Donna Massam

Firstly i thought i should let you all know that although i have had a lot of experience in becoming familiar with flash, i am still really terrible at it, the information goes out of my head quicker than it comes in. Also with only around just over a week to complete the task and the new actionscript 3.0 being different to 2.0 it really confused me. I dunno i think flash is just one f them things i don't have a knack for. After trying day in day out (literally) to add the sound how i had originally set out to, i ran out of time as i still have my presentation to do and cannot do it without this. I felt that my only option would be to come up with an alternative way of narrating to the user, which was through the use of text rather than sound.

Original flash template

To begin with in flash i added simple buttons which i created using the Rectangular Primitive tool, i then added bevel effects to the buttons to give them a 3D feel, i did this using new effect options that have been added to CS3. I have placed them in each of the bottom left and right corners to give the template a simple approach, helping the user to understand the template with ease.

I converted only the text above the orange rectangular images to buttons as this was more simpler for me to code the buttons in flash.

A preview of the images before:




After about 3 days of attempting to add the sound to the timeline and getting the sounds to stop once a button had been clicked and for a new sound to play once it then skips to the next frame and also getting the voice rollovers for my boyfriends buttons to work. i decided that i wouldn't complete the task in time so i took a different approach, instead i added though bubble and speeches, basically telling the user through word rather than through sound like i had originally planned to do.

A preview of the final template:

The button actionscript:

stop();

function handleClick0( pEvent:MouseEvent ):void
{
if( pEvent.target == get1 )
{
gotoAndStop( 10 );
trace ("click! new frame: " + currentFrame );
}
else if( pEvent.target == bath1 )
{
gotoAndStop ( 20 );
trace ("click! new frame: " + currentFrame );
}
}

get1.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick0 );
bath1.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick0 );

To be honest i also had a bit of trouble getting my buttons to work, as what i did was start my project from scratch and referred back to the template we were given to help me to remember and understand the actionscript code. thankfully i managed to get these working, and i now understand what this section of coding means. yay.