Lesson 1

Download Class Files
Class Files

Links mentioned today before class:
thefwa.com
http://www.verbatim.jp/senshuken/
http://roxik.com/


Homework:

Setting up your posterous account:
1) go to posterous.com
2) sign up
3) send an e-mail to post@posterous.com
4) during the sign up process they will give you your URL (like mine zevan@posterous.com) go to that url and note that your email has been turned into a blog post.

EVERYTHING you need to know about this is on posterous.com... so if your confused look at the information on the site.

As soon as your account is set up, you should post a link to them in the comments of this post (you need a gmail, aol etc... account to post a comment here).

The homework is the same every week:
Spend a minimum of 15 minutes a day working in flash - you can start by altering and playing with the class files. There is no limit to what you can do... if you are working on a banner at work, you can write about that, if you are working on your portfolio website you can work on that. It is important to review classfiles though so make sure you spend some time with them during your 15 minute sessions.

Challenge yourself by trying to change something about the class file, or trying to re-purpose it in some way.

You should spend around 5 minutes reviewing what you've done. Write it in the email that you send to posterous.... this is an important step - don't neglect it.

Things to Remember When Working on the Homework:
1) Bugs aren't really a big deal, if you get an error message don't get frustrated - you could try backtracking or taking a break and coming back to your work after an hour or two.

2) One of the main error messages people get is "Undefined property..." which means flash was looking for something but couldn't find it. This happens if you forget to type an instance name, mistype an instance name or talk about a function that's not there.

3) Clicking on the error message will take you to the line of code that is causing the error (not always reliable)

4) If by the end of your 15 minutes your file is completely broken... that's ok. You can pick up where you left off the next day... or you can just start with a new file the next day.

5) Don't underestimate the importance of recapping your 15 minutes with a simple blog post. When I tried this myself, I was surprised how many interesting ideas popped into my head as I started to write about what I had just learned.

6) Google is your friend. If you get a weird error message... try googling it. Also, if you decide you want to learn about something we haven't done in class yet... just google it, copy and paste the code and start playing around with it. You can learn a good deal about a piece of code just by changing the numbers around one by one to see what happens.

7) THIS one is REALLY important. Don't test yourself to see if you have things like "addEventListener" or "Event.ENTER_FRAME" memorized. This is a huge waste of time. Your ability to remember the exact syntax is irrelevant because it will happen completely automatically from you simply copying and pasting code from class files and messing around with it. That said, it can be helpful when your working with code to sometimes force yourself to type a redundant line here and there rather than copying and pasting it - this will help you to get used to the syntax without wasting too much time.

8) If you have questions about any aspect of this ongoing assignment feel free to email me (bendvent [ a t ] gmail.com).

Schedule:
// coming soon

(be sure to check back tonight/tomorrow for more info)