Sprockets

Worlds collide. The component builder (me) and the artist (with paint-stained fingers) look eye-to-eye at this over one long night.

Flash CMS. How is it done? How can it be done? How make a Flash site that extends to more and more of the same over time? As your client-list grows, say, and you have more of your best work to showcase, as does your client.

My artist shows me a beautiful Flash website done in NYC. She and I lived and worked in Manhattan for years, but she has gone to the far side of the International Dateline now, and I have gone to the baby farms outside the city for my young family.

The stain may never leave those gnarled fingers:

I am thinking of angels and aurochs, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art…

Two decades of Smalltalk and Assembler and C++ have left no such trace on my fingers, unless maybe this tremor….

Actually, I have never seen her fingers, not even by webcam.

Why can’t we do what they do, she asks. With my work…

She sends me beautiful Flash sites of her own, each with a long dizzying timeline in two or three dozen layers (neatly grouped layers), a library of beautiful drawings, and a few dabbles of older ActionScript 2 scattered throughout it all.

My first attempt sounds like e e cummings:

Suppose Flash is mostly menus…

Even the Flash page that has its own menu…

The page itself is a menu…

A large beautiful menu…

A menu does not carry your information, only points at it…

As a menu does not contain Red Snapper Stew, but points at it…

Suppose Flash does not carry your information, only points at it…

How do you fit more Associates onto your Flash page, as they come and go over time…

Or fit more press releases…

Or fit more clients in your showcase…

Or let your clients showcase more clients…

Your Flash page can point to a limitless mix of items, because you only point to the limitless mix, you don’t carry it…

Videos, PDFs, other pages, other sites, Red Snapper Stew…

To a component guy, this is an old and comfortable and well-worn distinction, and a life-saver. You script something called “myAge” and it contains a two-digit number. You script something called “myPicture” and no, it does not contain your picture, just the place to find your picture, a separate picture somewhere, a jpg file in its own image folder. “myPicture” only points to it, but that’s good enough.

You want Flash like “myPicture” not like “myAge”.

Then, specifically, the web sites she brought me, good and bad:

Scrolling:

The HotSizzle Studio (this is not actually their name) site, for example.

On their Press page (a swf):

• each link launches full item into its own new window, not into same Press page (swf)
• the links scroll with a custom-drawn scroller
• the links “float” (no box, scroll on page background within invisible boundaries)

You could go on forever this way, link after link, whistling like a Hobbit.

Not like that other site, which shall remain nameless:

• link not a link: contains entire item, not a link to a larger item
• standard issue scroller on white box
• white box with boundaries matching nothing

Sorry, starts bad, gets worse. Has a short life. Not short enough though, this sad life.

Thumbnail Menu (Toolbar)

The HotSizzle Client page has “toolbar” (or thumbnail menu) that races onstage like the Rockettes.

Each thumbnail brings up the same image at a larger size, and a caption, some text, and a link to full example at another site.

As with Press page, the links take us elsewhere for the full item. Here we get a tiny fixed-format text, no scrolling:

• picture caption, a dozen plain-fact words
• client:
• produced by…
• photography by…
• launch link
• alternate launch link

Credits…

Actually, that larger image is just the first of an image sequence. Image sequence does not scroll, however, but uses Paging Links.

Come to think of it, the Thumbnail Menu itself is just another variation on Paging Links…

You could go on forever this way, sauntering happily along.

In Short

From your HotSizzle example, I tell her, we might derive a HotSizzle Law for the Control and Confinement of IWVLS, where IWVLS (pronounced “oovals” or “ewvals” or maybe even “evils”) are Items of Widely Varying Length or Size.

HotSizzle Law for the Control and Confinement of IWVLS

Or:

How to Include All Those IWVLS Without Trashing Your Beautiful Flash Design

• no texts or other items of widely varying length or size within the Flash page
• instead link to such items (IWVLS) elsewhere
• list of links, however, may expand to any length
• but each link itself is strictly fixed in length and size, not an IWVLS
• links scroll discreetly across the page background, within invisible boundaries
• links scroll with cool little custom scroller
• Confine IWVLS:
• outside the Flash page
• each on its own page,
• usually html, that page…
• smaller, that page…
• floats, that page, over the main page
• (how many words does it take to sidestep “pop-up” ?)

Yes, I tell my artist friend, we could do what HotSizzle does, and more, and for less.

How? Components. aka Gadgets.

Like those gadgets you buy now, I tell her, except that we make our own.

Two kinds of Page Linking gadget, for example. An OutOfTheBoxScroller gadget.

You would start your work with our gadgets. Put your work into them (as you do now, when you buy these somewhere).

We make slow going for ourselves when we draw directly onto the main timeline, and then retrofit for a gadget effect.

By gadget effect, I mean: Easy to place any number of them, as needed. As needed over time.

HotSizzle has a big gadget for their Studio page. Their artists start with that gadget, and put their work into it. The gadget is made with ActionScript. The timeline for this page might be entirely empty. At runtime an ActionScript looks at the latest XML to see how many copies of that gadget to make.

As we did with our FaceCards.

In Short In Short (at the risk of oversimplification):

To catch HotSizzle and pass them, we need:

• no timeline: an empty single-frame timeline
• gadgets from first to last: all artistry put inside of ActionScript gadgets
• gadgets: my invisible ActionScript (to your specs)
• visuals: your skins, your content…

Component is my middle name, though I sometimes skip it:

John Hicks
Cerium Component Software Inc

No code today. Do you get paid for making a difference, or paid for code? Because unless you arrange to be paid for making a difference, you could write the wrong code year after year, the more the wronger, the wronger the more.

Until one day you pause for a no-code what-are-we-actually-doing-here day.