Neverside

Flash Frames

Im designing a new website and want to create a Flash animated header that spans across the top of the page. I am going to build an MP3 player inside it, so I cannot have the header part of the page reloading everytime the user clicks a link. I do not want to use HTML frames as this ruins the layout aesthetically and in terms of viewing space, especially for users running a low screen res.

What I want to know is:

1. Can I make up my website in 3 flash files [one for the header, one for the side nav menu and one for the page content to the right of the menu] and then insert them all into a single flash file and use that in the website?

2. If yes for 1, can I load php files into the flash file that will control page content? Can I use this file as a "frame" within the holding flash file, therefore allowing the user to scroll the whole page length, yet only changing the main content part of the page when a link is clicked?

Thanks in advance.

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Caching-SWF-files-for-Faster-Movies/2497
Basically u can setup flash to save it on the visitors hard drive. This is known as caching and is sometimes used to cahce images and html pages. By caching it, the swf file is only loaded from the server once then it's loaded from the hard drive.

have u tried iframes. They are frames that can be positioned anywhere!
<IFRAME name="inlineframe" src="yoururl.html" width=200 height=200 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 hspace=0 vspace=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=auto style="FILTER: chroma(color=#ff0000)" allowtransparency="true"></IFRAME>

Is much more flexible than regular frames!

Last edited by schoi, August 28th, 2006 04:12 AM (Edited 2 times)

Thanks for the reply, but I don't understand how caching will help? The flash will still be reloaded, be it off the server or hdd. The point is, I don't want the banner part of the flash file reloaded as it will have an mp3 player in. Ifit it is reloaded everytime someone clicks a link, the mp3 will start again from 0:00 which is a tad pointless.

Also, I don't want any sort of html frame as I want the whole page to scroll as though no frames are present. Hence, why I want to know about "frames" inside flash. I want to know if I can make a holding swf file, that contains 3 swf files, one for the header, one for the nav menu, and one for the page content. I want the nav menu links to only change the data within the swf for the page content. Is this possible? Can I set that respective swf file up to obtain data from php documents?

I had my website set up a little like that for a little while.
Problem was that having only one flash for content would be a big load.

What you could do, is instead have 2 flash files. 1 for the header, and the second split be be part nav, part content. You could then load a certain area of the content from a seperate .swf (have like home.swf, news.swf, etc.). Or you could take the approach of building it right into the flash, whatever you want.

For having the content come from a php file, You would only be able to get Text as your content.
The method i used for content is, I had a database with news, or whatever, and I would have a php file read it and i'd have it select it all, and id do a

print("$newsvar");

newsvar being the text from the database, that i retrieved with a SELECT in the php file.
er...
confusing? sorry.

what you are trying to do is relatively simple. All you need is three movieclips on stage. The header will only load once but stay active with the ability to load in php data using LoadVars. The sidenav can load as many times as you want, but when you click on the nav buttons the content page will be updated. You can do this a number of ways, either putting everything on stage, creating movieClips dynamically or setting up classes to manage everything. I am not sure about your flash experience so how you do it will be up to you.