Flash : A drop-down menu in a couple of ticks
[ Contents ]
Daniel Garrance

Creating a Menu

Before starting ... In this workshop, we won't go into the basic details. If you are not familiar with Flash fundamentals, we recommend that you read the unit on the main steps of animation creation with Flash.

To acquire basic knowledge of symbols and instances, and especially about buttons and movie clips, have a look at the set of lab books dealing with the design of the Jojo & Albert movie.

The way our menu works is very simple. It first appears as a button which, when clicked on, displays a set of menu items (three in our example). Clicking one of these items will lead the user to another Web page. And if you click outside the menu, it will close.

Our menu design is based on the creation of two main symbols:

  • A button

    • We will use four instances of this symbol, one for the main menu button, and one for each of the three items (see Figure 1).



    Figure 1: The main button and the menu item buttons

  • A Movie Clip

    • This clip will include two keyframes: one with the main button when it is inactive (it is the only one visible), and the second with all the buttons, i.e. the main one plus the menu items.

    The menu operation is essentially based on the transition between the first and the second keyframe of the movie clip.

Downloading. To enable you to follow this lab book easily, download the Flash project in its final state.



Contents
1   2   3   4   5   6 
Creating the Button Symbol