Introduction to Flash Animation in InDesign CS5

Introduction to Flash Animation in InDesign CS5

Who says you need to work with Adobe Flash to create Flash content? Adobe InDesign CS5 adds a load of new features and panels that enable you to add interactivity, motion, video, and much more to your InDesign documents by exporting to the SWF file format ( video tutorials) for viewing using the Adobe Flash player. This opens up a whole new world to those of us who don't use Adobe Flash. You can even export to the native format for Adobe Flash called FLA. That way, you can either publish the file in SWF format to be used on a website, for instance, or hand it over to a Flash developer as an FLA file to add some finishing touches to it.

In this article, I want to take you through the basics of taking your InDesign file and adding the following, and then exporting:

Buttons

Animations

Media (sound and video)

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

When you start working on a project for export to SWF, there are a few things that can make your life easier:

When you create the content, create content (colors, images) in the RGB color space.

Try to make the document size (adjustable by choosing File > Document Setup) the size at which it will be viewed as a SWF. While scaling is possible when you export to SWF, it may not be optimal for some objects.

Try not to copy and paste images to repeat images video tutorials. This can create a larger file size.

Make sure that transparent objects do not overlap any interactive element, such as a button or hyperlink. The interactivity could disappear.

Add Buttons to Your Document

The first thing we'll do is to add a button to the document in InDesign video tutorials. Buttons are used in your Flash content for lots of things. Most of us use them to navigate the document or control a video. You can create a button from almost anything. This includes a raster image, a placed Illustrator file, drawn content, a group, and much more.

In your document, draw a rectangle and add some text for the button. Select all of the button content and group it together (grouping is not necessary).

Open the Buttons panel by choosing Window > Interactive > Buttons.

TIP

You can show all of the panels necessary to work with interactive content by choosing Window > Workspace > Interactive or choosing Interactive from the workspace switcher in the Application bar.

With the object(s) selected on the page, click the Convert Object to a Button button at the bottom of the Buttons panel ( video tutorials). After the object is converted to a button, you can create "states" for it. To learn more, visit InDesign Help (Help > InDesign Help) and search for "Change button appearance for rollover and clicking."

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