Before I had started with this assignment I didn’t know how to use Flash, never mind be able to make a website. In my previous course I tried to make a small animation but I didn’t complete the animation, since then I have wanted to learnt Flash but I knew it would take a while to get my head around some of the things. With me not be very interested in coding I wasn’t looking forward to learning ActionScript but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, there is some really good tutorials that helped and the books I got had good explanations starting with terms and then going to the basics skills.
In the SMLP (Self Managed Learning Plan) plan I put as my first task to complete an essay about Flash and ActionScript in the Interactive Media industry, I kept editing the essay throughout the assignment because I kept thinking of things to add. When it came to putting the essay in the template I had to cut it down as I had wrote more than the maximum word count, I found it difficult to choose which parts to take out, in the end I took bits of detail and other parts I didn’t think her linked to the topic.
I did a web plan before I built the website, I always find it useful to have a web plan to refer back during the build. This web plan was a bit different to the others I have done as this website was Flash base, meaning that was no CSS but there is HTML page to upload the website but I couldn’t get it to work. I went for a simple and clean look for the website, as that was what the websites I researched for the competitive analysis were like. The focus should be on the work and making it look good and that is what I have tried to do with my website.
Before I started the build I read books about Flash and ActionScript and did some tutorials. I started by doing tutorials that were basic and easy to do then I tried hard ones, some took a couple of hours to complete. I used the tutorials I had done to make the website, things like the slideshow and photo gallery I altered the code to meet what I wanted for the website. When altering the code I had to make sure I got the object names same as the name in the code, this took me a while to figure out as it was a simple thing like having capital letters in the code not for the name. The website took more time than I thought to build it and it was hard when I got a problem, with like HTML and CSS I know I couple of things to try if something goes wrong, but with not having a lot of experience with Flash it wasn’t as easy to find solutions. By the end of make the website I had a better idea of what to check if there was a problem and then could find a solution to fix it.
I did create photo gallery for the portfolio webpage that I liked and thought looked good on for that page but I couldn’t get the gallery to disappear when I had been on the page it was on. I tried loads of different codes and changes to the code, tried adding things to the flash documents and then finally looked though the books and internet but couldn’t find anything to match the solution I wanted. I think I know what is wrong with it but I just don’t know this solution, so if I had more time on this assignment or had to redo it I could try and find a solution it make the gallery work.
Throughout this assignment have been keep a blog, it does help when it comes to writing the evaluation. I have been saving the blog entries in the drafts till the hand in date day, as I always did them on a Monday night with it being late after work, I like to have time to check over them so I ended up just saving them all in the drafts and reading thought before completing the evaluation, which refreshed by mind. The blog URL is http://victorialouisefishera10.blogspot.com/ , this will be my final blog entry for the SMLP blog.
