For a beginner.

[thooom]

I am just starting up with a Flash site and I am curious of what program would be best suited for beginners. I do know the basics of HTML coding and I know how to learn what's needed. But I'm all new to flash and I have no idea about php or sql etc either. Any suggestions?

[Pmorgan2]

I guess it depends on what you want to do. I find Adobe Flash to be more user friendly for beginners since you can just drag and drop things where you want them to be.

However it seems there's not a lot of 100% flash sites out there, and probably for good reason. If you want to do things that are a little more complicated than how the site looks and feels, then you might need to branch out into more than just Flash.

And that's where HTML comes in. HTML lets you put a lot of things together, including flash objects. I personally use Adobe Dreamweaver since I got it with Adobe Flash. You could just use a notepad if you're a really fast learner, or I'm sure there's some freeware HTML editors out there with a little less (but acceptable) power than Dreamweaver to get you started.

Things such as Javascript, PHP, and SQL are really needed for extra applets that you can add to your site. You can build a healthy website that displays information with just HTML, and make it pretty with Flash. If you need something that calculates (and you don't want to do it in flash) you can use Javascript and PHP. If you need to access a database for something, then SQL is a good thing to pick up.

I'm a beginner myself, but I'm a healthy ways into learning more. I hope my perspective helps!

Aloha,
Paul Morgan

[Beakers]

Hi there,

If you are new to coding I would suggest you look at ActionScript 2.0 in Flash before considering AS3.0.

You say you know the basics of HTML, a good place to go next is CSS. Do a CSS tutorial or 2 and then start playing around with it. Its pretty much a requirement to make a good structured design and the more you understand about it the better.

Are you planning on making the full sire flash? This is fine depending on what the purpose of the site is or if you are just wanting to learn flash.

Iain