Shameless Flashers - Using Flash Tools To Create Spectacular Websites

Flash is a powerful technology that can help you create spectacular websites, tutorials and demos. Find out which inexpensive tools are available to you that have very low learning curve.

SWFText

SWF Text is an author tool of Flash text animation. It embraces 150+ text effects and 20+ background effects, and users may also customize all the properties of a Flash, including font, text color, and layout, etc. With SW FText, a user without any experience of Flash development can easily create a Flash banner or an introductory page within a few minutes. And all you need do is to input text, select font and animation effects. While a veteran Flash designer may use SWF Text for text animation in a project, which sure greatly saves your time and effort.

Sothink SWF Decompiler

Sothink SWF Decompiler is a tool to browse, view and parse Shockwave Flash movies (.swf files). It can extract sounds, images, movie clips from a Flash movies. What's more, SWF Decompiler can decompile the action scripts in a Flash movie and turn them into neat and readable code. Sothink SWF Decompiler can convert your SWF to FLA. It supports exporting the whole movie file in FLA format, compatible with Flash 6 and Flash 7. Sothink SWF Decompiler supports Action Script 2.0 fully. It supports exporting ActionScript 2.0 while converting swf to fla and supports exporting the .as file and Flash Project file (flp) while the swf file contains AS 2.0 class. Within the program, it can decompile the code written in Action Script 2.0 and display the readable code in Action Script window, with syntax highlighting.

ScreenFlash Professional

If you want to build animated, interactive software tutorials in the shortest time, ScreenFlash is your best choice. It is the easiest and most effective tool for demonstrating your software product, adding animations to your application's Help system, or training novices. ScreenFlash captures the action and sound from any part of Windows desktop and saves it to a Macromedia Flash movie file. You can also edit the movie by adding button, sound, picture and text, which can create an integrated interactive demo.

More Flash Resources:

SWFText

http://www.deprice.com/swftext.htm

Sothink SWF Decompiler

http://www.deprice.com/sothinkswfdecompiler.htm

ScreenFlash Professional

http://www.deprice.com/screenflashprof.htm

John Deprice owns and operates http://www.deprice.com

6 Steps To Your Own Website

A lot of people these days are interested in getting their own place on the world wide web. Whether it´s a personal site like a blog, or a business site, they all need to have a decent plan before they get started.

A few years ago I started designing and creating websites myself. I started just to show off to others, but I noticed it wasn’t as easy I thought it was. I mean, it is easy to get a site online; you just buy a template, pay a coder, and pay some one to insert content and advertise for you then you’re done. But if you want to do things yourself, that’s where it gets tricky.

After a few sites, I managed to find a certain pattern in the process of creating and managing my websites.

1. I always start with an idea for subject and content. Believe me - never create a website about something you hate and know nothing about. Instead create a website about something you know a lot about and like to tell other people about. What also works is writing about a subject you would like to know more on, after doing your own research. Newbies can explain information to other newbies easier then pro´s explaining information to newbies.

2. Then I think of a design to go with it, to reflect its idea. Like if your subject is Boats, then don’t go with a flaming red design. Sure it could do it, but I would prefer for a blue, water-like design to reflect its subject.

3. If the design is done, you need to get it coded. Some create their designs while they code, but I prefer to use a graphical program to first create the whole design, just the way I want it to be. Then I slice it all (contact me if you want to read an article about that) and save it for the web. I usually have a small group of coders I trust to code my designs and they send it back to me when it’s coded.

4. Well then everything is almost done you would think. You got a design coded and everything. But the answer is NO. You are just starting. Sure you have a site and all, but you do not have hosting or a domain name. In order to get your site up and running, you will need something called hosting. It’s like when you buy a house it needs to be on ground. Well the hosting is the ground here, and your website is the house. Without hosting, your site is almost useless. These days you can choose between free hosts, which in my opinion aren’t great, but if you want to start and try out, I’d suggest you work with a free host first. And then there is paid hosting, you pay for a certain amount of server space and bandwidth and sometimes extra features.

5. Now if you have chosen to go for a free host, then please skip this step, cause you probably won’t be able to use it. A domain is needed for people to find your website. For example if you website is called BoatFish, then you could make the domain http://www.boatfish.com or http://www.boatfish.net, whatever you choose for. There are quite a large number of extensions you can go for. But I always suggest you go for a .com domain name. People tend to look for them more often than for a .net or any other extension.

6. The most important part of your website is your content. People stay or come back to your website because you have good content, or leave if you don´t. So please write up some good content for your site before launching it; this can cost you a lot of visitors. I can’t show you how to submit content, or what kind of content you should be submitting, this is something you should look into yourself.

7. Now you got everything you need to get your site online. And still you are not done at all. You can site around and wait for people to come to your website, but not many will. That’s why advertising will be your best bet to go for. You can link exchange and/or go for SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a great way to get many hits towards your website. I do not have any websites that haven’t been optimized for search engines, because I know seo’ing brings in many visitors, and customers. SEO means Search Engine Optimization, which means that it will try to rank you as high as possible at search engines. If some one searches for a keyword regarding your website they will see your site and click on it. This is seriously a great way to get many, many visitors.

8. Now your site is done and you can keep submitting content to your site, to keep visitors coming back. Good luck! And let me know if this helped you in any way.

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If you want to get more articles or Webmaster related information go to Http://http://www.webmasterspalace.com. It’s a place for all webmasters to unite and get their resources from. My name is Klaas Koopman and I am a Dutch Webmaster. You can contact me if you need anything Webmaster related. Thank you for reading. For Designs go to http://www.kkportfolio.net.

Effective Webdesign

The Basics

Before starting on how to design a website effectively, how about clearing some basic web design concepts? Designing Effectively

Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality.

Use of graphics and content

Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying.

Layout and design

While designing, keep in mind that poor layout and design will make your pages unreadable and difficult to keep your visitors on your website for long. Some of the things that make a poor design and layout:

1. Text that is too small to read
2. Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read
3. Large graphic files that take forever to load
4. Multiple things that blink
5. Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
6. Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once
7. Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels)
8. Animations that never stop
9. Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames
10. Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements

Some of the things that make a webpage stand out from the crowd:

1. Stay away from bad design features listed above.
2. Background does not interrupt the text
3. Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
4. Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
5. A large site has an index or site map
6. Link colors coordinate with page color
7. Every graphic link has a matching text link
8. Animated graphics turn off by themselves
9. Pages download quickly
10. All pages have the immediate visual impact within 640 x 460 pixels

Planning

Most of the time, all it takes to design your website effectively is a little planning. When designing a website, it needs to be clean, uncluttered, attractive and easy for users to read and find what they need. Begin with a webdesign plan:

1. what colors do you want to use?
2. Are these colors complimentary?
3. What items - text, images, data - do you want to put in your pages?
4. What layout do you want? Look at other websites and then decide.

Follow the above steps to get a website that speaks for itself and your business. You can always contact me for suggestions and webdesign projects.

Tasneem Rangoonwala is a freelancer Web Development Co-ordinator at D.zigns Enterprise Solutions, offering webdesign, development and other related services.

Effective Webdesign

The Basics

Before starting on how to design a website effectively, how about clearing some basic web design concepts? Designing Effectively

Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality.

Use of graphics and content

Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying.

Layout and design

While designing, keep in mind that poor layout and design will make your pages unreadable and difficult to keep your visitors on your website for long. Some of the things that make a poor design and layout:

1. Text that is too small to read
2. Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read
3. Large graphic files that take forever to load
4. Multiple things that blink
5. Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
6. Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once
7. Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels)
8. Animations that never stop
9. Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames
10. Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements

Some of the things that make a webpage stand out from the crowd:

1. Stay away from bad design features listed above.
2. Background does not interrupt the text
3. Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
4. Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
5. A large site has an index or site map
6. Link colors coordinate with page color
7. Every graphic link has a matching text link
8. Animated graphics turn off by themselves
9. Pages download quickly
10. All pages have the immediate visual impact within 640 x 460 pixels

Planning

Most of the time, all it takes to design your website effectively is a little planning. When designing a website, it needs to be clean, uncluttered, attractive and easy for users to read and find what they need. Begin with a webdesign plan:

1. what colors do you want to use?
2. Are these colors complimentary?
3. What items - text, images, data - do you want to put in your pages?
4. What layout do you want? Look at other websites and then decide.

Follow the above steps to get a website that speaks for itself and your business. You can always contact me for suggestions and webdesign projects.

Tasneem Rangoonwala is a freelancer Web Development Co-ordinator at D.zigns Enterprise Solutions, offering webdesign, development and other related services.

Make It Easy To Buy From Your Site

You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you.

You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. First, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits! Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you're making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don't know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won't buy if they find the process cumbersome. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this.

As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing? Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects' confidence. Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a cheque. On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects' desired payment method.

Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet. After all, it wouldn't make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they won't be able to pay you when they want to. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.

Building Your Mailing List with Downloads

A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business.

However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won't be enough to attract qualified prospects. First of all, you must place your download form prominently on your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you'll get some of them converted into your prospects! Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the harddisk collecting virtual dust.

Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie. For example, let's take a look at a very good example -- apple.

Com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via -- guess where -- iTunes! In reality, you do not need to offer such a "heavyweight" download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on.

The old adage "the money is in the list" cannot be true enough -- if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

Improve Usability of Your Website

Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors.

Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn't load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the creme de la creme of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about that.

The first method is to make sure the typography of your content is suitable. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell.