1. April 8th – Jeff Galak (CMU)
Programming Behavioral Experiments in Flash Session 2 of 3 Building Your First Flash Experiment
April 8th – Jeff Galak (CMU)

2. Agenda for the Week Session 1: Thursday, April 8th (10-12pm):
Intro to Web Programming, PhP, and Flash
Session 2: Thursday, April 8th (2-4pm):
Building Your First Flash Experiment
Session 3: Friday, April 9th (10-12pm):
Advanced Topics if Flash (Sounds, Videos, and Real Time Ratings)
Session /09/2010

3. Agenda for Today Working with Pictures Reaction Times
Create a new experiment from “scratch”
Session /09/2010

4. Two Ways To Get Pictures Into Your Program
“Hard Code” them
Drag an image file from a folder directly onto the stage.
Note that Flash adds it to the library.
File -> Import to Stage/Library
Use ActionScript
Session /09/2010

5. Pictures and ActionScript
Use the “empty movie clip” place holder
Name it something: “imageLoader1”
Save an image file in the same folder as the program
In ActionScript, use the following code:
loadMovie(“img.jpg", "imageLoader1");
Name of image file. Can be variable or string.
Name of place holder. Can be variable or string.
Session /09/2010

6. Reaction Times in Actionscript
gettimer()
Starttime = gettimer()
Put this somewhere in the main part of the frame
Endtime = gettimer()
Put this wherever you exit the frame (e.g. when a button is clicked)
storedate(“reactiontime”,endtime-starttime);
Put this just below the endtime=gettimer() line
Done!
Session /09/2010

7. Creating a New Experiment: Steps
Duplicate existing experiment
Rename all the files to the new experiment name
Update “experiment”.php
Change experimentname
Set the right number of conditions
Session /09/2010

8. Creating a New Experiment: Steps
Program your experiment
Update the preamble to reflect the correct conditions
Do everything else
Test your program in Flash (use Trace when needed)
Compile your experiment: Shift + F12
Create debriefing
Session /09/2010

9. Creating a New Experiment: Steps
Server Stuff
Connect to your server via FileZilla
Create a directory with the same name as your experiment
Upload everything
CHMOD the folder and files to 777
Test your program online
Check that the data file is created and looks right
CHMOD the data file to 777
Session /09/2010

10. Homework 1. Install software!!
2. Try and upload the existing files to your webserver and see if everything works
Make sure to check permissions (CHMOD 777 works well)…ask me for help
3. Take any simple questionnaire you have and try to turn it into a program (at least 2 conditions)
If you can’t get the web version to work just yet, try and get it to work locally (e.g. with CTRL+ENTER)
If you don’t have a questionnaire, I will give you one
Session /09/2010

11. Next Session Session 3: Friday, April 9th (10 – 2pm):
Advanced Topics if Flash (Sounds, Videos, and Real Time Ratings)
Session /09/2010