Summer 2010 week 12:—7/26/10: Mon. 9:00 - 12:00

Hi Everyone,

As you have seen from class this week, we are beginning our final project. This means that what we will be doing until the last class is revising our midterm projects and applying what we have learned since midterm to them.

At this point in the term, I have shown you almost everything that I want you to know, save for one last item, which is how to attach music files to your Flash movie, and then how to stop and restart them. We will do this part next week for homework. In class for next week what we will be doing is simply working on your projects. I will go around and speak to you individually and speak to you about what needs to be done to bring them to the next level regarding both design and technical issues.

For this week's homework, therefore, you will see a list of items that you need to have complete for your project when you give it to me in 2 weeks. You should do most of this, however, because as I mention above, I will be assigning the sound next week, and you'll need some time next week to complete that rather than working on revising the design of your projects and resolving technical issues.

Carter-

1. WEEK 11
   
   1. Classwork (7/14)
   • LINK    NO FILES from this week's class
   2. Homework:
   • Exercise 1:    Follow the following steps and make certain that you have ALL of them complete for the final project due on the last day of class:
   
   
   Navigation Buttons and/or Links
   1. The primary navigation for your website should ONLY be located in your INDEX file. This means, ALL YOUR BUTTONS should be there and NOT in the other files. Many of you put the same buttons that you have in your index file in your other pages as well. This is incorrect.
   2. Therefore, what you'll have to do is open up all your pages and make certain that there are no buttons in those other pages.
   3. The exceptions to this are the GALLERY pages. The gallery pages, remember, have image thumbnails that we used as buttons. Buttons like these for the gallery pages should remain. This is secondary navigation and buttons for this sort of navigation can stay in the other pages; however, please delete any primary navigation buttons from your content pages.
   4. Now, go to your index and delete your buttons there. You will have to REPLACE them with MovieClips like the ones we've been working on in class that only behave like buttons because of the ActionScript we have been using.
   5. Remember, each part of these buttons, the stroke (if you have one) and the fill (if you have one) should be a separate movieclip within the main movieclip.
   6. The text is also inside of the main movieclip, but recall, that YOU DO NOT TYPE THE TEXT OUT. Rather, you use a DYNAMIC TEXT BOX and place text there with code.
   7. All navigation should be done with MOVIECLIPS and ACTIONSCRIPT. You will not use any button symbols at all.
   8. This includes the THUMBNAIL IMAGES in your gallery pages. These should also be MOVIECLIPS. When you mouse over or click on these images, an outline should appear. If you need help with this part, I can provide it to you on Monday.
   
   Pop-up Menus
   9. You will also need to use at least ONE POP-UP MENU. This should used to reach your gallery pages. Since you should already have 2 pages for your gallery, this is a perfect place for the pop-up menu to allow the user to select one page of images or the other page.
   
   Gallery Pages
   10. Furthermore, you will need to ADD another page of images for a total of THREE GALLERY PAGES. There should be no less than 5 images per gallery page, for a total of AT LEAST 15 IMAGES.
   
   Title
   11. The title of the site should be in the index since it should be present throughout the site, no matter which page the user is looking at.
   
   Sub-titles
   12. The subtitles for the site, or the names of the individual pages should be prominently positioned somewhere within the individual pages. The user should know which page she or he is looking at at any given moment.
   
   Text
   13. DO NOT stretch text!! If you need to make text bigger or smaller, increase its font-size.
   14. The paragraph text for any site is never more than 12pt. Do NOT center whole paragraphs and do NOT bold everything. Making text bold is reserved for those items you want to emphasize, and centering may be done for titles, or subtitles, not for entire paragraphs.
   15. Captions should accompany all images unless it is just part of some design that you've made.
   16. Captions for the gallery images should include the name of the work of art and its date at the very least.
   
   Images
   17. There should be some sort of imagery on ALL pages, including the bibliography.