Behavioral Research with Flash Workshop at NYU – April 2010

(Updated 4/05/2010)

Welcome to the information page for the Programming Experiment in Flash Workshop. Here you will find all the required resources.

Workshop Schedule:

Session 1: Thursday, April 8th (10-12pm)
Session 2: Thursday, April 8th (2 – 4pm)
Session 3: Friday, April 9th (10-12pm)
Location:
- Thursday: KMC 4-120 (44 W. 4th St.)
- Friday: KMC 4-120

Required/Recommended Programs

Adobe Flash CS4 – http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/
- This is the primary program used to create experiments. You can download a free trial at the link above or you can see if your IT dept has a license for it.
- Although version CS4 is not required, it is the one I will be using during the workshop. If you have an older version, you will be fine.
- Although I am using CS4, all Actionscript is version 2.0 (not 3.0). If you don’t know what this means, don’t worry about it.
EditPad Pro – http://www.editpadpro.com/
- This is a very versatile and free text editing software we will use for editing PhP documents.
- By no means is this particular program required, but I text editor slightly more advanced than Notepad will make your life easier.
Filezilla (Client) – http://filezilla-project.org/
- This is a free FTP program that we will use to upload all of our files to a web server.
- Like EditPad Pro, you do not need this particular program, but it is quite good and the one I will use.

Introductory Resources

Flash Introduction (University of Kansas ) – http://www.techdocs.ku.edu/docs/flash_mx2004_introduction.pdf
- This is a very nice introduction to the basics of Flash done by the Academic Computing Services of the University of Kansas.
- This document uses Flash MX 2004, but the basics are all the same as CS4.
- Feel free to ignore everything related to animation (e.g. Tweening) as it is not relevant for this workshop.
Total Training Videos – http://www.totaltraining.com/prod/adobe/flashpro8.asp
- Total Training is a teaching product that has instructional videos for a lot of computer related products.
- I don’t suggest that you go out and buy the Flash videos, but they do provide quite a few of the introductory ones for free. Just go to the above link and click on “Free Tutorials.”
- Follow the instructions and you’ll be taken to the videos. I suggest going through as much as you can in the courses “Flash Professional 8″ and “Flash Professional 8 â€“ Actionscript,” You can check out the Flash CS3 tutorials too, but I suspect they will be redundant.

Important Files

Download this zip file to get all files described below (http://www.jeffgalak.com/flashworkshop/nyu2010/files.zip)
Workshop Files 1-
- The folder contains:
  1. workshopfiles.fla: This is the file you open in Flash to edit. It is formatted to work ONLY with Flash CS3 (or newer) and is what I will be using.
  2. workshopfiles.swf: This is the compiled version of the program that you would upload to your web server.
  3. workshopfiles.txt: This is a text file that you can ignore. It simply keeps track of the conditions (more on this in the workshop).
  4. workshopfiles.php: This is the php script that opens the program on the server and assigns conditions.
  5. parseflash.php: This is the code that handles all the data processing.
  6. workshopfilesdebrief.php: This is the file where you include your debriefing. Edit it with EditPad Pro.
  7. jeff.jpg: An image used in the program
  8. leff.jpg: Another image.
- You can see what the final version looks like here: http://www.jeffgalak.com/flashworkshop/nyu2010/workshopfiles/workshopfiles.php
Workshop Files 2 –
- The folder contains:
  1. workshopfiles2.fla: This is the file you open in Flash to edit. It is formatted to work ONLY with Flash CS3 (or newer) and is what I will be using.
  2. workshopfiles2.swf: This is the compiled version of the program that you would upload to your web server.
  3. workshopfiles2.txt: This is a text file that you can ignore. It simply keeps track of the conditions (more on this in the workshop).
  4. workshopfiles2.php: This is the php script that opens the program on the server and assigns conditions.
  5. parseflash.php: This is the code that handles all the data processing.
  6. workshopfiles2debrief.php: This is the file where you include your debriefing. Edit it with EditPad Pro.
  7. forthebirds.flv: Video file for the program.
  8. lifted.flv: Another video file for the program.
- You can see what the final version looks like here: http://www.jeffgalak.com/flashworkshop/nyu2010/workshopfiles2/workshopfiles2.php
MP3 Study Files
- The folder contains:
  1. MP3 Study Template.doc: what we’ll base our first study off of.
  2. mp3player1.jpg: a file we need for the program
  3. mp3player2.jpg: a file we need for the program
Experiment Check List

I will also upload all the powerpoint slides as they are created. We wind up making lots of changes during the sessions, so I’ll only upload them afterwards. HOWEVER, I will bring print outs for everyone to take notes on.

Other Useful Information (to be populated as needed):

1. Here are the most frequently used HTML tags to use when formatting text in a dynamic text box. Remember, you MUST a) check the “render as HTML” box for the dynamic text box and b) send the data via a variable (as opposed to via the ‘text’ property). So here’s an example of correct formatting: outputtext = “This is a test”;

Bold: (use: This is a test Results in: This is a test)
Underline: (use: This is a test Results in: This is a test)
Italics: (use: This is a test Results in: This is a test)
Colors: (use: This is a test Results in: This is a test)
- To set the color, look up the hex code at: http://www.2createawebsite.com/build/hex-colors.html

2. As promised, here is the “baseprogram_all.fla” file. This contains all the different scales, inputs and whatnot for you to use as you see fit.

In this program, I’ve added radio buttons and a way to show a “red x” on top of an image.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at jgalak@cmu.edu

Jeff Galak