Now that Captivate has been on the street for a few months and I have been
out there "yacking it up," the product has moved from novelty to production
tool in rather short order. Once that happens, there are the subsequent, "How
do I...?" questions that inevitably crop up. This article deals with a five
of the more common ones that I have encountered and shows you how to deal
with them.
They are:
Fitting the application interface to be captured into a defined capture area.
Adding a Voiceover script to a Captivate movie Moving the Control bar off of
the captured interface Creating a custom Control bar Adding streaming video
to Captivate. Here, then, is a collection of Captivate Tips, Tricks and
Techniques.
#1: How Do I Fit an Application's Interface into that Red Capture Area?
This is one of more common questions I am asked. Inevitably, you want to
capture to a size ... (more)
Macromedia Studio MX includes a number of relatively unheralded gems. Perhaps
it's because Macromedia hasn't hyped these features enough, or maybe users
spend so much time focusing on a particular tool that they have simply
overlooked or ignored how the other pieces of Studio MX actually work with
each other. A great example of this is the stepchild of Studio MX: FreeHand
MX.
For some odd reason FreeHand has fallen into the role of "always a
bridesmaid, never the bride."This started even before Macromedia existed.
When PostScript drawing tools hit the graphics industry in 1988, t... (more)
Could it be that we're about to see the disappearance of QuickTime, Windows
Media Player, and RealOne as viable Web players for streaming video and
audio?
Now that I have your attention, this question is not as radical as it appears
at first glance. The release of Flash Player 7 offers you one serious tool
for the Web playback of streaming rich media without the use of third-party
plug-ins that hijack valuable Web real estate and bandwidth.
Why do we need the QuickTime, Windows Media, and RealOne players when it
comes to video and audio on the Web? I really don't appreciate Apple... (more)
Writing in MX Developer's Journal recently, Tom Green (pictured) mused on the
benefits of the Macromedia Video Kit, and described how a $99 investment gets
you easily and painlessly into the Web video game.
When I first published my observation that "QuickTime is dead" in this
publication, I never expected the response that article would garner. It
ranged from, "Dude, you are sooo wrong!" to "Finally, we are free." Earlier
this year, Macromedia, as is so typical of the company, quietly dropped the
"Macromedia Video Kit" on the developer community and suddenly, video was
available... (more)
About a year ago, I had a long chat with Mike Downey, the Flash Product
Manager, regarding the launch of Flash MX Professional 2004. Mike was still
stinging from much of the criticism related to the that launch, and the gist
of the conversation was "never again." He was adamant that if Flash gets
shipped, it will ship when it is ready and only then.
This conversation took place in the midst of a very quiet tour that had
landed Mike in Toronto after a couple of weeks in Japan. Another couple of
weeks in Europe were in front him. He wasn't out apologizing. That's not
Mike's nature... (more)
Tom Green describes himself as 'teacher, author, chief cook and bottle washer.' He is an instructor at Humber College's School of Media Studies in Toronto, and is also the author of 'Building Web Sites with Macromedia Studio MX' and 'Building Dynamic Web Sites with Macromedia Studio MX 2004,' both published by New Riders.
Scott Sellers
Anthony Franco
Daniel Morris
Wayne Walls
Niki Acosta
Jereme Hancock
Oren Michels
Marvin Wheeler
Douglas Kim
