10th Entry

This weeks lecture started off with a look at the I-Phone interface. I’ve always been curious of the I-Phone but heard some rumours that it’s a bit overrated and too expensive for what it is but I had never actually seen the interface, until now! From what I could see, Apple’s done a really good job with the touch screen. It’s got a really flashy, innovative interface with some nice features such as zooming in with your fingers. I’m not sure if the novelty with the touch screen will last though. I’ve heard people say it can be a bit fiddly and typing with the keyboard can get a bit tricky.

We then moved onto the blogs. We were told some people had not referenced their links properly, referring back to Harvard referencing we learnt in the first tutorial. One thing I missed out on my links is the date last accessed so I’ll make sure I add that piece of information in the future. Geneen said she could tell who was going to be successful just by looking at our blogs, we all went silent after hearing that, self evaluating our own blogs, but I definitely understand what she means.

We then had a look at available jobs available to ICT graduates such as jobs related to project management, programming, design and forensics. I’m sure I can speak for everyone when I say how surprised we were to find out the amount of money involved with each one. You never really seem to think of the financial benefits of doing degree because of your current financial situation and because it seems so far away but it’s nice to see light at the end of the road, definitely a good moral booster!

Below are two links related to project management. One is a Wikipedia article and the other is a list of project management resources I found on the university’s website.

We also briefly looked at archives and how computers and the internet are being used to organise, digitalise, view and contain them. The internet is such a good resource for them when you consider the shear volume of some archives, such as the BBC archive.

We finished with an interactive Flash video of a snowball fight. The interactivity of the video came in the form of being able to change the characters faces. It really shows how much interactivity Flash can be capable of.

This lecture was certainly a very good moral booster and kick up the backside combined! It really is nice to see real world jobs we could go into after the degree is finished and makes us work extra hard to make sure we achieve what we want.

This week’s tutorial (and the last tutorial of 2007) was about embedding Flash animations. We were given a very scary coursework style scenario detailing that we had to embed the Flash file with the University of Glamorgan logo by its side on a specific blue background. I thought it would take me ages since it gave no instructions on how to do this but it actually took no more than ten minutes. Flash’s interface is very easy to use and shares some similarities with other programs so it wasn’t hard to import the video and logo and change the background to the specific blue by the hex code. It was interesting to use some different functions of Flash though. Its nice to know that a common feature is quick and easy to use.

1. Wikipedia Article on project management –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management

Last accessed – 17/12/07

2. Project management resources –

http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/staff/dwfarthi/projman.htm

Last accessed – 17/12/07

9th Entry

Friday’s lecture was about design techniques and basically methods to get your ideas down onto paper. It fills a nice gap since we did a lot on analysing and thinking about that the user wants but until now we never had any idea how to translate the ideas onto paper in a correct format.

A structure chart is a hieratical chart showing how different elements in the chart are linked. For example you could list the employees, managers, senior managers etc with a small amount of important people at the top going down to the relatively large amount of employees in comparison at the bottom. Their basic format and layout means they’re easy to read and create.

A flow chart has a start point and an end point, between them being the things you need to do to get there. There may be multiple roots and part of the design process involves writing down all the possible roots and seeing which one is best. Flow charts are very commonly used in the design process as it is one of the most effective ways to see how you can get from A to B. The only downside is that since some flow charts use different colours and shapes to mean different things you have to have some knowledge and understanding of them to be able to create and read them. Some of the more complex ones can look very daunting!

Wireframes are basically pre designed templates consisting of different boxes for you to write down your ideas in and maybe even include small diagrams. Each wireframe layout is different allowing you to design it yourself to get the full use out of it. Wireframes can be very good for items that can’t be easily translated into a structure chart or flow diagram and is a lot more effective than writing down notes on a plain piece of paper. Since wireframes order information, they are very easy to read and very easy to create.

A storyboard consists of lots of different pictures to represent the final product. This is very good for designing films for example or even flash animations – anything where pictures would be better than words. The only problem is that storyboarding can take quite some time to complete and you need some drawing skills but when done correctly they can be very easy to read and translate into the final product.

Checklists can also be used as a design tool. Checklists are good for noting what has to be completed when creating a specification. They are best used for making a few points on a specific item since no one likes to read though pages and pages of checklists with no indication of the key points.

And that concludes Fridays lecture, a brief yet thorough look though at the different design techniques. Businesses take a lot of care in with their design techniques since it is such a crucial stage of the development, so much so companies even sell expensive software for creating them. This lecture will definitely come in handy the next time I need to design something and get my thoughts together.

For my independent reading this week I’ve got a link to the BBC GCSE Bitesize design and technology area. I know it’s for GCSE but it’s actually really good!! (see bottom of the post)

This week’s tutorial was about “nesting” symbols within one another. This basically allows you to control its different components separately. After a few goes of trial and error I managed to get an animation I was really pleased with where the web part spun round and could be controlled independently by the buttons while the flash part completed its animation. You seem to learn much more when you have an error opposed to when everything goes well since your encouraged to stray off from the tutorial and delve down into flash’s intricate components to see how it all works. I really get the feeling that I’m playing around with a very powerful program! I look forward to expanding my knowledge of Flash even more next week.

Below is a good website for all sorts of tutorials relating to flash from simple to insanely complex. This is how I found out how to make my text spin around 360 degrees.

1. Tutorialized Flash tutorials –

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Flash/1

Last accessed – 10/12/07

2. BBC D&T Bitesize revision

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/dida/multimedia/designrev1.shtml

Last accessed – 10/12/07

8th Entry

This weeks lecture was on accessibility and how people with disabilities access resources on a computer. Accessibility is a very important subject that is often overlooked. As someone who has designed many websites, I was always aware but wasn’t that concerned about designing for people with disabilities because I always thought software would always be able to cater for their needs but this is not always the case. Legislation for making websites accessible for disabled people and the W3 accessibility guidelines have been in place for quite some time but I never bothered with them because they were a little excessive and no one else seemed to be bothering with them either so I was quite surprised to hear that disability pressure groups have started suing companies who do not abide by them.

Software can do a lot for people with disabilities including magnifying the text, changing the colour scheme of applications and websites for people with sight problems such as blindness or colour-blindness and providing voice recognition. It can also read text out loud on a website using a special text only browser. However while software can provide this companies need to insure their websites are compatible. A company has made a validator called Bobby so a company can check to see if their website would be accessible for people with disabilities. Some plugins, JavaScript frames and columns can all make a website difficult for a screen reader to read.

Hardware has also been created for people with disabilities including a panel that turns text to brail using pins and a keyboard for someone with only one hand.

To finish off we watched Animator Vs Animation II, incredibly to managed to be even better than the first, absolute pure genius!

This lecture has been very thought provoking. I never knew accessibility was such a big industry and I’m really surprised to find companies are even being sued for inaccessible websites. I’ll definitely keep accessibility in mind when I design websites and applications in the future. At the bottom of this blog entry are a few links I used to research the accessibility guidelines.

This weeks tutorial was about creating tweens within tweens with Flash. It basically involved tweening a symbol that already had a tween combined with it. It’s definitely getting more complex now but I’m enjoying discovering more of Flash’s features. You really need to think about what you want to achieve before you start creating the animation since the process of making the animation takes quite a while to complete and it can be difficult to edit at the end since your using so many different components.

1. W3’s accessibility guidelines -
http://www.w3.org/WAI/gettingstarted/Overview.html

2. Information about the Disability Discrimination Act - http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml

3. General information regarding accessibility – http://www.tiresias.org/guidelines/web.htm

7th Entry

Fridays lecture was the last of the three usability lectures. We started with a brief recap examining the usability of Daniel’s shoe and why we bought it. The usability of his sock wasn’t up to much though since it had a hole in it!

After that we went onto this weeks main topic, evaluation. Evaluation is concerned with gathering information about the usability a design for a particular product by a specified group of users. This could involve getting the users to measure the usability of the product while using it a relative activity or specific environment.

Evaluation is carried out by companies for a number of reasons. Evaluation helps the company understand the real world by talking directly to the consumers finding out exactly what they want and how they are going to use the product. It is very easy to bypass the negative aspects of a design when you yourself have created it. Evaluation also gives companies the opportunity to compare designs so find out the positive and negatives of each product, find the ideal solution and compare that with their existing product. This way the company could design towards specific targets and standards, for example safety or accessibility standards.

An ideal way to evaluate is to different questions during different points of the design process. This is called formative evaluation. Another way you can evaluate is summative evaluation which is the evaluation of a finished system. This might not help the existing products usability but it is useful if a company wants to develop a similar product or upgraded in the future. It can be good for accessing the product so it can be finely tuned.

Qualitative evaluation is basically an evaluation carried out by the company on their own or any other product. Typically this type of evaluation is non numerical and may be subjective. It’s mainly done by direct observation, questionnaires and even interviews. This type of evaluation could be used to give the company detailed statistics.

These usability lectures have been really interesting but I can’t help thinking we’ve done usability to death now so I’m looking forward to moving on to something new next week. I will definitely come back to the notes I’ve made on usability if I ever need to test an application or product I have made.

At home I did a bit of research on the different types of evaluations which you can see in the links below at the bottom of this blog entry.

This week’s tutorial was about linking Flash frames. I’m really pleased we’ve moved back to Flash, much more interesting than usability checklists! It was also our first go at Action Script, something I had been dreading from day one but it actually wasn’t that bad. I was surprised that all you had to do was click the plus sign, click on the relevant item and the code would come up automatically. I know it must get a bit harder than that when you’re doing more advanced things but its good start! I had a few problems at first because I wasn’t selecting the right object to put the Action Script in but as soon as I noticed where I was going wrong it all went swimmingly. All in all a good introduction to Action Script.

1. Summative evaluation:

http://www.sil.org/linguaLinks/literacy/ReferenceMaterials/GlossaryOfLiteracyTerms/WhatIsSummativeEvaluation.htm

2. Qualitative evaluation

http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/literacy/ReferenceMaterials/GlossaryOfLiteracyTerms/WhatIsQualitativeEvaluation.htm

3. Formative evaluation

http://www.sil.org/linguaLinks/literacy/ReferenceMaterials/GlossaryOfLiteracyTerms/WhatIsFormativeEvaluation.htm

6th Entry

Today’s lecture was the second part to last weeks lecture on usability.

Most of the lecture went over and re-enforced what we had been taught last week but there were a few new key points.

We got shown a usability triangle with the sides labelled with three main areas a designer would need to consider for usability, effectiveness, satisfaction and efficiency. The system needs to be effective, needs to be able to satisfy the users requirements and be as efficient as possible.

Another diagram we looked at was one by Nielsen regarding system acceptability, which relates well to usability (1). As an overview, it says that the product must be socially acceptable and be practical. Making it socially acceptable shouldn’t be too difficult if you put a reasonable amount of thought into what the consumer wants but practicality is more complex and comes with more things you need to think about. I won’t go over each point since it’s quite simple to understand just by looking at the diagram but its important to notice that utility as usability are key factors of practical acceptability.

Both diagrams are really useful and can be used to evaluate products that already exist or you own ideas for a product. I couldn’t really say which one is best because they are both so important and deal with different issues, the triangle for usability and the other diagram for system acceptability. To get the best result you would have to use them both together. They are definitely the best diagrams I have come across while doing usability,

Finally we went on to experience levels. Everyone has a different experience level for different systems or, for example, computing as a whole where they can apply the knowledge gained from using other systems into new systems. The three experience levels we looked at were novice, intermittent and expert. Each user has different needs for the system. The novice is going to need some help with the system, they need to be able to clearly see what the need to do, receive clear feedback to what’s happening and receive lucid error messages when required. The intermittent user needs it to be clear and simple but would not appreciate it if help he or she does not need would slow them down. The expert user would like the system to be as simple and efficient as possible so they can complete their task as efficiently as possible. They would also want more powerful controls and maybe shortcuts such as keyboard shortcuts.

Overall this lecture has been really informative. The diagrams and experienced levels really add more depth to the subject of usability. I await the final usability lecture next week!

At home I had a look over a Wikipedia article on usability to get some additional insight into the subject (2).

The tutorial this week was basically the same thing as last week worded a bit differently. It seems like we’ve done usability to death now, especially in the tutorials.

For the first part we had to think of a task the user would want to perform on the Glamorgan website. I choose finding information about the computer forensics course. We then had to find ways the user might fail in this task. The Glamorgan website is well designed so the only nit pick, for example the search results were too long. We then got a partner to do the same thing but like I said, it was difficult to find much wrong with it, it would have been much better if we performed it on a website that wasn’t professionally designed, that way we would have got some decent results.

The results depended upon who you were paired with though. I personally found the site fine and so did my partner but if you get partnered up with a goth for example they might think the site is too white and could do with some more black (it could happen!) unbalancing the results unless you balance it out by asking more people.

Overall I completed the task in about 20 minutes and didn’t really learn anything that I didn’t learn in the two previous tutorials.

1. System acceptability diagram

http://www.euser-eu.org/Document.asp?MenuID=168

2. Usability article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability

5th Entry

The topic of this weeks lecture was usability, a very broad subject covering many areas of technology.

Almost every piece of technology we encounter has been designed with usability in mind. Designers have to think about how a user is going to interact with a piece of technology and what the actual purpose of the technology is if it benefits the user in the correct manor. Our lecturer used the example when you go to a cash machine you just want to get cash out, you don’t want to complete a level collecting notes like you might want to do in video games for example. The designers must always think about contingency because if a user can do something wrong, they probably will.

Different applications involve single use or multiple use, single user or group user, informing, teaching or entertaining, controlled environments or uncontrolled environments.

One good way of organising the thought process when designing these type of applications is to spilt it up into different sections. There are many different ways of doing this but one we focused on was called CUTS or context, user, task and system. Context consists of the why the user will be using the system and where he or she might be accessing it. User consists of the users physical attributes, mental capabilities and general technological skill level. Task is what the user hopes to achieve from using the system like the goals and end result whether that be physical or emotional (eg. games). System is what system the application will be running on, for example will it need multiple monitors, will they need to be touch screen.

The lecture was very informative and really made you think what questions had to be asking during the design process in making these applications. Its amazing how much technology has come one and how many new devices have entered our lives like the MP3 player. There are so many new technological innovations being thought out and designed and it has become a huge industry. I’ll definitely be coming back to this topic if I have to design anything that requires and user interaction. I look forward to the second part of the lecture next week!

The tutorial was similar to last weeks tutorial following on from usability and design of websites. Instead of being given another huge checklist we got given two links containing guidelines for web design to make websites more usable (links 1, 2). The first set of guidelines consisted of 292 page PDF document with each page dedicated to a design feature. Thankfully we only had to look at the homepage section. The second website was a short list listing only the fundamentals.

The guidelines were presented in a usable way, the key points were highlighted and were clearly visible. The guidelines are sensible to an extent. Using the 292 page PDF document in chapters one bit at a time would work well but users could get annoyed sifting though all 292 pages when they just want to get a quick and basic interpretation of how good their website is, but that’s when the shorter checklist can come in useful. I don’t believe however that there is a one size fits all set of guidelines. For example, the guidelines say that websites should display the contents on the front page, but this wouldn’t be appropriate for small websites. Also, for websites where some users will have vision problems, big clear text would be a high priority. You can’t just follow a set of guidelines to the book and expect to get a perfect website. The guidelines can be fantastic for creating ideas but you need to combine them with independent thought. This is the same for almost all guidelines, not just ones for making websites. If I ever needed to design a website but had no idea how to design a website, the first thing I would do is look at some guidelines to get some ideas.

1. Usability.gov website guidelines:

http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html

2. Ten Usability Heuristics:

http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

4th Entry

The lecture was an overview of multimedia. A large subject covering text, clipart, graphics, animation, sound and video. In addition to this we also went over hypermedia and hypertext. While multimedia has been around for many years and is well established, hypermedia and hypertext are relatively new in comparison, only truly coming into their own with the advent of broadband. Hypermedia involves encyclopaedias, simulated micro worlds, expert systems and general learning systems. Hypertext involves electronic text, such as e-books and e-magazines.

We then looked at how this multimedia is produced and its different formats. We looked over text and how it is produced with ASCII, American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

Clipart is many found bundled with packages although some large clipart collections can be brought separately but seem to be becoming less and less common with the availability of images through the internet.

Graphics can come as raster, vector or bitmap. Bitmap files can be huge because it records the colour of every single pixel. These files can be compressed by other formats such as jpeg which looks at the general image and saves the relevant parts using them to calculate the rest of the image saving space. The difference between raster and vector is that you can resize vector as many times as you want and it will not get distorted while raster would.

Animation mainly comes gif, Flash, and Shockwave files. The animations that we create will start out as Flash files but can be converted to other formats to make them viewable in a web browser.

Digital sound mainly consists of mp3, wav and wma. Sound started out as wav which recorded all audio. MP3 offered compression by removing the sounds humans cannot hear, drastically reducing the file size. WMA offers a better form of compression allowing higher quality audio to be stored with less space. I’m not completely sure how it works differently but its good, trust me! Sound can be embedded in Flash as part of the animation file.

Digital video involves Quicktime, AVI and MPEG.

We then moved onto capturing media. Such as text capture, image capture with digital cameras and image processing, sound capture with microphones, and video capture with digital cameras.

The amount of file formats are definitely expanding which proves an added challenge for application developers to ensure their programs can interact with all the different file types.

To finish off the lecture we looked at the Cadburys advert with the gorilla on the drums to In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. We first looked at the original and then a spoof someone had one where the music is replaced by the music to Eastenders. It showed us how animations can be easily changed by cutting parts out, repeating sections and adding music.

The lecture helped me understand the basic concepts of multimedia, and how it is used and how it can be used. I also understand the many file types used and an overview on how they work.

At home I had a look at a Wikipedia article on multimedia which gives a general overview of multimedia and its uses (4).

The tutorial was based on the usability of websites. We had a look at Glamorgan’s website and were asked questions based on its usability.

I found out that overall it is a very good website. The site is easy to use, has a very clean layout and is well ordered. One bad thing about it is that it takes a lot of clicks to find out details of a course. Instead of just using hyperlinks, a dropdown box could be used created a more compact menu system that could be incorporated into the front page of the site.

We then answered a usability checklist consisting of questions with boxes n/a, yes and no to tick. The list was huge! It would have taken me at least half an hour to complete. Some of the questions were hard to understand and it some were hard to judge given that only yes, no and n/a were provided. A one to five system would have been more appropriate. Also if the checklist had been more specialised, like separate ones for universities and businesses, it would have been a lot quicker and efficient to answer the questions. Questions could have also been rated for importance. For example easy navigation is more than including the date the website was last updated. The checklist was written in 1998 and so is out of date compared to the standards of today’s websites with multimedia playing a greater part now most people have high speed internet connections. The benefit of using a checklist is that you already have all the questions pre thought out and they are there in front of you but it can have a few disadvantages, not least in not being able to distinguish the best and worst feature of the site.

This tutorial was really useful helping me to understand what makes a good website. One key thing I learnt is that you can’t please everyone. I personally thought the clean interface was the best feature while others put it down as the worst feature claiming it to be boring. The usability of websites can be related to the usability of all general applications so I’m sure I’ll be able to use the knowledge gained from this tutorial in many other aspects of design.

At home I found two could websites outlining what doesn’t make a good website (1,2) and the disability guidelines for web designers to make their sites accessible for disabled people.

1. Top 10 mistakes in web design –

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

2. Web pages that suck –

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

3. Website disability guidelines –

http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility/

4. Wikipedia article on multimedia –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia

3rd Entry

The lecture started with a talk about our blogs, that some of us haven’t got enough words, haven’t ordered it properly or haven’t included links to additional reading. Some of those points relate to me (glad I’m not the only one!) so I’ll be sorting that out in the next few days.

We then focused on interfaces. We started looking at the interfaces of operating systems, looking at how they started with the command prompt to the start of graphical user interfaces and where they are today and windows compared to Linux and Mac OSX. The first computer I used was an Amiga 1200, which had a very good graphical user interface, but I still remember using the PCs command line to launch some applications.

We then moved onto the interface of websites. The first one we saw consisted of a blank page and a column of grey symbols with no description. I think the idea was to encourage users to find out themselves what has behind the symbols instead of finding out it was a subject they were not interested in and clicking off it straight away. Although I think only the most curious of users would have actually read what was behind the symbols but it was a good idea and very original. The second website we looked at was of a famous composer for the music in films, although I can’t remember his name! It was a website done in Flash. It used multimedia very well using graphics animation and animation to project a very dramatic website to the user. It had a feature where you could change the music which changed the whole atmosphere of the site. I never knew music could have such a dramatic effect, something I would definitely keep in mind for Flash applications and websites. The were some design flaws though, the website looked a bit cluttered with all the animation and made it less user friendly compared to a conventional design although all in all it was a good, innovative design. The final one was a religious website. It said something like “Jesus loves you”. It contained a flashing multicoloured background, lots of random animated graphics and strange audio. I couldn’t work out whether it was a joke or they were trying to be serious! It was multimedia overload, not the way to design a website!

After the websites we looked at what makes a good interface considering the use of colour, fonts and navigation. Colour is important to make the site interesting to read and not appear dull but you have to be careful that the colours don’t clash (like red and blue). You also have to keep in mind what colour blind people see and realise they don’t see the same things as people with regular vision. Fonts need to be carefully considered, especially with websites because if you use a font that is not loaded the users system, they will not be able to see it (unless it is contained in an image). You also have to make sure the font is too large or small, is the right colour and is at least readable. The navigation is very important. It needs to be clear, easy to access and uniform throughout the site. All this information learnt can be applied to many things from websites to applications. It is definitely something I will keep in mind for the future.

To finish the lecture we watched a video called “Fat Kid on a Rollercoaster”, the perfect way to end the last lesson of the week!

I found a good website at home explaining what makes a good website (link 1).

The tutorial was based around shape tweening. Shape tweening is very similar to implement to the motion tweening we did in the previous tutorial. Where motion tweening moves an object, shape tweening transforms an object. The only difference to applying a shape tween as opposed to a motion tween is that you select shape tween from the tween drop down box instead of motion tween.

I made a few animations that changed a circle into a square and the text ‘one’ to ‘two’ and back again. I did this by breaking the shape apart twice so that each pixel was animated separately creating a very smooth transaction. I played around with the blend and ease options to see how it would change my animation. I didn’t really see any difference with the different blend option but ease produced a noticeable change in speed during the animation. Ease seemed to make it look much more professional so I’ll definitely be using that feature.

I had a few more goes creating different shapes and seeing the patterns they make as they cross over each other. Sometimes the tween created won’t be what you had hoped for, like going from white straight to black when it is meant to be a smooth transaction. You can sometimes get around this by putting a small cut through the shape which changes the animation. This certainly helped with my animations although you can see the cut even if its just a one pixel line so I will probably only use this method as a last resort.

Finally we added some shape hints which gave us greater control over the animation of the shape. They worked by allowing you to choose what part of the shape or text gets animated and where it moves and gets transformed tool. Probably the most useful feature I learnt in the tutorial and one I will definitely be using again.

At home I had a read of a shape tween tutorial I found on W3C Schools, listed bellow.

1. What makes a good website - http://www.barnard.edu/resnet/webpublishing/goodsite.html

2. WC3 Schools shape tween tutorial http://www.w3schools.com/flash/flash_shapetween.asp

2nd Entry

In the lecture we were shown a few blogs as examples. Its amazing to see how some blogs can get so large in regards the amount of hits they receive. Something I did notice was that the design of these large blogs weren’t really any different to the design of our blogs. This shows the content is so much more important the design and something that must be focused on a lot more, especially considering the interface most users would use is the one of the RSS reader. We were shown the RSS interface that would be used to view our blogs, once again showing us that design is not all that important (as long as it’s not blue text on a red background!)

We then moved on to using Adobe Flash. We were shown a basic flash animation on a fish moving up and down with its mouth moving in and out. We were also the interface of Flash and how to use motion tweens on the timeline. I used to have a copy of Flash MX2004 years ago when I first got into web design but despite owning a book on it, never really got then hang of it so to see how to do it in front of me was a really big help although you can’t really get to know the program unless you try it out for yourself. I’m lucky enough to have a copy of Flash CS3 installed on my laptop so I had a go at a few animations myself. I could get them to move on screen but the animation didn’t stay in the middle of the screen when I went to test movie, but it was still a good step forward in my understanding of flash.

We briefly touched on Action Script, something I had not been looking forward to! To be honest, Action Script was probably the biggest factor for me loosing interest in Flash and moving onto other web design languages when I first started out. I really hope Adobe’s first attempt of a new version of Action Script isn’t too bad!

At the end we were shown some storyboards on Pixar’s website. It was interesting to see the planning and the finished product displayed side by side, something you very rarely get to see. Understanding storyboarding may become useful if I ever have to create a Flash animation with lots of frames. The website was a very useful resource and something I would definitely go back to.

In the tutorial we had our first go in Flash applying what we learnt in the previous lecture and following a tutorial on Blackboard. We used the timeline to create keyframes and motion tweens to make an animation. I created two animations, some strange shape moving across a screen and a bouncing ball (links 1 & 2). I found the tutorial really helpful, it enabled me to get familiar with the interface and the basic features, something that would probably be very useful when we start using some of the more advanced features. I had a look at some other tutorials on the W3C Schools website (links 3 &4).

1. Strange shape - http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b250/iridiumcomputers/Strangeshape.gif

2. Bouncy ball - http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b250/iridiumcomputers/Ball.gif

3. Flash tutorial 1 - http://www.w3schools.com/flash/flash_tweening.asp

4. Flash tutorial 2 - http://www.w3schools.com/flash/flash_shapetween.asp

1st Entry

My first lesson on internet application development was a tutorial on Friday the 5^th of October. We all thought we were going to be told how to enrol on Blackboard (again!) and told to go away and turn up to the next lecture but pleasantly this was not the case! First we were told to find definition of a blog and find a blog on the internet and write a brief summary on it to get familiar with blogs. This was no problem for me since I visit a number of blogs on the internet.

We were also shown how to properly reference, something I found particularly useful since I hadn’t had been taught to reference before, the most I ever did was write a bibliography at the end of a piece of coursework. We were shown how Wikipedia may not be the most accurate resource by finding out what happened to Siegenthaler Senior, an American journalist who had inaccurate information written about him by a man who was trying to win a bet. The bad part is other websites took this about him from Wikipedia and published it on theirs creating a snowball effect. It was interesting because I had known information could potentially be inaccurate on Wikipedia but I didn’t know it had actually effected someone’s reputation. I will definitely be more careful when using Wikipedia to find information and would always use other websites and / or any other media to back it up.

Our first lecture started off with an introduction to what we will be doing in internet application development, the programs we will be using and a bit about setting up the blog and how it would be assessed. We were also shown some PDF help files regarding the Adobe CS3 programs we will be using.

We were then shown two flash animations, RSS Feeds in Plain English and Frog Guts. The RSS Feeds video was a short video explaining what RSS feeds are, how they can be used, why they should be used and how to access them. I’ve always wondered about using RSS feeds but I never really got round to learning anything about them show having a video shown in a lecture containing information that I could for leisure was an added bonus! I’ll defiantly look more into RSS feeds and maybe sign up to a reader like the one shown in the video. The second video was called Frog Guts, something I had not been looking forward to as a person who keeps frogs in their garden and a general amphibian lover. However when I watched it found it to be a really good flash animation. It was basically an interactive animation where you simulate opening up a frog and looking at its insides. I actually quite liked it considering people could use this information as a good alternative to actually doing it for real and has some benefits like the automatic labelling of the organs. It demonstrated how flash could be used as an education tool.

In the tutorial we set up our blog on a site called Blogger and began writing our first blog entry. Although it was my first time using Blogger, it wasn’t my first time writing a blog so I found the interface familiar. I looked up a few blogs to see the general layout and content of them which can be found on source 1, 2 and 3. On a side note, we were also shown a BBC news article on an artist who had grown an ear on his arm for art, just what we needed to start the day!

1. Steve Pravlina’s personal development blog
   http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/

2. Gamespot UK blog
   http://uk.gamespot.com/news/london_calling.html?type=london_calling

3. Kerrang Radio Night Before blog
   http://www.kerrangradio.co.uk/blog.asp?id=19038