How to Customize a Flash Template

Creating a website with flash intros and flash menus is a great way to attract and hold a visitor's attention. It highlights your website's best features while giving your site a professional look and feel. Flash movies are not only used in websites but can also be used in presenting a product to a potential client or customer. Using templates is the best way to achieve that professional and put-together look for your flash movies because they're cheaper to get and fast. The only challenge you'll face is editing the templates to go with your existing website of product presentation.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Flash template from a website
• Macromedia Flash application
• Graphics application like Adobe Photoshop

1. Download a Flash template from your chosen website. It is best to choose a template that already has most of the elements you want in your final Flash movie like color, images, and movie length. It will minimize your editing time. Your download file should contain an .fla and/or .swf file.

2. Open your Flash program (should be Macromedia Flash MX 6 or higher). Select and open the .fla file of your flash template or drag and drop the .fla to your Flash editor window. An .fla file is a raw Flash file that contains all the graphics and animation of the Flash movie.

3. Begin customizing elements of your Flash file by choosing from the two text-editing options.
   The first is by accessing it through the timeline. You can do this by moving the red timeline slider to where the text you want to modify appears. Press "V" to bring up the "Selection Tool." Double-click on the text and edit.
   The second way of editing text is by opening the symbols library by pressing "CTRL + L." Browse through the symbols library to find the text you want to edit. You can view the symbols in a preview window just on top of the symbols list. Double-click on the symbol and then edit.

4. Edit the images. Open the symbols library again and search for the image you want to modify or replace. Make your search easier by clicking on the "Kind" header to sort out your library symbols. Double-click on the item you want to modify to bring out the properties option. You can edit the images by using Photoshop or any other graphic editing software.

5. Save your edited template by clicking Save As... then rename your file so as not to save over the original template.

Tips & Warnings

• You can change the publish settings of your flash movie to make it lighter. This will make it load faster on your website. To change the publish settings go to File - > Publish Settings. Click on the Flash tab and change the quality of your images or audio.
• Don't save over an existing Flash file so you can have a working copy in case you botch up in the customizing and editing of the Flash file.

References

• Flash template resource

Resources

• Flash template resource
• Guide to publishing your Flash movies