Platt Portal

The final exam will be on Thursday, November 1 at 8am. It will have two parts: a written exam and a practical exercise. You will complete the written exam part first. There will be NO MAKE UPS for the final exam. However, you can use the whole 4 hours to complete it, if you wish. I will collect the final files and exams not later than 12 noon.

A list of topics to review is posted in the Exams review section of this portal. We will have a review session on Monday, after final critique. Make sure to get all your questions answered. The review session should be used as an aid to your studying, not as a substitution.

Well, we have came to the end of our class: I hope that, beyond the stress and frustration of getting your project done on time, you have learned all the necessary tools to start designing with Flash, and to deepen your knowledge, if you want. You all have worked very hard: you should pat yourself in the back! (-:

If you do want to keep on working in Flash, I am listing some resources that can really help you create more complex interfaces and applications.

Flash 8 Books
• Your textbook
• Flash Professional 8-Beyond the basics/H.O.T. series by Shane Rebenschied—Lynda.com. ISBN:0-321-29387-8
• Flash 8 Essentials from multiple authors — Friends of Ed. ISBN: 1-59059-532-7

Flash MX2004 books (most of the code still applies)
• Flash Mx2004 at your fingertips by Sham Bangal — Sybex. ISBN:0-7821-4291-5
• Animation and effects with Flash Mx 2004 by Jen Dehaan — Peachpit and Macromedia press. ISBN:0-321-30344-x

And if you want to really get serious with ActionScript:
• Foundation ActionScript Animation by Keith Peters — Friends of Ed Pub. ISBN:1-59059-518-1
• Essential ActionScript 2.0 by Colin Moock — O’Reilly. ISBN:0-596-00652-7
• Any of the Macromedia press book: Warning: they are not always very user-friendly

Finally a few sites and blogs, to add to the rest of the resources in the Link section:
• flashguru.co.uk
• kaourantin.net
• flashmagazine.com
• informit.com Flash reference guide

Happy Flashing!

Due to last week wildfires and the fact we have lost 4 days of classes, I will cancel the final exam. The final project, therefore, will be due on the last day of class: November 1 at 8am. After presentation, you can print out the screenshots, invoice and all other required paperwork as needed.

If time allows, we can do a quick recap of what we have learned so far.

I hope this will make finish your project a little easier.

One of the greatest things about Flash Professional 8 are the many enhancements to video. We had a quick sneak preview today, but you can find many resources if you want to learn about video more in depth. A good place to start is Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Video Learning Guide.
Other resources:
• Adobe Design Center
• Flash Developer Center / Flash Video
• Flash Professional and Video
• Informit.com: Video in Flash 8 article
• Flash Zone: Video Learner Guide
Of course you can read it all in its gritty details in the Flash 8 online reference guide. Warning: it may not be as user-friendly.

Lee Brimelow, of www.gotoandlearn.com fame, has recently produced a CD training on the subject of integrating video in Flash 8. If it is anything like his free tutorials it should be excellent.You can purchase Flash Professional 8 Video Integration CD Training at lynda.com

Finally, there are also a couple of books to check out on the subject of video and Flash:

• Hillman Curtis on Creating Short Films for the Web (Paperback)
by Hillman Curtis. Publisher: New Riders Press (August 31, 2005)
ISBN: 0321278917

• Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative (Paperback)
by Mark S. Meadows Publisher: New Riders Press; 1st edition (September 10, 2002) ISBN: 0735711712

We have learned how to format textfields by using CSS. Check this link to Flash Reference Material to learn about the supported CSS tags. You can also search for Supported CSS Properties and Styling built-in HTML tags.

Also, if you want to access the Flash help section from a browser, you can find it at Adobe Live Docs
Reference material for Flash 8 (it will work fine in CS3 as well) or Flash CS3

The two sites listed have excellent ActionScript tutorials that are completely free. While some of the tutorial may be a little more advanced that what we have done so far, they are still a great resource for your Flash design.
• gotoandlearn.com The site ius currentlu under construction, but you can still download the previous tutorial from it
• actionscript4designers.com

Also, don’t miss the RSS updates in the Industry Buzz page for new tutorials from Kirupa.com

Lynda.com also has an extensive collection of tutorial and CD tutorial: you can access them by subscription (there are different rates) or by purchasing the titles themselves.

The final site map and the finished interface design of the site is due on Wednesday, October 17, at the beginning of class. It is really important, when starting a new site, to plan what you are going to do in DETAILS. This will save you a lot of work and frustration later. Spend some time on the planning phase: you won’t regret it. You need to have at least 2 DIFFERENT computer generated interface designs to show me.

Ever get confused by all of the different ways that Flash organizes assets and information within your FLA and your SWF? Frames and timelines and levels and layers and depths, oh my! This series will sort it all out, and give you some great tips. If you ever wanted the skinny on the Flash movie clip architecture, this is the article you want to read. Check the first installment. Stay tuned for more.

Midterm will be on Friday, October 12, 8am-9am. There will be no make-ups for this exam. The midterm is comprised of short answers, multiple choice and True and False questions. We will have a full review on Tuesday, after the lecture. A list of review topics is posted in the Exams Review page.

Microsoft issued a mandatory patch to all its users last year (April 11, 2006) which changed the way ActiveX controls work in Internet Explorer. The change affects all interactive ActiveX controls in a web page. In particular, it affects any Flash movie (SWF) content in a web page. This change is in response to the patent claims by EOLAS regarding applications that can run within a web page. You can read in details what this is all about in this article or in this article. Now, if a user happens to a page that contains a Flash movie embedded using the traditional OBJECT and EMBED tags, Internet Explorer will display a grey border around the control, and a tooltip telling you that you need to click to activate the control. The control will not respond to the mouse or the keyboard until you activate it. Once it is activated, you can use it as before.

What is the solution? You actually have a couple of options. Adobe released an extension for Flash(download) and an updater for Dreamweaver (download) that can help you embed automatically your Flash movies, with the help of an external javascript document. Dreamweaver will also help you convert earlier html files using the new updater.

There are also alternative options that have been around for a long time, and that also use an external javascript document to embed the .swf files. They are more flexible and functional methods, but they will require you to write some code. The most popular methods are UFO and SWF object. You can read all about these methods, and download the javascript and the sample files from the following sites:
• UFO method by Bobby Van Der Sluis
• SWF Object method by Geoff Stearns site.

We will see an example of each tomorrow and we will discuss the pros and cons of each.

There are other methods out there, and in fact there are rumors that Geoff Stearns and Bobby Van Der Stearns are working together on a new, better method, hopefully coming our way shortly. In the meantime you can read an article comparing some of the methods at A List Apart.

Remember that, while this only affect Internet Explorer, the large majority of internet users today, around 70%, is still using this browser, and IE7 didn’t solve the problem. So, I am expecting to see your project published with one of the available metohds that employ Javascript.