How to Make Flash Banners in Clicks
A Flash banner contains animated texts, images and animation effects. Well-designed Flash banners can attract visitors and make your website more professional. However, creating a Flash banner usually requires expertise in Adobe Flash and Actionscript programming. This tutorial will guide you how to make animated Flash banners without any knowledge of Adobe Flash and just in clicks.
What You Need:
MTool Flash Banner Maker: The software comes with a free trial, so you can check it out before you buy it. You may download the trial version at http://www.mtoolsoft.com/download.html .
An Example Banner Made with MTool Flash Banner Maker:
To view more examples, please visit: http://www.mtoolsoft.com/flashbannermaker/examples.html.
Step 1, Define Size and Background of Flash Banner
Download and install MTool Flash Banner Maker. Launch the software, a dialog will popup and ask you to define the size and background of your Flash banner.
Step 2, Add Animated Image
Click the button “Add Image”, then in the popup dialog, select an image file, adjust its size, and click the “Ok” button. Then in the design area, you can adjust the position of the image by drag and drop.
At the bottom of the main dialog, click the “Entry Effect” property tab, you can define when the image enters the banner and the entry animation effect. The effects you can select from include “Fly In”, “Zoom In”, “Fade In” etc. In the “Exit Effect” tab, you can define the exit time and exit effect.
You can also add shadow effect and glow effect to the image at the “Filters” tab and assign a web link at the “Web Link” tab.
Step 3, Add Animated Text
Click the button “Add Text”, then in the text editor of the popup dialog, enter your text. You can define the font name, size and colour, multiple font styles are supported in one line of text. After adding your text, you can adjust its position by drag and drop on the design area.
Same as animated image, you can define entry time and entry animation effect at the “Entry Effect” tab, exit time and exit animation effect at the “Exit Effect” tab. You can also choose to animate the letters separately and define the time interval between each letter.
Step 4, Add Animation Effects
The software comes with pre-made Flash animation effects, e.g. snow effect, firefly effect, fireworks effect, star effect etc. To add an effect, click the button “Add Effect”, in the popup dialog, select an effect from the drop down list “Select Animation Effect” and click “Ok”. You can also further customize the effect in the right properties editor.
Step 5, Add Flash Preloader
Flash preloader is a very useful tool to inform the viewer how much the content of a banner has been loaded. Click the button “Add Preloader”, then check the option “Add Preloader”, select a style from the right list, define its colour and size at the right properties editor, then click “Ok”.
Step 6, Add Web Link
Click button “Web Link”, you can define the web address when clicking on the Flash banner.
Step 7, Preview
Click button “Preview” on the main toolbar, you can view the banner instantly with the built-in preview window.
Step 8, Publish to Flash Banner
Click button “Publish to Banner”, choose the button type as “Flash Banner”, then click “Ok”. You can also publish the banner as an animated GIF image. After publishing, the software will generate HTML code which helps you insert the banner to your webpage.
Step 9, Insert Flash Banner to Webpage
This step is highly relative to how and where you host your website. But basically, there are two steps. Firstly, you need to copy the generated .swf file to the same folder as your webpage, secondly, copy the generated HTML code and paste it to your webpage.
