Image fades and HTML links

[reeshe]

Hi,

Haven't used Flash in a few years now, and it has changed a lot...so I am a bit behind with the times. I need to do a site with a each section of the website having a background, that fades in when the user goes there. I want the transition from section to another to be smooth, and the new background image fade in on top as the other fades out (at the same time!)

Also how do i make some of the links on my website HTML pages and some flash? I need to be able to link back to the flash section of a site when clicking on the flash section. I found an example on the Louis Vuitton site, if you click on your account or newsletter and then click back to the Services it will go back to that specific section of the flash site.

http://www.louisvuitton.com - check it out to see what I mean.

Hope you can help, need to start developing my flash skills again.

Thanks

[Medyman]

There are two ways to do this.

The first way, and the way that the LV site seems to use is my using cookies. Preferably, session cookies. All of the reading/writing of cookies will be done by either JS or your server-side script of choice.

If it's set server-side, you would then relay the information (through a php script) to the Flash. Depending on the value set in the cookie (the value would in some way identify the part of the site you're visiting), you would then load that Flash section.

If it's set client site, you would need to invoke the ExternalInterface class (aka External API) and retrieve the value of the cookie via JS. That information is then relayed to Flash, interpreted (through conditionals) and the associated section of the site is brought up.

The second option is to use SWFAddress (http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/). The internals of this work in a similar way to the client-side setup I described above, but you'll benefit from a simple API to connect to particular parts of the site (not to mention that this is far more SE friendly).

[reeshe]

Thanks for that, will look into it.