1. Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 131 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie Lesson 13

2. 2 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Objectives Make Flash content accessible. Add named anchors for browser navigation capabilities. Publish a Flash movie for a Web site.

3. 3 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Make Flash content accessible There are many people who surf the Web but suffer from some sort of disability, such as visual impairment. Flash allows you to create a screen reader to make a Flash Web site more accessible to these people. A screen reader “reads aloud” the content of the Web site for someone who has trouble seeing it. While it is best to design a site for accessibility from the beginning of your design, accessibility can also be built into an existing Web site.

4. 4 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 What Flash components can be accessed by a screen reader? Text, buttons, and movie clips are all accessible by default in Flash. All static, input, and dynamic text boxes can be read in their entirety. The instance names of all movie clips and button instances can be read by the reader. Some components and arrangements of components can cause problems and have to be dealt with individually.

5. 5 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Adding overall accessibility to a site Open the Flash document and make sure no objects are selected. Click the Edit accessibility settings button in the Property inspector to open the Accessibility dialog box. Check the following boxes: Make Movie Accessible – Exposes the movie to the screen reader. Make Child Objects Accessible – Exposes all sub-movies to the screen reader. Auto Label – Labels buttons with the text on the button. Assign a name in the Name box for your Web site. Enter a description for the site which will be read after the title of the page is read.

6. 6 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Disable confusing text for the screen reader The movie used in the text had a phone number in the top corner that would not be read in the right sequence by the reader. You could change the reader options for this one object by first converting it to a symbol. Assign it a name and movie clip behavior. While it is selected, open the Accessibility panel and deselect the Make Object Accessible option. This one object is made inaccessible to the screen reader, without affecting the rest of the objects.

7. 7 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Remove “noisy objects” from the screen reader The movie in the text also had a movie clip map with labeled locations. Having the reader read these locations at the wrong time could confuse the user. They can be disabled. Select the movie clip for the map and open the Accessibility panel. Select the Make Object Accessible option and deselect the Make Child Objects Accessible. Now the map labels will not be read. Assign a name and a description for the movie clip.

8. 8 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 The Accessibility panel This figure shows the Accessibility panel being used to remove “noise” from the map movie clip. The main map object is marked as accessible, but the child objects (the location labels) for the map are not selected. The description will be read indicating the purpose of the map, but the individual location labels will not be read.

9. 9 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Add named anchors to increase browser functionality The movie used in the text consists of four separate sections, but a browser would only recognize it as one section. This means the user could not set a bookmark or favorite for any particular section, nor would the Back and Forward buttons move the user from section to section. You can add named anchors to this type of movie to enable the user to set bookmarks and use the Back and Forward buttons. A named anchor marks frames in the Timeline that can be used to find a location or for navigation.

10. 10 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Create a named anchor To create a named anchor in your movie: Select the scene you want to use and click in one of the frames for that scene. In the Property inspector, enter a name for the location in the Frame label box. Click the arrow on the Label type box, and select Anchor. Repeat the above procedure for every frame you want to use as a named anchor.

11. 11 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 An example of a named anchor This figure shows a portion of the Property inspector where a named anchor is being created. The Frame label box has been given the name Home. The Anchor type has been selected in the Label box. Note: Even after creating your named anchors, they cannot be tested until you configure your publish settings for the movie.

12. 12 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Publish your movie for a Web site A Flash movie cannot be viewed as is in a Web browser, for they only handle HTML files. You must publish your movie as a Web site, which will create an HTML file and an SWF file. The HTML file will open the Flash document using the Macromedia Flash Player. The SWF file will contain the movie to be played by the Flash Player. Flash can automatically create the HTML file using settings you specify in the Publish Settings dialog box.

13. 13 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 The Formats tab of the Publish Settings dialog box. This figure shows the Formats tab of the dialog box. When publishing your movie for a Web site, select the Flash and the HTML options. Assign a filename for each file, then click the Flash tab at the top of the box.

14. 14 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 The Flash tab of the Publish Settings dialog box This figure shows the Flash tab of the dialog box. On this tab, you can set the version of the Flash Player to be used to play the movie. The quality setting lets you adjust for higher quality or smaller file size. You can also select audio options on this tab. When done, click the HTML tab.

15. 15 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 The HTML tab of the Publish Settings dialog box This figure shows the HTML tab of the dialog box. In this case, the template has been set to Flash with Named Anchors, which will configure the HTML code to recognize the anchors created earlier. You can set many other options to tailor the HTML code in this tab.

16. 16 Publishing a Macromedia Flash Movie – Lesson 13 Summary In this lesson, you learned: To make Flash content accessible. To add named anchors for browser navigation capabilities. To publish a Flash movie for a Web site.