RESOURCES EXPLORATION

The four websites I discovered that provide a wealth of resources for any Flash designer or developer are: hotscripts.com, ultrashock.com, flashdevils.com and soundbible.com. Each of these websites was fun to explore and educational as well. The first website, hotscripts.com, is a website that provides the newest, top rated and most popular scripts for Flash, various computer languages, web hosting, XML and a few other areas. There are Flash tutorials, templates and resources as well as sub-categories which have available components, fla archives, programming books and software for downloading. The HotScript forums have a flash and actionscript area where you can post your questions, problems and/or solutions as a designer/developer. This site is easy to navigate and offers resources that are on the leading edge of Flash development and design.

The next site, ultrashock.com, has a wide range of creative assets that it offers to designers and developers. There are flash files that have been created by the flash community and are available for download. The files are comprised of photos, vector images, various scrollbars, sound clips, random movie clip positioning and much more. This website would be great for designers who do not want to have to create all of the content that they use in their web design or flash applications. There are a lot of files which contain decorative backgrounds, patterns and vector graphics that have a universal appeal. The sound library is not very large but has a diversity of sounds that are well suited for commercial purposes. Ultrashock offers quality resources at comparatively low prices and is a well-rounded source for flash designers.

The flashdevils.com website lists itself as an "Adobe Flash Resource Community with a helpful Flash Forum, Fla Files and Tutorials." I found this to be true as I navigated the site to find tutorials on drop down menus and website navigation, functions and OOP, limited animation and other areas. There are many actionscript files related to using arrays, bezier curves, collision detection, friction and gravity. The forums were full of designers asking questions about buttons, movie clips and interfaces so that it was easy to see this would be a great community for newer flash designers to belong to and explore. It also appeared that this site is in its early stages of development as some of the categories were empty, like text/visual effects, flash cartoons, interfaces and so forth. The cartoon section would be a great place for many of us to upload our animated flash movies for other flash designers to see and experience. I will be visiting this site more in the future as it grows and becomes a real asset to the flash community.

The last site, soundbible.com, was my favorite for two reasons. The first is because the concept of sound clips in my flash movies is fascinating to me AND this site offers free sound clips as their attitude is, "Our project supports teachers, students, faculty and starving artists who can't afford to buy them so we are forced to give them away for free." This is an amusing and generous way to provide sound to everyone who is involved in flash design and development. A caveat is that the Royalty Free Sounds can be used for commercial use. This makes this website a great resource for designers who may be operating on a modest budget. The royalty free sound library boasts 94 pages of diverse sound effects from a dying robot, moose calls, computer sci fi and rain forest ambience. The free sound effects library is 135 pages of equally engaging and fun sounds for use in a designer's flash movies, websites or commercial applications. I immediately bookmarked this website once I found that it offered such a variety of quality sound clips for free. The creators of the SoundBible website are to be commended for their generosity and willingness to share sound creations and effects among the designers/developers of the Flash community. This spirit of generosity is one that needs to be shared by more flash websites within the community.

These four websites are just some of the many Flash resources websites that I discovered in my research for this resources exploration. They offer useful sources for creative and technical solutions which flash designers can use whether the person is a novice or an expert user. They provide a wealth of material from flash website templates, fla files for specific functions to "how to tutorials" to guide flash users through the various applications. These websites are a great addition to the Adobe Flash website for user friendly information and communication.