About LukaMaras.com

This is a Flash educational site

LukaMaras.com is a Macromedia Flash tutorials site, built for you to learn easily how to create cool Flash sites. Here, you will find how to make every nice flash effect you've seen on the web, step-by-step, from the ground up. You will find detailed descriptions of every ActionScript bit of code, design procedures and more. I made tutorials for Flash 8 and Flash MX. Please, continue reading the next two sections to see why.

Flash 8 tutorials

Flash 8 tutorials are made for the most recent and most powerful version of Flash up to date - Flash 8. They show you how to create astounding design with its graphical possibilities and how to code in ActionScript 2.0 to make most out of it.

The ActionScript 2.0 tutorials are mostly application orientied. That is, they teach you how to write stable and reusable code that is modular and flexible.

Keep in mind that what you create by following these tutorials will only be visible for users and visitors to your flash site who have the Flash Player 8 or better installed on their machine.

Flash MX and up tutorials

The Flash MX tutorials are made for two main purposes.

First, you won't need real object-oriented programming in ActionScript for smaller projects, banners, flash elements of a mostly HTML site and so on. There's no sense in building an airplane when you can get to the nearby town with a car. So, if you need a quick way to, say, set up a flash navigation section for your site, the Flash MX tutorials will show you how.

The second reason is that you will need to make your projects backward-compatible for users who have previous versions of Flash player installed. That is especially true when you are working for clients that will require you to do so (banner ads for portal sites are a good example of this).

I called these tutorials Flash MX and up because they are made for Flash Player 6 and higher versions.

Conventions used in this site's tutorials

The conventions used in the tutorials are following:

Normal text like the one you are reading right now is used for the descriptions and text in general.

The paragraphs which are written in monospaced text and are indented are used to show ActionScript code, like the following:

on (release) {
   gotoAndPlay(1);
}

Pieces of code within normal text are written in monospace. Example:

In ActionScript, the stop(); command is used to stop the current timeline from playing.

Words that show up in italics are used for movie clip instance names, layer names, symbol names and so on.

The keyword shortcuts for performing certain tasks are shown in bold: press CTRL+ENTER to test your movie. Selecting a command from a menu is written in this form: to adjust your documents background color, choose Modify > Document.

Source files (.fla) are available for download at the end of most tutorials. The tutorials which explain small ActionScript routines usually don't have the source files added for download.

The tutorials are created on both the PC and Mac environments and the screenshots are captured from both systems.

Requesting a tutorial

If you have a request for a specific tutorial, before posting your request on my forum, please be sure that you have looked up and made sure that this tutorial or a similar one that answers your question doesn't already exist. After you've checked this, post your request and wait. I do not accept any tutorial/Flash related questions by e-mail. These won't be answered.

A small advice

There isn't anything that's difficult to create in Flash. Believe in yourself and you'll succeed. If you have a wish to create something, stick to it until you achieve the wanted result. After all, you are here to learn. That means you have the desire to learn more, to create and to expand your knowledge. And this site will help you do exactly that. Have fun while exploring this site and using the techniques explained herein to enjoy Flash even more, while making great flash sites!

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