Build an interactive site

What's this? An 'interactive website' tutorial? Does that sound a bit codey? Don't worry, because we're going to look at how you can add interactivity to your site with just a few clicks of the great video tools in Flash 8. The pain and frustration of producing anything that moves, has sound or is in any way fun on a computer is long gone. You don't need any code knowledge or highly advanced technical skills to do this. Instead, you can spend more time concentrating on how the interactive Flash elements fit within your animations and layouts.

You can't move around the web these days without bumping into new technologies such as AJAX, Flex and Mashups. The internet is becoming less and less static. Where previously the site owners, coders and designers were in charge, now it's very much in the hands of the site visitors.

And we, as web designers, need to have an understanding of these new ways of working. It's no good for us, our clients or bosses to bury our heads in the sand about any of this. We need to know how our design skills can fit in with these new web technologies. Static HTML pages and dull old brochure sites are rapidly going out of fashion, and Web 2.0 is all about bridging the gap between web and desktop applications and giving site visitors the ability to create their own content, broadcast themselves and manipulate their web experience to something that suits them. The challenge for us is to create interfaces and layouts which are fluid enough to work with these ever-changing developments.

So this tutorial will show you how simple it is to add interactivity to your site using Flash and video. Once you're feeling all positive about your new-found interactive skills, we'll also show you how to put together a podcast.

Click here to download the support files (27MB)

Click here to download the tutorial for free