A series of sprites that can be used for gaming.
Zip
file or Sit
file
A series of buttons created in Flash.The .fla and .swf files
are included.
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file or Sit File
Looking for some "prerolled" and "precoded" Director
buttons?
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file or Sit
File
The Glass Wall is an 89-page .pdf document that
follows the redesign of the BBC's home page.
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file or Sit
File
When I first saw these things my first reaction was, just how the hell do I describe them?. My first reaction was , They are code driven art. That sounded a little presumptuous . So I thought about them a bit more decided the best way of describing these things is as interactive clip art.
In this exercise I'll walk you through how to apply and manipulate an Auto Shape from the Toolbar and how to play with one of the Autoshapes that come prepackaged with the application.
Auto Shapes are accessed from the toolbar and the new Shapes panel. The toolbar autoshapes are located , as shown, at the bottom of the rectangle tool's pop down. As you can see there 11 new shapes ranging from arrows to stars.
The Autoshapes are selected from the pop down menu under the rectangle tool.
1. Select the Doughnut autoshape and click/drag a doughnut onto the canvas. The first thing you will notice are two sets of handles. The blue handles are the familiar handles used to manipulate objects on the Canvas. The yellow handles, called Control Points control the physical properties of the Autoshape. These control points are driven by JavaScript, thus my quandary around how to describe auto shapes.
2. If you roll the mouse over a Control Point you will be shown a tool tip. In the case of the doughnut, clicking the centre point removes the hols. Clicking and dragging the one to the right makes the hole bigger and clicking the one at the top will segment the doughnut.
Control Points allow you to manipulate an autoshape because they are JavaScript-driven.
3. Once a Smart Shape is on the Canvas it can be treated as regular artwork and manipulated. In the image below I've simply added an Inner Bevel to the doughnut. As you can see the Auto Shape tools are a great starting point for some creative work.
Once on the canvas Auto Shapes can be manipulated just like any object in the drawing.
The other group of Auto Shapes is located in the Assets panel. These are predrawn interactive clip art and I agree with Kim this is one area where Fireworks MX 2004 should receive a lot of attention and I can hardly wait to see what shapes are made available to us by independent developers.
1. Open the Assets Panel and click the Shapes tab. The nine shapes included in this release will appear in the Shapes Panel.
Fireworks MX 2004 ships with nine basic Auto Shapes.
2. The shapes then be dragged and dropped onto the Canvas. I will be using the Clock Auto Shape.
3. Click the shape and you will see four Control Points. They are:
Top- Hour. Drag this to move the hour hand.
Center- Click this and the JavaScript dialog box shown opens and asks you to set the time.
Right- Minutes. Drag this to move the minute hand.
Left- Tick marks. This one is really neat. Click it and the minutes appear on the clock face.
The Javascript dialog box lets you enter the time. This is what adds the "interactive to the phrase interactive clip art.
4. As I stated earlier these things are simply objects on the canvas and can be manipulated. For example, in this instance I want to replace the red area of the clock with something a little bit more interesting such as Goo Blue. Select the Subselect tool and click once inside the red ring around the clock face.
5. Select Goo Blue from the Pattern Fill pop down menu on the Property Inspector and the Clock is now filled with Goo Blue.
A clock filled with Blue Goo.