These are the Instructions for the Ninth module of this course:

CONTENT

This week we are going practice with an Interactive Timeline: a slide-show is a major example of an Interactive Timeline project.
In a slide show, your content is accessed by the user BY DEMAND, so you (the author) have to organize it so it can be easily accessed.

If you have browsed through the web, you might have seen SIMPLE slide shows, that work with NEXT and BACK buttons to navigate the pictures,
or galleries where you can rollover the thumbnails and with this action, get to see a bigger version in an different area of the Stage.

Depending on how you are doing with action Script, you can choose to build, either a simple slide show (with back and forth buttons) or a more sophisticated rollover gallery, organized with several buttons and a content-movieclip.

I recommend that everybody reviews the simple structure, and then go further, if you like the other one and understand the way to build it.

SOUND

We will also incorporate Sound to our work this week. We will incorporate small audio files to our Slide Show assignment.

Some of you will have to learn how SOUND works in Flash : how to import sound files, how to place sounds in the Timeline and adjust the sync mode for that instance.
Finally, how to set the output compression of a sound. We will incorporate small audio files to our Slide Show.

ASSIGNMENT ORIENTATION

Complete this week's assignment with an Interactive slide-show or Gallery

Download the zip folder "9_slideshow_sound1.zip" from the assignment window to your local computer.
It contains 2 files:
"slideshow.fla" contains a classic slide show, with a next and a back button. Notice that the content is under a mask, to make the size of all the images consistent.
You can build your slide show on the main Timeline or build it inside a Movie-symbol, the more professional way.
The file "jellyfish_slideShow.fla" is a beautiful example of a well integrated slide show: it maintains a solid theme and builds content around them, it integrates specially designed buttons with rollover graphic and sound and it contains a background sound.

Please build the Slide show WITHOUT SOUND first and keep a copy aside to compare the file-size when you introduce the sounds.
Use short sounds and try to import them already as mp3 files (although Flash will recompress them as mp3 on the way out if you needed to, but we have to keep an eye on the fla project file, so it can be sent through Moodle).

Also in the sample file area of your assignment submission, there is a file called "rollover-gallery.fla.zip".
You can navigate this presentation (I am calling it gallery to diferenciate it from the Slide-show navigation, with back and next buttons), by choosing from the thumbnails themselves.
You will have as many buttons as images you want to show, and you can program them to work on rollover or on press, whatever you like better.
Notice that ALL the content of the gallery is organized inside a movieclip, and the movieclip has been named on Stage.
It might be complicated for you to select the movieclip on Stage: you only see a tiny white dot on Stage. The reason for this is that the movieclip has no content on frame 1, so there is no graphic material to see, only the "belly button" of the movieclip symbol.
Select the tiny white dot on "big movie" layer, look at the Properties panel, and you will see that is a movieclip symbol, and that it has been named "movie".

Look at the scripts attached to the button and you will see that the command itself (second line of the script), is naming the movie, then adding a dot, then giving the action to take.movie.gotoAndPlay("ball");
This structure is called "DOT SYNTAX".
For more information on dot syntax, check the correspaonding page on your help site. LINK TO DOT SYNTAX

 

If you are using bitmaps as graphics for your Slide show, keep an eye on file-size, the maximum file size for the Fla file is 3 MB.

Please zip the file, to make it smaller.

Please set recompression settings for sound and bitmap elements in your project.

 

Post your comments and/or problems along with any advice or ideas you have on the “ninth week discussion group”.
Also take a look at the 2 links to previous Final Projects in the help-site.

http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/Ajarabo/F_online/Final_projects_F06/Frameset_FinalF06.htm

http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/Ajarabo/F_online/Frameset_projects.htm

It is time to define the theme for your Final Project and put together the media.