Lesson 1

Class Outline:
1) MovieClip properties
2) EnterFrame Events
3) += -=, mouseX mouseY
4) Zeno's Paradox
5) MovieClip nesting
6) addChild()
7) MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE
8) MouseEvent.CLICK, ROLL_OVER, ROLL_OUT
9) evt.currentTarget (indirect referencing)
10) Simple Graph Example

Your Blogs:
You should set up your blogs in the next few days - as soon as they're set up you should post a link to them in the comments of this post (you need a gmail, aol etc... account to post a comment here).

The homework is the same every week:
Spend a minimum of 15 minutes a day working with one or more of the class files. Challenge yourself by trying to change something about the class file, or trying to re-purpose it in some way. For example, you could decide that you'd like to use the Zeno's Paradox file to create a simple navigation or a small interactive scene. You could decide that you want to gain a better understanding of mouse events, so you might play with the mouseEvents2.fla until something interesting happens. After you've spent 15 minutes with Flash, you should spend around 5 minutes writing a blog post recapping what you did. You may want to paste bits of code, you may want to talk about what you got working and what you tried that didn't work. You can upload images, swfs or any other relevant files.

Things to Remember When Working on the Homework:
1) Bugs aren't really a big deal, if you get an error message don't get frustrated - you could try backtracking or taking a break and coming back to your work after an hour or two.

2) One of the main error messages people get is "Undefined property..." which means flash was looking for something but couldn't find it. This happens if you forget to type an instance name, mistype an instance name or talk about a function that's not there.

3) Clicking on the error message will take you to the line of code that is causing the error (not always reliable)

4) If by the end of your 15 minutes your file is completely broken... that's ok. You can pick up where you left off the next day... or you can just start with a new file the next day.

5) Don't underestimate the importance of recapping your 15 minutes with a simple blog post. When I tried this myself, I was surprised how many interesting ideas popped into my head as I started to write about what I had just learned.

6) Google is your friend. If you get a weird error message... try googling it. Also, if you decide you want to learn about something we haven't done in class yet... just google it, copy and paste the code and start playing around with it. You can learn a good deal about a piece of code just by changing the numbers around one by one to see what happens.

7) THIS one is REALLY important. Don't test yourself to see if you have things like "addEventListener" or "Event.ENTER_FRAME" memorized. This is a huge waste of time. Your ability to remember the exact syntax is irrelevant because it will happen completely automatically from you simple copying and pasting code from class files and messing around with it. That said, it can be helpful when your working with code to sometimes force yourself to type a redundant line here and there rather than copying and pasting it - this will help you to get used to the syntax without wasting too much time.

8) If you have questions about any aspect of this ongoing assignment feel free to email me (bendvent [ a t ] gmail.com).

I looked into posterous.com and it seems really nice. After you sign up, you simply send emails with text and attachments to post@poserous.com ... i tested a few different file formats and it seems to accommodate them really nicely. Sending an swf file will result in that swf file being properly embedded in the html page.

Here is the simple test that I did:
http://zevan.posterous.com/



CLASS FILES:
Click Here to Download Class Files