http://www.starcraft2.com/
First I was wanting to take a look at how the effect on the bottom of the page was done, how the planet shows through. I figured probably just some sort of image with the planet image as the background. But when I view the source there is nothing there? I understand that a good majority of the page is done with flash but where is all the code for the page? How is this page showing anything?

Thanks in advance!

Through the use of XML.

More specifically XSL(Extensible Stylesheet Language).
Check out these pages(from that site):
http://www.starcraft2.com/layout/frontpage.xsl
http://starcraft2.com/layout/includes.xsl

http://www.starcraft2.com/layout/frontpage.xsl is included by the line of code in the source:
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="layout/frontpage.xsl"?>

for more info check out:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamwea..._overview.html

A bit more advanced then what I have learned yet. Thanks for the reply!

Actually, I'm pretty sure that that is easily done with just Photoshop and CSS.

The planet can be said as the pages background image, and then the div over the top of it can (1) Have the property "background-color:transparent" and (2) have the image with all the holes in it as the divs background image. This means that the image must have been made in Photoshop on a transparent canvas.

This method is much easier than the XSL one - Hope it helps

I belive its this part of the layout/oinclude.xsl

<xsl:with-param name="flashvars" select="concat( '&flang=',$lang, '&menu_1=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.1'], '&menu_2=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.2'], '&menu_3=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.3'], '&menu_4=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.4'], '&menu_5=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.5'], '&menu_6=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.6'], '&menu_7=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.7'], '&menu_8=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.8'], '&menu_9=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.9'], '&menu_1_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.1'], '&menu_2_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.2'], '&menu_3_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.3'], '&menu_4_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.4'], '&menu_5_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.5'], '&menu_6_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.6'], '&menu_7_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.7'], '&menu_8_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.8'], '&menu_9_link=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.link.9'], '&menu_elements=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.menuelements'], '&menu_sepchar=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.sepchar'], '&menu_vheight=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.vheight'], '&menu_yposition=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.yposition'], '&menu_space=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.space'], '&menu_fontsize=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.fontsize'], '&menu_sepfontsize=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.sepfontsize'], '&menu_sepdeltay=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.sepdeltay'], '&menu_sides=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.sides'], '&maintxtmenucolor=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.txtmenucolor'], '&maintxtmenuhover=',$loc/strs/str[@id='sc2.nav.param.txtmenuhover'] )" />

I'm so sure that this is all entirely unnecessary when it can be done sing the method I posted above

yes, I was just showing the code. I would also think it could be done with photoshop and css.
--I've even seen flash effects done with css :P

You can also get some awesome animation effects using AJAX - check out Greenlush.com - thats all done in AJAX!