Project Detail

Description

The project is to write a Flash ActionScript application which will be a framework to host multimedia educational book for children. The application will be distributed on CD so performance is the key issue. The base for this application is a printed book which is meant to teach English language. Scans of the book are attached to this description.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

The objective of this project is not to digitalize the whole book but to build a framework for loading, navigating the book content, storing bookmark, etc. All other .swf's loaded by the framework will be produced during the framework creation and after it is built by our Graphics/Flash Developers.

The framework must use .xml descriptor to load the content of the book. This descriptor will contain:
- TOC of the whole book
- page contents connected to the TOC (described in more detail below)
- each page has a small dictionary of words and phrases which is contained in the texts. Those words and phrases must be loaded from external .swf files (i.e. an swf file will contain word in English, word in Polish, and it will be clickable – when you click it the word will be read in english)

The application has to be fullscreen.

There will be 6 types of full screen content/pages (each one attached to this description) and a small number of types of content loaded to those screens. The book has several stories (like Pinokio, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.)

1.Simple page with text and voice record of this text (both in one swf)
2.Table of Contents (TOC) – more detailed than in the example
3.Title page of a story
4.Regular page of a story, it is composed of:
- Image with animation + 2 texts – polish + english and voice record
- List of used terms on the left – will slide out on rollover and read on click, those terms (with recording) will be in one .swf each and loaded basing on the descriptor.
- Image dictionary of words on the right – will slide out on rollover and read on click, those words (and image and recording) will be in one .swf each and loaded basing on the descriptor.
5.The whole story on one page (or 2 pages) – still under discussion how it will look exactlty
6.The index of all words/terms used in the whole story (and one index for the whole book) which will contain the list of words used in the story. There are some features of index under discussion right now (i.e. read the word after click, navigate to page where the word is used, etc.)

Reading the text is not a task of this project. All texts and words will be recorded.

The xml file will contain all the information upon which the extarnal swf's will be loaded, connected and ordered (for example: page 1 - 100).

The application must have the following features:
- navigation through the pages
- bookmark stored on the user's computer (to mark where you finished reading)
- for performance reasons (reading from a CD takes time when the application has been inactive) the next page of the book has to be loaded to memory when reading the previous one – i.e. when the user reads page 2, page 3 has to be loaded to memory, so when the user navigates to it it shows up smoothly. Furthermore page 1 has to stay loaded if the user wants to switch back. The other pages must be unloaded so the application can run smoothly and take use much memory, because the book will have about 140 pages.
- when the user uses the TOC, index, or clicks the navigation button several times the application has to show up a preloader to load requested content smoothly (all the performance rules above must apply to this situation)


Additional files submitted:
1_plain_text.jpg
2_TOC.jpg
3_story_title.jpg
4_page.jpg
5_half_of_whole_story.jpg
6_index.jpg