RE: More on 3.4

Gregory -

The speed of a Flash presentations can be set by the author - but it does
require a lot of forethought as the speed is often "pre-set" given the
material shown. For example: the speed at which the words "Hello" move
across the flash presentation "window" will probably be faster than the
speed at which the words "Hello and welcome to my home page" will be
scrolled. And this is further influenced by the width of the presentation
"window".

But once you add multiple tracks of objects, the speed is basically pre-set.
For example: to set a presentation to the music of a song you would want the
Flash to have images and activity associated with points in the song - so
the speed of the Flash presentation will be based upon the speed of the
song. To slow the presentation down would detract from the quality and
intent of the presentation, as would speeding it up.

There's an interesting "third party" tool available from Coffeecup Software
called "Firestarter" that lets you build Flash presentations. You can get a
shareware download at: http://www.coffeecup.com/firestarter/. If you want to
bypass the Flash intro and see a screenshot go here:
http://www.coffeecup.com/firestarter/screen/.

The interesting thing is you can time how long something happens in the
presentation. For those who can't see the screenshot there's a horizontally
scrolling window at the bottom of the application that has second
delimeters, indicating how long a particular object does its thing. With
Flash you can have a background that scrolls, say from a pastoral setting to
an urban setting, with other objects doing their thing on top of the
background object. That "layer" effect is similar in logic to Netscape
layers. Each of these objects takes up a row in the timer section of the
application, and the object can be moved around to start and stop at varying
places in the whole presentation.

This is rather funny - I think there are, given 3.4, some interesting
accessibility features one could add with Flash. Especially if anyone takes
the time to see what sorts of objects can be added to the Flash presentation
with this tool. Funny ... I never would have imagined Flash as a tool for
accessibility <grin />.

-----Original Message-----
From: gregory j. rosmaita
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Sent: 8/1/2001 9:51 PM
Subject: Re: More on 3.4

aloha, chaals!

in your reply to matt's observation that users' can't control the speed
of
flash presentations, you wrote:

CMN: In otherwords, it isn't the technology, it is the author producing
particular kinds of content.

GJR: please explain how it isn't the technology?  no matter what values
the
author set, the user should (and to conform to UAAG MUST) provide a
stop,
pause, and slowing mechanism for animations -- the lack thereof
constitutes
a technological limitation, therefore, does it not?  moreover, the
author
who created the flash object probably didn't set the speed in the first
place -- he simply created something using a tool that enables
animation,
and most likely either let the tool use the default setting or used a
graphical user interface widget (such as a virtual slider or knob) to
tell
the authoring program to speed up or slow down the presentation rate...
this is typically the problem with javascripted events -- most people
who
insert javascript into their pages do _not_ hand code their java -- they
rely either on some sort of wizard interface, on pre-canned scripts, or
hand-hack the javascript until it does what they want it to do -- at
least
with their hardware/software array and settings...  again, from the
user's
point of view, these constitute technological limitations...

yes, i can open up a GIF or a JPEG with NotePad and add text, but when i
resave it, it ceases to function as a binary file...  and, unless the
common
off-the-shelf and/or "download now!" authoring tool implements an RDF
cataloging interface, such as that outlined by bert and yves' note, and
common off-the-shelf slash "download now!" slash "already on the damn
machine" user agents support RDF lookups (or sites spring up providing
an
intermediary interface), i don't foresee developers -- other than those
developing back-end software specifically targeted at the information
retrieval industry -- rushing to implement bert and yves' solution, no
matter how elegant (and i do think it elegant)

gregory.
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Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
            Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
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Received on Thursday, 2 August 2001 01:01:24 UTC