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Shockwave StartTips

Director & Shockwave starting tips

Install the Shockwave plug-in into the plug-in folder of Netscape 2.0

Authoring

Choose your director stage size small enough for the Netscape window ,
less than say 620x420 , e.g.400x300, 608x400 (Director crops stage to multiples of 4)

Choose 8 bit Colours max , only use 16 bit if your audience has v.fast access

Some lingo is disabled for users protection e.g. Use halt instead of quit

Save as plain .dir file , (use dos standard eight dot three characters for safety)

Use new free Afterburner program, to compress .dir file to .dcr . Compression > 2:1

Netscape 2.0 and HTML

Use new html line to place shockwave .dcr in your web page
EMBED SRC="myshock.dcr" WIDTH = 400 HEIGHT = 300

People without shockwave plug-in see broken image icons

Make sure your web server has .dir .dcr mime types set up in config file (see Macromedia tech notes)

By-pass html in testing on MacOs 7.5 by using drag and drop of .dcr file

Test the .dcr file directly by going File Open with the option key down

Some new Director lingo is Net aware e.g. GetNetText , GotoNetPage

Cross-Platform Net Issues

Use basic cross-platform fonts in your shockwave e.g. Times, Courier

Be aware that colours can look different on Macs and PCs

Always try and use relative links in your html pages so you can test on various PCs

Do not overload your processor with effects and always test on slower machines

TeToToYTM - test early , test often , test on all your target machines

Sources of infomation

Macromedia -extensive,up to date , main company web site

maricopa -user group with tips,tricks and FAQs