LayoutsPack BLOG

LayoutsPack cares about its users and we try to provide you with useful and helpful information. We continue our Web Templates Types review, so please welcome some fresh pieces of advice. Today we are going to speak about Flash Templates.

Flash Templates represent ready-made usual web design templates improved by Flash technology. Nowadays Flash Templates are of great popularity as they are considered to be advanced and modern and are appreciated by webmasters. Using Flash Templates as a basis for your website you will get vivid and impressive web presence supplemented with movements, sound and visual effects. And you may be sure your clients and visitors will be amazed how professional and qualitative your website is.
Flash Templates can relate to various categories, such as Education Flash Templates, Business templates & Finance Flash Templates, Photo Flash Templates and many others. In other words they will perfectly fit each of your purposes, either commercial or personal, and will meet all your requirements. Though Flash Templates may seem difficultly organized because of impressive animation effects, they are quite easy to work with and customize. You won’t need extra knowledge to cope with your Flash Template editing. You can easily change necessary text, images or symbols with the help of certain flash editors which exist specially for simplifying your work.
In order to work with Flash Templates and edit them you will need to install Macromedia Flash on your computer. After the installation is complete you may open the FLA file (you will find the instructions in our previous post) and start carrying out necessary tasks.
Have a look at the following tips on editing your Flash Templates.

Changing text in Flash

In case you want to modify the text within your Flash Template you only need to take several steps.
First open your FLA file in Macromedia Flash. After that you need to select the very part of the text to be edited. The first way to do it is to make use of the timeline slider. You need to move it and watch the animation process, and when you reach the text you need to edit, stop the slider. Then find “Selection Tool” on the tools panel, double click the necessary text extract and change the text typing new one instead.

Symbols library
Sometimes you may find it hard to access some symbols from the timeline. In this case you may need symbols library. In order to open it select “Library” in “Windows” option which is in the top menu.
To open symbols library you can use “Ctrl + L” hotkey or choose “Window/Library…” from the top menu.
When you get to the symbols library you need to choose the text you want to edit. All the symbols there can be previewed for convenience. After you have found the necessary text double click the symbol’s icon and it will show the text in main window. Then do the same with “Selection Tool” to modify the text.

Text Properties
You can also edit your text size and color by means of Text Tool and Properties Panel. There you will find all necessary icons and options to make the modifications of the selected text.
After you have finished editing your text use “Esc” button to exit and then you may choose other text extracts to modify them as well.

Changing images in Flash
While working with your Flash Template you will definitely need to insert some images, so follow the advice.
After you have opened the FLA file press F11 to get to Symbols Library. Find the necessary symbol there and double click its icon to see the properties. There you will find image preview and be able to check the image size. The picture you want to upload should be of original image size to fit the original animation and effects. You can also set the quality of the image using symbol properties.
You can also resize the image using Adobe Photoshop. To use the image in flash after modification make sure it has “jpeg”, “gif” or “png” format. Use “Import” option and find your image file to paste it then.

Publishing Your Flash Movie
When all the changes are done you should publish your animated header and update it. In order to publish your movie choose “Publish Settings” selecting “Publish” option there. The SWF file will be located in the same folder where FLA file is. Don’t forget to replace previous SWF file with updated one, and then check the changes.

So this was the basic information on Flash Templates we wanted you to familiarize with today. Hope you will make use of it and thank you for the attention.

You are welcome to leave comments and ask questions if necessary.

Layoutspack.com continues familiarizing its users with information about website templates types. And today we have Flash Animated Templates in question.

Flash Animated Templates are the kind of web templates that combine sound effects and live action in one. They may have flash header, animated menu and will appear a perfect solution suitable for impressing website visitors not only with professional design but also with interactive flash technology. Very often 3D models and 3D animation are used. Flash Animated Templates are good choice either for dynamic or static websites, and they will definitely make your website look professional and vivid.

A lot of web designers use Flash Animated Templates nowadays as they are considered to be stylish and improve your website presentation greatly. Nowadays there is a variety of Flash Animated Templates as their popularity grows day by day, and they are quite easy to use – you won’t need extra modern equipment to work with them.
The list of special software you will need to work with Flash Animated Templates is quite short and includes:

-    any HTML editor (Dreamweaver, Front Page etc)
-    Macromedia Flash
-    Adobe Photoshop

Any Flash Animated Template can be also modified according to your demands with the help of any popular HTML editor, and you won’t need special HTML and flash knowledge to edit and improve Flash Animated Templates. You can replace any photo, text or object easily.

In order to make necessary modifications you will work with the template FLA file - a file with all graphics and animation. You will make use of it with the help of Macromedia Flash MX 6 or higher. In order to open the FLA file, select “Open” in the “File” section, and then simply find where your FLA file is located.

“Unexpected file format” error

It happens sometimes that when you open your FLA file in the Flash editor you receive an error message which says that the file format is unexpected. This can be explained by the fact that your template source files were created with newer versions of the software.
So what are you to do? All you need is to upgrade your version of Adobe Flash/Macromedia, and you will be able to open the FLA file properly. In order not to meet such obstacles in future make sure you use Adobe Flash CS3 or Flash 8.
Thank you for your attention, this is the piece of information for today and we hope you will find it useful. Any comments and questions are accepted, so feel free to share your opinion.

LayoutsPack provides its users with definitely qualitative website templates of various types. But our purpose today is not to highlight the quality but to get every user acquainted with principles of website templates’ operating. So get ready for some useful piece of information. Our topic today is CSS Templates Knowledge Base.

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets – is the technology that is used for creating CSS Website Templates and helps web designers to arrange and stylize their web pages. The popularity of using CSS is growing nowadays because it’s a convenient option that is compatible with most of web browsers.

The advantage of CSS is that with its help you can separate style from the content. This means that the elements responsible for page styling are easily defined and you can find these elements within the page structure separately from the content.
Using CSS you can easily modify your web pages. Now you don’t need to repeat a number of tags – just edit a CSS file and you will get necessary changes.
So we can say that CSS Templates contain convenience of use and modern technologies in one.

There are certain software requirements for using CSS Templates and they are the following:

-you should have an HTML editor installed on your computer – any you’d like to work with (Front Page, Dreamweaver, Notepad, etc.)
-if you want to add/edit some animation than Macromedia Flash is required
-you will also need to use Adobe Photoshop to work with images

Editing CSS template

If you need CSS templates to be edited you can easily do it yourself. But you should mind that in case of editing a style sheet responsible for text all the text documents related to that CSS style sheet will be modified as well. Here is the instruction on the example of Dreamweaver:
-open the document you wish to edit
-find “Window” section and choose “CSS styles” there. Then click on the “Edit Style Sheet” option in the CSS Styles panel.
-the next task is to choose the name of the style sheet and click on “Edit” button.
-do all necessary modifications
-don’t forget to save the document after finishing your work.

Design-Time style sheets
When you work with your CSS style sheet in Dreamweaver there is a possibility of hiding or showing it during the design-time. In order to apply this option you need to:
-find the Design-Time section in the CSS Panel
-in the following dialog box mark Show Only at Design Time (Plus button) option in case you want your CSS style sheet to be displayed, then choose the very style sheet you want to apply this option to in the Select a Style Sheet section; or if you want to hide a style sheet mark Hide at Design-Time option and then browse necessary CSS style sheet.
-in order to cancel any of the show/hide options for a certain style sheet choose the necessary one and then click Minus button.

We hope you’ll make use of the information we presented you today. Feel free to post your comments, ask questions or just share new ideas. We appreciate every opinion.

It’s always exciting to start new services and feel the anticipation waiting for first requests.

As you already know last week LayoutsPack in association with WebTemplatesTalk started the new service of Website Templates Requests. Anyone subscribed to one of our Web Templates Packages just has to tell us what design he precisely needs and he’ll get it in a quickest turn around. (You may read more on this option at Website Templates Request post.)

Well, I’m happy to announce we’ve got the first order and we are already on the final stage of animating the skin! Here’s a Consulting company website design for user Pankson547.

Hope you are satisfied, Piter!

And for our other customers I remind – you will be able to download this Flash Animated template as well.
We encourage everyone to post their requests likewise. We’ll complete every order of any kind. So don’t forget to check us out for new updates and news.