[xandro]

I don't know if this is the right forum, but can someone tell me what software I need to make simple Flash (.swf) animations?

Thanks.

[[email protected]]

You need Macromedia Flash. You can download a 30 day trail from www.macromedia.com. I have the full version of Flash 5. Works great and is easy to use.

[Adam Betts]

There are several products that allow you to make .swf file but here are two most popular program:

Adobe Livemotion 1.0
Macromedia Flash 5

I'm a web/graphic designer myself and use Livemotion mostly because of it easiness. Flash 5 is way powerful than Livemotion but can be complex in some area. I'm looking forward for Livemotion 2.0 very soon! Yes, it will be MacOS X compatible

[ 08-11-2001: Message edited by: Adam Betts ]

[Rick1138]

Swish,available at www.swishzone.com ,it can do a lot of things with text that Flash can't do,for onlt $30,but unfortunately you will need either a virtual or an actual PC to use Swish,as no Mac version is currently available.

[Demonhood]

Flash 5 (or any version for that matter) can be frustrating as hell, but I'd still recommend it based on all the stuff you do with it.
I'm pretty calm, and even I had to yell at my screen a couple times on the last project I flashed.

[xandro]

Thanks for the help! Yeah, I should have said I was mainly interested in text.

A friend sent me a text .swf that she did with Swish (I think she was trying to rub it in that I couldn't do it on my Mac), so I was looking for a Mac-compatible equivalent. Maybe I'll get Flash and make something a lot better.

[Rick1138]

Flash is a lot more powerful than Swish,Swish is just a minor app that can do a lot of textual effects that can't be done quickly in Flash.I wasn't recommending it as a replacement,only as something to be used in conjunction with Flash.As Demonhood said,Flash can be very frustrating to work with but there is nothing else that has wide browser support that is nearly as powerful,if Java implentations were more consistent it would be another story.One thing I recommend is to save your work often,like every 2 or three minutes,and at every major step save a new copy as there are a lot of strange undo bugs,if you screw something up you can always go back to the point before the problems occurred,otherwise you may have to rewrite from scratch.Another good piece of advice is to never put more than one object on a layer at a time,even if they are similar,such as a group of buttons.or you can run into problems.Even though its possible to drag and drop directly onto the main timeline,don't be tempted to do this,import graphics and the like indirectly by the route Insert>New Symbol,and then dag and drop from Flash's library.The reason for this is that if you import into the library,you will have a symbol,which is Flash's lingo for class object at the root of the symbol/instance hierarchy,otherwise you'll have an instance at the root,which is a very bad place for an instance to be,and will cause problems that are not solveable.A good book on Flash is Colin Moock's book ActionScripting,published by O'Reilly.

[Rick1138]

By the way,unlike Demonhood,I'm not a calm person,one night I smashed a chair and tore up a book while working with Flash.

[acidchicken]

i really think LiveMotion sucks. Flash is so much more of an application. I would learn flash and forget LiveMotion.