macromedia flash sitedesign: Hi there,

In order to make my work portfolio easily accessible to anyone interested in
seeing it I decided to put it on a website I created.

I had already created a site and placed some of my portfolio on it though I am
not overly happy with its design, I feel it looks to basic.

An idea I had to improve it was to use polaroids that a user can click on to
zoom in to view my work.

* The polaroids would be 'scattered' across the screen similar to how they
would if real ones were thrown on a table
* If a polaroid was behind another one it could be brought to the front
simply by hovering over it
* Clicking on a polaroid would enlarge it so that it would cover as much
of the screen as possible, this would happen in a fluid motion
* A polaroid could be dragged from one end of the screen to another by
holding the left mouse button down
* The polaroid would appear darkened or out of focus until hovered over
with the mouse


Although I know a bit of Flash I have no idea how to do something like this
and would very much appreciate it if you could help me with this, any help is
much appreciated!

I am doing some HTML on Dreamweaver, can this be embedded into a frame?

Cheers,

Niall

I have seen a site exactly as you described, only it was a full flash site.
When I remember the name I will forward it to you. This could easily be done
in flash. I'm not too keen on dreamweaver. I tried using it once and got so
pissed off that I deleted it from my computer and never thought about using it
again. It's a good thing I was able to use the purchase as a tax write off : )

It would be great if you could do that, thanks very much though I'm a little concerned now about my idea being seen as copied from somewhere else.

Not sure who it would be an issue to except yourself. I've seen the exact thing
you're talking about also and then another one that is close to being the same.

I suppose if you feel that you might be perceived as copying and that it would
affect your target market's feelings, then maybe come up with something else.
People copy others all the time. It just depends on how you think it will
affect you in the end.

[q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]ghgjjjk[/b][/b][/i]
* The polaroids would be 'scattered' across the screen similar to how they
would if real ones were thrown on a table
* If a polaroid was behind another one it could be brought to the front
simply by hovering over it
* Clicking on a polaroid would enlarge it so that it would cover as much
of the screen as possible, this would happen in a fluid motion
* A polaroid could be dragged from one end of the screen to another by
holding the left mouse button down
* The polaroid would appear darkened or out of focus until hovered over
with the mouse
[/q]

Im no master myself but hopefully I can point you in the right direction.
You do need some basic actionscript knowledge but dont be scared
since none of this is really advanced. I just started learning actionscript
myself 3 weeks ago and can do these kind of effects already.
-For the polaroids themselves just arrange them as you want and make
them into movieclipsymbols, put each one a separate layer, that way you
can easily move them up and down by moving the layers themselves.
If you use Flash 8 go to properties>Filters and add a small dropshadow to
each picture to give some depth.
-Use actionscript to make each picture come to front when hovering over it
if you dont know actionscript that well please go to flash help file or search
google for an action called "switchDepth" and "getNextHighestDepth" and use
this togheter with onRollover for each polaroid.
-Same with resizing you Polaroid to cover the whole screen use basic
actionscript
"onRelease" and make a motion tween to cover up the sceen. I suggest you use a
lowquality bitmap for your original polaroid and as soon as it has been
enlarged
you load in an external jpg etc of higher quality that way you will keep the
filesize down.
-To be able to drag your polaroids you need to use actionscript called
"onMousePress"
and "startDrag"
If the name of your polaroid movieclip is polaroid_mc then the code will look
like this:
polaroid_mc.onPress = function () {
polaroid_mc.startDrag();
}
polaroid_mc.onRelease = function () {
polaroid_mc.stopDrag();
}

Again if you use Flash8 just the filters and add blur to your picture when in
standard mode
then onRollOver delete that blur and the polaroid will look crisp.

I know this doesnt help you all the way but hopefully you will have a better
idea of what you need to do.
And about actionscript I can recommend the learnflash.com Intro to
actionscript 2.0 video tutorial which
covers almost all the actions you need for this task I used it myself.
Note: Im in no way attached to learnflash.com so its only my personal opinion
stated above
you can of course learn actionscript by reading the flash manual aswell.

Wish you the best of luck with your website
/AquaStealth