Building forms on Flash

Development work covered during lesson
Today we built our forms onto stage. I used a guideline document that was available in the student shared drive to help me know what to do, however the instructions were very brief and didn't cover everything and therefore I had to use my own initiative in order to make the forms that way I wanted them to be. Firstly we opened Adobe Flash and selected Action Script 3.0 as this was the software that we needed to build our forms. Next I looked for the background picture that I wanted to use for my first form which was 'Main menu'. I decided to look on the internet to see if I could find the picture that would best suit my front end, however I could not find anything I liked so I looked in the student shared drive for pictures that were available to use. The picture that I used for my background I found in the E block folder and It was a picture of the E block hallway. I thought this was suitable for my front end as the theme is E block and it was also quite colourful so I thought it would be the best background to use. I then imported this picture by clicking on 'file' in the top left corner and then 'import to stage' in the drop down box. Once I found the picture that I wanted to import I clicked open, which then imported it onto Flash and I changed it to the size I thought was most suitable by right clicking the picture and going to the 'free transform' tool which allowed me to move the image and change it to the size I wanted.


However, soon after this I realised that by using this tool it would make it a lot harder for me to get each form exactly the same size and therefore it wouldn't look very professional. I clicked on the picture and went onto the  'properties' tab on the right hand side of the page and changed the width to 200 and height also to 200 so that I knew exactly what size my picture was, in order to make sure all of my forms were the same size. After I had edited the background I added a button so that the user easily exit the form whenever they wanted to. I did this by going to the 'windows' tab at the top of the page, then common libraries in the drop down box and clicked on buttons. It then provided me with lots of different options of buttons so I decided to choose the 'Buttons Bar Capped' option as it thought it looked the most appropriate for my front end. As well as that I also made the button purple as this is the colour that I had previously used for all of the buttons on the videos within my front end and therefore I decided to follow the theme through in order to make it look more professional. After I had chosen which button I wanted, I decided to use the button as a blueprint so that I would be able to copy the button every time I needed it, which would mean that I wouldn't need to go through the options for every button I create, and it therefore made the process a lot faster and more efficient. In order to do this I opened the 'Library' tab on the right hand side of the page and dragged the button in. I then duplicated the button several times by right clicking and selecting duplicate and then giving each button appropriate names such as 'maintointeractive' and 'maintoplayoptions'. Before I could put these buttons on my front end I had to change the text to display what I wanted it to and I did this by right clicking the button, selecting 'edit' and then typing in the word/s that I wanted. As well as that I also had to change the instance name of every button in order to ensure that it worked correctly and I did this by clicking each of the buttons, then going to the properties tab and giving them an appropriate name such as 'btnmaintointeractive'. 


After I had done this for all of the buttons on the form I made sure that all of the items such as the background and all of the buttons were on the same frame of the same layer to ensure that it would work properly. Finally,  once I had finished building the form and it contained all of the items I needed I completed the form by holding down the shift button, selecting all the items on the form, right clicking, selecting 'convert to symbol' and then I gave it the name I thought was best suitable which was 'main menu'. I also selected the form, went to properties and named the instance name of the form 'frmmain'. After I had finished all of this my 'main menu' form was complete and I repeated all of these steps for all of my other forms. Overall I created four main forms which were 'main menu', 'interactive options', 'play options' and 'scene selection'. Once I had finished all the forms I made sure that they were all in the correct order by looking at the layers and rearranging them where I needed to so that my front end would work the way I wanted it to. For example I made sure that the 'main menu' layer was at the top so that when my front end opened this would be the first form that would show up.  

How the development work fitted into the client brief
We built the main forms onto Flash in order to create the main part of my IMP. The forms that I created were 'Main menu', 'Interactive features', 'Play options' and 'Scene selection'. All of these forms are extremely important to my front end as the user will use these to get to different activities or interactive media such as the drag + drop game and the most important part of the IMP which is the video. Without these forms my IMP wouldnt look very professional because the interactive media would appear immediately and it would be a lot harder for the user to navigate themselves around the IMP. In addition to that I also made sure that the forms I created suited the theme of my IMP by including a relevant background and suitable colours and buttons. This fits into this section of my client brief:


In my IMP I am going to try and create a well designed front end that mirrors the theme of the films/pictures by using backgrounds on each screen which are relevant to what my IMP is about and making sure that I provide extra information and advice on my chosen theme in order to extend the value of the message that I am trying to achieve.  I may also use sound effects in order to help portray the message of my IMP and give the reader a better understanding of what my IMP is about.

New skills table reference number
4