Creating a button in Flash

Today I created simple buttons with the use of flash, this is to give me the experience to help me when working up my own website. I can use this simple method to develop up a better looking and complicated button for a professional website.

The first thing I did was create an Action Script 2 document and I drew a square of which I will then turn into my button. I did this by going to modify - Convert symbol. I gave the name Button 1 and then changed the type which is known as the element to Button.

Press cmd L to get the library up which shows the button so that if wanted you can drag this onto the page to have more buttons (helpful for a webpage).

Double click on the button and it comes up with a grid on the button, this is to show that the button is a vector, there is also a blue box around it and a cross in the corner to show you that it is a button. When double clicking on the button you get a new timeline come up which displays the programming of the button/ button settings.

There is 4 states to a button, these are:
 Up - Normal state
Over - Hover state
Down - Hold down state
Hit - Click state

Each state should be different to define the button more. For example the colours would be different for all states BUT the down state and the hit state will be the same colour. To make this happen you need to insert the button onto each state but this is by going to Insert - Timeline - Keyframe

This copies the button onto the next page and then you can change the colour to show it is a different state of the button.

After we finished this we clicked on scene 1 which took us to the original timeline and not the shape programming/ settings. We then saved this as a flash document format (fla) and pressed cmd enter to view the button and test it to see how it works or if it work.

You can add text to the button but to do this you should write it on the page then place it onto the button. Click on the text and copy it, instead of pasting it onto the next state with cmd v instead press shift cmd v. This will then place the text onto the same positioning as on the previous state instead of the middle of the page.

London Trip

On 20th September, I went on a trip to London with college; we went to visit the South Bank side of London of which included the seeing of Borough Market, The Tate Modern, Bankside Gallery, Oxo Tower, the Skatepark and the Hayward Gallery, we then caught glimpse of The London Eye slightly.

Our first stop was Borough Market where we spoke with the Communications Manager, we had a brief meeting with her where she described the target audience and things about the business/ charity that she thought we should know which is not displayed on the website. During this brief meeting, I took notes of which had the information she had spoke about so that this could then help me with my designing process, thought process, my poster in general and my research. After this meeting she took us to the Market and then let us to look around and witness the special feel she had spoke about; this feel being one different to the supermarket by the simple use of speech. I found Borough Market interesting due to the fact that you could speak to the stallholders about their products they are selling and even get to sample their foods, the friendly feel brings the market to life more with the use of a smile it could brighten the day. 

After being at Borough Market we visited The Tate Modern, walking past Shakespeare's Globe on the way. We were to look around the gallery, the gallery was interesting and full of various art and styles. When in The Tate, I brought a few items from the shop of which were a large Tate rubber, drumstick pencils for my brothers, a book full of illustrations and a Tate bag to carry my items in, altogether coming to the price of roughly £30.

After seeing the work in The Tate, we went to another gallery of which was minutes away. This gallery was called Bankside Gallery of which was only a small gallery but had some very interesting pieces in of which could help with this project, this gallery also had some pieces of which was displaying South Bank itself. I found that some of the pieces in the gallery were eye catching and were more noticeable than other with the unique style they used and the use of colours.

When viewing Oxo Tower we went through the building and into another of which has 5 floors of work. The work in which we viewed was mostly to do with culture, showing different styles and cultural views on art. It was very interesting to see the different types of cultural art and to see someone working on a piece when you walked in was also very interesting because you say how he was working and thinking about what he was doing before he did it.

On the way to the skate park we saw this. The people were wearing safety equipment and
were creating templates in which they then had a jet washer machine
and was clearing the words out of the mud with the template.

We went to the skatepark to see a different aspect of art, the fact that we went to galleries and then went to a skatepark full of graffiti shows that although we can walk around a gallery and look at art in styles we might see all the time, we can also go and looks at different types of art like graffiti to get the experience. I personally am not a huge fan on some graffiti but I found that it was rather interesting for the fact that it was very colourful and different from everything we saw in the galleries, the colour was not as bold as the ones you would see in a gallery but due to being again colours like white and black the colours usually seem to come out more, this could also be the fact that the spray paint was not as bold and also that the painting had been there for a while and the paint was wearing off. 

The Hayward Gallery was the last place we went to of which was a Punk exhibition with the title of "Someday all the adults will die" this was not the type of punk I had expected so it was a bit of a disappointment but some of the pieces were very nice. I really liked this Punk Mona Lisa piece.

After we saw the Hayward Gallery we saw a glimpse of The London Eye and then got on the coach to arrive back on time. I really liked this trip and found that this was the best one because i found that the things we saw were a lot more interesting than any of the other trips.