Flash designs are very desirable to clients who are paying for web design services.  Flash technology has enabled web designers to add sound and animation to websites without requiring extensive bandwidth.  Most of the latest browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Explorer now support flash presentations which are just more attractive than HTML.  Flash is not recommended for sites which are content oriented; however, a flash intro is always attractive.  Currently, HTML web sites and Flash web sites are the most in demand.

Many designers don’t do flash designs because they find them to be overwhelming.  If you would like to offer your clients flash designs, but you just don’t want to mess with learning the specialized techniques, you can purchase a collection of flash designs from www.layoutbank.com and customize the layouts to meet your client’s needs.  If you want to take a crack at learning to develop flash layouts, here are some basics to get you started.  It is not as difficult as you may think.

Before beginning the design of a flash layout, it is advisable to make a rough drawing of the layout on paper to determine the interface and desired color scheme.  Open a new file in the Macromedia Flash software and select Modify-Movie.  In the movie properties menu, set the frame rate to 60fps with dimensions of 779 x 434 and select white for the background color.  The defaults in the other fields of the movie properties menu should be fine to begin with.

Now, select Modify-Scene and rename the scene as ‘index’ for your home page design.  Create a border your layout and split the layout into two vertical divisions; 300px x 479px is ideal.  Divide the left portion into three subdivisions and select a color for each, then choose one of the colors and select Insert-Convert to symbol and give it a name and do the same for the other two colors.  This converts the colored patches into graphics.  To create a shadow effect, you can select Window-Library-<the graphic name>, double click the graphic and select Insert-Layer, then copy the patch from one layer and place it on the second layer.  Select the first layer and change the color to black.  Select Modify-Curves-Soften Edges and set the distance for 10px, number of steps 10  and direction inset.  Now you can convert the shadow into a graphic by selecting Insert-Convert to Symbol and naming it.