Flash:
Building Easily Replaceable Components
By Butch Pfremmer
Vice President, eLearning
Practice
butch.pfremmer@welocalize.com
Photos and
AVI movies depicting people are often not appropriate for international
markets. If locale-specific imagery
is necessary for the application, it should be included in the Flash source
in such a way that it can be replaced with localized imagery with the least
possible effort. This requires
building a library that comprises graphic and video symbols that can be
replaced by importing localized versions.
What is a localizable
library?
The Flash
library is a repository of the shapes, images, movies, audio, and other
objects that can appear in a Flash movie.
Library objects can be stored in folders, making organization of the
objects simple and efficient.
Right-clicking
on elements in the library gives a contextual menu that allows access to
the elements' Properties. In the
Properties dialog, you can import localized versions of the elements in the
Flash file quickly.
Clicking the
Import button in the Properties dialog box for a library object gives a
dialog that lets you search the file system for the new object to import in
place of the original. The library
object will retain its name in the library.
No further localization is necessary, aside from possible rearrangement
of objects on the stage to account for differences in the placement of
items on-screen in the localized imagery or video.
Naming of Library Elements
Items in the
library should be named using a descriptive naming convention. Any naming convention can work so long as
the items are named unambiguously.
Library names such as "Symbol 7" or "graphic"
are not helpful to the localization engineer, who will have to sift through
the library looking for individual elements to localize.
Regarding e-learning programming
If on-screen
simulations of computer software are to be localized, it is common to
record AVI movies of software simulations using software such as
Camtasia. For simple simulations,
this is often the best alternative, as simulations can be recorded, edited,
and imported into Flash (in the manner described above) generally with
little effort. Simulations up to two
minutes in length can be localized easily this way. For longer simulations, a series of
simple video demonstrations can be imported into Flash and shown in
sequence.
Longer
simulations may require a different technique, as the size of the AVI files
generated by video recording software can be large. Also, it is often difficult to ensure
synchronization between AVIs and audio files in Flash. Localization of long, complex simulations
can be simplified by animating ("tweening") cursor movements in
Flash and importing imagery containing the content of the simulation.
For example,
the movement of the cursor to a menu, selecting the menu, and selecting a
menu option can be animated in flash:
In such
cases, the layering of items on the timeline is critical. Layers must be named using obvious
pertinent language or a structured taxonomy. It is very helpful to use layer folders
to organize the layers on the timeline.
Complex
simulations should be constructed this way in order to keep file size down
and to ensure synchronization of audio and video.
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