i have special site needs - need a bit of help...

[cb911]

hi,

i have special needs.

i've been wondering for ages what i'm going to do for my website... and now it's finally time to get it done.

i know what i want... but i'm not 100% sure how to go about it and get it done. here's the features that i want:
• flash buttons (i'm a multimedia/video person, i couldn't stand to have a static site)
• an easy to update 'news' section (something like Movable Type. i just want something on the main page that i can update easily with news etc. if Movable Type is the way to go... i'll need some help with that, tutorials or something...)
• a media player (this is a maybe - perhaps for the "hi" version of the site. perhaps a flash music player? with different selectable tracks, and the usual play/pause & volume controls. does anyone know how to go about setting something like this up? any good tutorials out there?)

well that's it mostly, i was thinking maybe also about having a spot on the page that scrolls news and site updates horizontally accross (does anyone know which would be the best way to do that? Flash, or are there other ways? once again, any tutorials on this would be great. )

i think what i'm mostly confused about is whether i should go all Flash, or mix up the Flash buttons with regular HTML? i kind of want to avoid using Flash for the whole site, because i'll have a gallery section, and every gallery that i've seen made in Flash has been clunky and no where near as nice and functional as a regular gallery. i'm thinking most of the site would just use CSS, and i'd maybe have 3-4 different parts of it made up of Flash? how would that work out?

well, any help would be appreciated, i've done a few small webpages in either Flash or HTML, but never mixed the two, so opinions from those who are more experience would be a great help.

thanks.

 

[Espnetboy3]

css and xhtml is your best bet , with some use of flash if you must. It's best to actually know the code and language. I would write the whole site in BBedit.

 

[Espnetboy3]

learn style sheets and use them to update your site. So much quicker

 

[zarathustra]

css and xhtml is your best bet , with some use of flash if you must. It's best to actually know the code and language. I would write the whole site in BBedit.

You need to relax a bit.

I would love to do my ad layout in pure Post Script, because it's cleaner, but Illustrator does a pretty good job.

Agree on the CSS part though.

 

[rendezvouscp]

It seems like your pretty flash happy. Most of what you described can be done without the use of any flash. The buttons can be done with CSS, you can look at Movable Type or something like that for news (unless you want it to be more blog centric, then I'd go with Blogger, which you can customize to your hearts desire), and if you restrict the limits of a QuickTime file, you can instantly have a player (but I'm sure you'd like to customize that). Do some searching for code on horizontal movement of text—I know you can do it with html, but I don't remember.

I really suggest that since you are starting off with nothing, that you do everything by hand as much as possible. ALA (http://www.alistapart.com/) is a great site that has a lot of what you'll need for design. It can be really exciting to design your own site, but it's a lot of work too. I suggest that you do some drawings of your site first so that the design follows the content.

One more thing—make use of XHTML and CSS! Additionally, make your site standards compliant. It's so much easier to work with if you're doing things right, and it'll make it easier for your users too. Have fun, and post any more questions here.
-Chase

 

[cb911]

thanks for the help. and thanks for that link rendezvouscp. A List Apart looks like it will be a real help to me.

i am pretty "Flash happy"... i guess that's because i'm not familiar with what you can do with HTML or CSS etc, but i do know that i can do everything i want with Flash.

i'll check out the 'net for any info about scrolling text... but about the buttons - i knew i could use CSS to have a button highlight, but i had in mind more than that, movement in the actual button. Flash would be the best way to do this, right?

and about the 'news' section... i'm not familiar with MovableType and Blogger at all... i thought that Blogger was more of a service, rather than software that you use? well, i'll have to read up on them, and maybe look at some sites that use both to try and see which is the one i'm looking for.

thanks all.

 

[dotdotdot]

I can help!!!

You're not going to want an all flash website as they are slow on certain machines and won't always be viewable. However, you can make a .php based site which will make life easier.

You begin with an index page

www.mysite.com/index.php

from there you have text - FLASH or HTML (or Auto detect flash - thats cool) and for flash, www.mysite.com/flash/index.php and html, www.mysite.com/html/index.php

Using PHP you set it up so that you have the same site in both, but text based links in the HTML version and flash links in the other.

Then, google fusionphp and download fusion news to your server. Then, when you go to www.mysite.com/news, youll be asked for a user and password and then be able to post and manage all news - or you can do what macrumors does, and just use forums to run the site.

 

[brap]

CSS self indulgence: http://www.csszengarden.com/

I'll add my voice to the chorus of "Aaargh! No! No more unnecessary Flash!"