Creating Floating Button Labels - Page 2

Getting Started

Because there are no rules to flash designs, the user can be confronted with many different designs all competing to be better and different. It is important to note that people have only recently adapted to the visual presentation of information on a HTML page. A Flash page that may be visually beautiful but navigationally unfamiliar or illogical will result in confusion and the user feeling uncomfortable with the site. Chances are he/she will look else where next time. A labeling technique such as this can be extremely useful to a novice or confused visitor. The user will thank you for it and come back again.

Creating this function is a simple process. Create a button by choosing Insert > New Symbol, name it and select the button behavior. (For more information on Building Buttons see the tutorial.) Create the images for the four states but in the Over state you need to place a movie for the floating text. This can be in addition to any other objects you wish to place in the Over state.

Select the Over frame and choose Insert > New Symbol, name your clip and give it the movie clip behavior. A new stage will appear. This is for your floating text. You will want a 2 second pause before the text appears so have a look at your frame rate and multiply it by two (two seconds) and place your keyframe in that frame number on the movie clip's timeline. For example, if your frame rate is 12 fps, place your keyframe in the 24th frame. Like so: