FLASH

1. FLASH Presenters: Tin Hoang Andrew Mcdonald Mehran Panahi Akhavan Matthew Tang

2. Agenda • Flash History • Animation • Action Script • Accessibility • Criticism • Questions

3. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Flash History • Jonathan Gay – creator of FutureSplash • Macromedia bought and renamed to Flash 1.0 • 2005 Adobe bought Macromedia

4. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Animation Basic animation concepts: • frames • individual frames • Keyframes • blank frames • Timeline • Stage

5. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Animation Types of animation: • Motion http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx2004/motion_tween.htm • Shapehttp://www.webwasp.co.uk/tutorials/001/index.php • Guided Motionhttp://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Guided-motion-tween-animation-create-an-air-chase/13548

6. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Introduction to Action Script • Actionscript in itself is a very flexible language. • There are very few constraints to the type of code you can write and execute. • This makes Actionscript a very moldable yet volitile and unstable langauge. • Semicolons are not needed on the end of code lines but should be used for code clarity.

7. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Arrays • Associative arrays are used in Actionscript. • This means that arrrays can be referenced with keys which are numeric, strings, or • concatenated variables and string. • <actionscript> myArray[2] = 56; myArray["id"] = 78; myArray["id" + i] </actionscript>

8. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Arrays Continued. • This makes using a for loop to traverse through an array more difficult than usual. • However, there are special conventions in Actionscript which allows a for loop to access an • entire array. • <actionscript>for (var i in frames) { ...}</actionscript>

9. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Casting • There is no true casting in Actionscript; however, "new" can be used. • This is important for numbers made from a string arguement. • <actionscript> var i:String = "5"; var j:Number = new Number(i); </actionscript>

10. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Delegate • When eventhandlers are used, the reference to 'this' has finicky behaviour. It may not necessarily refer to the object you intend to. • The delegate function ensures the proper reference to objects within a movie clip.

11. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Delegate • If delegate is not used and you import a nested movie clip, every reference to 'this' will refer to the parent clip. • When using delegate, this will ensure that all 'this' references talk about the parent movie clip or the nested movie clip, depending on where the 'this' is located.

12. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Delegate • In most cases, the delegate is not necessary but is good practice to include it. • Delegate has only one function, create. Include the following line of code in either your constructor or your initializer. • <actionscript> onLoad = Delegate.create(this, onLoadScreen); </actionscript> • This will let the page load, and continues the code execution in onLoadScreen.

13. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Delegate • For a more in-depth explaination refer to the Actionscript.org tutorial. • http://actionscript.org/tutorials/beginner/the_delegate_class/index.shtml

14. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Dynamic Components • Classloader is used to create a new instance of a class that extends MovieClip. • The first parameter is the owner of the newly created object. • The second is the class of the object, which can accept a string or the class itself. • The third is the unique instance ID. • The forth is the depth at which the new instance is initialized. • The last one is the list of modified parameters for the new object to take on.

15. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Dynamic Components • <actionscript> // This is a sample of how to dynamically create a button. ClassLoader.createClassInstance( this, componentClass, "buttonName", getNextHighestDepth(), { fontSize:21, width:350, height:40, _x:209, _y:225 }); </actionscript> • attachMovie and createEmptyMovieClip can also be used depending on the purpose.

16. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Event Listeners • <actionscript> private function thisFunction():Void () { this["buttonName"].addEventListener("click", this, "buttonEvent"); } private function buttonEvent():Void { ... } </actionscript>

17. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Functions • Most functions are declared like in Java or C++. <actionscript> [scope] functionName([parameters]) { ... } private myFunction():Void { ... } </actionscript>

18. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Functions • A unique feature is that, variable properties can be bound to functions. This can be done in two ways: • the variable can be bound to an already existing function or • it can be bound to a dynamically created function. <actionscript> onLoad = myFunction; // or onLoad = function() { ... } </actionscript>

19. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Global Variables • There are three commonly used globally accessed predefined variables. They are the following: • *_root - The highest object in the ownership heirarchy that the current object is in. • *_global - The global object is an object that can be referenced by any class anywhere in the code. • *_parent - The object that owns the current object. • All MovieClips include a property called onLoad that is bound to a function. This property is called whenever the MovieClip is loaded.

20. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Variable Declarations • Variables can be used without a declaration. When variables are used without a declaration, they can be of any type. This allows for flexibility in code, however it may also result in complex bugs. It is always a good idea to declare your variables before using them.

21. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Variable Properties • Variables can contain properties, they can be created and changed at any time. • <actionscript> aPerson = "John"; aPerson.age = 38; this["backButton"].text = "Go Back"; </actionscript>

22. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Accessibility – What is it? • To make pages on the Internet accessible to all users, especially those with disabilities.

23. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Sample of Accessibility • Some Sample of Accessibility working in a loud environment not be able to see May not be able to use keyboard or mouse

24. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Why Accessibility is important • Legislation, standards and regulation: • The size of disabled population: • 41 million accessible user are using the web. (world bank 2002)

25. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions How Accessibility works Screen magnifiers Screen Readers <html> <head> </head> <body>Hello </body> </html> Assistive Browser Voice Recognition

26. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Basic Solution for accessibility with Flash Using accessibility panel for following objects: • Text • Input text fields • Buttons (including button movie clips) • Entire movies

27. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Sample Accessibility Pages • Scalability Examplehttp://www.webaim.org/techniques/flash/media/scaleable.html • Keyboard Examplehttp://www.webaim.org/techniques/flash/media/intractvmap.html • Microsoft Web sitehttp://www.microsoft.com/about/brandcampaigns/innovation/yourpotential/main.html

28. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Flash Criticisms There are two main types of criticisms surrounding Flash. - Browser Issues. - Usability Issues. - Other issues.

29. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Browser Issues Flash causes users browser to act in unexpected ways. - Back button. - Reload button. - Stop button. - Print command. - Search command.

30. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Usability Issues Usability issues consist of web fundimentals that are not or not easily supported by Flash. • No link colors to see where you have been. • No browser control over text. • Cannot book mark specific content. • Search engines cannot easily index flash pages. • Users cannot line specific parts of flash sites.

31. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Other Issues Some other issues that plague flash. - HTML is easy and most users can create pages this way. Flash is difficult to learn and use. - Although flash may be common. Many browsers use have older versions and cannot display the • newer Flash.

32. Flash History | Animation | Action Script | Accessibility | Criticism | Questions Questions QUESTIONS?