how to automate photslide template in flash 8

Ok i will do that . Appreciate your help Motionmaker, and i'll also check out the links ,

Regards, and thanks a bunch
Janette

The Photo Slide show is a Flash Movie that is a simple cut from one frame to the next. It is somewhat I described minus placing the images into MovieClips and instead on one frame on the timeline, a set of frames providing a tween.

You could delete the _controller layer. Delete the frame 1 actions in the _actions layer. Then on the picture layer and captions layer you would expand the keyframes to extend the time the photos are appearing. Click on them and press F5 to insert a frame. The template movie is 12 frames per second so you need 12 frames for 1 second of viewing.

You need to do the same on the other layers but you can do that to the right where the captions and picture layer end to save extra steps. On the last frame of the _actions layer you insert a keyframe and add the action gotoAndPlay(1) to get the repeat loop.

Then if you want to fade in or out content you can proceed to replacing the images with MovieClips containing them and then doing the tweening I explained.

Bottom line is you will need to learn about the Flash IDE timeline and how to manipulate it.

Thank you for your reply, Motionmaker,

Wow, i'm surprised!

I thought it would be something as easy as a clicking a button in the template!

By the way, my slideshow will have about 10 pictures, in a banner., It will be very small in size ( i only want it to be about 7cm wide and height 3 cm approximately) as it will be part of a logo, for a website header. I will have about 10 pictures showing one after the other.

What you said above sounds complicated! The flash 8 template allows you to change the photos, all i need to know is how to take the control off, ( the template has a control, which the user has to click)

What i want is to automate it. The slideshow will be in a website header, so obviously i want it to load and play automatically when users go to the webpage.

Thank you, and i hope you or anyone else can make some suggestions. I'm sorry i'm so flash illiterate.

You can do this without any knowledge of Actionscript, but if you have lots of bitmap images you face two problems. One is the size of the Flash movie could present overkill on server load as all of the images will be downloaded regardless if they are seen. The second is the sheet effort of dealing with everything inside one Flash movie.

With that in mind, you would create a MovieClip for each photo you import and place the Photo in the MovieClip.
The on the main stage you create MotionTweens for each MovieClip. You can have them fade in or out using the properties. If one needs to fade in or out over another, then then you need to start a new layer for each MovieClip and overlap the tweens. Use Motion versus Shape for the tween method.

So learn how to import a graphic and place in a MovieClip. Then learn how to tween a MovieClip changing alpha value, position, size, and tinting.