Packaging for the web can be a bear. That's why Authorware 6 has One Button Publishing. But even OBP has a lot of options. Did I remember to set the title of the HTML page? Did I set all my u32's to Recycle? If you don't publish to the web every day, it can take hours to get the publish settings just right, if you're picky like me.

If you click the Help button from within the Publish Setting Dialogue, it will launch the One Button Publish Settings Help. I like to use the Settings Help as a checklist when I am setting up a file to publish to the Web. I still have to do some tweaking to the settings, but I can get more of the settings right the first try this way.

One thing the Help files don't say is that you must check the "Package As" (For LAN, CD, HDD) box without the "With Runtime" box checked if you want to have your changes update in your .aam and .aas files.

The reason for this is simple: the Web Packager works the same as the one in previous Authorware versions. It starts from an .a6r file, and then creates the web packaged file from that.

If you do not check this box, Authorware will create an .a6r file so that it has something to publish–but only the first time. After that, it will simply republish the existing .a6r. Checking this box tells Authorware that you want to publish the changes you just made, rather than any old version that happens to be in the folder.
 

I think pulling apart other peoples' code is one of the best ways to learn to code yourself. Here are a few of my favorite example sites:

Authorware Resource Center

Barbara Brown's Authorware Downloads (features Jeopardy style game)

Gantek Multimedia (features Agent ActiveX Demo and WinCtrls Demo)

Apurva Lawale's Authorware Tutorial (Look in the Code section>

TAAC Conference Downloads

You may know that it has been raining a lot in my part of Texas lately. Yesterday was another such rainy day, but when I went to leave work, the rain had let up; and the waning sun had made an appearance.

As I drove east on my way home, the sun was behind me. I was surprised and delighted to see a rainbow arching across the sky, silhouetted against the dark clouds of the departing storm. That alone would have made my day. As I drove toward the apparition, it got brighter and the color deeper until it was more vibrant than any rainbow I had ever seen.

The closer I got, the more beautiful it became, arching over my head in a perfect semi-circle that seemed to have its ends buried in the hay fields to either side. I had never understood the legend of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, since I'd never seen the end of a rainbow before.

Finally, I passed under the rainbow, and it disappeared. I didn't even mind the downpour I was heading into.

Last week, I suggested using a Conditional that triggers off of TimeRemaining to pop up feedback when a user is inactive. That works up to a point, but if you do not shut off the Timeout, the TimeOutGoTo() will still happen.