More website work !

So after having so much fun, and so much pride in working with Derrick on his site. I am happy to report I have 2 maybe 3 more website projects I am doing for some people in the near future. I am really excited to see what they will be looking to do and see if I can test more of my skills and see if new challenges arise.

XML done !

OK, so after getting work done from home today. I spent the afternoon getting the XML driven flash banner uploaded to Derricks site. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself. Now I need to give him the walk through of where all the files are on the sites server, then show him how to modify the XML if he were to wanna add more than 6 banners and have different links to them (I.e. different pictures pertaining to different stories or announcements/news on his site.) Over all the look is good and the functionality is better than it was.

The next time I do this I need to figure out how to get it to cross dissolve pictures into each other…..

Flash Banners & XML….what a joy

Well I spent today learning how to make a XML driven flash banner for Derricks website to make it easier for everyone to upload new banner photos. It looks cool however, its very confusing the way the flash project file links to the XML file. Your images are links to the flash file but you do your animations and transitions in the flash file with action scripts. Right now the banner is rotating 6 images by fading in and out to black with the same text as you notice on Derricks website. Now I need to figure out what to change in the action script and if I need to make a new layer to do a crossfade transition so the photos crossfade into each other instead of to black. Its up and running I just didn’t put it on the site but I want to get it to cross fade first. That is a project for this week in my free time.

Website for Derrick

The past few months I have been guiding my friend Derrick on the path of web development and design with a joomla based website for his section of scouts. http://ne6b.org. The last few days I have been demanded to learn flash and edit CSS and the HTML of the template on his site.

I have to say after fighting and with Flash CS3 and using many, Many colorful metaphors to get this looking right and to make the flash banner look like derrick wanted it to, its finally done.

Editing te CSS and HTML wasn’t that hard, thanks to the web developer extension in Firefox as well as the Safari 4  beta tools I found what i needed to edit within the template. It seemed easy, I think that’s because the CSS file was “neatly” laid out. Not sure all CSS files look that nice, but what do I know.

Over all I am happy with the way this site has turned out. It still has some content to be posted but the over all look is done (for now).

Next thing…. I need make it easier to update the flash banner so anyone can just upload photos to the server and then it just updates the banners automatically. (Mike clear your schedule …other than moving and the g/f) I’ll have questions with XML

Thanks again for the consult of Mike Graham, he gave me tips for the CSS and HTML as usual. I will be owing him many happy hour beverages by the time I get a degree in Web Development and Design.

The next thing on the list of things to do is teach Derrick how to do this himself so he can learn Flash, editing CSS, and HTML.

One thing to always remember…. BACKUP YOUR TEMPLATE !!!! It will safe your life someday….. but I didn’t tell Derrick that, however Mike knows what I mean he had to fix some mistakes I made with website templates before…..