I've never been a big fan of placing graphics inside the Interaction icon. I preferred to use Displays for displaying and Interactions for interacting. Simple as that.

But finally I realized: the Display part of an Interaction stays on the screen only as long as the flow is paused within the Interaction. I'm a big fan of letting Authorware take care of things like erasing and such for me. By placing the graphic in the Interaction, as soon as the flow exits the interaction, the graphic is gone.

Another advantage to putting graphics in the interaction is that you can see the outlines of Hot Spots and Hot Objects, etc. while positioning graphics and drawing with the draw objects...and your graphic does not jump to the front of buttons, etc. I think I'll be putting my graphics in Displays a lot more often from now on.

The Authorware map file is just another text file. You can actually read the map file of the current piece (or another piece) and parse information out of it. You might want to do this, for instance, to download your external media before it is needed.

You could also use it to check the length of files on your hard drive against the map file to ensure they are the right version. Authorware is supposed to do this automatically, but does not in many cases.

To read the map file, use ReadExtFile(NetLocation^FileName) or ReadURL(NetLocation^FileName, 1). 

At TAAC, there was quite a bit of discussion about what the interface for the next version of Authorware should look like. What do you think could be done to make Authorware look and feel more user friendly?

Date: September 24th
Time: 7:00 pm Central US Daylight Time
Location: http://www.authorware-amy.com (Click on the Chat button just below the logo.)
Guests: There aren't any...everyone's opinion is valid. I am hoping, though, that the Macromedia engineering team isn't too burnt out and can make it.
Time/Space Translations:
This is 8:00 pm Eastern, 6:00 Mountain, 5:00 Pacific.
Add 6 hours to the Central Time for current UK time, and 5 for GMT.

If you haven't heard, Authorware 6.5 will be released soon. Jamil Zainasheff, Head of the Authorware Engineering Team, gave us a sneak preview of the new features in Authorware 6.5. No, Authorware is not dead!

Authorware 6.5 is filled with new functionality such as User Defined Functions that can be stored internally or externally, WinCtrls that can be tailored to match your application background, an improved Flash Asset Xtra that supports MX, and new accessibility features.

Every year at TAAC, Mark Henry poses a problem that can only be solved with ingeneuity, skills, or bravado. Luckily, the Cheesy Danishes, consisting of Steve Howard, me (we were the Cheesy part), Ole Kristensen, Allen Axelsen, and Anette Villadsen (all Danish, of course), have a touch of the first two and loads of the latter.

We elected to teach Bernoulli's Principle by flying a wing-shaped Mark Henry to next Year's TAAC. After a brief introduction that explains the principles, we used a game to quiz the users. Correct answers resulted in Mark Henry's being able to eat a bean. Following bean consumption he naturally produced thrust, thus maintaining altitude. However, if Mark did not get enough beans, he lost altitude and crashed, dragged away by demons to a Flash Conference Hell.