Designng for Full Page

Hey Guys,

Flash noob here. I've been asked to put together a simple flash page to that corresponds to a christmas card my office is mailing out. I've got the vector graphics set up and the page story-boarded and how I'm going to script it all thought out.

My question is: How I can go about designing it for a full screen flash?

I know how to set the publish properties, by setting 100% for width and height (among other settings) - but what size should I set as the workspace to begin with?

Do you have any tips for designing full page over no-scaled flash?

Thanks!

Flash by default makes the stage 550x400. Why? I have no idea because nothing on the web is that size but whatever, I'm sure there's a good reason.

Most websites are the aspect ratio of the most common screen size which would be 640x480 or 800x600 or 1024x768. Any of those sizes will work because if you link directly to the swf file itself for instance:

http://www.mywebsite.com/christmas_card.swf

and it opens in a browser it will by default resize itself to the full screen size of whatever computer it opens with. If the aspect ration isn't correct though you'll see areas around the outside of the stage so you have to be sure that your numbers for your size are correct. Sure, you SHOULD make it the best viewable size for the simple fact that it looks cleaner and more professional and it will prevent seeing past the file's stage but as long as you do not change the aspect ratios I gave you it will play full screen no matter what the variable.

Thanks for the response!

I guess my question necessarily just about resolution - because I want all the flash to stay in browser. Usually I run a 960x600 grid for web design to make sure it fits in the 1024x768 screen area. I was wondering if its different for flash?

Also, is there a way to make sure (after being embedded) the flash scales to max height but doesn't stretch to the full page width. I keep having that problem, on my widescreen it stretches it all out.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it!

Turns out the settings I was looking for are all in the swfobject files - so thats not an issue.

Still curious as to what viewable screen area would seem to work best on average for filling the average user's viewable browser space without them resizing etc.