Dear Thursday:

I love you. You are the last day of my work week. Most people give Friday all of the props and push you under the rug as just another day. At DDA though, you are the pinnacle day.

After 3 days of working hard programming websites, animating in 2D with flash, and/or animating and modeling in 3D with lightwave, you bring me a happy feeling. When 5 o’clock rolls around I know there is a beer with my name on it, thanks to you. Before I leave I also know that my paycheck will be given to me as well, thanks to you. When I’m driving home I get an awesome feeling knowing that I can stay up as late as I want, thanks to you. There is also the week’s best lineup of prime time shows on television at night, again, all thanks to you.

So my dear Thursday, I just wanted to let you know my feelings about you and that I appreciate all you do. Keep up the good work.

Your not so secret admirer,

Vinnie

PS: Same time next week. I’ll be waiting for you…

I’m currently part of a group who are undertaking a large scale website update on numerous pages of a site. This task involves numerous changes on every page and can’t be done with a simple find and replace command because all this new information and alterations need to be tailored to the specific page.

On the first page I did this on, I had to actually get the changes made, and then make sure that all of the tables and everything else matched up to the example page we were provided. This was sort of working out the kinks and helped me find out what needed to be changed and in what way. This also took me a bit of time, but only so I could be sure it was all correctly done.

For the next few pages I knew what needed to be changed, but I still found myself wasting clicks. I would copy some ColdFusion link information from the old page and put it on the new page and then find that I needed that information later on another part. I would then have to go and copy and paste it again.

Finding all of these little details allowed me to create an order to do the changes. This new method made the time it takes me per page as efficient as it can be. Having a set routine also minimizes the chance that I would miss any part of the updates because each part is its own step.

Setting up a method for involved changes saves time, reduces errors, and can remove the madness from the whole process.

When we make websites, we have the keen eyes of our designers make the website design and styles. They use Latin text as a placeholder on the pages. Our awesome staff of writers write the content and search engine optimization keywords for all of the pages to be. Once the design is approved and we are ready to move forward, the design and content have to be put together. We call this building out the pages and it can be a long and tedious process, depending on the size of the site, but it can be done no other way.

At DDA we have a large number of people who are capable of taking on this task, so it is an easy type of workload to manage. It is actually a useful thing to have around when workloads need to be managed because is a versatile job to be assigned that can assure that everyone is able to stay busy and productive at all times. Plus, it is essential to creating websites, so it has to be done.

When using tweens between frames in Flash, you can either use the motion tween or the shape tween. Both have their positives and negatives, but both also have their uses. For me, the motion tween is the one used most often.

Motion tween works with movie clips and you can only have one single component on the frames you are tweening to not get an error. This is great to use if you want to show an item moving, rotating, changing in size, or a combination of any of these. Beyond these uses, the motion tween is helpless.

The shape tween on the other hand deals with items that aren’t made into clips. It can use any amount of drawn items on the stage during its tween and can change the shape and color of these items. It can also make things move, rotate, and change in size, but not in the precise way that the motion tween does. There are many times when the shape tween will give you unexpected results and oftentimes you will need to give it help to get it to morph in the way that you want it to. It calculates the shape shifting itself and always seems to take the quickest path to the new shape, even though that may not be what you want. The shape tween also takes more effort on the computer’s part to play when it is finished and on the Internet, though this is becoming less of an issue as computers are becoming more powerful.

Both tweens have their strengths and weaknesses and do what the other cannot. You just need to decide what you want done to choose your tween. But for the most part, motion tweens get the majority of things done without any headaches.

I recently needed to find out how to resize images that are being stored on the server using ColdFusion. My initial search didn’t show me any built-in existing ColdFusion tags that could do this, so I searched more. I was finding plenty of add-ons that could do this task, but they were all charging a fee for their product. A fellow worker had needed to do some image resizing before and gave me a link to a free open source version of image resizing code. Open source to the rescue again.

This image resizing add-on does everything I need. You can scale the image proportionally or by just either height or width, control the compression and quality, overlay a watermark, and so much more. It works with all the most common formats too. JPG, GIF, and PNG are all supported. The best part is that it’s all free.

Open source code is a very useful ally in the coding world. With open source code available out there, time that would have been spent coding my own image resizing add-on, can now be spent pushing the envelope in a different way.

Open source code is a great asset and idea in the programming world and allows the complexity and capability of future programs and applications to be that much better. Since we don’t need to waste time making stuff that has already been done, we can use that time making stuff that’s never been done. It saves money for people paying for the work as well. Less time spent on writing the code that open source has provided means less time to pay a programmer for. Everyone benefits. Well, except for those people who are trying to sell the code. They might go out of business.

At DDA, I have been able to make various 3D animations, flash animations and applications, and numerous website updates. No matter how much I have made, I still can’t help but show every new finished product to everyone I know. My parents, siblings, relatives, girlfriend, and family friends have all been given a glimpse at the projects I have been able to work on.

The fact that I love to show off the finished products is a tribute to DDA and its innovation, creativity, and ability to push the envelope. If I was constantly making generic, cookie-cutter animations that were just adjusted to match a new company theme, I would have no reason to show anybody. It would be like saying, “Hey, look at this thing I already showed you” or “Look at this thing I made that you’ve probably seen on numerous websites before.”

The things I get to show them I know they’ve never seen before. The DDA Power Pyramid for instance is a really new concept for showing off some portfolio work and there is nothing else like it out there. Plus, it’s just flat out cool to play with. That one always gets shown if I know you haven’t seen it before. You can tell by people’s reactions too that these things are new to them and that they are impressed because of the “wow” that comes out of their mouths. The wow factor is always a good indicator.

I know there are more creative projects on the horizon to work on and when they are finished I will be proudly showing them to everyone.

Adding an animation, whether it be flash, an animated gif, or a video clip, is a great way to grab a user’s attention on a website. It is also a way to give visual representation that may make understanding a concept easier than with just text or a static image. Motion from the animation will attract the user’s eye and will get them to at least notice it. What you want to convey when you get their attention is the key.

My first task in Flash here at DDA was actually to make a text item do a quick spin at set intervals. This was because it was a key link on the site and we wanted to make sure that people noticed it and knew where it was to click on.

Currently, we are using animation to get a message across more easily. We have some product spins on a site and we want to let the user know that these are available to view if they click. So we are adding little flash animations of an arrow circling some “360 degree” text. This grabs attention and gets the message across quickly and easily once the focus is on the animation. The alternative was just standard text which isn’t very attention grabbing at all in comparison.

Some animation, when carefully thought out, can add a great deal to your website in the area of usability. Try using them in your own site, but don’t overdo it either. Too much animation can actually add confusion. Aim for a delicate balance and ask yourself if every animation has a purpose before you decide to add it.

Common practice here for me when working in Flash or Lightwave is to always save. I save often and I save many copies. I will typically save a new version every time that I reach a new step, fix the latest problem, or undertake a new phase in the project. I typically label them with numerical values attached to the end of the filename. For example, “test1.fla,” “test2.fla,” “test3.fla,” and so on.

This is the best way to work in my eyes because there are always mysterious and unforeseen problems that can occur.

For instance, in Lightwave we had a project that we worked on for a long time and had been saving many copies. Then a mystery error occurred which corrupted the file we had saved and it would not reopen. It wasn’t a catastrophic problem because we could just open the last version of the project and minimize the damage.

Another problem that could happen is accidentally deleting something important that can’t be undone. Yet another, is a mysterious error in your latest version that makes the program close itself every time you run it. These can both be remedied as long as you have backup versions that you know work and haven’t been tainted with any of the latest code or errors that you may have made.

This practice is the best way to ensure that there are no devastating problems that would cause you to start over from scratch. If you aren’t saving multiple versions yet, you should start.

We’re making our sites and we’re checking them twice, or more.

DDA always puts out quality products whenever we finish a piece of work. This is due in part to our extensive proofing system. Whenever we make anything, it will get a once over by numerous people throughout the company who all have different viewpoints and qualities. This confirms that what is finally decided upon will be the best solution and it will be working flawlessly.

Let’s say that we are adding a new contact form, using ColdFusion, to a website. After we get all the initial information that the client wants this form to deliver, I start making the form.

Many things can be missed when programming, usually due to oversights in what a user might input. That is why we test and test again, inputting strange data in all the fields and confirming that everything works as it should.

I initially have the email sent to myself and I may receive 50 emails from testing before the client will ever see one, just because we will not send it out until it is flawless. After creating the form, and doing my own testing, a designer may take a look at it for aesthetics, a writer will proof the text, and someone other than me will again test the functionality, while all being overseen by David.

After any work goes through this gauntlet of checking, David will get the final say. All of these perspectives from all of these different people makes the final product that we put out a unique one that allows everyone to gladly hang their hat on it and be proud that we made it.

At DDA, we are heavy into technology and keeping with the latest advances. To do this we are constantly on the lookout for new equipment, software, and methods. New programs are being made everyday in the ever evolving field that we are in, so exploring them and the possibilities that they can open for us is essential. Even if it isn’t a new program, it could be some sort of addition to something that already exists to make it easier to use or more versatile.

Some recent examples of these new technologies and advances were just discovered last week by Laurence, the Head of the Video Department. They are a Flash Actionscript 3 add-on and an add-on for websites called Piclens.

The Actionscript 3 add-on is meant to make Actionscript programming quicker just by writing code for you that is typically similar and generic in every use, but is still time consuming to write. This add-on lets you check boxes to change the specifications and then generates the code to start a new event.

Piclens on the other hand, is a freeware program that you can add to your own website or just use for your own benefit while browsing the web. It creates a wall of images that you can traverse in a seemingly 3D environment. You can also use it to play video if an image is clicked on.

These were just two things discovered last week and I’m sure this week will bring some new finds as well.

I was told in college that we are being taught to learn instead of being taught a certain programming language or program from front to back. The curriculum was built this way because in this field a method that may be used today as the standard could be old and inefficient the next.

Learning to learn will keep you on the forefront.