Flash newbie with size issues

[lastevns]

Hi all,

I a newbie to flash and to web design in general. I mean, basic html was no problem but I've just created a site completely in Flash (I know I should have placed the flash movies in an html page but since virtually every part of the page has a motion tween - a fade - I did the whole thing in flash).

So, I made these pages in Flash with the page setting at 1400 by 900. However, I designed my graphics within the page to fit , full screen, at 800 by 600. Now, I have complaints from the client that the page is too small on one of their computers. Well, they're unaware of the fact that a higher resolution will result in a smaller image. But I want to make the client happy anyway, and so I want to set the page to show as a percentage of the user's overall screen - regardless of their resolution. But I have no idea how to do this with a flash page. If this were straight html, well, I could place the page in table and set the table at, say, 80 percent of the screen. But I have tried that by grabbing the html code made by flash and placing it in a table. It didn't resize the page to 80 percent of the screen when I went from resolution to resolution. So I'm clueless as to how to do this.

Both I and my (now completely non-existent) social life would be abjectly grateful to anyone who can help solve this issue). And so would the picky members of the Songwriters Guild of America - for whom I'm volunteered to do this site (www.songwritersguild.com).

Thanks,
Laurie Stevens

[MstrBob]

As it is, I see no reason why you need the site to be totally in flash. Or any flash at all. You have no special affects that I see (except for the annoying fade in affect on page loads) and the realtime clock, which could be done in JavaScript. And one does NOT use tables for layout, tables are to present tabular data. I don't know about Flash, but I do know about basic web design, and having that huge page (I'm using a 800*600 screen) is quite annoying, no matter if the content resizes to my screen. All that empty space is a no-no.

Making the website HTML and CSS would open it up to a much wider range of audience, including people using mobile devices and special devices for disabled persons on the web. Placing your text content in <div> 's, such as <div id="content"> would work, and in your style sheet you use:

div#content {
width:80%;
}

This of course can expand and use your entire layout in (X)HTML and CSS, allow many more people to see it, and you wouldn't have the screen resolution issues, and generally, I find that people are more comfortable with stand HTML sites. I myself have used a number of full flash sites and I find them to be annoying. But this is all just me.

[sharkey]

True what you say mstrbob but to add to it i thought flash was like not resolution dependant and rendered to the different screen sizes.

So technically if you change the 2 width="100%" attributes it should work.

[ray326]

There is something EXTREMELY wrong with that page. It's size is 147.78 KB (151324 bytes) and 99.9999% of that is in a huge block of repeated comments. And yes, the ONLY thing the flash is accomplishing besides destroying accessibility is adding the little music loop to the page.

[Ben Rogers]

Agreed. Although it might be a pain, it's worth it to make this page more accesible and useful. It's a simple design, done easily with HTML and CSS. The gradient simply annoys me, and is not neccesary, and the music can be done with HTML. And, IMHBO, only sites with flash games and movies should use flash, and if they use flash elements in their navigation, they should look cool doing so (a la newgrounds.com, despite the ads) ;)