Chapter 1
Flash is already widely supported: about 90% of browsers; it's essentially a hardware-optimized, cross-platform method for delivering multimedia content.
Background not mentioned in the book: in January, 2001 Macromedia merged with Allaire, the makers of ColdFusion. Expect much more sophisticated integration between Flash multimedia and data-driven applications.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) will be a big part of this.
Chapter 2
Get comfortable with the distinction between editable "authoring files" (.fla) and deliverable "movie files" (.swf). In programming, these two categories are called "source" and "object" files; there is much similarity.
Flash movies may be extended across as many dimensions as you like (or as memory allows) by adding new scenes.
The z-index or stacking order of layers in Flash is bottom-up: layers at the bottom of the screen (vertically) represent content that appears at the bottom of the screen in its three-dimensional or z-layering. (If you've used Director, this will be disconcerting: Director stacks content the opposite way.)
Chapter 3
There's an important distinction between shapes and objects. Graphics begin as shapes but can be turned into objects.
The new pen tool (upgraded in Version 5) is now a fully functional bezier drawing tool.
Web-safe color or not? These days, the 216-color restriction probably makes very little sense. But we love hexadecimal!
Chapter 4
Text for Flash movies may be imported from external HTML files. This has some interesting possibilities that we'll explore later in the term.
Text elements can be made dynamic, letting them function as input boxes, or like form fields in HTML; and like form fields, their content can be changed procedurally.
Text blocks can have variables assigned to them. This could be fun.
Flash supports the FONT FACE and FONT COLOR constructions, which are deprecated (listed for exclusion from HTML) by the World Wide Web Consortium. The other styling features are okay.
Font symbols can be used to achieve many of the same ends for which one might use style sheets in HTML.
Chapter 5Flash has no sound-recording feature; you'll need to use SoundEdit16 on the Macintosh, SoundForge XP in Windows, or some other digitizing program. The two just mentioned are available in the Graphics Lab and Hypermedia Room.
It's preferable to import sounds as MP3 files if you can; this will keep your authoring (source) file smaller.
"you can have as many layers with sound as you wish." This means you can collage or combine sound tracks.
Get to know the distinctions among Event, Start, Stop, and Stream methods of introducing sound. You'll probably use either Event or Stream most of the time: the former if you want a sound to play throughout your movie independent of action, the latter if you want to synchronize action and sound.
Types of sound compression: you'll probably stick with MP3 in most instances. This provides 10:1 compression without major loss of quality.
You can update a sound (or indeed a graphic or other imported file) from within the source file without reloading the media element.
Chapter 16
To change the default file name--or file extension--in the Publish Settings menu, you must de-select the Use default names option.
Curious about what version of Flash to choose for export? If you're using MP3 audio, you must choose Version 3 or later; if you're using standard ActionScripts, Version 4 may be a better choice; Version 3 is required for QuickTime export, Version 2 for Java. For purposes of this class, Version 5 is acceptable unless otherwise specified.
One of the Flash HTML templates will automatically create an imagemapped image allowing you to link a static representation of your movie to the acual movie file. For Assignment 2, we'll do this less elegantly and by hand. Stick with the plan for the moment, but you may use this option on later assignments if it seems useful.
You may use the default (Flash-only) HTML template for all assignments in this course. You may also experiment with other templates, but I don't suggest you do that for the present assignment unless you're already familiar with Flash.
Setting dimensions of your movie window to 100% means that it will always occupy the full browser window. This is not relevant for Assignment 2, where movie dimensions are fixed, but may be a consideration for later assignments, where you can choose your own geometry. Do recognize that larger windows mean poorer playback performance.
If you use the Paused at start option, you will need to include a button that plays the current movie. For Assignment 2, simply enable your movie to play at start.
Flash and QuickTime: we'll come back to this topic later in the course, since the possibility of combining Flash and QuickTime video is very exciting. Notice, though, that you must limit your Flash movie to Version 3, and that you must export in QuickTime format, meaning users must have the QuickTime plugin installed in order to see your work. QuickTime is very popular across both Macintosh and Windows platforms, but it is not nearly as common as Shockwave.
You can export Flash/QuickTime hybrids for use with QuickTimeVR, a panoramic technology. We'll need to look into how much control of QTVR Flash makes possible.
Franklin and Patton imply that the <EMBED></EMBED> container is Netscape-specific. In fact it is also supported by Internet Explorer. The <OBJECT></OBJECT> container is specific to IE and calls on unique Windows functions not available to Netscape (or, in some versions of Shockwave, to Macintosh users). In most cases, though, you should use both containers together.
There is an OUTRAGEOUS typo on page 488. The authors repeatedly misspell SRC as SCR. The correct spelling is most definitely SRC (short for "source," as in "image source," etc.).
