When I begin a new Flash^R project for Pamela Gladding Ecards, I start from a pre-existing template. I created this template especially for her ecards. It has the default width and height dimensions that I need for the ecards along with the setting of 30 frames per second.

This template also has the Pamela Gladding preloader with the golden colored text and Edwardian Script ITC font. The preloader has a golden colored progress bar and dynamic counter already programmed. This preloader is used for every ecard. We can start with this template and make a few changes for our Product Tour application. The playback area for the Product Tour is much smaller than that of an ecard, so we will need to remove the progress bar but keep the dynamic counter for the preloader. We will also change the text color for the counter from gold to white, to match the color scheme for our application. Of course, removing the progress bar meant changing the code for the preloader so that it wouldn't give an error because there wasn't a progress bar on the stage.

For the Product Tour our next step is to decide if we want to create the entire project in one big fla file or create each section of the Product Tour as its own fla file. I like to keep things as simple as possible and the though of working on one big fla file is not my idea of "simple". So, let's create a separate fla for each section of the tour. There is an Our Cards section along with a Send an Ecard, View an Ecard, How to Join and Membership sections. Using a separate fla for each section is more flexible because we can make changes to these small fla files as needed. We also can reorder, add or omit an entire section of the tour application in the future without to much fuss.

Main FLA - control panel and playback area
Section 1 FLA - Our Ecards
Section 2 FLA - Send an Ecard
Section 3 FLA - View an Ecard
Section 4 FLA - How to Join
Section 5 FLA - Membership

Because the size of all the fla files together is not very large, we do not need to create external swf files to be imported via ActionScript for each section of the application. All the smaller fla files will be pasted into a main fla as movie clips. So the only thing we need on the main Timeline is the preloader, navigation buttons and the panel. We also want to ease the transition between the end of the preloader and the beginning of the first movie clip. So, let's use a simple tween that fades out the splash screen. This will work nice because each section ends with this same splash screen. Now the main file is ready for the first Our Cards section.

Pamela Gladding Ecards

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