Ha!Ha!HelpDesk Summer 2006

Aug 16, 2006.
Q. [FLASH] Where do those of us go to keep up to speed understanding the function/feature capabilities of Flash and aren't seeking to do actual programming? by Charles Knickerbocker. "Energy flows where attention goes..."

A. Hmmmmmm. Network with us, is my first reply. After getting your permission to publish your question, you qualified your question to target the C-levels (Executives) audience.You asked me to answer, "How does this tool make your business more efficient, more profitable, more, more, more? Without getting technically dirty."

Oh, this is gonna be fun. Why don't you just say...."Show me the Money, Honey." Okay, here goes.

First, I know you know Flash is an animation tool and not a toy, even though I did make a toy doll of the original 60's comic dude. It was paper dolls back then. Flash is an animation tool that makes movies in a file format called .swf. Some movies are small enough to broadcast on the web. Which by the way, is how you start baiting for MONEY. And big enough, well I guess you need a DVD to hold the file. Flash has an optimization function, so that you can make your movies (called .swf) small enough for your web audience's bandwidth, then you publish them to the web.

Business's are using Flash as a marketing tool to advertise. Advertising is fishing for buyers. Buyers bring you money. There's your profit factor.

How is it more efficient? Well, if you have a web page that you like to advertise on a lot, then this is an efficient, and cheap way for you to do your own advertising.

How do you keep yourself from getting technically dirty?

Stick to the simple FunkyFlash Recipes that our group will be posting soon. Visit Sue's Top Flash Links at>>http://ammug.nhive.com/flashbday.html

The other alternative is to hire a Flash Artist (Developer/Designer). Of course, the Flash Developer/Designer's time is another new cost factor to consider. My Flash Master, said never charge less than $50 hour. However, I hear about young, brilliant, Flash artists charging dirt and damn near minimum wage. I guess they are the starving Flash Artists. [Ya, know that is so wrong. Right up there with the Slavery topic, and all.] I know you won't be like that, right?

Cost to develop and design a Flash Ad? It depends what Flash artist you find. We have several in our group, that I could hook you up with and get you a guesstimate. If you're interested, then just click the comment below and I'll get our resident Flash Guru's to reply.

Flash On, dude!

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July Q. [Illustrator] How do you use an .ai File in Corel?
A recent user asked me to take an .ai file and make it useable for him to use in Corel. All my attempts yielded chunky-ugly bitmaps, even though I saved it as a PNG. A little later, I found out a fellow sleuth had successfully done it. Here's how he did it-- What you need: Adobe Acrobat and Corel Draw.

1. Open the AI file in Acrobat.
2. Then save as an EPS file.
3. Open the EPS file in Corel.

Voila! there's all the beautiful vectors all preserved. How cool is that? How did you do? See, we care.
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June Q. [FLASH] Is it possible to put a link/button on a CDROM that would only be activated if the website was actually ready?

[Hello Adobe Austin User member, I recently attended an Adobe Users Group Austin meeting. It was the June 2006 meeting. Since then a question has come up and I was wondering if youd be available to help me, or if theres a better place to go than here: http://aaugnewsletter.blogspot.com/ [nope! this is the Ha!Ha! Helpdesk.] Basically, Im trying to find out if it would be possible to put a link/button on a CDROM that would only be activated if the website was actually ready. For instance, if I burned 10,000 trial CDs with my product on it and the link was blank, this would be great. But, lets also say that a demo on my website would be ready several months later. Is it possible in Flash to have a link activated or deactivated depending on the information sent out from a URL? ~ Emily Hovland Director of Content Development --- Sleek Software Corporation www.sleek.com --- 1-800-337-5335 --- fax: 1-888-353-2900 Incredible TutorT Powerful Solutions for High-Stakes Tests

A. (from our resident Gurus's Chopin & KK) Emily,
My take would be to put a conditional statement in the Flash movie file (swf)that will check for a small text file with a variable in it from a server that would be used to "trigger" the visibility of a button if the variable is not present. That way you would have a "hybrid CD" that is dependent on outside content. Regards, Cornelius

----- From: Karen Kreps Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 2:31 PM Hi Emily, Once you burn a CD-ROM with a link to a URL on the web, it is there. You can't add or activate one after the CD-ROM has been published. But you can have it to go a holding page for the website until the full site is ready. Use some text explaining that the site is under development and to please return at X time to see what will be there. I hate using "under construction" pages on the Web. There, it's better not to provide the link. But in your case, you won't have the option of adding the link to the CD-ROM. Therefore I recommend that your holding page offer some small sampling of the kind of info that will be there and invite the user to return for future updates. Good luck. KK
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Thank you very much for getting back to me. This really helps me out. I'm glad Flash is sophisticated enough to do this.
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