Hey guys,
I'm new here and trying to figure out if Enliven is the tool for me. I need to develop a stand alone application in Flash, that includes 3D, and distribute on CD. But the Viewpoint Media Player looks web based. I searched for CDrom on the board but the last message was from like 3 years ago. Is it possible to do this?

Thanks in advance.
Kojak

Hi Kojak,

Without knowing more about exactly what it is you want to do, I can at least tell you that creating cd roms with the VMP is definitely possible. However, you will need to at least run it in a shell of internet explorer that you call up using vb script -- the same way standalone programs today embed an instance of internet explorer for certain uses. But this may or may not work for what you want to do. Without more details, I can't give you a better answer.

Thanks. I'm going to be creating a "customize your motorcycle" interface/program they want to send out on CDrom. Pick a model and add features, colors, add-ons, etc. and view it in 3d as you're customizing it.

I've seen this product integrated with Flash on the web but wasn't sure if it translated to an .exe on CD or hard drive.

I see. Yes, if you don't want to use a web browser directly, you will have to do it in an shell instance of ie with vb script.

Thanks. Are there any issues with this? Anything I need to be carefull of? Are there any instances where this thing wouldn't play or work?

Is there any one on this board that has done this that I can talk to?

Hi Kojak,

Sorry for taking the weekend to get back to you, but I wanted to consider your case more thoroughly before answering. First, the option I presented you before is done with VB not VB script. Sorry about that. Upon talking to one of our VB engineers, he said the only fallback he can think of is difficulty of implementing the VB. A fallback I can think of is it will probably limit you to IE 5 and greater on PC's only. But we have done it before and the VMP runs fine. As far as flash, I can't speak to that (you'd have to find out from them). In regards to your flash portion, my only question is are you sure you can't do the flash part inside the VMP? The VMP has the ability to run actionscript and flash animation at the Flash 5 level. Doing it this way can save you alot of back-and-forth scripting between the flash player and the vmp.

Our engineer also presented another option I hadn't thought of which is much easier if you can use it ... create a windowless browser window (chromeless window) with javascript and run your app in that. It's a much simpler implementation than the VB route, obviously, because instead of calling up a shell instance of IE, you're just removing it's framing. I've never set up a chromeless window myself but our engineer said to just do a search for it on the web (chromeless window) and you should get alot of info on how to do it. I would imagine it's pretty simple. I would also think it's pretty cross-browser and cross-platform compatible, but you'll have to double check on that for yourself.

Regards

Hello, thanks for getting back to me.

That sounds like an idea. So basicly I would launch the IE file from the disk in a chromelss window. This in turn would run the VMP and I would integrate any Flash in the VMP? VMP will let me use Flash and XML together?

If the XML you're referring to is the MTX code for the VMP, then yes. The VMP will run xml and flash together. You author the flash using macromedia flash as you usually would and make sure to export the .swf as flash 5. Then you reference the .swf from within the mtx something like this:

<MTSTimeElem Type="SWFView" Name="swf_loader" PostAnimator="1" Path="myswf.swf" />

Of course there's a bit more steps to hooking up the flash interactivity from within the MTX, but it starts by targeting the above time element with an interactor to grab mouse events and channel them into the swf like this:

<MTSInteractor Name="myInteractor" >
<MTSHandle Event="MouseMove" Action="swf_loader" />
<MTSHandle Event="MouseLeftDown" Action="swf_loader" />
<MTSHandle Event="MouseRightDown" Action="swf_loader" />
<MTSHandle Event="MouseDrag" Action="swf_loader" />
</MTSInteractor>

...and so on, depepending on what mouse events you want the swf to pick up. If you're new to VET I would suggest to start by reading up on interactive flash in VET in the Viewpoint Rich Media Authoring Guide available on Developer Central. This guide also tells you the few flash 5 features that are not supported in VET.

After reading that to get a better understanding of how interactive flash works in VET and if it suites your needs, then you can give a shot at trying it in Enliven, though unfortunately Enliven's help documentation on how to hook up interactive flash in Enliven is more limited. But you can go over Eliven's tutorial which will show you the basics of placing flash in the Enliven scene. Once you've placed the flash in the scene, it's merely a matter of calling that Flash time element using an interactor or action. But I'm probably getting ahead of things a bit. You can let me know if you have any questions if you get that far.

Regards

Thanks for your help. I look this over.