Now that you thoroughly understand the concept and uses behind Shockwave for Director, it's important to know that Macromedia has developed a similar product for its high-end authoring package, Authorware. The name, coincidentally enough, is Shockwave for Authorware, and its uses are similar to Shockwave for Director with some key differences. Here is what you can expect from this chapter:
It is important to first describe the differences between Director and Authorware. As you may already know, Director started as a tool for creating two-dimensional cell animations. It is for this reason that the interface of Director takes on a "cell-by-cell" look that stretches out into infinity. It has only been recently that the package has evolved into an authoring platform. Because of its base in two-dimensional animation, its interface is clumsy for interactive presentations that are by nature nonlinear. Enter Macromedia's solution, Authorware for both Windows and Macintosh. Since its introduction, Authorware has been billed as a "high-end" authoring solution with emphasis on the interactive programmer. Authorware has an extremely intuitive interface that allows for flow-line style building of presentations (see figure 19.1).
Figure 19.1 : The Authorware interface.
Until recently, Director was still the package of choice because of its ability to use Shockwave to get from a local machine to many machines networked together. Now, with the introduction of Shockwave for Authorware, Macromedia's high-end authoring system can also deliver applications over a network. But wait-there is a key difference between the two types of Shockwave. Shockwave for Director can deliver a presentation over the much-talked-about Internet. Shockwave for Authorware must use an Intranet.
What is the difference between these dramatically different platforms with spellings that are so similar a casual reader can mistake them as the same word? Well, the Internet is a global connection of servers that can be accessed by any old Joe with a PC, a modem, and a phone line. The Internet is typically slow to download information because of the restrictions of modern phone lines.
An Intranet, on the other hand, is typically set up within a company and is a connection between internal PCs and a network server. Intranets provide a much quicker access time of data because of larger bandwidth and improved communication devices. For instance, many computers connected to an Intranet have a network device installed, rather than a modem, and have a direct connection to the network. The network interface allows for a much faster transfer rate because it is not limited to a telephone connection.
While the Intranet limitation exists with Shockwave for Authorware, it works just like Shockwave for Director because it uses Netscape Navigator or another browser to download and view information off the network. Many companies are just now discovering the potential of this new medium, and are excited about the growth of Shockwave for Authorware in the future.
As with any new technology, the first question to ask is, who would benefit from using it and how? I think the answer to the first part is unquestionably large companies with an Intranet currently installed. The second part of the question is a topic exploding in the corporate world: What are some of the applications of Shockwave for Authorware?
The most important application that companies are finding useful for Shockwave is training. With companies becoming more and more concerned with the quality of training for their employees, Shockwave for Authorware allows a detailed training program to be accessible from any PC that's connected to the Intranet. Not only can trainees have access to on-line text describing their jobs in detail, but also to high-quality audio and video that will reinforce ideas and increase retention.
Previously, employers would have to designate a room as a training room for new employees. Also, they would have to fill this room with multimedia-capable PCs for each trainee to use. Then, they would have to schedule a time for the new employees to attend a training session. All of these things were taking away valuable resources from the company and costing a lot of money to maintain. With a training module written in Authorware and "Shocked," new employees can sit at their own computers at their own leisure and review training material.
Another important application of Shockwave for Authorware is internal communication. One of the most important tenets of any successful business has always been strong internal relationships. In order to develop these relationships, effective communication is essential.
In the past, things like newsletters informed employees about what events were planned for the company, how the company was doing financially, company history, new employee information, and so on. With Shockwave for Authorware, a company can develop an on-line newsletter that's accessible from any computer in the building. Not only does it save on printing costs, but the medium is enhanced with the addition of, for example, a full-motion video of the president describing company positioning or a narration of upcoming events over an animated calendar.
Now that you are convinced that Shockwave for Authorware is the perfectsolution for your business, you need to know how to use it. The basic procedure for creating a "Shocked" presentation is simple; just follow these steps:
The following gives in-depth details about each of these steps.
The first step is to choose an existing Authorware 3.5 presentation or create a new one. Creating a new presentation may be the option you choose, because, like authoring for CD-ROM and kiosk development, there are certain limitations to keep in mind while programming, the most important of which is the size of the video you are attempting to play. With presentations coming from a CD-ROM or hard drive, the computer must only spool enough information into memory to start a video playing. Then, new frames of video are accessed in real-time from the disk.
However, with the speed of current Intranets, videos must first be downloaded to a user's local machine before it can be played back. People who use the Internet are all too familiar with waiting for items to download to their computer; but, the smaller the video files, the less time it takes. Of course, before Shockwave for Authorware, playing video files over an Intranet was impractical and presentations were limited to text only.
The next step is to put the Authorware 3.5 program file through Macromedia's Afterburner for Authorware. Afterburner breaks the presentation into smaller chunks of information that can be more readily accessed from a network. In order to accomplish this, you must first package the program without the run-time player of Authorware. This creates an .app file that Afterburner can read (if you package the file with the run-time player, the result is an executable file with an .exe extension).
When you select your file to use, Afterburner then asks you for the destination of the map file (.aam) it creates. A map file is a text file, created by Afterburner, that is essentially a log of transpiring events as the presentation is being "Shocked." It records things such as the names of the individual packets of information, the location of any external files such as movie files, Director files, and so on.
The next thing Afterburner asks you for are Segment Settings. These settings describe how the "chunks" of information are produced. The first thing you type in is a four-character prefix that you want each file to end up with. (Afterburner automatically adds four digits representing a hexadecimal number, starting with 0000.) This prefix can be any four characters that you want to use to keep these files organized.
Next, you can specify the file size of each chunk produced. The default setting is 16,000 bytes, which is a good choice for most presentations. You can choose to make the chunks larger or smaller depending on your own project. After that, Afterburner takes over and begins producing files.
Your last step is to embed the map file into an HTML document. Even people who are not familiar with HTML programming can easily do this step. An HTML document is just a text file that enables you to add statements. The statement for a "Shocked" Authorware piece is:
<EMBED SRC="mypiece.aam" WIDTH=640 HEIGHT=480 WINDOW=onTop>
Where "mypiece.aam" is the name of the map file you
produced, WIDTH and HEIGHT are the screen size of your presentation,
and WINDOW describes how the presentation appears in the browser.
The options for WINDOW are as follows in table 19.1:
| Definition | |
| Displays the piece embedded within the HTML page in the browser window. You can use inPlace only in Windows. | |
| Displays the piece in a separate window on top of the browser window. This makes your piece look more like a separate application. | |
| Displays the piece in a separate window and minimizes the browser. This setting makes your piece look the most like a separate, stand-alone application. |
At this point you have completed the process, and now all you have to do is open the HTML document inside the Web browser. The two requirements for viewing a "Shocked" piece are that you must have a compatible browser, such as Netscape Navigator, and you must have the Shockwave for Authorware plug-in. Installing the plug-in is as easy as downloading an executable file from Macromedia's Web site, double-clicking it to launch an installer, and following the instructions. You will find that total functionality has been maintained and viewing a presentation over the network is as dynamic as pulling it from a CD-ROM or hard drive.
Recently, Phillips Design Group was given the opportunity to create an interactive CD-ROM for Software Artistry, an Indianapolis-based company specializing in help desk software for large corporations. The CD was graphically dynamic and contained video, audio, and a full demonstration of each module in a family of software. The piece, created entirely in Authorware, was a perfect test for Intranet application using Macromedia's Shockwave. The following is a step-by-step procedure to "Shocking" Software Artistry's presentation:
Packaging the Existing Presentation
The first step in Shocking the presentation is to package the existing Authorware project. The actual files are not included on the CD-ROM, but you can follow the procedure and adapt the concepts to your own project. The steps are as follows:
Figure 19.2 :Packaging the existing presentation.
Putting the Packaged File Through Afterburner
With the presentation packaged without the run-time player, you are now ready to use Afterburner. Note that Authorware, Director, and Freehand all have separate Afterburner programs. You must use the Afterburner for Authorware program.
After finishing the preceding steps, Afterburner automatically opens the softart.aam file for viewing and editing (see figure 19.6). Afterburner includes editing features so that if the name of a file or its location changes, you can easily edit the .aam file without re-Shocking the Authorware piece. Editing within Afterburner is relatively easy and involves simply double-clicking a line in the file. At that point, different dialog boxes appear, depending on the operation being performed. When you are finished, simply save the file and the changes take effect.
Figure 19.6: Viewing and Editing the -aam file.
Embedding the Map File Into an HTML Document
You are almost finished now-you need only make reference to the Shockwave file in the HTML document.
View the Document Through a Web Browser
The Shocked presentation is now ready to be viewed through the browser. The steps in Netscape Navigator are described below.
Figure 19.8 : The presentation as seen in Netscape Navigator.
Just when you think this software is perfect in every way, be
advised that Macromedia's Shockwave for Authorware is still being
developed on a daily basis, so there are still some problems and
limitations.
| Tip |
An immediate problem you may find is that after installing Shockwave for Authorware and trying to run the Software Artistry presentation through Netscape's Navigator, you get an error dialog box stating that it's unable to locate the external movie driver for the embedded Director files. After hours of testing and such, you may find that you have to do a custom installation of the Director external movie drivers. By copying the necessary files from your Authorware subdirectory to c:\program files\netscape\navigator\program\plugins\np32asw, you're able to get Shockwave to find the necessary drivers. |
The Afterburner interface is clearly in the testing stage. It would be good to see a much more user-friendly interface. The days of editing text documents to accomplish tasks are over. Users demand an interface that clearly describes options and presents many help features. You may also notice that depending on the background colors you have chosen for Windows, text entry boxes, and sometimes buttons, do not match.
As far as limitations go, Shockwave for Authorware deals with the boundaries of technology in several ways. First of all, there are speed limitations when using a product over a local area network. Designers must keep the size of video and audio elements small because of slow download times. Another limitation is the type of computer that's being used to view the "Shocked" piece. Not all users of the network will have computers that are capable of displaying high-color graphics or video.
Macromedia's Shockwave for Authorware is a revolutionary product in the quest to find better ways to communicate via the computer. Whether it's training, information about current events, or other corporate happenings that depend on effective communication for their success, Shockwave proves that a currently installed Intranet can handle multimedia-style presentations. Perhaps in the next year Shockwave will evolve into an Internet tool, where Authorware pieces can be viewed on the World Wide Web. With the future holding so many uncertainties, there is one thing for sure: Macromedia is and will be there with its cutting-edge products and vision.