Week 12

Monday * March 29

Working with dynamic text, components, and XML in Flash.

DUE 9 a.m. Monday (via e-mail): Critique 3

READ Lesson 8 in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book (ACiaB).

EXAMINE An in-depth look at USA's religious beliefs, practices (USA Today)
Lots of external data. Lots of dynamic text fields.

Screen capture: An in-depth look at USA's religious beliefs, practices

Notes * * *

Flash components: These are supposed to save us time in Flash development, but I find most Flash components to be too inflexible. The exception: The Flash video components (we used these last week) are easy to use and very helpful.

XML data: Most news organizations feed external information into Flash via XML. You may never need to create an XML document from scratch, but you may well be expected to edit one, or to insert data into an XML format. NOTE: You do NOT need a Flash component to load text, images, etc., from outside Flash.

Dynamic text: When text comes into Flash from an external source, it must be displayed in a text field of the type Dynamic. (The other two types of text in Flash are Static and Input.) When you create a Static text field, you specify font, style, size, color, anti-aliasing, alignment and position (X,Y). With Dynamic text, you also need to consider :

Supplemental * * *