Re: FLASH: CD ROM and Director con't

[Michael@BTW]

> That makes me wonder...  If I became an accomplished Director user on the

> Mac, I would totally incompetent on the WIN version?  I could use the

> techniques but I'd have to study WIN programming to make it work???


No, Director lingo is essentially the same x-platform. There are xtras

(c-coded extensions to Director) that are platform specific, and these may

include system calls or calls to platform specific data-base or other

programs. There is some platform specific lingo, but its pretty minor. There

are of course other issues: fonts, memory, display, drive names, auto-start,

etc. that it is best to understand and/or test thoroughly on both platforms.

 

> The only thing it would be good for me is  - not CD's  or Kiosks [unless

> it happened to be a Mac Kiosk}  - but for Shockwave productions.  Sure,

> if I were producing a Mac Game CD or Mac only environment production, it

> would work, but if I needed to do something cross platform for a client..


If you use standard lingo and xtras, just hire someone to burn a projector

on the other platform (but be careful of the fonts, we're often using

Flashed fonts in Director to simplify this process).


> I am SOL. Hire a Win programmer to do it, cause it isn't just the

> program, you need to be totally 2 platform?

> 

> Is there then a better way to produce a self running CD ROM that is cross

> platform that is merely a presentation and not a database integrated ASP

> production or game?


Depends. To be self running it needs to be an .exe, though you can set up an

exe to launch QuickTime a nice presentation Involves some programming,

though. QT (using Livestage and/or Flash) can also do very nice interactive

presentations, and WiMP is heading swiftly in this direction. However, these

will depend on the system players so if the above is not an option, your

audience would have to start the movies themselves. You also have the choice

of trying iShell to make a x-platform CD on a Mac, which may or may not be

more cost effective (iShell is free, but the support is expensive;-). BTW,

iShell is at: http://www.tribeworks.com/


> 

> Is it better to produce  a Flash  & HTML Browser CD ROM?


If you are going to use a browser anyway, just use it to launch your

shockwave file (which somehow manages to make x-platform files from one

platform).

> 

> What - use Acrobat with PDF's ?  Does it allow hyperlinks with embedded

> Flash? 


I think you'd have to convert your Flash files to QuickTime, Acrobat does

QuickTime but I haven't heard of support for swf. Course this could

change...


> Just curious if there isn't a low cost, non-programming way to do

> something on CD that works on the Web.


Shockwave w/browser works ok, though w/o the autostart. In fact I did this

years ago when sending off Director portfolio (CD based) to a job site where

they lacked a Mac (and I lacked a PC). Didn't get the job, but the portfolio

worked fine;-).


> 

> Jeff 

> 

> 

> Jefferis Peterson, Pres.



=====>

Michael Penney

Sharpener of the Cutting Edge

BigTimeWeb.Com




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