Using SPRY or Flash in a Drupal Header
Hey!
I'm really new to Drupal, but excited for the possibilities that it is going to give my site!!! The design is really complicated: and I'm used to coding using absolute positioning... I don't have any php experience at all. (See my current site: www.CandiceJarrett.com - which I had some help with btw)
I have this design where I want to make the nav part of the header and use either flash or spry to make the nav and the header do some cool animations relative to eachother. Here's a screenshot of what the new site will look like:
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j303/candicejarrett/PREVIEW_4.jpg
Besides the header/nav problem... I was looking to use some kind of rotator for the featured fan photo... so that it selects from a few jpegs that I preselect. I'm going to go through the tutorials here with a fine tooth comb and hope that I can make this design a reality while still using drupal. If anyone here can give me advice about any part of it... especially the header... I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
Cheers!
Candice
PS. I'm using drupal 5.6 - and am using www.CandiceJarrett.net as a testbed if you want to see how far I've gotten. Thanks again!!!!! :-)
Comments
Hi Candice ! Something you
Hi Candice !
Something you should know about drupal before I start, is that the menus in drupal, like the navigation on your header, is done through a menu interface, and not hard codded into a template. This way it's easy to modify the menu items, re-organize them, or even delete them without typing any code.
Also, in Drupal, if you want to use flash, it's totally possible, using BLOCKS. Blocks in drupal are used to display some content with the ability to move them around on the page. I can for example, put an image in a block, and then decide that this block containing my image should show up in the sidebar, only on some specific pages, or even on all pages. So if you want a flash item in your page, it works the same as an image, you just have to upload the flash item on your server, and then add the links to the flash movie in a block in drupal.
Some code like this one for example :
embed width="523" height="227" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" name="homeflash" id="homeflash" style="" src="/sites/mysite/files/swfobject/header.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>You can see an example of a flash movie in a drupal site here : http://www.kellyclarksonweb.com/
BUT, if you want your flash movie to interact with the menu, it mean that the menu itself will be part of the flash movie. It mean that the menu will not be created using the Drupal menus, but will be created using flash, and if you want to modify it, you will have to edit the flash movie. Inside your flash movie, you can set the links to the right pages in drupal, so the navigation is totally possible using a flash movie.
Menus are usually not done through flash because any modification would be to complicated, especially compared to how easy it is to edit and modify menu items in Drupal. A good alternative to animation in drupal would be to use javascript or ajax, like on apple.com, made without any flash.
The image rotator sounds like it's totally possible using javascript (jquery) or ajax.
If you need more informations about flash though, you can go here : http://www.actionscript.org, http://www.kirupa.com