I will be able to meet students before class on Saturday

If you are having trouble with your site, I will be available at the Starbucks next to PolyTech from 10am until 1pm on Saturday.

Class 14: More Flash and Galleries

Last week we covered the basics of Flash. Today we will add a little more interactivity to Flash buttons by using targeting of movie instances.

Here is the Flash exercise for today.

Here is a quick Flash file you can use for the demonstration.

Also, I have prepared a downloadable list of criteria for your final project.

After we go through our Flash work, several of you have expressed concern that your galleries are not yet working. I will go over those one last time. Here is the code for both layouts again.

If you are still having trouble, I must hear from you this week. I cannot help you if you say nothing, and I may not be able to give you the attention you need if you give me no time.

Quick Fix: Background image bug in Safari

A lot of you have background images for your sites. If you open your site in Safari, you may find that the image gets dropped.

In order to make sure Safari gets the message, you need to embed the style on each of your html pages.

In your header area, above the link to your stylesheet and type in these tags

<style type="text/css">

</style>

Then go to your style sheet, copy the style for the body tag and paste it between these tags, like so:

<style type="text/css">
body {
    text-align: center;
    background-image: url(images/bgslice.gif);
    background-repeat: repeat-x;
    margin-left: 0px;
    margin-top: 0px;
    margin-right: 0px;
    margin-bottom: 0px;
    background-color: #999999;
}
</style>

Be sure to check your file paths on pages inside the docs folder. Test your page in Safari and your background image should be showing up just fine now.

Class 13: Homework and Final Project Criteria

Today, we will go over the basics of Flash and do some animation exercises.

Your Homework:

Design and create a flash button you will use in your site. We will learn more about scripting next week, so you should be able to make your button link to a page within your site or to an external web site. The button should relate visually to your site and have some animation.

Criteria for Final Projects:

On May 16, you will present your final projects. They will be graded by the following standards:

1. You have created a CSS-based HTML website, using the class template
2. It has at least four pages, successfully linked by the navigation
3. You have included a gallery of your work
4. You have created an effective, eye-catching design that reinforces the point of your site
5. You have a working email form
6. You have optimized your site for search engines with meta tags
7. You have included a flash button that has working actionscript
8. You have written original content

Points will be deducted for the following:

1. Using the work of others without porperly crediting them
2. Not including alt tags
3. Sloppy work (broken links, badly done styling, missing or badly sized images)
4. Incomplete pages (left over lorem ipsum text, images from the files I gave you, etc.)

Up to 10 points of extra credit will be given for the following:

1. Additional pages beyond the required four
2. Giving me pdfs of your sitemaps and wireframes
3. Giving me pdfs pf your earlier pet site sketches, with wireframes, sitemaps, and blocking shots included

You will lose one letter grade a day that your project is late. I will not be giving incompletes this year as there has been so much absenteeism. Those of you who need help need to contact me immediately, we will set up some extra lab time.

Class 13: The Flash CS3 interface and intro to animation

Open Flash

Create a new document. When you are asked what type of document, choose Actionscript 2.0.

Here is what you will see (I used the reference materials from Flash Classroom to make this chart):

The Flash interface

The Toolbar

The Flash Toolbar

I assigned you to read the great introduction from Flash Classroom, an excellent resource for beginner flash students. After we use their introduction to the tools panel, we will go through some basic animations in class.

Some files we can work with in class:

Different types of image files

Exercises we will do in class:

Flash Exercises (corrected)