Experience required!

Question

Hi there - apologies in advance for this rather wordy question, but I'm looking for some clarification over a few things with somebody who's had experience in this field..
Basically, here is where I stand, currently.
I'm sixteen and interested in flash web design. I've produced a website already, which, at the time of production I was over the moon with, but obviously as time goes on, as I expect is the case with most designers, I've become less and less fond of it. The main reason being, it's awfully un-dynamic making updating it a real nightmare. (A side note - the website is for photography, so heavily reliant on being able to be updated).
Now, I wish to produce a new website with content that I will be able to update more easily. Without trying to push myself too far, I'm hoping to produce something as close to a CMS as possible.
Here's the method I'm thinking of, but I'm just not sure whether it's viable:
1) Thumbnails, loaded into a movieclip, with an XML file providing the the link to the image.
2) Full size images, loaded into movieclips too, with an XML providing the link to the image.
3) Text on the website, such as an about me etc, inside an XML file, loading from there too.
In all honesty, that's the core of the website.
The two problems I face each time I get going are how to load images effectively.
SO, after a long wind way of piecing my words together: THE QUESTION:
What is the best way to setup a site with such components as the above, mainly focusing on the 'loading images' side of things.
Does my method seem logical?
And if so, how do I go about setting up a generic loader that draw a certain image url, for multiple instances, from XML?
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and thanks in advance for any advice you can provide, at all!
Kind regards.

Answer 1

Here's the scoop on classes.  There are folks who use them, religiously, and there are others (moi) who don't. There are those who emphasize they are the only way to do anything, and there are those (moi) who don't.
I don't use them primarily because I still have to understand some things about them that in the past have caused my brain to twist up trying to understand... long before I ever met Flash.  Still, I can deal with simpler ones and can usually help solve simpler problems people have with them.  I don't emphasize creating them, because things can be done withoutcreating them.  But they do offer a structuring basis that can make for better control of your own designs and workflow (I guess).  And, after all, anything you do in working with actionscript is going to boil down to using classes, even if they are just the built-in ones.
But to design what you are after you don't need to use classes.  So if you want to learn how to do it, then you can pursue it sans classes.  If you do pursue it with classes, then you'll be doubling up on the learning effort... trying to solve the functional design on one hand and trying to solve working with classes on the other.
As far as your wondering about creating master-pieces.  You can create them dynamically with code, assigning their properties when they are created... lining them up one after another, assigning them event listeners, etc... you just devise a little coded assembly line to cycle through them.  A MovieClip object can have properties assigned to it dynamically, so you don't need to have a master lying in the library that you use over and over (though you could).  For instance...
for(var i:uint = 0; i<5; i++){
     var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
     mc.x = i*100;
     mc.name = "mc"+String(i);
     mc.age = i*10;
     mc.addEventListener(...etc);
     addChild(mc);
With that loop I just created 5 potential homes for things to be planted in, they are spread out at 100 pixel intervals and can each be targeted using their name properties.  I could have stored them in an array and use the array to target them instead of their names (often easier to deal with).  Normally the populating will be done as each one is created in the loop, but that is just to demo how your masters can be easily created from code alone.
The XML file will be a resource of data which you can use for the content.  It can identify the images that your code will load and plant into those movieclips, or indicate sections of text content, or color schemes, or placement values of things... pretty much anything you want to be able to adjust without editing and compiling a new Flash file.
Later on, you can mix in a server side language such as PHP to allow you to load images to a server and/or to extract the names of images from a folder on a server, and it can generate the xml formatted data that Flash will read in just as if it were an xml file (flash doesn't know/care, as long as what it gets looks like xml).  And then, advancing even further, you get to mix in a server database, making your site all kinds of dynamic--storing and retrieving data all over the place.  It's a great hurdle to get over, especially at your age... the world will be yours to conquer... I didn't learn these things until I was over-the-hill.
Don't fear it, just pursue it.  It really is not difficult stuff but it requires developing a way of thinking You just have to develop a programming frame of mind.  It will come.  It won't happen overnight, at least not right away, but at some point a light will come on and you'll find your confidence level makes you fearless.
Take your time and pursue it one stage at a time, and don't be shy of keeping it simple.  Find a basic tutorial and get the basic concepts under your belt... don't shoot for the ultimate design from the start... you can build up to that in stages.  Since you want to pursue xml next, which is a logical choice, here's a link to the first xml-related tutorial I learned from...
AS3 - RSS XML feed
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=64
The gotoandlearn.com site has a lot of good tutorials that deal with some of the features you'll be getting into, though alot are advanced beyond anything I know as well.
And since that is an RSS tutorial, I recommend you also do a Google search for "AS3 XML tutorial" because an RSS feed has some slight differences in the xml data and I wouldn't want to guide you into a corner.