Website Designers and Webmasters

This post is about variables in AcrionScript (the programming language for Macromedia/Adobe Flash).

ActionScript Basics

Some very quick basics

// <- These two slashes are a comment.
// Everything after a comment on that line
// will not be processed by Flash

every.statement.ends.with.a.semicolon;

Varbiable Basics

What is a variable? A variable is group of numbers and letters or one letter that will store an amount, a string or a true/false statement. A variable cannot start with a number.

// This Creates the variable “x” and
// gives it the numeric value of 4
x = 4;

// trace() will display whatever you put
// between the “(” and “)”.
trace(x);

// That will display: 4

In this example, the numeric value of “4″ was stored in the variable “x”. Here is another example:

number = “4″;

trace(number);
// 4

These last two examples were very similar, but notice that the variable (number) was given the value of “4″ (with quotes around it). The quotes changed the value of the variable from a numeric value to a string. A string is just a group of number, letters, symbols, etc. defined with quotes.

statement = “Here’s a statement for you”;

trace(statement);
// Here’s a statement for you

As I mentioned above, you can give a variable a numeric, string or true/false value. This third value type is called a Boolean value. A boolean value is either yes/no, true/false, 1/0, on/off, etc. In Action Script, you can assign them with either true/false or 1/0.

go = true;

trace(go);
// true

That is a quick summary of how to declare variables the shorthand way in ActionScript. My next posts will be along these same lines, so if you are hungry for more, check out my other ActionScript Posts them out.

If you have any questions, or if I was unclear at any part, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll get it fixed up for you.

-Until Then,
-Ashton Sanders

Yes, Google is a lot of different things. One of the things that Google is, is “Funny”

I don’t know who figured this out… but let just say you wanted to drive from Boston, MA to …. France! You could ask Google Maps to give you directions…

And It’s actually a fairly simple process. I’ve got the map saved Here:

Click to Get Directions

I’d like to bring your attention to step 5.

HAHAHA

-”I love Google!”
-Ashton Sanders

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) make it very easy to replace text with an image. Here is the whole process described in as few words as possible:

Background Information

In CSS, “display:none” will cause that element and every child in it to disappear. There is nothing you can do to make one of the child’s element.
“background-image” give an element a background. This can be applied to just about every element.

Create the Elements in HTML

In your HTML, write this:

<h3 id=”title”>
<span>Here is the Title!</span>
</h3>

Create the CSS to replace the text with an image

In your CSS, write this:

/* Remove the Text */
#title span {
display:none;
}

h3#title {
background: url(“image/url.jpg”) no-repeat top left;
height: 20px;
width: 100px;
}

And Bam! Your text has disappeared off of the page, and the H3 element is 20 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall. It also has an image for a background that is aligned in the top left corner.

I’ve seen that CSS Text Replacement technique described with two pages, so I thought I’d see how short of a blog I could make out of it.

And Now you know how to replace text with an Image!

On a side Note, I’ve also seen this done with: “text-indent: -5000px;” or “visibility:hidden”. These work, but I would stick with display:none. It’s the cleanest way to do it.

-I hope that helps you out with your CSS and Design Needs.
-Ashton Sanders

Absolute Positioning with CSS can be a very useful thing.

I’ve been working a lot with CSS over the last year, but I’ve just recently discovered the secret to absolute positioning.

Absolute Positioning in CSS

Absolute positioning will allow you to move an HTML item from anywhere in your code to the same spot. For Example: The side bar on this page (Top Horse Connection) is at the very bottom of the HTML code. But the CSS absolute positioning tells the side bar to be positioned 170 pixels from the top of the page. Here is the CSS Code:

#sidebar {
position:absolute;
top: 170px;
left:0;
}

As you can see, it’s very simple. And it’s very useful when you want something to align along the right or left side of the screen. But what if you want a sidebar to be positioned in the middle of your screen (lets say 300 pixels to the left of the exact middle)?

You could do:

#sidebar {
position:absolute;
top: 170px;
left:400px;
}

On a 1400 pixel-wide-screen, that would work perfectly!, but what if your screen was 800 pixels wide, then the sidebar would be 100 pixels to the right of the middle… So what now?!?!

This is what would you do:

#sidebar {
position:absolute;
top: 170px;
left: 50%;
margin-left: -300px;
}

And Wala!

-More on the way
-Ashton Sanders

This is a PHP tutorial to add advanced include templates to your site.

What you need to know

• Basic PHP functions: include(); and the “for” loop.

Background PHP Information

It is a very useful thing to use a template on your site. Once I have finished designing a site, and converted it into XHTML/CSS, I then make two (or more) includes out of it: “header.php” and “footer.php”. Those two includes have everything that is the same on every page of the site. This allows me to easily add or remove a button, change the layout, etc. All I have to do is change one file, and the entire site is updated!

What’s the Problem?

If you know includes, you know that they must be relative paths, not absolute. (So if your page is in the pages folder (/pages/) and your header.php is in the header folder (/header/), you will need to write your include like this:

include(../header/header.php);

The problem arises when you don’t want to hard code every new page, in every new folder.

PHP Solution

Here is a simple for loop that will figure out what folder you are in, and put the appropriate number of “../”s to make your includes work:

<?
$folder = split(“/”, $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
$rootpath = “”;
for($count = count($folder); $count > 2; $count–){
$rootpath .= “../”;
}
include($rootpath . “include/header.php”);
?>

There you have it, some sweet, yet simple PHP.

-Enjoy,
-Ashton Sanders