ContentsChanges from 3.0 to 5.0
Familiar with AutoPlay Media Studio 3.0?
Here’s what you need to know to get right up to speed with v5.0!
AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0 now uses a free-form scripting language. This allows you to type in your actions as well as create your own functions. This new scripting language gives you greater freedom and makes it much easier to accomplish many tasks. Language features such as IF statements and FOR loops give you far greater control over the actions than was possible in 3.0. For example, conditions are handled in a much more natural (and powerful) way using IF statements, allowing you to apply a single condition to many actions.
The excellent built-in script editor includes features like syntax highlighting, search-and-replace, bookmarks and macro support. You can either type your actions straight into the editor, or you can add and edit them using the helpful action wizard interface, complete with descriptive text for each action parameter.
In 3.0 you were limited to 34 actions. In AutoPlay 5.0, you have many more actions at your disposal: more than 110 in the Standard Edition, and over 360 in the Professional Edition. This means you can create even more advanced projects.
Note that if you convert a 3.0 project to 5.0, the actions will not be converted. Please see Importing AutoPlay Media Studio 3.0 Projects for more details. You can read more about the new scripting language in the Scripting Guide.
There are now many more events to assign actions to—including the new "On Preload" page event that lets you make changes to a page before it's even displayed. There's also a handy "On Timer" event that lets you incorporate timed actions into your projects.
There have been several changes to AutoPlay Media Studio’s objects.
Six objects are available in the Standard Edition:
The button object allows you to use single-file .btn files to create multi-state buttons. The button object is similar to the v3.0 image object, but much more advanced and even easier to use. Just drag a .btn file onto the page, and it comes complete with images for each of the different states—up, down, highlighted and disabled—already built into the object.
AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0’s image object is now used simply for single images. One big change is that the image object is now resizable (like all of the objects in 5.0), so you can resize an image without using an external paint program. In addition, both the image and button objects support 32-bit images that contain alpha channel information. This allows you to create smooth transparent and shadowed images.
AutoPlay Media Studio 3.0’s text box object has been replaced with the paragraph object. The paragraph object does not allow the selection of text, but does allow custom “skinned” scrollbars as well as transparent backgrounds. If you want to simulate AutoPlay Media Studio 3.0’s text box object, just use AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0’s input object.
The AVI Video object has been replaced with an all-purpose video object. In addition to playing AVIs, the new video object is able to play many more formats, including WMP and MPEG. AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0’s video object is built directly on top of low-level DirectX interfaces, which maximizes system compatibility. As an added bonus, the video object supports custom “skins” for the transport controls.
The new label object is designed for placing static text on the page. When you resize a label object, the size of its text changes automatically. And like all objects in 5.0 that can display text, the label object fully supports anti-aliasing.
The Flash object allows you to display Flash files directly on the page, complete with animation and interactivity.
Four more objects are only available to users of the Professional Edition:
The hotspot object replaces the old hyperlink object, but no longer supports swapping of page background image areas. In fact, the ability to switch between multiple page background images has been removed. (This type of functionality can be better achieved with the button object.)
The web object lets you display a web site on the page, just like it would appear in Internet Explorer.
The input object allows you to add a single or multi-line input field on the page, so your users can type information right into your project. It even has the ability to hide text as it's typed, so you can use it to collect a password from the user without the risk of giving it away to anyone peeking over their shoulders.
The listbox object allows you to display a list of items on the page in a scrollable area. For example, you could display a list of song titles (so the user could choose a song to play), or a list of topics (so the user could decide what topic to view next).
The way objects are created and destroyed at run time has changed as well. In 5.0, the objects on a page exist from the moment the page is created, until the moment the page is closed. This means objects can respond to actions even while they're hidden. They will also continue to trigger their events. (Except for mouse events, of course.)
AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0 has a brand new resource file management system in place. Now any time you add a file to your project, a copy of the file is made and used in the project. This ensures that you never lose resource files (images, videos, documents, etc.) that are used by your project. This feature also dramatically speeds up project previewing and the build process in general.
AutoPlay Media Studio 3.0’s single-sound player has been replaced with an all-new state of the art audio system. The new audio system allows real-time mixing of multiple audio channels—each of which can be controlled independently. With the addition of new audio actions, you can do everything that the v3.0 player did and much, much more. As well, the new background music playlist makes it incredibly simple to add project-wide background music that will mix automatically with foreground audio.
AutoPlay Media Studio 3.0’s Virtual CD-ROM feature has been done away with. You don't have to specify a folder any more. Instead, the resource file management system takes care of it for you automatically. Every project has its own "project folder" that contains all of the files that will be burned to your CD. It's all done behind the scenes, so you still enjoy all of the benefits, without even having to think about it.
AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0 has now added the ability to extend the product through the use of plugins (Professional Edition only). Object plugins allow the seamless addition of new objects to the product. Action plugins allow the actions to be extended to do most anything. Plugins will become available by both Indigo Rose and third party developers.
AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0 now allows you to specify a movie that will be displayed when your application starts up. You can use either videos or flash files as your startup movie.
AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0 includes a feature that makes it easy to check for various technologies that your project might depend on. You can choose from many different types of technologies to detect, such as Macromedia Flash, Microsoft PowerPoint or Adobe Acrobat. The best part is that new detection scripts can be dynamically added to the product.
AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0’s design environment has been dramatically improved with a panel system that allows docking panels to be tabbed, pinned and hidden. You can even configure your own custom workspace layouts. There are too many new design environment features to mention here. Please read the User’s Guide to discover them all.