Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
need to standardize when to put code directly on the timeline and
what that code should look like. Since we
'
re discussing banners in
this section, we
re not going to spend any time on frameworks
because they are, quite honestly, complete overkill for something
as small as banners. However, something that we can very easily
discuss here is naming conventions and class package structures.
In general, your class packages should be in a reverse domain
format for your company (or your client in some cases). For exam-
ple, the base of your packages might be com.yourcompany and a
package for utility classes might be com.yourcompany.utils. Once
your package structure is in place, the team should discuss and
agree on the criteria to decide which package a given class will go
in. Some will be very obvious, whereas some others may techni-
cally be able to fit okay in more than one package (though they
never should go in more than one). As for naming conventions of
classes, methods, and variables, be as descriptive as possible.
When you saw the name of the ClickTagger class, it was pretty
obvious what its purpose was, and even more obvious was the
assignClickTag
method and the
targetWindow
variable. The point is
to make it as easy as possible for someone else to step in and
use the code with as little ramp-up/learning time as possible. The
quicker standards are agreed upon within your team, and the
quicker other developers can jump in and use the code, the better.
'
The Bandwidth Profiler
While Flash
s Bandwidth Profiler can be very helpful in the devel-
opment of microsites, it can also be invaluable when you are creat-
ing banners. The most useful part of the Bandwidth Profiler during
banner development is going to the left side, which contains all the
information about the banner (Figs. 3.8 and 3.9).
'
What You See
A quick rundown on the left side of the Bandwidth Profiler (see
Fig. 3.9) gives us the following information under the
“
Movie
”
heading:
“
Dim
”
signifies the dimensions of your stage;
“
Fr rate
”
shows the frames per second at which the banner will play;
”
is one of the more important ones here because it shows the file
size of your published banner;
“
Size
“
”
Duration
lets you know how many
frames long your banner
s main timeline is and then goes on to do
the math and show you the actual number of seconds it will take
for your banner
'
s main timeline to get to the end (this is very use-
ful when you are dealing with time constraints in your specs); and
finally,
'
will tell you how long it will take your banner to
download to a user
“
Preload
”
'
s computer.
