Create an Interactive CD-Rom with Flash MX By Brian Dino Computer Magnet Program North High School Denver, CO TIE Conference2004 Contact:

Session Focus Learn how to create an interactive CD-rom that promotes your school, program, or project. By using FlashMX, you'll learn how to combine text, graphics, audio, video, and internet into an interactive CD-rom presentation.

Flash MX Features

Learning FlashMX FlashMX has a steep learning curve Now, in case you think that an authoring program with this many capabilities is a flash to learn, think again. Macromedia Flash does have a significant learning curve for the groovy stuff, but it's not out of reach for instructional designers and developers. My QuickBooks program, for instance, is harder to understand. Developing decent Macromedia Flash learning content (non-linear and interactive) requires some study and practice. But if you're worried that Macromedia Flash is too hard for the average Joe to learn, check out this math quiz developed by a seven-year-old. math quiz – Patti Shank is an instructional technology consultant (and faculty member). She can be reached through her website:

Learning resources for FlashMX Many avenues to learn FlashMX – Use the built-in Help files in FlashMX – Animated tutorials on flashkit.com – Numerous books from Macromedia and others Printed guide: From Macromedia: Digital Narrative Project ($15)Digital Narrative Project – Nice, step-by-step tutorial on building a Flash NarrativeBest method: use tutorials and learn from existing FlashMX file Programming needed? Yes, but reuse of Actionscript (code) simplifies effort If you cant master programming buttons/navigation, use the FlashMX 2004 templates with built in navigation

Good FlashMX websites Flashkit.com-great tutorials and sample projects, code, music – Great user community at Flashkit.com Some good tutorials for newbies: (search for these titles on the flashkit.com tutorial page) Building Buttons Using Layers Perfect Newbie starter tutorial Introduction to flash usability FlashMX Scrollpane component

Flash MX 2004 New Features For the first time Flash is offering a collection of templates to simplify the production of standard Web documents such as ads, slide shows, and tutorials. In addition, the templates are smart; for example, a photo album template includes all the programming necessary for a photo slideshow. A lot of UI components, like scroll bars, check boxes, and list boxes, that previously had to be laboriously created, are now included in Flash MX. The appropriate behaviors are built into these objects, so adding functional interface elements to an application is a simple drag-and-drop operation. One of the biggest changes in Flash MX is the integration of video. The integrated video support, provided by the Sorenson Spark codec, can import standard video formats, such as AVI, MPEG, or QuickTime, and convert them to a streaming format that is displayed natively by the Flash MX player. The import filter can also resize the video or sync the frame rate to the Flash movie when converting a file.

Flash Examples Student Examples – Backup location: (north high student work) – (under featured links) Real World Examples: – – –

Putting Flash File on CD-Rom You must create an Autorun for your.exe Projectors This tutorial will show you, step by step, how to create an autorun for your.exe projector when distributed on cd-rom. In order to do this: 1. Open up windows Notepad and type in: 2. [autorun] open=intro.exe icon=icon.ico Replace 'intro.exe' with the file name of your.exe movie, and 'icon.ico' with the name of your custom icon if you have one. If not remove the line 'icon=icon.ico'. 3. Save type as an "All Files (*.*)" with the filename autorun.inf. 4. Burn your cd with the autorun.inf, icon.ico (if any), and projector.exe in the root directory of the cd. When you enter the cd into the drive, it will automatically run your.exe file.

Session Evaluation Please let each of your session attendees know that conference and session evaluations as well as session handouts are available on the TIE website online.org/2004http:// online.org/2004