Using Sothink SWF Quicker’s Template to Create Flash Animation Slide Shows
Sothink provides a number of inexpensive, popular and powerful tools to assist with web design.
One of those is SWF Quicker used for creating Flash graphics and animation. Quicker allows you to start from scratch or edit existing flash files. I have achieved very satisfactory results using Quicker on a number of projects.
Unless you have specific requirements not addressed by the Slide Show Template included with the product, use it! You can create a professional slide show within 10 to 15 minutes.
Tips for creating your slide show:
- Do not expect to do much editing within the SWF Quicker Graphical Interface once the wizard is complete. Think of the template wizard as a stand alone application, not a method for creating a basic project to modify further once the wizard is complete.
- Prepare your picture/slides ahead of time. Resize them all your desired display size or to fit within the display maximizing the height or width. Optionally, the pictures can be slightly smaller to create a background colored border. Preface slide file names so they sort sequentially, it will save reordering when you run the Wizard to create or modify your slide show.
- Take your time going through the Wizard; verify that the slides are correctly ordered, an appropriate transition is applied to each slide and that the timing is set to your needs. I like to use 4 to 5 seconds between slides and typically disable all user controls to create automatic self running and looping presentations.
- It’s a good idea to double check everything before saving your slide show near the completion of the Wizard. Once you click next to save your work, the back capability is disabled. Making changes requires either rerunning the wizard or editing the Action Script within Quicker.
- At the last step, the Wizard publishes your slide show in the designated directory. The show consists of a.swf Flash file containing the controls and the picture files stored separately. This capability allows for simple file replacement to update or change slides.
- Once the Wizard completes you can edit the Action Script to make changes. To locate it, click the movie explorer tab in the lower right panel, expand index, select action layer 2, and highlight “actions for frame 1.” The action script can be edited in the bottom panel under the action tab. Picture information and the slide duration are easy to find.
- When embedding flash video.swf files, I always set the window mode parameters to transparent preventing bleed through to other windows, and set the z-index to less than 0 display pop-up menus over the top of the slide show.
If you are looking to create Flash Animation Slide Shows, Sothink’s SWF Quicker could be the right solution for you. A full licensed version is available for $84.95 from their official site.