Home > Articles > Design > Adobe Creative Suite

Flash Reference Guide

Aug 22, 2003

␡

⎙ Print

< Back Page 171 of 398 Next >

There is such a thing as being too creative. A site design that's too creative, or haphazard, can confuse your customers. When creating a site, you want to employ a design strategy where elements on the screen, such as content and navigation, are logically collected together. This process is called "blocking."

How Does Blocking Work?

Blocking—a concept you can use for almost any Web site or application— involves breaking down design into specific, easily recognizable blocks of organized content, such as navigation, advertising, and branding. Amazon.com, for example, does a great job of blocking:

Figure 1

Amazon packs a lot of content on the screen, but the site is still easy to use. This is because the design is divided into easily recognizable sections. You can better visualize this by replacing the text and graphics on the screen with blocks. Here is Amazon.com blocked out:

Figure 2

You can see the areas of content in red. Across the top, you have the site's navigation; below the navigation is the search tool followed by personalization; and the site's main content is broken into three main columns: category navigation, content, and advertising. I was unable to capture the site's footer content in this screen shot, but that exists as well as a block of content at the bottom of the site.

Rule of thumb: when blocking out a site, keep the blocked design simple. This allows your customers to find what they're looking for as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, blocking a Web site design is nothing new. There are plenty of books on this subject. In fact, a good book for new designers is "Web Graphics for Non-Designers" by Nick Boyce, Isaac Forman, Dave Gibbons, and Adrian Roselli.

Deconstructing a Design

You've seen the Amazon.com Web site blocked; let's take the same premise and apply it to a Flash design. The following figure is the Flash design you're going to deconstruct.

Figure 3

Now, let's take the design and break it into blocks as shown here:

Figure 4

When you look at a design, your eye travels the same path whether you're looking at a poster, book cover, or Web site. Almost always, you start by looking at the top left corner of a design and move in an "S" shape down to the bottom right. In our new design, a "burst," or attention grabber, has been placed in the center of the screen. This forces our eye to start at this point before beginning its curvy "S" movement. The blocks of content are focused along this "S" movement. The following illustration shows how the eye may likely move through our new design:

Figure 5

Now you need to place content into the blocks on the screen. Key design elements you want to use are: navigation, branding, utilities, content sections, and page footer. These sections form the fundamental construction of most designs. Here is our design blocked and labeled:

Figure 6

The design has been developed to illustrate the main fundamentals of Flash design. Most of the sections, such as navigation, content, and footer, should be familiar to you. Some of the names, such as "Utilities" and "Call Out Section," are names I use to group non-traditional design elements together. "Utilities," for example, groups together a "Home" section while the "Call Out Section" highlights a specific piece of content.

Layering Design in Flash

At some point, you need to gather up the nerve to take your design into Flash. HTML Web site designers who conceive their site designs in Photoshop often have big problems migrating them to the Web. They need to slice their images and layer them in complex tables or use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to take the design to the Internet.

Flash is much friendlier, largely because its history is based within illustration. To this end, many of the tools illustrators would use are available to Flash designers as well. You can create an illustration for a site in Macromedia Fireworks or Adobe Illustrator, for example, and import the art directly into Flash, which inherits the design's layers and groupings.

Let me show you. We're going to take the design for the site, which was created in Fireworks, and import it into Flash.

Open Flash. Create a new design and set the stage settings to 766 x 746.
Choose File >; Import >; Import to Stage...
A window opens. Navigate to the PNG file called "Outline.png."

Figure 7
The "Fireworks PNG Import Settings" window appears. Select "OK" to import.

Figure 8
The image is imported into Flash and you can see in the Timeline panel all of the layers of the image inserted into a new layer.

Figure 9
Save your work.

What you now have is the basic layout for your design.

Next Steps

These are the fundamental building blocks needed for your design. But this is Flash, which means you can add animation and interactivity to your design as well. In the next section, I'll discuss branding and show you how to use animation to focus users on specific brands you want to highlight.

< Back Page 171 of 398 Next >

🔖 Save To Your Account

Peachpit Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from Peachpit and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Privacy Notice

Overview

Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about Peachpit products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information

To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites; develop new products and services; conduct educational research; and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email ask@peachpit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information

Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security

Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children

This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing

Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information

If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out

Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by Adobe Press. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.peachpit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information

Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents

California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure

Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

As required by law.
With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact

Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020

Email Address