Multimedia Blog

Out of pure boredom I've been setting myself daily projects in order to learn more actionscript. I have also been forcing myself to make all my applications and sample files dynamic in order to improve my general coding skills and most of all so that I can re-use all my sample files for other things.
Today was a little different because I banned myself from using tutorials or any snippets of code from the net. I coded my own dynamic tool tips and an animated infomation bar for a pretty generic world map type file. Definately worthwhile and unlike most of these files I have made I think it looks pretty sick.

Will be uploading all my swf's when I get round to hosting my own blog, should be early next term

Labels: AS3

Probably the biggest change in Flash CS4 is the way it handles motion and the new features for timeline animation. They have introduced 3D support that includes a 3D transform tool that works on the usual 3 axis like you would find in 3Ds Max. Adobe have also added the Bone Tool. This enables you to click and drag bone structures inside a single item or to link items as demonstrated above.



When animating in the timeline flash automatically draws out a customisable motion path for every tween. The new Motion Editor panel (see above) has a vast range of options for each tween you create. You can now chose from dozens of different easing types and filters and apply them easily to the same tween within this properties panel. This lets you achieve complicated tweens that have only been possible with ActionScript in CS3. Each of these features can all be added and fine tuned in the properties panel by moving the points on the graphs within the motion editor.


The Project Panel is a new feature for developers that allows them to manage their projects and files in a library like format. You can create new class documents or any other document directly from this panel and use custom or preset code templates.

All in all the latest version of flash looks like it could really transform the look of the internet. CS4 looks to be aimed at the designers and animators more than developers. I think a lot of developers prefer to use Flex Builder anyway. Less and less people were using timeline animation and it was generally accepted that ActionScript was the way forward. CS4 could really change this. In the first six months after it's release I'm expecting a lot of innovative 3D work and alot of progress in terms of the quality of flash animation. I'll also be interested to see if the current trend of ActionScript being seen as superior to timeline animation changes.

You can check the CS4 deomonstration out here

Labels: flash cs4

Came across this by accident this morning and now I'm completely convinced that I NEED to do this 3-day training course. It's an applied AS3 training course. Only 3-5 people are on any one course and it takes people from my level (very familiar with AS3 with some basic capabilities) to intermediate/advanced, teaching both the theory and giving you hands on practice learning techniques that are relevent to the current industry trends. They are a small company, when I rang for more information I was actually speaking to the guy who does all the training. He's a certified Adobe trainer and some of the work he has done looks really impressive. The couse is £730 for people who are self funded and reguarly takes place in North London. Unlike the 9 grand Shillington College course this one is really do-able....now i just need 730 quid!

Here is what the application looks like so far. The Slider is fully functional and the XML is loaded in to the tabs for the title and date information. There is a smooth mouse over animation on each of the buttons.

I still need to:

1. Make a switch statement that detects which tab is 'current' and releases the previous one.
2. Work out how to load that tabs content into the body of the application after removing the previous content.

Possible Improvements:

1. Create Header.
2. Increase number of tabs add the ability to scroll through them.
3. Small pixel style mp3 buttons to control background music.

Labels: Design

The XML was simple for the information I needed to store. Literally took about 10 minutes to learn the basics but I'll post a reminder of the structure here in case I forget.

XML works in a 'tree-like' system with nodes, child nodes. For instance ITEM is a child of NEWS_LIST and DATE is a child of ITEM. Any information within the nodes tags are attributes.


I found the AS pretty complicated. I've spent a while reading through the code line by line and it makes sense to me now. I have created a sample FLA where I have loaded the specific items I want into individual text fields.

This will work fine for my application this time since I know what XML items I'm targeting but with a more dynamic application that lets the user determine the number of tabs themself, by creating or deleting nodes within the XML file I would need to use more complex AS with a loop that checks through all the relavent XML items.

Thats enough computer spil for one day, screen shots tommorow and a working version when I get my wordpress blog sorted.

Labels: ActionScript, XML

While my wordpress theme is on hold (still waiting on a copy of photoshop) I have decided to make a news reader/journal application in flash. I started off with a mock up design in flash and I have now implemented everything so that it functions.

In order to fullfil my aim of uploading my first file to flashden and trying to make a sale I now have to get the hang of loading all the titles, dates and the content itself from an external XML file so that the file is customisable without even opening the FLA.

I've got the text books out and I'm scanning the forums, will post how it goes tonight.

Labels: XML

From what I understand it's important but not essential to validate your code. I'm aware that it helps to improve web standards and when working professionally it is likely to be a neccessity but from a personal perspective it helped me identity a copy of mistakes within my script. From now on I will be attempting to validate all my scripts as it's good practice and it will encourage me to code properly and not just 'so that it works'.

I have followed the author of the tutorials process for styling a theme. It was useful to see the order and thinking behind his method. I now haver something that resembles a blog layout and I can get on with creating my own design. I'm confident that I can design and code my own wordpress themes now using a generic two column layout. I'm still unsure about several parts of the php script but I understand what they do, even if I don't fully understand why.

Need a copy of photoshop really but I'm going to do the best I can without it for now. I have Flash cs3 so I'm going to mock up some designs and refine them once I get hold of a copy.

So far I'm up to step 6 of 16 of the tutorial and it's been pretty easy to follow. So far I have basically been using php to call each piece of information that needs to be displayed. I have also been dividing each element and giving it the neccessary id's and classes so that I will be able to format it within the stylesheet. I understand the majority of the php, from how I understand it, I'm calling functions that have already been defined by wordpress as I am only calling functions and not defining any.

I'll continue posting with my progress and hopefully I'll be able to implement my own theme by the time term starts.

Found a 16 part tutorial that shows you how to install wordpress and all the neccessay facilities to implement your own wordpress theme from scratch. Some of the stuff is a little bit over my head but to be honest I tend to learn more like that and I'll be doing something worthwhile.

The good thing about this series of tutorials is that it's geared up to working offline rather than having actual host the site and upload all the new files every time I make a change. Then once I have created my custom blog scheme I can buy my domain and get it hosted. I don't have a problem with using blogger for now but in the long term I think it looks pretty unproffesional as someone who is specifically interested in design and development for the web (obviously different if you are following the AV, animation pathway etc).