Recently I was asked how I pre plan websites. This is how.

The first thing that is taken into the creation of any site is user access and ease of use. A lot of people are trying to create new and exciting things which I am all for but do not do this at your users experience’s expense. Keep it simple stupid is one of the greatest things when it comes to a design. A designer once stated that the best user experience is one they hardly notice. This is why it is a good idea to always think about them using your site over fun and exciting things you can add.

The second thing that you need to consider is the space requirements for everything that you need. Depending on the website you are going to want to keep the users coming back for more. The best way to do this is to not fill the area up with advertisements, a few are ok but if you have a horizontal ad space on the header don’t put one in your first post. Ads inside of content just make the readers annoyed and whatever you do, do not place and add in the very top right sidebar. This is a high clicking zone and you are going to want users to stay in your site as much as possible. Pre plan your menus, headers, content, footers and anything else you are adding into the site in an appropriate manner. Take margins into consideration because spacing can completely throw off a design.

The third thing you are going to want to accomplish is the overall design and layout of your items. This means that if you use a font for one size of header you should keep it consistent with that header inside of that area of the site. Meaning, if you are creating a blog, every post should have the same style of header. This does not mean that you should keep all of the heading fonts the same throughout the site. Some of the best designs on the net have different fonts in the header, sidebar and post content. Now getting away from fonts and back into the idea of layout and design I should add that the layout should stay to its theme. This means that you should not be changing the size of drop shadows between items and text, backgrounds should stay the same pertaining to their selected area and high traffic areas should contain a large amount of contrast. It will make the users eye go to that direction.

Simple rules you need to follow in order to give your site that design it needs:

Keep it simple stupid.
Be careful with ad placement.
Consistency is key.

Recently I have made the switch to a Macbook Pro. During this switch I will be without some of the usual software needed to do what I normally do. However I will be getting back up on my feet inside of a week when I receive the purchase of CS4 master collection. Once dreamweaver is up and ready to go I will be back to the regular posting but until then things will be going slowly.

There are going to be a few more updates that are being taken into consideration. These updates are as follows:

more intro to Actions Script 3
java code snippets/tutorials
xcode tutorials/objective c

A new theme update or modification to the current version of clouds.

The language of actionscript doesn’t use traditional variable types like advanced computer languages (java, C++, c.) Actionscript does things a little different. They like to be a little more generic since creating room in memory is not a heavy issue. Because of this the data types are a fair amount more user friendly.

The variable types flash uses are as follows:

“Int” This stands for integer and can be a negative or positive and thus include 0. (-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,5 are all examples of the int data type.)

“Uint” This is very similar to the int data type however it cannot hold negative numbers, or ‘0.’ It can only hold whole numbers.

‘Number’ A number can be any number. This include negatives, 0, positives, and decimal numbers (floating point) which is the equivalent of declaring a double, float, or single.

‘String’ This data type will display characters of text. An example of this would be “text,”

‘Array’ An array data type is more than one item in a variable. This means that could store a list of bowling scores.(1,6,2,4,2).

‘Boolean’ A Boolean data type traditionally takes up one bit of data because it only stores a 0, or a 1 which is interpreted to true or false.

‘Custom object’ This can be whatever you want and is declared as a variable type because it is stored in memory much like a variable. The difference is that this can store multiple variable types.

Setting up a package for your flash traditionally means that you will be going in the direction of object oriented programming. This means that you will be able to create different class files and use them as objects.

The simplest way to look at this is using any general object such as a city. In order for the city to be properly run we will need an object for power grid, roads, and sewer system. These sub objects can be split up into their own classes and used in the main movie clip by setting up a package.

The basic package layout looks something like this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
 
public class Main extends MovieClip {
 
public function Main(){
trace("If this appears in the output you have done well.");
} // end of main function
 
} // end of main
 
} //end of package

Tip: When creating a swf object you need to make sure that you do not mix together AS1 and AS2 with action script 3. This is unlikely to happen if you are learning from scratch or teaching yourself but if you need to update a previous project then you will need to make sure you are not mixing levels of actionscript. This is caused by the way they are put together in the creation of the swf file.

Inside of this file you can add all of your movie clips and declare them as variables. You can also import all of the needed files along with create the code required to do what you would like to do.

The last thing that is required when creating a package is the link to your movie clip. You can create this link simply by clicking on the stage, making sure it is your default document, then adding the document class name as shown below.

If everything is ok and your flash program runs you will have a line of confirmation in the output.

This is a quick briefing before going in depth on different bits and pieces of flash AS3. I will be creating a series of brief introductions into certain aspects and components of the language along with a tutorial using said component.

All of the articles will consist of key notes and source code. These tutorials are a project in their own and will take up a fair amount of time. They will also receive their own section from the top menu and a brief updates in the projects section.

Google is going onto no longer support Internet Explorer 6.0 and will be moving onto better thing. Since the release of HTML5 there has been a fair amount of hype but not a lot of big sites have switched over to it yet. Youtube which is owned by Google was the first to go big but now it looks as though they will be doing so with their search engine.

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043