Final image To follow along download dzyneoArt2.ai

1. Download and Open dzyneoArt2.ai in Adobe Illustrator or use your own art

2. Open up the brushes pallete by going to Windows > Brushes. Open the Artistic_ChalkCharcoalPencil Brushes by going to Window > Brush Libraries > Artistic_ChalkCharcoalPencil. Select the Brush called Chalk in the Artistic_ChalkCharcoalPencil pallete and it will show up in the brush pallete.

3. With the pen tool selected draw a diagonal across the art work & apply the chalk brush to the stroke. I chose a stroke size of 2px.

4. With the pen tool selected draw another diagonal across the art work & apply the chalk brush to the stroke. I chose a stroke size of 2px.

5. With the pen tool selected draw another diagonal across the art work & apply the chalk brush to the stroke. I chose a stroke size of 3px.

6. Select all the strokes created & go to the top menu Object > Expand Appearance.

7. Open the Pathfinder
pallete Windows > Pathfinder.
Select everything
CTRL(PC)/CMD(MAC)+A.
In the pathfinder pallete click on merge as shown in the image. Then Select just the stroke color in my case it is pink by going to the menu Select > Same > Fill Color & delete the selection.

8. Now you have your distressed art in Vector Format

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In today’s tutorial we will create a clean and colorful arcade layout. This tutorial was create to teach the readers how to create different content boxes. hope you enjoy!

Preview:

Create a new photoshop document

1 Open up Photoshop, create a new document that is 1200px by 1300px, with a background color of #2d2d2d

Creating the background

2 I found a nice picture of some mountains from SXC and placed the image at the top of the canvas. I then used the eraser tool to lightly blend the background and the image together

Creating header and navigation

3 Select the rectangular selection tool (M). Create a rectangle in the top center of the canvas with a width of 942px and height of 3px

4 Select the gradient tool (G) with the linear gradient option selected. Use the rainbow gradient and drag it from the right of the canvas to the left

5 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a dark Grey (#292929) rectangle with a width of 942px and height of 95px place the rectangle underneath the rainbow rectangle

6 1px below the rainbow rectangle section create a 1px white (#ffffff) that spans 942px lower the layers opacity to 50%

Creating the main content area

7 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a white (#ffffff) rectangle with a width of 942px and height of 1093px place the rectangle underneath the header / nav leave a 20px – 30px gap

8 Double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

Adding a rotator area

9 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a dark Grey (#292929) rectangle with a width of 924px and height of 286px place the rectangle at the top of the white area

Creating a featured game box

10 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a blue (#008fff) rectangle with a width of 331px and height of 78px

11 Double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

Creating a tabbed game menu

12 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a Grey (#3b3b3b) rectangle with a width of 270px and height of 115px

13 Again select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a light blue (#a4d0ff) rectangle with a width of 331px and height of 202px

14 Once again select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a light blue (#a4d0ff) rectangle with a width of 115px and height of 202px place the rectangle to the left of the blue box this should overlap part of the Grey area and create a nice looking tab

Creating the main content boxes

15 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a orange (#ffa100) rectangle with a width of 279px try to make the height at least 50px. Select the rectangular selection tool (M) create a selection overlapping the bottom of the rounded rectangle, hit delete

16 Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set at 4px. Create a dark Grey (#292929) rectangle with a width of 279px its height should be 170px place the layer behind the yellow bar then raise it until you have something like this

17 Repeat steps 15 – 16 until you have something similar to the image below

Adding a nice sidebar

15 Select the rectangle tool (U). Create a light Grey (#d8d8d8) rectangle with a width of 296px and height of 526px

16 Above the light Grey rectangle box I added an advertisement banners

17 Here is what we should have now

Adding some extra background details

18 I added a render to both sides of the layout. These can be found on Planet Renders

Adding details

Adding the navigation bar

19 To create the navigation bar we need to create a white (#ffffff) 1px line that spans the header area

20 Directly above that select the rectangular selection tool (M) create a rectangle that spans the header its height should be 20px

21 Set the foreground color to #292929 and background to #000000. Select the gradient tool (G) with the linear gradient option selected and drag a gradient from the top downwards. this will create a gradient in the selection

22 Duplicate the layer. select the duplicate and flip it vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICALLY). Change the layers blending options to overlay and reduce its opacity to 40%

23 I added a logo and some game type categories

24 We are now going to create a drop down list. Select the rounded rectangle tool (U) with the radius set to 4px. Create a rectangle with a width of 259px and height of 192px double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box and use the settings below

25 Rasterize the layer and cut the top section away so it smoothly joins the navagation bar

26 I added a rollover state which is a simple arrow facing down which indicates a drop down menu. on the drop down menu I added the same arrows facing right with the games that fit into that category

Adding content to the rotator

27 I added a centered a image i found at SXC to the middle of the dark Grey rectangle

Creating the featured game thumbnail box

28 Create a white (#ffffff) rectangle with a width of 77px and height of 65ox. double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

29 I added a thumbnail to the middle of the rectangle and to the right I added information about the game

Creating the tabbed game thumbnail boxes

28 Create a light blue (#eef6ff) rectangle with a width of 76px and height of 76px. double click the layer to open the layer styles dialogue box. Use the settings below

29 I duplicated the box and added a thumbnail in the middle of each box. On the right I added the games title, a rating system which I found the icons for at Iconfinder.com and the amount of plays the game has had

Creating the lists for the boxes

30 For the lists throughout the layout I used a image based list. The icon can be found on Iconfinder each one has a 10 – 30px space between them

31 I added game titles next to each icon. I then gave each box/tabbed menu a title, the text has been aligned to the left of the box

Completing the sidebar

32 Select the rectangular selection tool (M). create a rectangle with a width of 282px and height of 46px. Set your foreground color to #679ad2 and background to #85b6ed. Select the gradient tool (G) with the linear option selected, drag a gradient from the top of the selection downwards

33 I added a icon to the left of the title bar, next to that I added the actual title. For the content of the sidebar I added a dual list that contains all the games that would be on the site

Completing the sidebar

34 For the top games box I created the same thumbnail I created in steps 28 – 29 as for the content to the right. i then duplicated the thumbnail/game information until the box was filled

Completing the footer

35 For the footer I created a simple copyright line this is placed to the left

Congratulations!

You have now completed the tutorial design hope you enjoyed it!

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In this easy lesson made for Flash 8 professional I will show you how to create a set of cool, neon glow playback control buttons easily. No other applications will be used to create these buttons, because Flash has so much power on its own! You will see:

• How to use the basic shapes to create the ones you need,
• How to use the great blending filters in Flash 8 pro,
• How to combine multiple filters and objects stacked upon one another, and some more.

You can see the example of the sleek buttons below.

Preliminary steps — setting the background

1 Open a new Flash document. Choose Modify > Document (shortcut: Ctrl+J). Select black as document background color. Click OK.

2 Select the Rectangle tool (R). Turn off the stroke color by clicking on the little pencil icon and then the small red-striped square at the bottom of the Tools panel: .

3 Make sure that both the Object drawing and Snap to objects options are turned off: .

4 Click the Set Corner Radius icon () and enter 6 in the window that will show up, click OK. This is done in order to have rectangles with round corners.

5 Draw a flat color (any color will do) 410 by 120 pixel rectangle.

6 Select the Paint Bucket tool (K). Go to the Color Mixer panel (opened by default — you can always find it in the top right part of the Flash working space). Do the following (see numbers in the screenshot below):

1. Click on the paint bucket icon to select the fill color.
2. In the Type menu, select Linear.
3. Click once on the small colored square found on the bottom right.
4. In the color code field, enter the hex code #2E70AA (that’s a zero, not the letter O).
5. Set the Alpha property for this color to 34%.
6. Set the same color for the left square, but set its Alpha to 100%.

7 Press and hold Shift, click near the rectangle’s top and drag your mouse down until the rectangle’s bottom. Release your mouse button, and there is your nice gradient!

Creating the glowing outer ring

8 Lock the current layer and call it background. Create a new layer and call it buttons.

9 Select the Oval tool (O). Go to the Property inspector and make the following selections: block the fill color, select any flat color for the stroke (outline) color, set the line type to Solid and choose 3 for line thickness.

10 Somewhere over the rectangle, draw a ring (it is a circle, but because of the line thickness and lack of fill, it looks like a ring). Make it 70 by 70 pixels.

11 Select the ring by clicking on it with the Selection tool (V), if it isn’t already selected. Go to the Color Mixel panel and click on the pencil icon to select the Stroke color (). In the Type menu, choose Linear exactly like you did for the fill color previously. Add two more color squares to the gradient by simply clicking anywhere between the two existing ones. You should have four of them in total, with the following color values, positioned like this:

Note: all the four squares should have their alpha set to 100% (complete opaqueness). The ring will now look like this:

I have hidden the background layer to work more easily and so that you can more clearly see the various steps.

12 Select the Gradient Transform tool (F). Click on the ring to select it. Rotate the gradient by 90°. To successfully do this, make sure that Snapping to Objects is turned on (View > Snapping > Snap to Objects). Then, press and hold Shift, click on the white circle handle and start moving your mouse clockwise.

13 While the ring is selected, press F8 (or select Modify > Convert to Symbol) to make a symbol out of it. Name it outer ring. Select Movie clip as type and be sure to select the registration point in the middle (see screenshot below):

Click OK. This choice for the registration point will make it easier to align the elements inside the button later.

14 Click on the Filters tab in the Properties panel (see no. 1 in screenshot below). Click on the plus icon (2) and select the Glow filter. Make the adjustements as follows:

1. Blur X and Y: 8
2. Strength: 260%
3. Quality: High.
4. Color: #ADE2FC.

Leave the Knockout and Inner glow options unchecked. You will get a nice glow for your outer ring:

Making the main button circle

15 Select the ring again and press F8 again, while leaving the same registration point as previously and Movie clip as type of symbol. Call the new symbol play button and click OK.

16 Double-click on the newly made play button symbol to enter inside it. Call the first layer outer ring and lock it. That’s where the ring that you have just created resides. Make a new layer above it and call it circle.

17 Select the Oval tool (O) again. Go down to the Properties panel. Set #B0E2FD for the outline color and #3A5274 for the fill color. Select Solid as line type and a thickness of 2.

18 Draw a 54 by 54 pixel circle on the stage, anywhere.

19 Select the circle (both the outline and the fill). Open the Align panel by selecting Window > Align. Turn on the To stage button (1). Click the align horizontal center (2) and align vertical center (3) buttons.

The circle will now be perfectly aligned with the play button movie clip’s registration point and also with the ring below it.

20 Choose the Selection tool (V) and click on the fill of the circle once to select it. Press Ctrl+C to copy it.

21 Lock the current layer and call it circle. Make a new layer above it and call it circle overlay.

22 Select Edit > Paste in Place to paste the circle you copied two steps earlier exactly on the same position, but inside this new layer.

23 The copy of the circle fill will be selected by default after pasting. Go to the Color Mixer panel. Click on the paint bucket icon to select the fill color. In the Type menu, select Linear. Make the following gradient:

• You should have three color squares, one in the middle and one on each end of the gradient.
• Each square’s color should be white.
• The alpha factor of squares on each end should be 41%. The middle one’s should be set to 3%.

24 Use the Gradient Transform tool (F) to rotate the gradient by 90°, just like before. The final result should look like this:

Creating the play icon

25 Lock the circle overlay layer, make a new layer above it and call it icon.

26 Select the Rectangle tool (R). Block the stroke color. Set the fill color to #3A5274. Draw a 33 by 33 pixelsquare anywhere on the stage.

27 Turn on the Snap to Objects option and use the Selection tool (V) to create a triangle out of the rectangle. Do it like this (follow the image sequence below):

1. Bring the cursor close to the square’s upper right corner.
2. Click and start dragging down, until you reach the middle of square’s height. Release your mouse button.
3. Repeat the same thing for the lower right corner of the square, this time dragging the corner towards the point you just made in the previous move. Once near, the corner will snap into place. Release the mouse and there is your triangle.

28 Click on the triangle to select it. Go to the Property inspector and type 27 in the W (width) field. There! You have a good-looking play button now. The screenshots below show the difference in size before and after the width of the triangle was modified.

29 Center the triangle inside the button.

30 Select the Ink bottle tool (S). In the Properties panel, choose Solid as type and set the thickness to 4. Click anywhere on the triangle to give it an outline.

31 Choose the Selection tool (V). Double-click on the triangle’s border to select it.

32 Press Ctrl+X to cut the outline.

33 Lock the icon layer. Make a new layer below it and call it icon outline.

34 Select Edit > Paste in Place to place the icon border here, right below the icon itself.

35 Lock the icon outline layer and unlock the icon layer. Select the triangle inside it.

36 Hit F8 to convert it into a symbol. Call it play icon and click OK.

37 The new play icon movie clip will be selected by default. Go to the Properties panel and click on the Filters tab to set the blending options for this symbol. Choose the Glow filter and tweak it like this:

1. Blur X and Y: 6
2. Strength: 240%
3. Quality: Medium
4. Color: #ACE0FD
5. Inner glow must be turned on.

And — ta-daa — here’s the final result, with the background:

Now ain’t it cool? This blue neon glow looks soooo good ! Let me show you now how to easily duplicate theis button and create a stop button out of it.

Creating the glowing stop button from the play button

38 Go back to the main scene by clicking on the Scene 1 link.

39 Open the Library by selecting Window > Library.

40 Right-click on the play button in the Library and select Duplicate from the pop-up menu. The Duplicate Symbol window ill appear. Just change the symbol’s name to stop button and click OK.

Repeat the same thing with the play icon symbol: duplicate it and call the new symbol stop icon. You will have fice symbols (all of them movie clips) in the Library now: the outer ring which is present in both the play button and stop button symbols, as well as play icon and stop icon for each respective symbol. Let me show you now how to make the modifications.

41 Double-click on the stop button symbol inside the Library to enter inside it. Unlock its icon layer.

42 Click once on the play icon that is inside it, to select it.

43 Go to the Properties panel and click the Swap button.

44 The Swap Symbol window will show up. All the symbols that you made in your Flash document so far are displayed here — exactly as they appear in the Library. Select the stop icon symbol and click OK.

Although this movie clip symbol looks exactly the same as the play icon, you know that this is the stop icon in fact. Flash informs you of this by displaying the name of the currently selected symbol in the Properties panel:

45 Now, double-click the stop icon movie clip on the stage to enter inside it. Erase the triangle and draw a 28 by 28 pixel borderless square in its place. I have made the square smaller, because if it had the dimensions of the triangle, it would come too close to the circle’s border and that wouldn’t look so good. Oh, yes: the color of the square should be the same as triangle’s: #3A5274.

46 Click on the stop button link to go back to the movie clip’s timeline.

47 Align the icon in relation to the movie clip’s center.

48 Lock the icon layer. Unlock the icon outline layer. Erase the outline triangle that is inside it.

49 Draw a rectangle here, without a fill, and make it the same size as the icon above it: 28 by 28 pixels. the line should have the same thickness as before (4) and the same color (#3A5274). Align it like you did with the icon. It should look like this:

And finally, here are both the play and stop neon glow buttons, side by side:

They look awesome! And there was no need at all to use Photoshop! The pause, fast forward and rewind buttons can be made easily now — you know now the easy principle of duplicating symbols. Just make smaller triangles for the rewind button and make two rectangles for the pause button. Nothing easier than that.

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In this lesson you will see how easy it is to create a nice Flash website menu interface and make it work also! Particularly, you will learn how to:

• Create simple buttons and duplicate them,
• Make your link text look crisp and readable,
• Make mirror copies of your buttons easily,
• Design and code a simple navigational system.

In the Flash example below you can see what you are going to create with this tutorial. Try clicking the buttons!

Drawing the gradient sky background

1 Open a new Flash document. Call the first layer sky.

2 Select the Rectangle tool (R). Use only the fill color – go to the colors portion of the Tools panel, click on the pencil icon (see 1 below) and then the small square with the red line (see 2 below).

3 Draw a borderless rectangle wider than the stage, and about 70 pixels high.

4 If the rectangle is selected, unselect it by clicking anywhere outside it with the Selection tool (V).

Go to the Color mixer panel (Window > Color Mixer). In the upper right part of this panel, select Linear as type of fill.

In the bottom, a color stripe will appear. Click on the small right rectangle and enter the #B6E2FA as color code in the appropriate field. Then click on the right rectangle and enter #78B0E9. The alpha (transparency) properties for both colors should be set to 100%.

5 Select the Paint Bucket tool (K). Click with your mouse on the top of the rectangle and start dragging it diagonally to create a nice diagonal linear gradient fill.

Top of page

Creating the menu buttons

6 Lock the sky layer. Create a new layer and call it menu.

7 Select the Rectangle tool (R). Go to the Properties panel. Set the outline color to a light gray hue, and the fill color to a dark blue one. You can see the colors I used in the image below. Also, set the thickness of the outline to hairline.

8 Draw a 90 by 30 pixel rectangle, over the sky background, near the left edge of the stage.

To have the exact dimensions of the rectangle (because it’s difficult to get them when drawing by hand), double click on the rectangle’s inside (fill) with the Selection tool (V). After you did this, both the outline and the fill will be selected.

Go to the left side of the Properties panel and you’ll see the the W (width) and H (height) fields there. Just enter the dimensions for your rectangle manually and hit Enter to confirm. Make sure that the little padlock icon on the left is unlocked so that you can enter the width and height values independently from one another.

Also, make sure that the position (coordinates on the stage) of the rectangle (the X and Y fields) is set to round numbers. There must be a zero at the end, not any other number.

Why is this necessary? Because when you are drawing precise graphics (like the hairline outline of the rectangle) or using bitmap fonts, crisp pictures, and so on, you must set their coordinates to round numbers. Otherwise you will get blurry and messy results in your SWF movie.

9 Select your rectangle on the stage once again (both the outline and the fill).

Press F8 (or select Modify > Convert to Symbol). In the dialog window that shows up, select Button as type and call it home button. Click OK.

You will see that the rectangle has changed – it is now a button symbol. The small circle in its middle is it’s registration point. This point is relevant when making changes and issuing commands to the button via ActionScript. For example, when you want to move the button programatically, this point’s coordinates are taken as button’s position.

10 Double-click with the Selection tool (V) on your newly made button to enter inside it. You know that you are inside the button if you look above the layers – the indication is there.

11 Call the first layer inside your button symbol rectangle. Lock this layer. Make a new layer and call it text.

12 Select the Text tool (T). In the Properties panel, select static as type of text.

Choose a font you like. Make its size 12 or so. Select white as color, to make it stand out from the blue rectangle background. In the menu below the font size and color options, select “Anti-alias for readability”. This will make your link text look sharp.

13 Click with the Text tool somewhere inside the blue rectangle area and type “Home”.

14 Open up the Align panel (Window > Align). With the link text you just typed still selected, turn on the “Align to Stage” button (see 1 marked on the picture below).

Align the text horizontally (2) and vertically (3) inside the button. So, since the “Align to Stage” button is turned on and you are working inside the button, the text field will be centered in relation to the button’s central point. If you’re interested, I made a separate tutorial on the use of the Align panel.

15 However, there are still manual changes that need to be made. To ensure that your text renders correctly, without any blurry parts, to make it more readable, go once again to the Properties panel and set its position (coordinates) to round numbers.

If the last number in the X an Y fields is equal or above 5 (like 18.9 in the picture above), round the whole number to the upper value. If it is below 5, round it to the lower value. For example, if it is 14.3, round it to 14.0, and if it’s 14.5 or 14.8, round it to 15.0.

Once you have done this, if your text isn’t centered in relation to the blue rectangle below it, position it with arrow keys on your keybourd. Just press the up or down (or left and right if needed) key – this will move your link text by 1 pixel, and it will stay on round coordinates.

16 One last thing before you move on: be sure that the “Selectable” option is turned off. Check if this is so in the options for your text field below the scene.

Why is this necessary? If you have this option turned on, once a user moves her mouse over the button, the cursor for selecting text will appear, instead of the hand cursor. In addition to the fact that this sucks (a text selecting mouse cursor appearing over a button definitely does), your button may even not function at all!

Turn this option on only intentionally – for example, when you want your users to be able to select a piece of text on your flash site, like your address, etc.

17 Click on the “Scene 1″ link above the layers to return to the main scene.

There! The button is finished. Making the other buttons will be easy now.

Duplicating the other menu buttons from the existing one

18 Open the Library (Window > Library). Right-click on the home button symbol and select “Duplicate” from the menu that appears.

19 Call the new symbol gallery button and click OK.

20 Double-click on the newly created gallery button symbol in the Library to enter inside it.

Click on the link label text field to edit it. You can do this by double-clicking with the Selection tool (V), or by clicking once with the Text tool (T). Write “Gallery” (without the quotation marks, of course). Press Esc to exit the text editing mode.

Use the left arrow and right arrow keys if necessary to center the link label inside the button.

21 Go back to the Library and repeat steps 18 through 20. Make three more button symbols. Call them music button, links button and contact button. Change their labels accordingly.

You don’t need to return to the main scene to do this. Just duplicate them inside the Library, double-click on each one of them, change the text and center it. When finished with all the buttons, return to the main scene. You will have five different buttons for your menu in the Library.

Placing the site menu on the stage

22 Choose the Selection tool (V). Click once on the home button to select it.

Press Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on a Mac) to copy this button. Press Ctrl+Shift+V (Cmd+Shift+V on a Mac) to paste this button in place, exactly over the original one.

Now don’t click anywhere and don’t select any other tool. It may seem that you have just one button on the scene right now, but there are two. They are placed exactly one over the another (thanks to the Paste in Place command).

Just press and hold Shift on your keyboard and while holding it, press the right arrow key to move the copy of the button horizontally. Each time you press the right arrow key, you will move the button by exactly 10 pixels. Press the key 10 times to move the button exactly by 100 pixels to the right.

If you had pressed just the arrow key without holding shift, you would have moved your button by 1 pixel at time. This comes in handy when you must design a precise layout.

23 Repeat the previous step by copying and pasting in place the second button and moving it 100 pixels to the right. Do this two more times to have five buttons in all on the scene.

Finalizing the site menu by swapping the button symbols

You will see now how easy it is to place every menu button in its right place. I love Flash! It is wonderful and really easy to work with

24 Click once with the Selection tool (B) on the second button from the left. Go to the Properties panel and press the “Swap” button.

25 In the window that appears, select gallery button and click OK.

Repeat this procedure 3 more times for each of the remaining buttons. In the end, you will have all the particular buttons required for your flash website menu on the stage.

After finishing the part of the menu that will server to navigate through your Flash site, you are going to create the menu’s mirrored reflection.

Making the reflection of the menu

26 Select all of the buttons on the stage. Do this with the Selection tool (V). Click somewhere outside the buttons (for example, on the top left of the menu) and drag your mouse to encompass all of them.

27 Copy the buttons (Ctrl+C) and paste them in place (Ctrl+Shift+V).

28 While holding Shift press the down arrow 3 times to move the copies down 30 pixels from the original symbols.

Release the Shift key and press only the down arrow key five times. You have moved your button copies exactly 35 pixels downwards.

If you followed the dimensions I gave you at the outset of this tutorial for creating your buttons, the copies will be now spaced just a few pixels from the originals. This will make for a nice and more realistic mirror reflection effect. Also, you don’t want to move your mirrored buttons too far from the real menu, to save space.

29 Keep the copies you just moved down selected. Select Modify > Transform > Flip Vertical.

You have just made a mirror reflection of the menu. Now ain’t that easy? Sure it is But let’s give it a more realistic look.

30 You must have your reflection buttons still selected. In the Properties panel, click on the Filters tab (1 in the image below).

Then click on the little blue plus icon (2) and select the “Adjust color” blending filter. The controls for adjusting the colors of your buttons will appear.

By dragging their respective sliders to the left, set the Brightness to -18 and Saturation to -36. Or just enter these values manually in the appropriate fields. Leave the other two values (Contrast and Hue) at zero.

31 Click on the Properties tab (right next to the Filters tab you clicked in the previous step). Select Alpha from the Color menu and set it to 41%.

32 Lock the current (menu) layer. Create a new layer between the two existing ones and call it blue background.

You will draw a blue gradient here. This will make your navigational header look more realistic and beautiful. Since you already have a sky-like graphic behind your menu, it makes sense to create a reflection of it too.

33 Select the Rectangle tool (R). Block the outline color and select a fill color that is in good contrast with the existing graphical elements. You are doing this only to draw and position your rectangle more easily. You will change its color to a gradient later.

Draw a rectangle that 48 pixels high. The width isn’t important – only make it the same size as the scene or wider than that.

It is important to place the rectangle so that its upper edge is between the real buttons and their reflections.

Unselect the rectangle by clicking on an empty part of the scene with the Selection tool (V).

34 Go to the Color Mixer panel, click on the paint bucket icon to adjust the fill color (and not the outline – the pencil icon – just in case it is selected by default). Select Linear as fill type. Make the following choices for your gradient:

The first color (little square on the left) should be set to #B6E2FA and the second to #78B0E9. Leave the alphas for both colors at 100%. Leave the left color on the gradient’s left edge and move the right one a little bit inside (just click on the quare and drag it).

This gradient is just a little bit different from the one you made in step 4.

35 Select the Paint bucket tool (K), click on the rectangle’s bottom edge and start dragging upwards to make a vertical fill. In this way, the darker color will be at the top.

You don’t have to make the exact mirror copy of the sky beneath the menu buttons. What you’re making now will look very nice and interesting.

36 Select the rectangle and copy it (Ctrl+C). Lock the current layer (blue background).

37 Make a new layer above all the existing ones and call it overlay.

38 Paste in place (Ctrl+Shift+V) here the rectangle you just copied.

39 Go back to the Color Mixer panel and make the following gradient: you must have four color squares. Add a color square just by clicking anywhere between the two existing ones.

All the squares should have their color set to pure white (#FFFFFF). But their alphas should have the following percentage values (from left to right): 100, 79, 50 and 28.

Drag the squares so that they look like shown on the image below.

Lock this layer.

Now isn’t this a nice menu with its mirror reflection below it? Sure it is

Before making your menu functional via ActionScript, you must first make place for the different sections of your site, which is exactly what you will do in the next few steps. Onward!

Setting up the navigation system for your Flash website

40 Make a new layer on top of the existing layers and name it site content.

41 Right-click on frame 5 of the newly made layer and select Insert Keyframe from the menu.

42 Draw any kind of content here. Paint something with a brush, make a circle, anything at all. This is just temporary dummy content. Don’t lose time on making real content now, you will do it later. Follow through to the end of this lesson, it is easy to make changes later.

43 Repeat the previous step 3 more times: right-click on frames 10, 15 and 20, select Insert Keyframe from the menu and insert some kind of dummy content there.

You can draw over the existing content or erase it and make something new. I am telling you this because when you insert a keyframe into a layer, Flash automatically copies the content from the previous one, if there existed something.

44 When finished, go back to the first keyframe of this (site content) layer by clicking on it (standard left mouse click). Create some content here too. Write “home” or draw a house

Your timeline should now look like the one shown on the image below.

45 Lock this layer and make a new one above it and name it labels.

46 Click on the first (and only, so far) keyframe of the labels layer to select it. Go to the Properties panel – you’ll find the “Frame label” input field on its left side.

Click inside it, type home and hit Enter to confirm.

47 Still in the same layer, right-click on frame 5 and select Insert Keyframe from the menu. Do this again for frames 10, 15 and 20. Your upper two layers should have keyframes in exactly the same places.

48 Click on the frame number 5 to select it. Go again to the Properties panel and give it a name: gallery. Repeat this for the remaining three keyframes (10, 15 and 20): call them music, links and contact, respectively. All these frame labels will be visible on the timeline.

Lock this layer.

49 Right-click on frame 20 of the overlay layer and select “Insert Frame” from the menu (not Insert Keyframe).

This will make this layer’s content appear throughout your flash site. If you don’t this, these contents will only be visible on the first keyframe, at the beginning.

And of course, all the other menu elements must be visible throughout the timeline. So make this for each of the remaining layers: menu, blue background and sky.

Below you can see the final look of the timeline.

Now that the site’s navigation system is in place, you will name your buttons (all of them) so that you can issue them commands programatically later.

Naming the menu buttons

50 Unlock the menu layer. Select the Selection tool (V). Click somewhere on stage to unselect anything and everything that might be selected.

51 Click on the first button on the menu from the left to select it (the Home button). Don’t click it’s reflection.Go to the Properties panel, and enter its Instance name in the appropriate field: call it homeBtn. Hit Enter to confirm.

52 Repeat the procedure from the previous step for each one of the menu buttons: call them galleryBtn, musicBtn, linksBtn and contactBtn, respectively.

The Instance names make possible to control your buttons via ActionScript.

53 Now, select the first mirror button – the reflection of the home button (the first from left in the second row). Give it an Instance name – call it homeBtn1.

Why give Instance names to these mirror buttons? Well, precisely because their purpose is to serve only as visual elements – mirrored reflections of real menu buttons. If you left them like this, when a user moved his mouse over them, the hand cursor would have appeared. This would create a really inappropriate confusion. You must always be user-friendly! So, you are naming these mirrored buttons to turn them off later via ActionScript. Once you are going to do that, they won’t function anymore, and will just be graphical elements, which is what you want to accomplish!

54 Give Instance names to all the other mirrored menu buttons: call them galleryBtn1, musicBtn1, linksBtn1 and contactBtn1.

Writing the ActionScript code that powers the menu and the website navigation system

55 Lock this (menu) layer. Create a new layer above all the others and call it actions.

56 Click on the first (and only) keyframe of the new actions layer to select it.

57 Open up the Actions panel (Window > Actions). Write the following line of code inside:

stop();

This simple command stops your movie from going on and looping endlessly.

Now, I want you to do a little test. Test your movie (Control > Test Movie). Move your mouse accross the buttons and their reflections (mirrored buttons). As you can see, the hand cursor will appear over both the menu and its mirror image. And you don’t want that, so now I am going to show you how simply it is to disable these buttons.

58 Write this piece of ActionScript just below the first line you entered in the previous step:

homeBtn1.enabled = false;
galleryBtn1.enabled = false;
musicBtn1.enabled = false;
linksBtn1.enabled = false;
contactBtn1.enabled = false;

Test your movie again (Ctrl+Enter on a PC, Cmd+Enter on a Mac). Move your mouse over the reflection buttons. As you can see, there’s only the standard arrow cursor now – the hand cursor doesn’t appear anymore. You can even try clicking on them – nothing will happen.

Yep, it is that simple! The enabled property of the button symbol can have two values: true or false. By default, it is set to true. So when you set it to false, the button is visible, but doesn’t function any more – it cannot be clicked, even if you tell it to do so via ActionScript. The button stays disabled until its enabled property is set to true again (of course, you’ll leave it at false for the reflected buttons).

59 Append your code with the following lines (again, just put it after the existing code):

homeBtn.onRelease = function():Void {
gotoAndStop("home");
}
galleryBtn.onRelease = function():Void {
gotoAndStop("gallery");
}
musicBtn.onRelease = function():Void {
gotoAndStop("music");
}
linksBtn.onRelease = function():Void {
gotoAndStop("links");
}
contactBtn.onRelease = function():Void {
gotoAndStop("contact");
}

Test your movie (Ctrl+Enter). If you did everything exactly as i wrote up to this point, you should be able to navigate your site. Click on the menu buttons and see for yourself! Easy navigation, isn’t it?

Explaining the ActionScript behind the site menu buttons

First, I want to explain you why you named the frames. Using frame labels (like gallery for example) instead of a frame number (5) has one practical benefit:

If you ever change your site contents by moving the keyframes or inserting new ones, all you have to do is move the frames with labels so that thay stay above their corresponding content keyframes. There is no need to go back to your ActionScript code and rewrite or change the numbers.

Now let’s see how the code for the buttons works. I will explain the code functionality just for one of the menu buttons, because they are basically all the same – only the button Instance name and the frame label change.

homeBtn.onRelease = function():Void {
gotoAndStop("home");
}

The first line,

homeBtn.onRelease = function():Void {

says that a function is assigned the onRelease event for the homeBtn button. The onRelease event happens when a user clicks and releases his mouse over the button.

If you want you can put the onPress event here instead, that happens immediately when a user has just pressed his mouse over the button. But that event is more likely to be used in games, when something has to happen immediately when the mouse has been pressed – like a spaceship shooting, for example. I like to assign the “standard” (onRelease) click for the buttons, menus and various other kinds of website interfaces.

So, once the onRelease event has happened, a function gets executed. You certainly noticed the :Void keyword after the function() keyword. This means that the function in question does not return a value. In many cases, a function in ActionScript has to return a value. Look at this example:

function mySum():Number {
var a:Number = 3;
var b:Number = 4;
var sum:Number = a+b;
return sum;
}

This function calculates a sum of two variables’ values. The last line tells to return the value of sum to whatever object that called the function. So that’s why the :Number keyword after the function’s name. It states that the value returned by this particular function will be a numerical one and not a text value or any other.

So, in the case of your menu button, the type of value that the function returns is Void. This means nothing, zero – the function does not return any value, it just serves to advance the playhead to a particular frame on the timeline.

And just what is it that gets run when the function is executed? Everything between its curly braces – { and }. Here it’s about just one line of code:

gotoAndStop("home");

This line tells Flash to jump to the frame which is labelled home and stay there. That’s all there is! Simple! Just one more thing, however: if you wanted to insert a frame number instead of a frame label here, you must do it without the quotation marks. Like this:

gotoAndStop(1);

Fine. Before wrapping this tutorial up, just read some advice below.

A little bit about site navigation and usability

You have seen how to make a slick menu. However, always keep in mind your site (or your client’s site) users. The user is king. If a site happens to be difficult to navigate and counter-intuitive, the most beautiful and appealing graphics and design won’t help.

In fact, what is often overlooked, is that the design inolves thinking and responding to your users’ needs. Make a button look like a button – this doesn’t mean it has to look ugly or too similar to a real-world button. There many, many examples of beautifully designed navigation interfaces and menus who are also intuitive and easy to use.

You know that the reflection buttons you made in this lesson are real button symbols. The user sees them as a nice graphic element only, which is exactly how it should be.

Usabilty is a science in itself, that applies equally to HTML and Flash websites. HTML is simple, and yet there are many things you have to think about when building such a site. When confronted with all the powerful and rich possibilities that Flash has to offer, this just gets more complicated. When you have a myriad of possibilites for design and developement, don’t get overwhelmed and think that you must try and implement every single great gizmo in your Flash website. Be nice to your users and they’ll like your site

Related posts:

1. Glowing neon playback control buttons
2. How to make a complete Flash website navigation system with a built-in preloader for external content
3. Glowing neon playback control buttons

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