Section 16.2. Creating Flash Buttons

16.2. Creating Flash Buttons

As you'll recall from Chapter 4, a Flash button is a short Flash movie that looks and works exactly like a rollover graphic. You can build Flash buttons directly in Dreamweaveryou don't need any outside authoring tools. However, Flash buttons come with some drawbacks in terms of accessibility and performance. If you're hazy on the particulars, see Chapter 4.

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Flash Buttons work well as one-off, special-feature buttons in the main content area of your page.

If you understand what you're getting into and you still want to add Flash buttons to your site, here's what you do. Click anywhere in the document window to create an insertion point, and then go to the Insert panel. Look in the menu of Flash objects, and choose the Flash Button object, shown in Figure 16-5.

Figure 16-5. The Flash Button object is in the menu of Flash objects

The Insert Flash Button dialog box in Figure 16-6 appears. From the Style menu, choose the graphical appearance of your Flash button, and watch the Sample pane for a preview.

In the Button Text field, type the label that appears on the button face, and choose the font and type size. You don't have to stick with web-safe fonts here. Go with whatever crazy typeface you prefer. In any case, the label should be short enough to fit on the button that you selected. You'll check this in a few steps. The Sample pane won't update itself to show the button with your text, so don't wait around for it to do so.

Click the Browse button next to the Link field, and navigate to the page to which you want the button to link.

If you want to color the background of the button, click the Bg Color color box, and select from the menu of color swatches. You can also sample any color on screen.

Finally, type a filename for the button in the Save As field. After the filename, add .swf, the Flash file extension.

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Don't save the Flash button in your images or img folder. Keep it in the same folder as the current page, even if you normally save Flash movies with your images. For the Flash button's link to work correctly, the button file needs to be in the same folder as its page.

The same goes for Flash text, too (see "Creating Flash Text" later in this chapter).

Figure 16-6. Build your Flash button with the Insert Flash Button dialog box

Click Apply to preview your button in the document page. If your label doesn't fit, shorten it, or reduce the type size, and click Apply again. You can also change the button style if you're underwhelmed by the result.

When you finally have the button looking the way you want it, click OK, and fill out the Flash Accessibility Attributes dialog box. Click OK again, and Dreamweaver adds the finalized button to your page. You may then adjust its position on the page with the Property Inspector, as shown in Figure 16-7.

Figure 16-7. Position the Flash button on your page

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Press Play on the Property Inspector to test your Flash button's interactive features, or even better, preview your page in a live browser window. In a browser, you can click the button and follow the link.

To edit your Flash button at any time after you've created it, select it, and click Edit on the Property Inspector.