GDT 260 Animation for the Web: Fall 2003
Notes & Handouts November 5
Publishing
File > Publish Settings
Flash Tab
- Version: Flash 5, Flash 4, etc. for backwards compatibility. Certain actionscripts are not backward compatible
- Load order: specifies whether layers are loaded from bottom up or top down
- Options:
- Generate size report: creates a report showing file sizes of each element in movie
- Protect from import prevents someone from opening your .swf in flash
- Omit Trace actions: prevents
trace()actions from executing - Debugging Permitted: allows the debugger to be run
- Compress Movie: compresses version 6 movies, doesn’t always play nice when using
loadMovie()actions
- Password: set a password for importing when “Protect from import” is checked
- Quality settings: sets default quality for graphics and audio
HTML Tab
- Template: different HTML templates. Default is fine in most situations
- Dimensions:
- Match Movie: dimensions set in Modify Movie
- Percent: percentage of browser window/ containing HTML element
- Pixel: specify a different pixel dimension
- Playback:
- Paused At Start: user has to manually start movie. generally a bad idea
- Show Menu: controls whether or not a right-click/ ctrl-click displays a full context menu
- Loop: does the movie start over at the end? Any stop or gotoAndPlay action in the movie overrides this option
- Device Font: controls whether fonts are embedded or not
- Quality: Determines quality of playback/ anti-aliasing. Auto-high allows movie to play back at highest quality possible without slowing down.
- Window Mode: Determines how movie acts with Dynamic HTML, mostly affects IE Windows. Also determines whether movie background is transparent in IE Windows, Netscape 6 Windows
- HTML Alignment: theoretically aligns the movie
- Scale: when dimensions set to percentage determines how movie relates to viewport/ containing element
- Default (show all): scales movie to smaller window dimension and maintain movie proportions. Results in a box that fills the space allotted and a movie that scales to fit within either the height or the width.
- No border: scales movie proportionately to larger side of the window, and hides overflow. Flash alignment determines which part shows, ie. if you choose bottom right, the bottom right corner will always show, and the top or left will be cut off
- Exact fit: scales vertical and horizontal dimensions to fit within the space. Distorts movie
- Flash Alignment: works with scale: no border to determine which edges of the movie will align to the viewport
Dreamweaver
Flash movies can be inserted into tables, etc. in Dreamweaver. Just hit the “insert flash movie” button, then specify the html settings on the Properties panel.
Storyboarding
Storyboarding spells out all the key elements in your movie and illustrates the relationship between them.
In a linear narrative, storyboards show important narrative events.
In a non-linear narrative, storyboards show important narrative events, as well as relationships between each element and narrative flow.
Storyboards can be simply text, like the example below, or they can serve as visual mockups.
