What kind of tool do I need to use to make the animated design on treehouse's index page?(before login)

Hey Eric, So sorry I can't tell you exactly how those work because I'm on my iPad and can't easily view the source code, but the way it's working is either using JavaScript or using CSS. Flash is (how to say this nicely) archaic. As I said I'm on an iPad and I can see the animation and flash doesn't work on iPads. I'm going to assume you are new (Welcome its awesome to have you and meet you!! Please lmk if I'm wrong in assuming your new tho) but now a days browsers are sooo powerful that they can do crazy cool animations without heavy complex things like Flash and Actionscript. To see what cool things can be done with just a little css or js you should check out http://codepen.io and if you want to learn how to make cool animations like the home page one you can check out CSS Foundations which will cover transitions, transformations, and animations in CSS or JavaScript Foundations which will cover how to manipulate objects in js. Please let me know if you are confused or have any questions about how awesome CSS, HTML, and JS can be, and Good Luck!!!!

Patrick Metcalfe

Questions: patrick@patrickmetcalfe.com

HTML, CSS and Javascript will do the trick. If you don't want to learn all those things though take a look at Adobe Edge Animate which is part of creative cloud. It's a lot like Flash except it outputs HTML, CSS and Javascript based on what you build. If you're already familiar with the Flash environment however and want to animate in Flash take a look at the CreateJS plugin.

I agree with Riley, the lesson on CSS3 Transitions and transforms has some information you could use. The animation loads up on page start up, which kind of sounds like what you're talking about. Good luck!