Here is my Task:
I am an experienced Flash user, but severely limited in what I am allowed to produce at work, so I am out of practice. I am trying to convince my company (not NASA) to make more use of Flash in an effort to improve presentation techniques. This is in response to a Problem Finding by the Columbia Accident Review Board. (see the following website)
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/nytimes_1203I've been assigned to make a CD-ROM that will store over 300 images, including illustrations, photos, and video. This imagery is intended for technicians as a visual reference of parts and assemblies. There is descriptive text which must be displayed with each bit of imagery.
Here is the PROBLEM:
I suggested we use Flash and Director to create this CD-ROM. A single format could be created, (Text area, Image area, navigation bar, etc) and the presentation could be built like a guided tour. However, management has approved the project mandating that the image database be searchable so that users can type in a keyword or part number, and I will not be able to use Director. I will have to do this entirely in Flash and Actionscript, or Visual Basic.
This increases my timeline for production (I had anticipated being able to use some of Director's functionality.) while Management has demanded the project be finished sooner than I recommended. I am not panicking at this point, but I'm hoping I might draw from someone else's past success.
Here is the WORKFLOW:
I have already built a basic interface for this Flash presentation. (Text area, Image area, navigation bar, etc). The most efficient method I can surmise is to have all the images that will be displayed stored in one folder, all the text objects stored in another folder, and a spreadsheet that correlates which text goes with which image, and list potential keywords and phrases. The flash component would then be relatively small (500k - 1M), as it will only be storing the interface and Flash script. The actual search function would then search the spreadsheet for the keyword(s) and return the file locations for the associated image and text. Then the Flash element would create a list of possible hits, and display the list to the user printing the topics of each image/text set in the spreadsheet. (The topics would be a cell in the spreadsheet.) Each topic would be a hyperlink which would insert the selected image and the text into the appropriate slots in the interface. If time permits, I would like the results list to include thumbnails, similar to the following NASA site.
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/m2k4/frameset.htmlMy apologies for not going into greater detail. I'm confident I will be successful in seeing this research project through. However, as this project is important to me, and not high priority at my company, I'm hoping to find some help on the internet. I'm certain that once I have something that can be seen and touched, support will increase on future projects.
Thanks
HoloSim
Holosim@msn.com
