branching : http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/actionscript/as3-101-branching/

arrays : http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/actionscript/as3-101-arrays/

loops : http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/actionscript/as3-101-loops/

Even if you’re having trouble understanding what’s going on in the readings it’s really important that you do them all, then we can help you understand anything that’s confusing in the lecture. We have already looked at branching and loops last semester, so it won’t all be completely new.

So the topics I’m hoping to cover this week are :

- How flash player renders graphics
- Vectors / drawing api
- Bitmaps
- filters and blend modes
- Performance, why flash is so slow, and how to keep it moving.

There are quite a few readings that I’ve added to the course outline page for this week, but only a few of them are essential, and they will be partly revision anyway. Don’t worry they’re not very long.

Essential Readings:

vectors intro : http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/as3drawvectors/

filters intro : http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/as3filters/

performance : Rendering performance only the pages listed below are essential but the whole chapter / article is really good:

Redraw regions

Off-stage content

Alpha blending

Bitmap caching

Vector shape smoothing

Non Essential Readings

vectors advanced : http://tutorials.flashmymind.com/2009/02/actionscript-3-drawing-api/

filters advanced : http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/effects/manipulate-visual-effects-with-the-colormatrixfilter-and-convolutionfilter/

vectors and filters : http://tutorials.flashmymind.com/2009/02/advanced-animation-with-drawing-api/

FP10 Drawing API, 3d & PixelBender : http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/flash10drawingapi/

Tweening Filters : http://www.greensock.com/tweenlite/

blendModes advanced : http://www.lostinactionscript.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/26/custom-blend-modes-for-flash-10/

Cool Stuff Worth Checking out:

readings :

variables : http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/actionscript/as3-101-variables

functions : http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/actionscript/as3-101-functions/
objects    : http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withflashcs3/#objects
classes : http://www.kirupa.com/developer/as3/classes_as3_pg1.htm

Update

Download Example Files

I’ve added the page http://andyvern.com/uni/semester-2/ which has the current course outline and readings / tutorials for each week. I’m going to keep updating it as it’s still missing quite a bit but feel free to go ahead and read whatever you want and let me know if you come across anything you think I should include.

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I grabbed these images of a flash designer/developers site : http://www.peteshand.net/  (hopefully he doesn’t mind us borrowing them)

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Week 8 Starters

]]> http://andyvern.com/uni/2009/09/16/week-8starter-files/feed/ Get Adobe Flash player Get Adobe Flash player http://andyvern.com/uni/2009/04/06/update-week-5-source-files/ http://andyvern.com/uni/2009/04/06/update-week-5-source-files/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:50:32 +0000 Andy http://andyvern.com/uni/?p=273 Here are the source files for all the examples we looked over last fri.

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First is the completed version of the click drag explode example we were working on in class.

Download click drag explode complete Source Files

Number of Downloads: 36

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Everything else including more basic examples of drag drop and the loader class is in the download below

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Download week 5 examples

Number of Downloads: 16

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-Click on the “new star” button to add a star to the white container.

-rollover the stars to make them spin -click and drag the stars around the stage

-drag the star over the skull and cross bone to explode it and remove it.

-turn the boundaries of the draggable area on or off with the “toggle Boundary” button

Download week Click Drag Explode starter files

Number of Downloads: 50

Download Size: 732.7 kB Download Updated: April 3, 2009

The name of the ftp client I showed you at the end was “FileZilla”

and it is available for free from:

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http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client

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Download week 4 examples Source Files

Number of Downloads: 39

Download Size: 32.5 kB Download Updated: March 30, 2009

          //makesure you have a MovieClip in the Library exported for ActionScript with the class: Star
          //create a new variable and datatype it as a Star (the MovieClip you have in the library)
var newStar:Star;
 
          //add a mouseDown listener to the stage that will call the function addRemoveStar
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, addRemoveStar);
             //BestPractice (no stage / weak reference):    this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, addRemoveStar, false, 0, true);  
 
          //write the function addRemoveStar
function addRemoveStar(e:MouseEvent)
              //BestPractice(return void):     function addRemoveStar(e:MouseEvent):void
{
 
	       //create a variable named objectClicked and store the target of the MouseDown Event
	       //(it will either be the stage or something that has been added to the stage like a newStar)
	var objectClicked = e.target;
 
	       //create an if statement to find out if the target of the mouseDown event was the stage or a newStar
	if(objectClicked == stage)
	{
		       //when the target of the mouseDown event is the stage, create a new instance of the Star called newStar
		newStar= new Star;
 
		       //position the newStar at the x and y coordinates of the mouse
		newStar.x = mouseX;
		newStar.y = mouseY;
 
		       //add the newStar to the stage
		stage.addChild(newStar);
	}
	       //when the target of the mouseDown event is not the stage it means it is a newStar
	else
	{
		          //remove the newStar that was clicked (the target of the mouseDown event)
		stage.removeChild(objectClicked);
	}
}

Download starClick Source Files

Number of Downloads: 34

Download Size: 6.3 kB

Download Updated: March 21, 2009

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http://ecodazoo.com/

http://www.sonacom.fr/sonacom.html

http://www.hoodieremix.com/

http://www.pearljamtengame.com/

http://kuler.adobe.com/

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Some of the Hype about AS3

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What the hell did that mean ????

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If your like I was when I started learning AS3 with no prior programming experience then the previous paragraph and a lot of the information out there about AS3 probably means absolutely nothing to you.  Don’t worry this 1st semester course is going to be about making AS3 as easy as possible for you to learn and give you the foundations from which you will be able to make all sorts of things in flash.

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Rather than confuse you with a whole bunch more introductory technical talk (that didn’t start to really make sense to me until after about a year of using AS3), we’re going to jump straight in and start making things move and interact.

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We’re going to use the smallest amount of code possible while keeping it basic which means that not everything we learn at first is going to be considered “Best Practice”. As we get more used to using AS3 I’ll introduce the extra things you should do when writing your AS3. Keep in mind that for most people using AS3 (definitely including me) no matter how long they’ve been programming there is probably a better or more efficient way of writing the code but as long as the finished product does what you want it to then the code is correct… (Author of Essential ActionScript 3 Colin Moock said something along those lines when I saw him present in Sydney last year)

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1. Controlling Timelines with AS3

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The obvious place to start is using AS3 to control the playback of the Stage and MovieClips.

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The blue bits are the parts you keep and the green parts need to be changed.

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stop()
Stops the playhead in the movie clip or main timeline at the Keyframe (F6) the AS3 is written on.

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Starts playing the SWF file at the specified frame.
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gotoAndStop(frame number or name)
Brings the playhead to the specified frame of the movie clip and stops it there.

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One of the most important things about learning to program AS3 is learning to use the Help Docs. This can be hard at first because they can seem very hard to understand but it’s worth getting into the habit of using the help docs all the time.

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To find out the rest of the “methods” (ways in which we can control timelines like: “stop()“) for MovieClips:

1. Type MovieClip into the actions panel. (it should be blue)

2. With the cursor somewhere in side the word hit F1 on the keyboard.

3.This will launch the help docs at the page with all the information about MovieClips.

4.To see other Methods that can be used with MovieClips go down to the “Public Methods” section.

5. The ones listed are Methods specific to MovieClips but there are a whole lot of extra ones that can be used with MovieClips because MovieClips are based on other Objects that have Methods of there own. Don’t worry if that didn’t make sense, just click Show Inherited Public Methods to see the rest of the things you can get MovieClips to do with AS3.

HTML - AN INTRODUCTION

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HTML stands for HyperText Mark-up Language. Strictly speaking HTML is not a programming language but rather a system of tags that allow you to create web pages. HTML is the most basic component of web page design, a good understanding of how it works is essential for successful web based work.  Because HTML is a system of text based tags you can create HTML pages with just a text editor. However, most people find the text based approach somewhat limiting and as such there is a whole range of visual page layout HTML programmes such as Dreamweaver available. While Dreamweaver allows you to create HTML based web pages with little or no knowledge of the code beneath a basic knowledge of html will always be useful in in solving problems that invariably arise.

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<TAGS>

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HTML is composed of tags that are used to delimit a particular area or property of a document.  Tags typically appear as pairs such as:

<body>……….</body>

in this case the first tag <body> marks the start of the body section and the second tag </body> marks the end of the body section.

Almost all web pages will follow this very basic structure:

”

<html>

<head>

<title>put a title here</title>

</head>

<body>

within this section will lie the content of the web  page

</body>

</html>

”

To display the above html code as a web page do the following:

1          copy the text into a text editing program

2          save as a plain text document with an extension of html. Eg test.html

3          open the document in a browser (file>open)

As you can see the page we have created is very plain in terms of both colour and layout. There are many tags that allow us to change the colour of the document itself and control the way text displays. HTML also allows images and other media (flash, video, sound etc) to be embedded.

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OR IN DREAMWEAVER

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(Ctrl+N) / > File > New

->Bland Page > HTML > Create

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This will create a blank XHTML page with all the necessary tags to get going.

</TAGS>

HTML TAGS

For a comprehensive list of HTML tags including browser compatibility see:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_reference.asp

http://www.webmonkey.com/reference/HTML_Cheatsheet

http://www.psacake.com/web/dy.asp

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First we’ll go through these articles step by step

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/27-css-basics/

We’re going to create another theme for this site using CSS.

http://www.justdreamweaver.com/blog/2008/05/customizing-wordpress-themes-with-dreamweaver/

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Install FireBug

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

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Make sure your CSS and HTML / XHTML are valid:

http://validator.w3.org/

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Extra CSS tips

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/01/19/53-css-techniques-you-couldnt-live-without/

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How to Vertically and Horizontally Center a fixed dimension website in HTML with CSS

http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/thebox/deadcentre4.html

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Download HTML CSS Example Source Files

Number of Downloads: 42

Download Size: 22.1 kB

Download Updated: March 19, 2009