Week 10: Portfolio Breakthroughs

This week, I continued to work on my portfolio site. I added a few pieces of paper and drawings to the background that is behind the book on the opening page. I also added the link that will open the book so the pieces can be seen. For the sake of time, I've given up making an animation of the book moving from laying closed to sitting up open. Instead, the view will just switch from one view to the other with no animation in between. Considering that change, I also added a background of scattered papers and pencils to the main part of the portfolio. Here are some screenshots of the background and a link to the opening page of my portfolio:I also fixed the problem of the next and back buttons not working if you clicked a tab first. Of course, the solution was something incredibly simple that never would have occurred to me. I simply masked the back button of the first page and the next button on the last page. They are still there and can still be clicked, but I'm the only one who know they're there. Before, clicking on the pieces in the book opened a larger version, so the details could be seen. I couldn't figure out where to put the code to get back to the main portfolio, though, with the child or the parent. It didn't seem to matter where I put it, I got an error message that the return button wasn't being detected. I finally realized that the code I was using was looking for a button to be clicked on when I didn't have a button. I deleted the code that looked for a particular button and asked it, instead, to just listen for a click anywhere as the cue to return to the parent. That fixed that problem. Here is a link to the page with working children:

The problem I''ve been having with the page turning animation is still something I haven't figured out. I left that alone this week in favor of working on other things that I thought I could solve fairly easily. The fix for the problem with the back button on the first page gave man an idea, though. It may be a question of creating a mask of some sort in the page turning animaton that will keep the content from being seen until the page finishes turning. If that works, I really only have to put a resume on the page I've reserved for it; and I think my portfolio will be done.

Week 9: Portfolio Still

I spent a lot of time this week looking for how to fix the problem that I discovered last week. When the pages turn backwards, you see the previous piece before and after the page turning animation plays when you should only see the previous piece after the page turning animation plays. I spent a lot of time looking for tutorials, hoping to find one that addressed the problem of turning the pages backwards. I found a few full animations of books with pages that turn forward and back. The action script was hidden, though (They were copyrighted, I think.); and I couldn't see it; so they weren't very helpful. I didn't find one that helped me fix the problem, but here are screenshots of and links to two of the best page turning tutorials:

When I couldn't figure anything out to fix that, I started working on making the pieces in my portfolio into buttons. When someone clicks on them, they will get a larger version of the piece so they can see the details. Here's a link to the portfolio as it stands now:

I did notice some more problems with the next and back buttons. If you click on them in the very first frame, they work just like they should. If you don't click on one of them and click on a tab first, the next and back buttons don't work at all. I'm sure it's some little quirk of action script that I need to figure out. That's what I'll start out working on next week.

Week 8: Portfolio

This week I did some more work on my portfolio website. I actually have the animation that takes people through the portfolio mostly finished. All the tabs work, and the pages turn forwards and backwards. The one big problem I have is what happens when the pages turn backwards. The frame changes to the previous one, which means the piece displayed on the page changes, before the page turning animation plays. So, you see the previous page before the page turns and again when the page turning animation ends. I'm not exactly sure how to fix this problem, but I'll work on it. This is a screenshot of the portfolio animation and a link to the animation as it stands so far. I've also done some more work on the first page of the site. Most significantly, I've added my name to the first page of the notebook. I figure it's probably pretty important that people know whose portfolio they're looking at. I

still have to animate the book from where it rests on the desk at first and get it in place to match up with the animation I've already got and finish the desktop where the book is.