Multimedia Authoring

In the course we use Flex and actionscript to build interactive multimedia applications. The computers in the FEW lab rooms contain the software to work with Flex. To install the software on your own machine follow, check the instructions.

Team accounts

• Register your team (if you have not already done so).
• Read instructions to use your team account.

Getting started with Flex

To build an application with Flex you can choose to use the all-in Flash builder or your favorite editor and manually compile your source with the Flex SDK.

• Flash builder: A step-by-step guide to make your first ActionScript application.
  or,
• Flex SDK: A step-by-step guide to compile a Flex (.mxml) file on the console.

or,
• Eclipse interface design utility: A step-by-step guide to design your first Flex component.

Assignments

In the first part of the course you get hands-on experience with Flex by building three multimedia applications.

Assignment I: logo

Create a logo with effects and animations, and link to homepage.

Assignment II: image viewer

Create a data-driven application that displays a sequence of objects from the Amsterdam Museum. The display should at least include an image for each object and allow navigation within the sequence.

Fetch your data from the web service of the Amsterdam museum:

• read the web service instructions
• create a search query to get results
  e.g. http://amdata.adlibsoft.com/wwwopac.ashx?database=AMcollect&search=title=rembrandtplein
• the location of the images you find in the XML element <reproduction.reference>
• prefix this with http://ahm.adlibsoft.com/ahmimages/ to fetch your image

When there are problems with the server you can access the static XML file from:
http://www.few.vu.nl/~michielh/mma/assignments/am.xml
Also check the tutorial page for the example viewer shown in class.

Tutorial:Actionscript Basics. Image loading & XML parsing.

Assignment III: presentation wizard

Create an authoring application that allows a user to create a presentation.

• use the image viewer from Assignment II to select images
• provide functionality to put the images on a slide
• provide functionality to enrich the slide, e.g. text, drawing, animations
• play the slides in sequence, possibly with animated transitions

An simple example can be found on the resources page, under 'tutorials'.

Final project

In the second part of the course you work on your own project. As a project context we suggest the Amsterdam museum, or culture in Amsterdam. For example:

• games for visitors
• touch screen applications
• location-based services
• social-media based games

Projects outside this context can be discussed.
As a first step, you have brainstormed resulting in one or two ideas. On the brainstorm page, we list your initial ideas.
The peer reviews of your concept presentations are now available.