buttons, button actions & publishing notes
(plus lots of racket...sound on please...haha)

now stop that right this minute, kat! we hear you singing for joy because you think you've gotten rid of us.....well, that won't last long. i have it on good authority that the most bratly of this term's students are headed straight back to pester you next term. so have a good rest over the holidays. you will need it! lol

this week we were learning to create flash buttons. create buttons? huh? didn't we do that in psp level 1's first five minutes? didn't we learn later that buttons take up tons of extra space on webpages and are often pretty gooey and silly? didn't we decide we don't much like buttons? hummmm, in looking, maybe flash buttons are a bit different. we haven't been allowed to do much with them yet [insert final pious look for not working ahead this term], but we might just want something to click so that our glorious movies will stop and go....and so our fans can replay them endlessly....lol *we* will reserve judgement on flash buttons until we know more.

here is my first attempt at exercise one: fla and swf

and another attempt fla and html

can't forget this one...it's just for you, kat!! *grin*
(fla can be found here AFTER viewing)

publishing movies for web viewing

some things i want to remember:

• use the bandwidth profiler to check for frames which exceed the safe limit of data for a smooth download
  
  
• don't forget to upload your swf file as well as the published html file [farron waves at karen cause she's not the only one who's done that kinda thing] ;^)
  
  
• alternate images (ie. jpg, gif, quicktime & png) can be created in the publish feature to allow viewers without a flash player to get a version of your image.
  
  
• you movies can be set to load from the top down or bottom up
  
  
• another alternate viewing option is the projector. this is an exe file. flash players are not required for these files, but the size is much larger than a swf.
  
  
• flash WILL overwrite published files of the same name. if you want to keep more than one version, be sure to change the name and/or directory. do this by unclicking default name and renaming
  
  
• quality settings and file reports are handled in the publishing section of flash

that's all for this week and this term, folks. it's really been fun and my only regret was that i did not have more time to spend on these exercises. hope to see ya'll in flash 2!!

_^..^_
farron