Cherry UK website is up

Our company website has - at last - gone live.  I've spent quite a while getting this bad boy online and I've learned a lot along the way.  I already knew Photoshop pretty well - but now I know how to use it for the web.  CSS is no longer a mystery - just a befuddlement.  And I've managed to incorporate a bit of Flash too.

The opening page has a Flash slideshow to show off some stills of our work.  I also used Flash for all the movies on the site.  I'd started by making my own player but to be honest I was a little out of my depth, so I ended up using a re-skinned FLVPlayback component.  It works really well and there was no need to re-invent the wheel after all.  I used flashVars in the HTML so that I didn't have scores of separate SWF's cluttering the site.  I think that may be my next post ...

Five3D

If you've had any dealings with Flash you probably know about Papervision3D - I'm a long way off being able to use it myself, but the 3D effects it produces are amazing.

Another 3D package that looks really fun is Five3D .  It's a vector based system that, judging by the examples,  can do some amazing stuff - especially with text.

Also, check out pixelwelders website for some really cool stuff - the opening page is all done with Five3D!

Naming conventions in Flash

There are a whole load of programming conventions that make using actionscript a little easier.  I found this article on the adobe website that explains in detail what you should and shouldn't do.  Here is a bullet-pointed quick start.

• Use consistent abbreviations - ply for player, and plw for plywood, for example.
• Use mixed-cases to make words stand out - like brainHead.
• Try and be descriptive - brnSc is not as good brainScanner.  And aZebFrmA is useless compared to aZebraFromAfrica.
• Actually it says the shorter the name the better - so what about africanZebra.
• Obviously you can't use words already in actionscript, so var, array, new etc. are all banned.
• Variables can't start with a number
• Functions should start with a lower case letter
• Classes and objects should start with upper case characters - this helps them stand out in your code so that when you see MonkeyWidget you know that it refers to a homemade class.

There is loads more in this article, but these few tips should help you keep out of trouble for a little while.

How to learn Flash and influence people - Part 2

I have a pretty good grounding in web design; not good enough to make a living but I understand where to lay my {table} and where to stick my {head}.  I've been redesigning my company's website and added a little bit of Flash using Dreamweaver - just basic embedded movies - and everything seemed fine.  Fine that is until I decided to have a look at what made this swf work.

I noticed new files added to my website - things like FLVPlayback and steelExternalAll.swf.  What do they all mean?

Well I'm not sure I know even now, but the point is that it started me down the road of finding out.

And I've found out a lot in the last month.  I've discovered gotoandlearn the amazing online resource of Lee Brimelow (who is a Platform Evangelist at Adobe - whatever that means).  He also has a great blog that has all the latest Flash news.

I've signed up for O'Reilly's Safari Books Online where you can browse scores of books about Flash and Actionscript.

And most importantly I've started to use Flash to make things happen!

How to learn Flash and influence people - Part 1

I already knew about Flash.  It powered a million banner ads.  It was at the heart of a thousand online  games.  I even had a copy on my work computer.

Actually I didn't know Flash.  I thought it was a vector based animation studio that made online content.  I thought it was for tacky banner ads and tackier animations of singing cats.  I arrogantly thought it was After Effects Lite.

I'm very happy to admit what an idiot I was.  After a month of playing, swearing, reading and coding I've come to love Flash and Actionscript.  I love the feeling that it can do anything you want, if only you know how to do it.  Every day I come up with new uses for Flash; and I get a little better at knowing how to use it.  Who knows, one day my skill may match my imagination!

I've started this blog to share with people just starting out with Flash a few tips and resources that I've found invaluable.  I would also love to get help and feedback from those millions of Flash users who know more than me.