How to Create a Free Flash Banner

Flash banners are a quick way to add impact to your existing website or for use as advertising. The user's eyes will be drawn to a moving banner more quickly than a banner that is a static image. You might think that you need a Flash development program, but you can quickly and easily create a flash banner without expensive software--and in very little time.

Things You'll Need

• Photograph(s) or image(s) to use as a background
• Text you would like to display on the banner
• Website where you can upload your banner

Instructions

1. Plan the major components of the Flash banner you wish to create: background image, text and style. You will have a lot of templates to choose from, and it's always better to start with a plan.

2. 

   Open your favorite browser and go to the Free Flash Banner Creator website (link in Resources). Click on the "Banner Creator" link.

3. Select the type of banner you would like to create. In this example, we'll create a picture banner; however, you can create other types of banners using this tool as well. The site allows you to create different sized banners and even banners with sound effects.

4. 

   Go through the many different templates provided by the site to carefully figure out which style is most appropriate for your banner. In this example, we are going to use the template "bildbanner5."

5. 

   Click the "Browse" button to locate the file you would like to use. Then, click the "Upload" button to send the file to the site. The banner template that we have selected accepts JPG and PNG (Portable Network Graphic) files. This image is going to be the background of our banner.

6. 

   Enter the text that you would like to appear in your banner. Type or copy and paste your text into the "Text 1" and "Text 2" fields. Next, enter the URL of the website the banner will link to. Additional options are available, including the ability to adjust transparency and change the compression of the final file. When finished, click on the "Submit Query" button.

7. Review your new Flash banner. If you like it, you can download the banner for uploading to a website, or you can make adjustments and start again.

Tips & Warnings

• The Free Flash Banner Creator will put a small logo in your banner. To remove the logo, you'll need to use the premium version of the site; however, the fee is significantly less than investing the time and money you would spend using professional software.

Resources

• Free Flash Banner Creator