I think I’m trying to do too many things at the one time. Lots of ideas for new things I want to do, and a whole backlogue of things unfinished…but not abandoned. I think I need to get through the freelance work first, then just attack each of my unfinished projects one by one. I am not allowed to start anything new…well, maybe once I’ve finished at least one or two things…
Working on another Flash microsite. I’ve not even finished the first one yet. Thankfully I can reuse a lot of the work I’ve done on the other one, and I’m really enjoying the amount I’ve been learning while working on them.
Classes are really great way for me to easily reuse the code, and with each of these sites I’m working on I’m refining them. Right, back to work.
Well, while I find this Seven Things, blogging link exchange thing, that Felicitas Betzl has tagged me in, eerily like a chain mail, I’m going to break with my usual tradition of not getting involved. What the hell, it’s almost 2010, and I’m almost 30.
1. One the most important things that has shaped me as a person is having an identical twin. My sister Jennifer has always been someone I can rely on and trust, and I could never properly express how great and supportive she is.
2. I have a phobia of tic tacs. Yes, those harmless (ick) sweet type things. I only have a vague memory of my elder sister tormenting me with them when I was younger, but I can’t look at them now without feeling on the queasy side. TV adverts must be switched off, and just the sound of the box rattle makes me twitch. Yes, even typing this is making me uncomfortable. I have challenged my phobia. A few years ago I tried to eat one. I removed it almost immediately and it doesn’t seem to have helped.
3. I hate when people spell ‘weird’ incorrectly. I even had to correct it from the Rules section below. All these stupid english rhymes have done is confuse people. ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ is NONSENSE: weird, their, abseil, beige, caffeine…..
4. I don’t really think I can deny being a geek. I’ve been programming computers (badly) since I shared a ZX Spectrum 48k with my sisters from aged 7/8. I make a point of knowing what actors and directors are associated with what films, and by now I have a pretty decent movie knowledge. I read sci-fi books and watch sci-fi tv shows. I play computer games on PC or console till early in the morning (even if only at weekends). I wear glasses. I read books on the bus. And well, I slouch forwards when I walk….does that cover it?
5. I will NEVER EVER let anyone see the first web site I made (notice how I didn’t use the word ‘designed’). It first reared it’s ugly head in the year that I discovered the internet…I think that was about 1996. You know, I actually wonder if I actually still have the files.
6. I’m addicted to sugar. The 2 sugars in my tea could easily get turned to 3 unless I keep an eye on it. If I’m in the supermarket and they have those 3 packs for a £1 fizzy sweetie selections I have to buy them. And I also just finished eating a Sherbert Fountain. DAMN, there are no more sweeties in my flat.
7. I have a BEng (Hons) degree in Product Design Engineering. The only parts of it that have come in handy is the Accounting and Marketing classes. But, you know, I met a great bunch of people, so I can’t really feel bad about it.
And here’s the rules of the game:
And just to finish – due to my dislike of chain nonsense, would all the people I’ve tagged please NOT feel obliged to do this unless they really want to!
Part of the microsite I’ve been working on requires a page flipping component.
Did some research into finding one that would suit, and found these:
Had a go of the free version. This is HTML based so didn’t suit my purposes of importing it into the flash as an internal component, and the license with the source code was out of the budget. Animation feels nice and smooth and there are plenty of page controls, but the page images load in dynamically, so if you are flipping through quite quickly you seem to get a lot of blank pages.
I liked the smoothness of this one as well. It also has plenty of page control features and comes in a variety of types:
With the Flash Component you can add ActionScript for external navigation, page links and video. Although no source code is supplied, the component should cover any common uses. Images also load in dynamically. It seems faster than the Flash Page Flip one, although this may be related to the image file sizes. One thing I wasn’t so keen on was that the shadows seemed a bit on the dark side, but overall seems like handy and easy to use page flipping tool.
This page turner offers all the standard page controls, but also has the option of auto page flipping, hard front/back cover, page tearing and right to left written books. Again this one allows you to load in either your image or swf pages dynamically, and is controlled by an XML file. Page turning animation doesn’t quite feel as smooth, but has a lot of extra features and good documentation on how to use it.
Page Flip also offer a completely free open source version of their Page Flipping component. Has almost all the same features as v3.5, however you import your page images directly into the FLA file.
These all seem to be really good page turning components with slightly different usage methods and features.
I’m working on the Flash microsite site again. Cheered me up quite a bit, as I really feel I can get my teeth into it. Starting to add the visual elements to it, so it’s becoming more fun to work on.
I’m trying not to obsess too much about constructing it in the right way either. It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae, but it will take me less time in the long run if I work out the details as I go along. I can always re-structure things later if I have to.
Anyway, best get back to it.
I do. I love gradients and rounded corners, but it’s turning into a sick, sick addiction. Every site I design now is full of gradients and highlights and little rounded corners…but it’s got to stop.
I’m now in the habit of, once I’ve finished designing a page, removing all the rounded corners to decide whether they actually benefit the design or not. However, my gradients and highlights are still a problem. I need to expand my design skills. So, I’m determined that the next site I design will have NO GRADIENTS…just to see if I can actually do it. I’m already a step towards it; the latest illustration that I’m working has no gradients in it at all….um….yet.
Well, while I’m almost fully converted from Elaine Simpson to Elaine McVicar, and now I’m getting converted from Danu Design to Elaine McVicar. You may not have noticed that my domain name has been changed over, with only a few hiccups, from yesterday, but here I am elainemcvicar.com. You know, I really like how that looks.
I’m building a Flash microsite at the moment with the consideration that it should end up being a re-useable template, as there may be additional microsites in the future. So best way for me to do it is to create classes that control the functionality of the site.
So far I have a main page structure set out. This includes one FLA file that imports a navigation class. This class creates the menu and controls the navigation between pages. I’ve even managed to get SWFAddress working. This lets the user click back and forward on their browser through the Flash site.
I’ve also created a separate class for all of the content pages. This ensures that the actionscript for each page doesn’t interfere with the others. Next steps are really to code the specific pages, add the content and reskin it to fit the design.
I know I’ll have quite a few challenges, and the timescales I have to work on it are really tight, but I’m looking forward to seeing this project through to the end.
Well, I’m glad this week is over. It’s been a pretty awful one. Redundancies announced at the start of the week, which has made work a very depressing and slightly more stressful place.
So, I’ve occupied myself with pottery class and climbing, which are two very good things to get yourself out of your own head. Also realised that when I started this blog my intention was to write about my thoughts on my general day to day work in design, but I seem to have gotten distracted into trying to write articles and tutorials. So, from now on I’m going to try to go back to my own thoughts. This is about me.
Well, today I’m going to try to create an RSS feed for my homepage updates. The blog one is already handily incorporated by WordPress, but I’d like to create one that involves all my updates.
Now the XML tags are pretty easy. This website, Make RSS Feeds, gives you the basics. However, what I need is one that is automatically updated when I update my website. I believe PHP is the answer. I’ve found this site: Web reference – Creating a Custom RSS Feed with PHP and MySQL. Let’s have a go!
Okay, that took me some time using the tutorial above, and the PHP code from my homepage updates…
First try in the validator brought out a few errors. I believe they are to do with the header information so I’m going to search from more help with creating an RSS feed using PHP.
So an hour later, I’ve managed to get it to work – excellent! Seems like the tutorial I followed had a few things in it that was causing me problems, although I’m not sure why.
Now, after some tweaking, here you go, my homepage RSS feed. Please let me know if you have any problems with it, and I will try to sort them.