Boxercast for CS205: Recent Episodes
Michael Geraci
Podcasts for the Pacific University Community. The CS205 podcast supports Mike Geraci's Introduction to Programming for Multimedia class. Each episode features a short lecture about a single concept in ActionScript 2.0. These lectures are designed to assist students with little or no experience with programming languages.
Episode 9: Loops are a very powerful aspect of any programming language, they allow you to perform a series of actions quickly and efficiently. in this episode, we'll talk about all the different types of loops in ActionScript, with special emphais on the "for" loop.
Episode 8: conditional statements are vital to any programming language. This podcast introduces you to "if" statements in ActionScript and their more versatile counterpart, the "switch".
Episode 7 talks about how and why we pass a parameter to a function or a method. Some functions just need a little extra direction before they can do their job just like you and I need to know exactly what we're hungry for when we go to make a sandwich.
Episode 6 introduces a "big picture" concept: objects and classes, the pre-defined elements that swirl around the Flash universe, and the system by which they are organized. Key topics in this episode include: a discussion of methods and properties, a discussion about the power and glory of movieclips, the notion of instantiatiion; and inheritance.
Episode 5 introduces you to variables. You'll learn how to declare, initialize, set, and change a variable. The slightly more complex aspects of variables are also introduced: you'll hear about strict typing your variables, and the scope of variables.
Episode 4 deciphers one of the first 'serious" code examples in the texbook. Chapter 4, page 77 features 12 lines of ActionScript that is designed to show how to use Boolean data types.
Episode 3 discusses some of the more important aspects of writing ActionScript. Topics include: naming instances, formatting statements, and the built-in utilities for checking your code for errors.
Episode 2 introduces the concept of event-driven interactions in Flash. What are events? What types of events are there? How do you trigger reactions to them with ActionScript? All these will be discussed and more.
Episode 1 covers some of the basics about Flash ActionScript, SWF files, the Flash player application, and how to start writing code. There is also some information about where to access the online documentation for Flash.