I've always been a little leery about using PageHistoryID and PageHistoryTitle, because things get a little strange in the page history when you have nested content. This is especially true when you use Frameworks inside your "content" pages to organize events, such as you see in the Forms ShowMe that comes with Authorware.

The way the Page History works is that it keeps a record of the pages you've visited. The default number to track is 999, but you can change this in Modify>File>Navigation setup. To the Page History, a page is anything attached to any Framework, no matter how you may think of it.

So, does that mean that you can't use the Page History if you have nested content and want to limit navigation to what you think should be a page? Not really, though it takes a little scripting.

Basically, you just loop through the Page History, checking each page to see if it is the child of a valid "parent." Say, for instance, you have a course arranged into Sections. Each Section is a page containing a Framework with Chapters, and each Chapter contains pages.

If you label each Framework with its title in the hierarchy, then to go n pages back at any level, you simply check for the label in the IconTitle of each page in the log, incrementing a counter from 1 to n as you find appropriate pages.

The code for this might look like:

GoToPage := 0
BackTo := 4 --we're looking back 4 pages
counter := 0

Repeat with X := 1 to 999

Page := PageHistoryID(X)
--if we've run out of pages to check
If Page=0 then exit
Framework := IconTitle(IconParent(Page))
If Find("Chapter", Framework) then

--we have a "page" of the type we want
counter := counter + 1
If counter = BackTo then

--we have found enough pages
GoToPage := Page
exit repeat

end if

end if

A Knowledge Object icon is just a special map that can launch a wizard to help you configure your Authorware file. But it took me a long time to figure out how to get into a KO to insert my own content.

To open a KO icon, go to Modify>Icon>Properties or press Control-I on your keyboard. Then press the "Open" button.

Gosh, it does not seem so long, but the Authorware-Amy website was announced just over a year ago, April 1, 2002. The first newsletter was published a year ago today, and I think there were about 8 subscribers. Now there are 163 subscribers. There have been 14 chats, and 39 Newsletters, including this one. The home page has received nearly 18,000 hits.

I'd like to thank all the visitors to my site and subscribers to my newsletter for making this possible.

There are loads of great Authorware sites out there, and, like anyone, I have my favorites.

Steve Howard's micro-cosmos is a personal, blog style site that is unique in the Authorware world. Lots of unique tidbits just waiting to be uncovered.

Authorware.com is probably the biggest repository of Authorware FAQ's and example files on the internet. Nice jokes, too.

The Authorware Course, a nice, basic, online introduction to Authorware.

Greg Miller's Absolutely Authorware site impresses me more each time I visit. If you've looked at my ASP example and it wasn't enough, there are database examples here, including ASP and CGI.

Apurva Lawale's Authorware Tutorial has always been a great way to learn more about Authorware, but now there is a new series on writing u32's that makes it even better.

My credit card company's online bill payment system is a usability nightmare. One of their favorite tricks is popping up a window that is roughly 100 pixels high for a 500 pixel report. Unfortunately, you can grab the corners and drag them all you like, but it does not resize.

However, I found that if you right-click on the window's box in the Task Bar, one of the options you get is "make this a normal window." If you select this option, the window suddenly becomes resizeable. This tip could save the lives of inconsiderate web designers everywhere!