Wilson Construction Employee Intranet
Technical Design Specifications
Summary
Wilson’s Employee Intranet site will be a complete rebuild. Most of these
changes will use the backend server technology with ColdFusion and Flash
Remoting. (This is a Flash/server connection technology, which skips the need
to use (or re-load) html pages.)
The Home Page will be built in xhtml for book marking and search engine purposes. Log-in & password verification will require ColdFusion server linked to a SQL database server. E-learning programs will function with ColdFusion server in compliance with the xml “SCORM” standards.
Most of the focus of this project is to prototype a Flash 6 website that loads fast and follows 508 accessibility rules. Intranet site will be used on IE 5+/ Mozilla browsers with Flash 6 plug-ins for use on PCs, Macs and Linux/Unix computers. The interactive training pages will use a ColdFusion / database exchange for scoring and record keeping.
Site will include 1 xhtml home page, ColdFusion log-on &
e-learning pages, and 4 dynamic flash pages. There also will be several dynamic
ColdFusion / Flash forms using variations of server or flash/client-side form
validation. These forms will be used for the benefit program’s database sign-up
and updating.
The default opening flash node, “Wilson Bulletin,” will include a pop-up link
to a 50 second video narration by the company president. This same node also
has a pop-up window link that opens a pdf version of the “Wilson Way.”
(Wilson’s quarterly Employee newsletter)
Working Wireframe Storyboard Link— featuring Flash 6’s “named anchors”
Most all of the final Navigation Menus, Logo graphics, and Flash banners will be instances of Flash movie-clips. Navigation needs to work with mouse clicks, key commands and/or tabbing. Flash navigation menus, logo and flash banners will stay in the exact location on all web pages. Text reading software for the blind requires simple, but tricky design standards. Final interface design depends… on the test results of Phase 1 QA with the blind reading software such as “Windows Eyes” and its Macintosh counterpart.
This project uses flash 6 for fast, incremental loading of web pages. Using “Shared libraries at runtime”& “time-loading Actionscripts” allow graphic assets, embedded fonts and “script-includes” to download “just-in-time.” This helps prevent long loading waits by loading flash & graphics in small packets in timed sequences. Loading time is further saved for loading later flash page — by linking to previously loaded shared libraries stored for re-use in client’s browser cache!
Share libraries will include special-edited versions Verdana fonts for embedding. These fonts have literally been pared down to a third of their orignal file size. (These truetype fonts were edited in Fontographer — deleting all unnecessary foreign and symbol font characters — 22kb as opposed to 62kb) This makes for much smaller shared library swfs. These embedded fonts solve font consistency & reading problems when developing on multi-platforms.
Flash scripting development follows a series of stages. The first stage is writing “hard-wired” scripts that work and then testing. The next stage is simplifying code with multi-use functions and testing. The last stage, I will try to re-write code to stay in the timeline’s first frame script layer as “Call-back functions.” This is the new recommended “standard” for ActionScript coding. I will be a verbose “commenter!”
General Info on Forms for e-learning quizzes and data set
& retrieval:
A lot my time will be QA testing forms for blind text reading software. I will script forms for the conventional ColdFusion server side validation and database interaction. If time permits, I will try to change this validation to more client-side flash… If I still have time, I may try to script forms with Flash Remoting with ColdFusion components. If by some miracle I still have more time, I will script Remoting/CFCs with advanced “recordset” data retrieval.
Home Page Node
This plain vanilla xhtml page functions for book-marking and search engine tagging. (Text flash page has yet to be readable by search engines.) Careful writing in page text can tag search engine “spiders” summarizing contents of site. This careful writing applies keyword & description Meta tags well as title bars.
This page serves mainly as a security Log-in portal with name and password textbox forms.
Wilson “Bulletin” Flash Node
This page opens as the default page after successful logging-on. The middle-top of this page has 2 buttons to pop-up windows for a 30 second quicktime video narration & a newsletter pdf.
The top flash banner dynamic text is linked to a re-savable, 5 to 7 word, “bulletin.txt” file. This banner can be easily changed weekly with “simple text” & “notepad” text editor and uploaded with Fetch/WS_FTP.
“Water Cooler” Flash Node
When this page opens, a function script loads a ”Featured Employee bio” swf. The Featured Employee bios are selected with ActionScript functions the use the ”random operator” on an “Array list” of all employees. There are two dynamic text that are linked to birthdays and announcement linked to “birthday.txt” and “announce.txt”
“Benefit” Flash Node
Page prompts for name and password textboxes. Form uses Flash client-side validation first, then, ColdFusion does a second validation. ColdFusion, then will return a “recordset” and returns a form filled with user’s data.
“Employee Forum” Flash Node
There is a read-only dynamic text box linked to the editor’s forum topic writing “forum.txt”. There are voting checkboxes, radio buttons, selection menus, etc. Submitting one’s vote sends vote to the database score tally… and sets a “ I-have-voted-my-only-vote cookie” to users “Shared Object” stored in the user’s cache. (“Shared Object” is the Flash 6’s cookie-on steroids) The new tabulated score is returned by Flash Remoting / ColdFusion. Vote cheating is pre-empted simply using the Flash client-side.
Safety/Skills xhtml / ColdFusion Node
E-learning programs run on conventional ColdFusion session management.
Password forms uses some javascript client-side validation first, then, ColdFusion does a second validation. ColdFusion interacts with SQL database programs that send and return data back as html documents.