My apologies for not being hurry-hurry with my next installment of the Flash series but yours truly is occupied with a full blown job search. That said, I think I have an a promising lead. Off in the far away land of Independence, Iowa a woman was recently arrested for not returning a library book. That’s right! She wasn‘t reported to a collections agency. She was flat-out arrested. Seeing as the city of Independence will no doubt be out of a Library Director – or more than likely a fall guy librarian – I propose that they select me as the next replacement.

I promise! I won’t arrest anyone for keeping inspirational books about a teacher’s quest to inspire students to write. Suddenly e-books sound a little more promising than usual.

Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Flash was released in 1996 by Macromedia as a vector animation tool and has since become one of the most used pieces of web-development software in existence. In case you are curious as to it’s potential, thousands of examples are available at Newgrounds.com. Flash contains support for embedded music, videos, dynamic coding using ActionScript (Adobe’s private scripting language), and traditional animation among other things.

For today’s purposes, however all you really need to know is that Flash animations and it’s related code operate on a timeline, Flash files can run independently of a browser, and the program does really well when compressing files. This is why it is so heavily used. That said, the animator tool has several major components worth discussing. I’m not going to over them all (because I’m trying to point out that Flash is a tool that Reference Librarians can use), but I will try to be as comprehensive as possible. If you want to learn anything that I don’t discuss today then I would suggest visiting the W3C School tutorials.

The Timeline:

As mentioned earlier Flash animations aren’t created using text code. Instead, they use the same basic principle that animators do – frames.  Enter the timeline… which organizes all Flash movies. If you look at the image to your left you will see that there are a number of different cells. The two black dots are called “keyframes,” the blank frames are unchanged, and the “a” sign signifies that ActionSctipt is run at that point. Keyframes denote changes in an animation from frame to frame. At first most people see working with frames as time intensive. After all, wouldn’t it take forever to create a keyframe for every change in an animation? The answer is yes but tweening solves the problem. Basically, tweening allows you to automatically render differences between frames thus saving an animator time. I won’t cover tweens in any more detail but you need to know that they’re an integral part to Flash; they make your movies move! Remember them!

Additionally, you don’t have to use one layer on the timeline. Flash allows you to stack layers on top of one another to create the illusion that an object is in front of (or behind) another. Placing objects on different layers is good for visual changes. If you look at the gray box to your left once again (with the pencil) then you see that there is room for multiple layers.

Animation:

When working from the timeline it’s easy to create animations with Flash. First, since it uses vector graphics all material on the desktop are treated as objects. This avoids broken up content and makes it easy to group or manage the timeline. Also, when using keyframes, tweens, and other animation tools it’s easy to deal with this material. You just need to type in text, draw some pictures, import a .jpg (or something else) and use a few tweens to make things move. That’s really it…

ActionScript:

ActionScript, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated and is what makes Flash really useful. It lets you take objects and transform them into buttons, change their color according to user behavior, cause them to appear or disappear, and lots of other cool stuff. ActionScript makes Flash movies interactive instead of linear. And lets face it. Linear can be boring!

To use ActionScript all that you need to do is add code to an individual keyframe. Some examples include:

• stop(); - Stops the movie.
• play(); - Plays the movie.
• gotoAndPlay(33) - Goes to frame 33 and plays the movie.
• function buttonClick(event:MouseEvent):void
{
gotoAndStop(22);
}
22.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, buttonClick); - Sets an object to
be a button that goes to frame 22 and stops when clicked.

Don’ t worry about everything above not making sense. Just remember that if you enter this code in a certain frame (when the playhead reaches that point) the code will run and you will get a corresponding behavior and/or action.

Multimedia:

Another nice thing about recent versions of Flash is that it supports multiple multimedia formats. If you take the time to visit YouTube you’ll notice that it uses Flash and it’s own video codec to display submitted videos. MP3’s, .wav files, and other sound formats are also supported. Images can be embedded. Interestingly enough any file that Flash can open is also able to be incorporated into an animation. This flexibility turns out to be incredibly useful, and in the case of Libraries Flash offers a way to create instructional programs and animations using topical media; it can embed the content that patrons want.

Publishing:

The final thing to know about working with Flash is that it uses an atypical publishing process. I have already been mentioned that Flash can run in a stand alone player outside of a web browser, but at the the same time the commonly used file isn’t the primary document like you would suspect. As with Adobe Illustrator there is always a master file and and an output file. With Flash the source file is always larger than the published file but and published files can only be created using a source file… so there are two types:  .fla’s (the source) and .swf’s (the published file).

Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

For those of you well versed in web-design there are three “elements” that designers talk about: 1. content (i.e. HTML) 2. design (i.e. CSS) and 3. functionality (i.e. PHP). Libraries have mastered #1 and #2 as evidenced by the fact that almost every major library has a homepage while #3 is slowly gaining acceptance. This is especially the case in instances were Web 2.0 tools have taken off. Ironically, however Adobe Flash is rarely used by libraries while it is common everywhere else.

Part of this has to do with Flash itself. While most interactive websites are server or browser oriented (that is they are part and parcel with the site they enhance) Flash is not. Instead, Flash is a self-contained application that runs in a browser and is not part of the website. Moreover, while Flash offers support for retrieving information from an external database, it’s not well suited to this purpose. Libraries require access to large amounts of information and so do their tools.

Enter what Flash can do: quickly and easily construct interactive animation. Going back to the “old-school” librarian days we’ve always been willing to make lists. Lots and lots of lists. This hasn’t helped our “boring” reputation though, and pointing patrons to our plenitude of them doesn’t necessarily make people think positively about visiting the library. The “wow” factor just isn’t there. Sure, academics and inquisitive individuals are going to be willing to learn about EbsoHost by reading your six-page pathfinder, but the average person is probably going to be bored out of their mind. This is where Flash and it’s emphasis on animation can help our patrons out.

Take this animation that I created as part of a class last semester: The Archive.

Now, compare it to a static or marginally interactive webpage. It’s pretty obvious that the Flash page is just more fun. This doesn’t mean that Flash should always be used to create instructional walk-throughs, but it does provide an engaging component that often libraries lack. Flash can be used to lessen the impersonal feel that a computer – or paper list – creates.

Over the next several weeks I plan on posting a three part series dedicated to Flash and library instruction. In part one I will introduce Flash and it’s basic functions. In part two I will begin to build an instructional animation. Finally, in part three I will compare our finished product to competitors and return to a discussion on Flash’s usefulness.

So, the numbers are in and we are undeniably, most assuredly, certainly, and incontrovertibly in the middle of a recession. I’ve heard predictions that unemployment could reach 9% by next year and that in Missouri (my home state) it could be as high as 10%. This is a problem for everyone, but it seems like something that is going to make life for M.L.S. grads miserable. I’m not expertly versed on the the profession’s job prospects, but if it turns out that librarians start waiting to retire even longer then life could be hard for the “young un’s.” The reason partially has to do with a rough entry level environment. This absolutely brutal article from LibraryJournal.com – despite it’s age – seems to hammer the nail into the coffin too.

Uhoh!

So to my point… The possibility for any youthful Renaissance in dealing with electronic resources seems nonexistent.  Here’s why:  If there is a massive amount of competition then it makes landing a job hard, and this can directly impact the collective “perspective” of the profession. Let’s face it, if it takes an M.L.S. and 5+ years of work experience to get a decent job then the average age of everyone will be high. Moreover, the age factor often hints at if or if not someone is tech savvy. The tough entry level arena for M.L.S. grads is killer too! For those qualified, given the choice between working where they want and doing what they can do I suspect that a young librarian would jump ship in a minute. Why wait around if you might be able to find a job doing some web development, building computers, or programing something somewhere? Especially when you have bills to pay.

Double uhoh.