Dreamweaver.MX.1002004.The.Missing.Manual [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

13.3 Shockwave

As the Internet-ready form of movies created with Macromedia's Director, Shockwave
is an older brother to Flash. Director has a longer history as a tool for developing
complex interactive presentations. It began life as a program for creating CD-ROMs.
But when the Web exploded onto the scene, Director quickly morphed into a Webauthoring
tool. Because of its CD background, Shockwave offers complex programming
possibilities, which makes it ideal for detailed interactive presentations (Figure 13-7).

Like Flash, Shockwave requires a plug-in, but unlike the Flash plug-in, this one doesn't
generally come preinstalled with Web browsers. If you include Shockwave animation in
your Web site, many of your visitors will need to download the Shockwave playera
3.5-megabyte download!

At times, it can be difficult to
tell the difference between the
various external media types. This
Shockwave game offers animation
and interactivity just like a
Flash movie. However, for highly
interactive games that require
precise timing and action, Shockwave
is usually a better choice. Its
advanced 3-D features, and builtin
physics principles (like gravity
and collision detection), make
it perfect for advanced gaming
applications. To sample this technology,
go to www.shockwave.com. There you'll find a mixture of
Flash and Shockwave movies.

That annoying requirement is a good argument against using Shockwave for general-
audience Web sites. Some of your visitorsespecially the ones that don't have
cable modems or DSLmay not put in the time and effort required to enable their
browsers to view your masterpiece.

But if you just can't do without Shockwave, you can insert a Shockwave movie into a
Web page just as you would any multimedia format. Click where you want to insert
the movie; then choose InsertMediaShockwave (or choose Shockwave from the
Media menu on the Common tab of the Insert bar). Either way, a Select File dialog
box appears. Find and double-click the Shockwave movie file (look for the .dcr extension).

The Shockwave movie appears as a gray rectangle with the Shockwave logo in the
center. But Dreamweaver can't automatically calculate the dimensions of Shockwave
movies, so you need to type the width and height of the movie in the W and H fields
of the Property inspector. Use the same dimensions you specified when creating the
file in Director.

You can preview Shockwave files directly in Dreamweaver by selecting the movie
and clicking Play on the Property inspector. To stop the movie, click the same button
(which is now a Stop button).

You resize a Shockwave movie just like a Flash movie, as described in Section 13.1.2.2.

13.3.1 Shockwave Movie Properties

The only Shockwave movie property you have to set by hand is the width and height of
the movie. Most of the time, you won't need to bother changing the default properties.
The Property inspector does, however, let you change the movie's name (a requirement
for using JavaScript to control its playback), substitute a different movie, choose the
movie's alignment relative to the text around it, specify a background color, select
an ActiveX ID, or specify top/bottom or side/side margins. All of these options work
just as they do for Flash movies (see Section 13.1.2).