Navigation Tips

Well, you probably want to create some cool unique navigation menu for your site. Most nice flash sites have them so why not yours. This tutorial will give you some tips that I learned while creating my flash sites.

First of all on most sites you will probably have a few seconds of animation from one section to the other, any sort of animation. Now, here's a scenario: The user clicks on a button that sends him to section x from section y. During the cool animation you worked so hard on that user decides to go to section z. What happens to the animation sequence? It gets cut off and jumps to the animation sequence intended for section z. But there is a problem you where in the middle of a transition this might ruin the whole effect. I simple way to avoid this entire mess is just to use two variables in your flash site.

The first CurrentSection this variable will hold the name of the section you are in so if your in section x the value would be x but if your in section z then the value would be z. This helps program the buttons to play the sequence you would like.

The next variable you will need is the Process variable. This one will hold a value of True or False. So if you have a animation sequence that you don't want interrupted just add a keyframe at the beginning of the sequence (I recommend in new layer) set Process to be true and add another keyframe at the end of the sequence and set Process to False. And just add an if statement to the beginning of your button action. Something like if Process eq False..., I used If Process <> "True". That's it you can download the .fla file for an example of those two variables being used.

Example .Fla File Navfla.zip

Summation:

Step 1 - Set CurrentSection with the name of the section at the first keyframe of section (before the animation sequence).

Step 2 - Set Process to True on the button that leads to an animation.

That's All.