Re: FLASH: A teacher wonders why ActionScript tutorials "bite"

[2Nerotik]

Jumping onto the bandwagon (hey it's a free trip) =c)


At 12:04 PM 21/01/2000 +0100, Paul Kilgour wrote:

>I'd just like to add my 5 Kroner (roughly 2 cents!) to this

>argument/discussion.


Do to our (ugh) Canadian economy/taxes/inflation/exchange rate I'm forced 

to put

in my $0.02 and another $1.98 to express my opinion.


>Some people, and I am one of them, were already 15/16 years old when the

>first battery powered calculators came onto the market. I remember we had to

>buy them in kit form and put them together ourselves. And we weren't allowed

>to use them in school exams!


Yes and now they not only allow then but allow them to be programmed.


>I see you as long time PC users. This I also see as an advantage, having to

>have gone through all that DOS cr*p.


Hmm I liked DOS... go figure *shrug* but hated Win 3.1 with a passion.


>I congatulate Tom Green on his original message - I'm sure there must be a

>lot of other people out there just as mystified as us. I'd also like to take

>this opportunity to critisise Macromedia - not on the product, which is

>excellent - but the lack of information it as a company provides to people

>like us.


I think most of us are right there criticizing MM for this as well, of what 

good

is a product when you don't understand it's best features and the company

that made it didn't bother to explain what each thing does but only provided

examples and poor examples at that.


>The manuals that come with the software are, quite frankly, rubbish. For

>instance, in the manual for Flash 3 there was one whole page on FS Commands.


I think you're lucky to get even that much with F4. I mean try finding 

information

on how to use the FSCommand to change the background color of the movie, it's

there but I have NOT to date received any answer on how to use it properly 

or what

attributes for color to specify. Hex doesn't work and RGB is erratic.


>Anyway, I've strayed off the point a little. The argument was that huge

>amounts of us do not have the time or inclination to learn programming. We

>never wanted to in the first place but have been pushed into it by a

>changing market. People like Macromedia should be providing more basic

>information to make it easier, especially since some people have been using

>there products since before web design became popular.


Even for some of us who may have learned programming in high school and didn't

pursue that in college now have difficulty with JavaScript and 

ActionScripting, tho

thankfully I still remember most of it (Turbo Pascal) and at least the 

IF/THEN, functions

and other statements at least on the basic level still apply. But even that 

at most times doesn't help to actually understand everything that is going 

on in an example.


A lot of times it's "I can see it does that... BUT WHY ?"


Yes Tom we definitely need tutorials for beginners and Cheri a whole book 

is not needed to be written for 'each' tutorial, you need one tutorial 

explaining the basics

that can be referenced for the other tutorials... the problem is that 

nobody has

bothered to write that first beginners tutorial that explains all the basics.



.oOo.

|| Even if you're paranoid, maybe they really are after you.

||

||  Addicted 2 Swing ---> http://www.nisa.net/~2nerotik/

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||  HTML Writers Guild ---> http://www.hwg.org



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