Welcome to the Authorware.Amy dot com home page
TIPS

Old Tips

Want to sign up? Create a Profile

Already have a profile? Log in

March 2004, Week 4

Applying an erase transition to icons erased with EraseIcon()

Calculation Icon Properties give extra information

March 2006, week 1

Use the right size scrolling text box to know where the lines are

Extra Xtras when using Flash Asset

February 2006, Week 4

Using the BuildDisplay function

Ctrl-Drag destination page to Navigate for Call/return

Get ready for AMGAC 2006 San Diego
February 25, 2006  February 2006, Week 4 
The Tip

The BuildDisplay() Function is one of the more mysterious ones, since it is not very well documented. In theory, you should be able to look at the contents of an icon using GetIconContents() and use that to make an identical icon using BuildDisplay(). That's great, until you want to create an icon from scratch, for instance importing an RTF file to a specific location on the screen and make it transparent.

I can't claim to have conquered the secrets of the BuildDisplay() function, but I can tell you that to import a transparent rtf into a rectangle with the top left corner at 250, 25 that is 560 pixels wide and 750 pixels tall, you can use this:

BuildDisplay(IconID@"an empty Display icon" ,[[#type:#rtf, #rect:Rect(250, 25, 560, 750), #antialias:0, #filename:FileLocation^"somefile.rtf", #attributes:[#drawMode:#transparent]]])
Did You Know?

Earlier this week I was fuming after dragging a page map to a Navigation icon to change its destination, because doing this reset the navigation type from Call and Return to Jump to page. My dearest husband, Steve Howard, chuckled a bit and told me a neat trick. If you hold down the control key while dragging to the Navigate icon, you get call and return navigation, whereas if you don't the navigate icon will default to jump to page.
AMGAC 2006 in San Diego

AMGAC logo

AMGAC 2006 is coming up soon in San Diego, CA. We already have several well-known speakers signed up, such as Joe Ganci and Steve Howard, but we're still seeking speakers. If you're interested, click the "Speakers" link and fill out a speaker application.
Interesting Sites

SmartPixels Learning has produced a nice little demo showing the features that are in Authorware 7 that weren't in earlier versions. This includes a guide to packaging for MacIntosh playback.

For a while, the link to Authorware Tutorial at Duquesne University from my site was broken. I am happy to report that the tutorial has been returned to its former location.
TOW goes Dynamic

On the theory that I'm too lazy to do anything manually when I can spend hours making it data driven, Tip of the week is now moving to being data driven. For now, I'm publishing it to ASP then mailing that page to the Topica mailing list, but soon I expect to export my list and mail you directly.

The main reason I am doing this is to automate the process of posting archived Tips and to make TOW searchable. Because of that, expect to get some Tip Reruns in the next few weeks as I add the Tips that haven't been posted to the database for the benefit of the Authorware community.