Working with Swish

This tutorial for Swish Version 2.0  is designed to help you edit your Swish movie so that you can use your own wording rather than our sample text.  (The images are large, so please allow time for them to download!)  Follow the steps below the graphic:

1.  In the Swish program, you can either click on the "open folder" icon or go to File / Open and then navigate to your FrontPage web.  Find the file ending in "SWI" and double-click. This will open your movie file.

2.  You will see the movie appear in the center area.

3.  To the right, you will see the name of the file, the background (if any), and each text entry line.  If each line of text if visible and stacked on top of one another, you can "hide" lines of text by clicking on the "Eye Icon".  This does not delete the text, but simply hides it from view.  Click on the line of text you wish to modify.

4.  You will see the text appear in the box to the right of the screen.  Delete our sample text and replace it with your own.  You can change the font, the color, size, and orientation.  Note:  You can use any font in your fonts folder.

5.  The timeline contains the information on the effects we have used for each line of text.  Each tiny square is one frame.  Some effects are short - maybe only 10 boxes - which at 12 frames per second would last less than one second!

6.  As you make your changes, you can preview it.  You can start or stop your preview through these buttons.

7.  Should you choose to delete one of our effects and replace it with one of your own, you can access the effects through this drop down menu.  Please preview your movie often and adjust each text line (lengthen or shorten) as needed.

Once you are happy with your new movie, you will want to save it and then export the SWF file (the Shockwave Flash file that the browser sees) and the HTML coding into your FrontPage web.

1.  Go to File / Save (to save the movie with the same name to the same location) or File / Save As (to save the movie with a new name to the same or different location).  Note:  You can save the Swish file (SWI) to a folder on your hard drive.  It does not have to be saved into your FrontPage web's root folder.

2.  Next, you want to go to File / Export and select the SWF option.  You want to save this file directly into your FrontPage web's root folder.  Do not save it into another folder...just save it where your main pages are located.  If you changed the name of your file, your SWF file will reflect the new name.  (Note:  If you save your SWF file with the same name as ours, you can skip step 3!!)

3.  The final step is saving the HTML file and placing it into your FrontPage web.  If you have retained the original file names, this step is not needed because your coding is already in place within the web. 

If you have made changes, you will need to import the new coding.  In Swish, click on File / Export / HTML to Clipboard. Once you have the code copied to your clipboard, go to your FrontPage page which displays the movie.

• Click on the movie in FrontPage to highlight it.  Now delete.

• With your cursor in the area where you wish your movie to appear, click on the HTML tab.

• Control + V to paste in your new code.

• Click on the Normal view tab and you should see your movie.  Preview your page in the browser.

• Save the page.

Q: My movie isn't playing?  What's wrong?

1.  Make sure you have not confused the SWI file with the SWF file.  These are two separate files.
2.  Files are case sensitive - check the name of your file and then check the HTML coding!  Files should be the same name and lowercase with no spaces or special characters.
3.  Make sure the SWF file is sitting in the root web folder.

If you continue to have problems, contact us and we can walk you through the steps.