a Tuesday feature

by William Hurley

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The Shockwave Project: Final Step

This week, we look at what the index menus could look like "shocked" and finish our current project. Since this Shockwave movie will not appear at the bottom of every internet.com page, not all the items are shown in the menu, and all have been disabled (as we will be explained later).

First, let's look at the functionality we have added and the Lingo code needed to produce the effect of the menus. Remember, all the Lingo for the rest of the project has already been covered in last week's column.

When using the navigation Shockwave this week, you will see that the first item that appears is Netday News. Again, not all the items are covered. If you remember, the list from our project planning section looked more like this:

Clicking on the arrow next to it will take you to the Net Resources section, continuing on with the action will take you to the Search section, and so on. This is done by simply adding the following script to the sprite (of the arrow).

on mouseDown
go to next
end

This is a very simple technique that will prove to be useful in future projects. There is, however, a second part to this technique. In the score, drag the down arrow (from the left of the score window) out to the frame you wish to be the "next" frame. This is covered in more detail in both the Director 4.0 and 5.0 resources.

What about getting to the submenus of each menu? Double-clicking on the subject in the first section will bring up a subject in the second section. This is done through the use of another doubleClick statement, which was accomplished by simply adding the following script to the text object in the cast:

on mouseDown
if the doubleClick then go to frame 40
end

At frame 40 we put the next section. This script could have easily taken us to another movie, a list, or a variety of other objects or areas. I chose this method because it is one of the best methods for a more linear layout in the score. It also follows the line of thinking that we have been using throughout the project.

When the other text objects appear in the second section, another arrow appears. This one takes you through the submenu list of items. It works in the same exact fashion as the first arrow does. Again, these are simple techniques so we do not get into them too deeply. If you do have any questions, feel free to e-mail me.

Past installments of Simply Shocking

http://www.internet.com/