Stock In Action

Let’s assume you’re a Flash guru, or at least on the road to becoming a Flash guru. Why on earth would you need to buy Flash stock? It’s not like you can’t build your own contact form with email validation or snazzy slideshow gallery.

Stock can be a great time saver and if you’re an experienced freelancer you know that time really does mean money. Before you read on, please note that I am in no way suggesting that stock should ever replace custom work. Though in certain situations it can be used as an out of box solution, I typically use stock only when I can seamlessly integrate it into custom work or use it as the base and then make it custom.

I was recently hired to take the designs for the new rightguard.com site and convert them into a fully functional flash site. 99% of the code was custom-built from scratch. The night before the launch they decided they wanted a “subscribe to newsletter” function. There was no way and frankly no reason to try to build one in the middle of the night. Instead I bought a file from FlashDen, customized it a bit, and had no problem meeting their deadline.

So, how do you know if the file you’re buying is worth spending time and money on? I’ve bought more than one useless or poorly-documented file that I just ended up scrapping. That is a risk you take, but at $5 per file it’s annoying, but not too big of a deal. There are ways to decrease the likelihood of buying a bad file. Most stock flash sites allow buyers to rate the file. Ignore the rating if there are fewer than four or five votes. If there are too few ratings on that particular file try to find the overall rating for that author.  I steer clear of files and authors with four or more files that have a 3/5 or lower rating. Stock Flash files are unique in the stock world in that they usually have a page for comments and questions. Read them carefully, but keep in mind that most of the negative comments are from beginners who don’t know Flash. Try to sort out valid complaints from the guy who wants custom work for $5 or the guy who can’t figure out where the actionscript is.

Interpreting someone else’s actionscript can take as long as just writing something yourself. Fortunately most stock Flash sites require the user to not only write detailed instructions, but also to comment the code out very well. That being said, there are dozens of sites and thousands of authors. Not all of them follow strict guidelines. For the most part customization of the files I’ve bought has been relatively easy. If you are a less experienced Flash developer don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Like I said earlier, the key to using stock effectively is to make it seamless. Luckily, changing the general look is much easier than changing functionality. When you are searching, don’t worry too much about finding something that looks exactly how you need it to. You are a freelancer, this is where you shine. This is also where you remove all evidence that you are using stock (not that there is anything wrong with that).

One final thing to remember when buying stock Flash: make sure you know what you are buying. Check the compiled swf size, the actionscript version, and of course the file comments.