Final Project

Here is a link to my Final Project home page. This is similar to the stub file that we set up for lab 9. I have several other .swf files that are linked from this main page. Enjoy!

Lab 9 - Linking to other .swf files

Here is my "stub" Home Page for the 4 maps I have linked for Panning and Zooming. A couple things came up in this lab - the Map reset button on each county map doesn't work. I wouldn't try it, but if you do, then just hit the home button to return to the home page. I tried adding some minimal effects to the buttons also. Oh, if you try and click the flashy buttons they don't work, but the images do.

Lab 8 - Panning and Zooming

In Lab 8 - Panning and Zooming, I used a company map of Fairfax County. I had to resize it from 25 MB to 6 MB to get it to work well in Flash. The thing that threw me off the most was the reset button. I couldn't figure out how to go back to the original size. Also, all my pre-programmed buttons started flashing. I'm not sure if this happened before or after I made them movie clips, but I couldn't get them to stop!

German Invasion - Labs 5, 6, & 7

I was finally able to get these German maps together this week and here's all of them together. It took me the longest time to get my little tanks to snap to the motion guides - seen here - Lab 5 - Motion Tween , and once I got that it still took a while to set them all up. The best thing I did was lock the layers I wasn't using while editing different objects. I didn't grab and move my base layer every 5 seconds.
In Lab 6 - Shape Tween, the moving shape was only difficult when I was trying to move the little yellow vertexes between different dates. I was able to change my yellow vertexes to blue, making the selection of them much easier. I also got advice not to overlap the vertex points which really helped.
In Lab 7 - Splash Screen, Links and Pop-ups, I added a splash screen by inserting frames at the beginning of the timeline. I added a button to jump right to the main interactive page, but also added a 3 second delay if the button wasn't pushed. I tried making a separate scene in Flash, and when I did I could not publish them together. I could only make two different .swf files for each and they didn't run together. Whenever I tested the movie it would only play my invasion scene. The links are the title Wikipedia, Wikipedia) and the legend Discovery, both to Operation Barbarossa pages. In the discovery page, they have an animation of the battle with both the German and Russian armies depicted.

Lab 4 - Interactive Presidential Map

This is my Interactive Presidential Map. I didn't pick the normal blue for the democrats this time. After having used flash for several weeks now, I've become much more comfortable with the software interface and I think my map design shows.

Interesting Interactive Map

This is a Flash file I found about the flooding in New Orleans. It doesn't have timeline buttons (only forward and backwards), but it is still interesting to see when the flooding occurred.

This is a pretty simple map I found of the Lewis and Clark Journey. The page also has links to the American Revolution and Civil War battles.

Lab 3 - Interactive Football Map with Weekly Buttons

I spent some time this week to improve on my Lab 2 map.
My Week 3 Lab has a few new things, like clickable buttons for individual weeks, including sounds. I've also formatted a few things better, lining up the timeline text and putting Home and Away games on different sides of the bar. Changing the background to grey made the overall map standout a little better too.

Lab 2 - Interactive Football Map

The map I made of the New England Patriots Road to Super Bowl XLII shows where and when New England played its games during the season. I decided to highlight the northeast region because most of the team's games occurred in that area. As my first flash interactive map, I am proud of this accomplishment, although I definetely see room for improvement in the future.

Interesting Interactive Map

The Trulia - Real Estate Website is a searchable database of homes on the market or just sold. Its linked to Google Maps so when you enter search critera, like a town or zip code, a map pops up with all the homes displayed. After you select a home for further inquiry, it links to the real estate company's local website for pictures and other information.

Lab 1 - Super Tuesday

Here is my map of the Super Tuesday primaries. I picked the democratic party because it is most similar with my political views. I stuck with the "normal" deomocratic party colors of blue because my style is to go with what works with just a few changes. I stumbled across the background shading in flash and thought that was a unique touch. I also wanted to make a point to display which states had been won by who, shading Clinton and Obama differently. I highlighted which states held primaries without the delagates counting towards the total needed to win the canidancy. So by glancing at this map you know that Clinton has won 4 states with only 2 for Obama, but you also know that 2 of Clinton's states don't really count.

Setting up my first blog

I just logged in and I am blogging for the first time. Lets see how all this works.

The class blog: GEOG 590 Advanced Map Design

The GMU Dept. of Geography Home Page

The ESRI Mapping Center is a great site to get all kinds of information about maps. There are 6 different sections, including "Ask a Cartographer" where you can submit your own map for critiquing. There is also a blog section which goes over questions that are the most commonly asked.

If you are working on a project in Virginia and need background information, you could use the Virginia Gazetteer found through the UVA website. This site has Land Cover, Aerial Photos, Terrain Models, Topographic Maps, and Sattelite Imagery for every Virginia USGS Quadrangle.

Locally, Fairfax County has a website with PDF maps you can download for an individual county tile. There's a link to the Grid Map on this page if you don't know the tile you need. Once you know the tile number you can download a contour map, zoning map, property map, and even a Chesapeake Bay map. If you're more interested in an interactive map of Fairfax, use the Address Locator site to look up property owners, sales, and values.

The Political Map I chose displays each state of the USA as they relate to the Gross Domestic Product of the country named on the map. In other words, Canada has a similar GDP to Texas. I stumbled across this and thought it was worth adding.