Well as they say the customer (or client) is always right, even if you know they are wrong (i.e. if you know there is a better way). I would urge you to get a contract in place in the future, most of us doing this for a living have been stung at one time or another and it's not until then that you realise the importance of a contract. It protects both parties.
Sadly there is a lot of people into flash, flash sites are awful for User Experience, but if your client doesn't understand you should do this asap most flash is custom, I don't know a lot of Action script but if you know what to do then just get to it. good luck
That whole web site was done on flash. You should be able to do that site simple in Flash There are no vars passed to and from between. You could create that all within flash and use the basic actionscript of buttons for the << back and Forward>> that are buttons to send to the next frames. Have you ever used Flash before? In the animation time line you start on say, frame 10 to 20 for the first animated gallery piece, and frame 20 to 30 for the next section etc. Then when you use the forward button the actionscript will be a simple GoTo and Play Frame 20 etc Since that whole site was done in Flash that should be simple for a Flash designer. It only becomes more involved when you are sending variables to and from Flash with actionscript if you're not fluent in actionscript and how it passes javascript/ and server side. Why would you take on such a site for only $500 ? A duplicate site for that would require server-side between Flash, and Galleries require high-end DPI and animations. I dont understand why Programmers and Developers aren't setting a Diamond Pricing system like the Diamond companies do. That way you dont get a website or functionality unless you're starting at $150 an hour. Its a business industry where many of those people can't do the coding and scripting on their own and compete with high-end competitors. But these pricings are making us all look like lawn cleanup. The bluebook pricing on developers and designers is $40,000 low end, and $60,000 - $100,000 PHP/ SQL anybody getting paid like that on a daily basis these days? Where's the Internet pricing coalition lol
If you can't do it it's best to refund all the money and chalk it up as lesson that you need to define all parameters and the scope of the project in a written agreement. (digital will work) You cannot just not deliver and take money. It is the same as a house painter starting a job painting a white house green then can't reach the second story; the painter says I'm charging you for my time and putting white paint back on the lower story to cover the green I already painted... Doesn't fly. You have a few options. Download and decompile the sample she gave you and recompile or analyze for your own project. Download evaluation versions of Flash CS5 and/or Flexbuilder 4.5 and search for photo gallery samples to create one. as nick360 suggested. Find out what gallery was used and buy or download it. In a matter of 5 minutes I was able to find out the gallery name "jinky.swf" and ascertain that indeed other sites were using the exact same version. I'm not even a web developer per se, I write back ends and desktop apps. I grabbed a copy and decompiled it and loaded the fla in Flash CS5. In minutes I was able to view all of the sybols, action script etc. All that would be needed is to create the small php script to grab the images and sound and recompile. Easy You might want to reevaluate your tool-set or take some courses.
I agree 100 percent. It's the people reading a few books, using copy n paste with free tools calling themselves professionals. It has destroyed the industry for people that have invested years learning and devalued careers for those who have dedicated years gaining formal education degrees in CS etc. It pisses me off to no end. If I had any advice to any real developer it is to never leave a good job and try to make it out on your own. I learned the hard way that