach for a new web host or ask your current host to install PHP.

It is a good idea to keep this script for future reference.

Part 2

In this part I have introduced you to the basics of writing and running PHP. By this time you should now know if your host supports PHP and should have a basic understanding of how PHP scripts are structured. In part 2 I will show you how to print out information to the browser.