ContentsChanges from 3 to 8
Familiar with AutoPlay Menu Studio 3?
Here’s what you need to know to get right up to speed with v8!
AutoPlay Media Studio 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. 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 you were limited to 34 actions. In AutoPlay 8, you have many more actions at your disposal. This means you can create even more advanced projects.
Note that if you convert a 3 project to 8, the actions will not be converted. Please see Importing AutoPlay Menu Studio 3 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 and dialog event that lets you make changes to a page or dialog before it's even displayed. There's also a handy "On Timer" event that lets you incorporate timed actions into your projects.
Application development has been raised to a new level in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 with the addition of customizable dialogs. Dialogs support the same background settings, objects and events as pages do...but the options don't stop there. Dialogs have features above and beyond pages including custom sizes, multiple windows styles, and even a custom icon. Complemented by both its own "DialogEx" action category containing 21 actions, as well as 6 additional "Application" actions, you'll surely find this powerful new feature a welcome addition to your design arsenal.
There have been several changes to AutoPlay Media Studio's objects.
Objects which are available in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 are as follows:
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 or dialog, and it comes complete with images for each of the different states—up, down, highlighted and disabled—already built into the object.
The new xButton object is similar to the Button object, but is instead an extension of the Windows button. It contains features such as setting text, images, using visual themes and styles, and even supports markup so you can incorporate text highlighting, hyperlinks and more.
AutoPlay Media Studio 8'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 8), 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.
The new slideshow object allows you to show a series of images in a set area. It supports automatic resizing and scaling as well as transitions between images.
AutoPlay Menu Studio 3'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's text box object, just use AutoPlay Media Studio 8's input object.
The new rich text object allows you to display rich text (.rtf) in an object. Supports transparent background as well as design-time and runtime character and paragraph formatting.
The new PDF object allows you to display PDF files directly on the page or dialog, just like it would appear in the Adobe Reader application or web browser. It does this by taking advantage of the Adobe Reader ActiveX control.
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 8'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 QuickTime object lets you play audio, video or show images on the page or dialog by taking advantage of the QuickTime ActiveX control.
The new label object is designed for placing static text on the page or dialog. When you resize a label object, the size of its text changes automatically. And like all objects in 8 that can display text, the label object fully supports anti-aliasing.
The Flash object allows you to display Flash files directly on the page or dialog, complete with animation and interactivity.
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 or dialog, 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 or dialog, 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 or dialog 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 combobox object allows you to display a list of items on the page or dialog in a 'dropdown' menu list. For example, you could display a list of countries that the user may live in on a registration screen.
The new checkbox object wraps the standard Windows checkbox control but takes it to a new level by allowing transparent background and mouse state text color changes.
The new radio button object is great for quiz and test applications. Radio buttons support transparent backgrounds and changing text color as the mouse passes over them. Radio button selection and grouping is also handled automatically.
The new grid object allows you to add spreadsheets, grids and list controls to your applications.
The progress object allows you to display some type of progress on the page or dialog. This could be used to visually indicate progression through a linear menu, as a movie position status indicator, or any other implementation that gives your application that professional finish.
The tree object allows you to display a selection tree on the page or dialog. Parent elements can be expanded/collapsed to show/hide options.
The way objects are created and destroyed at run time has changed as well. In 8, the objects on a page or dialog exist from the moment the page or dialog is created, until the moment the it 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 8 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 Menu Studio 3'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 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 Menu Studio 3'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 8 has now added the ability to extend the product through the use of plugins. 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 8 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 8 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 Adobe Flash, Microsoft PowerPoint or Adobe Acrobat. The best part is that new detection scripts can be dynamically added to the product.
AutoPlay Media Studio 8'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.
AutoPlay Media Studio 8's scripting engine is now faster, more powerful and much more extensible. The Lua 5.1 system features a new module system, incremental garbage collection, new mechanism for varargs, new syntax for long strings and comments, mod and length operators, metatables for all types and a fully reentrant parser.
With the new scripting engine upgrade comes compatibility with Lua 5.1 modules. You now have access to a wealth of free Lua code you can download and use in your AutoPlay Media Studio 8 projects. In most cases you simply copy the module files into your project and "require" them in your script. Just some of the useful modules out there include Bit Operation, Date, Canvas Draw, Imaging Tool, GD, Crypto, Colors, Speech, Alien, Social (Twitter), CURL, Regular Expression Parsing and so much more. It’s a whole treasure chest of addons and tools just waiting for you!
Do your projects contain huge database and video files? AutoPlay Media Studio 8 now includes full support for burning directly to Blu-Ray media (BD-R, BD-RE). The integrated Bluray disc burning allows you to publish your project directly to single layer and dual-layer BD-R and BD-RE media, supporting 25 GB, 50 GB and even 100 GB formats.
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 gives you the freedom to create applications that look exactly the way you want. Perhaps you prefer that your programs to take on the same appearance as the operating system (e.g. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 Aero...)? Or do you want them to be entirely customized with completely custom drawn background images, buttons and window shapes? Or perhaps you'd like to simply make use of the hundreds of ready-to-use MSSTYLES themes (like OS/X Tiger and Panther) that you can download on the Internet? In any case, AutoPlay Media Studio makes it possible – and easy!
It's never been easier to write database applications using AutoPlay Media Studio! Easily connect to a variety of popular local and remote/Internet database systems including MySQL, SQLite3, ODBC, Oracle and PostgreSQL. Execute any SQL statements you desire like CREATE, INSERT and more – even easily retrieve data results using a row-by-row cursor system. Features full integration with our fill-in-the-blanks style Action Wizard, plus intelligent code completion.
AutoPlay Media Studio now features integrated support for displaying PDF documents right in your application. This highly requested feature also gives you full control over the display and formatting. You can show/hide toolbars, scrollbars and borders. Layout options include "Single Page", "One Column", "Two Columns" and "User Preference". View options include "Fit Page", "Fit Page Width", "Fit Page Height" and "Actual Size".
Take control of the PDF object with 18 easy-to-use actions. Fully integrated into the fill-in-the-blanks Action Wizard, you'll be able to easily create dynamic applications to work with PDF files. Actions are provided to Print, Load, Navigate, Zoom, Resize, Hide and much more.
Thanks to the new Apple QuickTime object, your AutoPlay Media Studio applications are now compatible with over 80 video, audio and image formats. Video formats include .MOV, .DV, .M4V, .MP4 and dozens more – including the amazing h.264 format. Audio formats include .AAC, .AIF, .M4A, .MP3, etc. Visual formatting options let you lock an aspect ratio, resize the media to fit the object dimensions or center it within the object area. Border styles include 3D, plain or none.
The Quicktime object by itself is great - but a Quicktime object plus 22 built-in high-level actions is just plain awesome! Brought together, your AutoPlay Media Studio actions have exceptional control over the QuickTime object. Using simple script commands you can Play, Seek, Set Volume, Load, Mute, View Full Screen, Hide, Show and much more. Your only limit is your imagination.
If you're trying to create an application that blends in beautifully with the operating system, the new xButton object is just what the doctor ordered. However, that's just the beginning! The new xButton object supports far more customization than was previously possible. Now you can modernize your applications by adding "icon" images to your buttons, plus you can "markup" the text however you desire! This object lets you control the relative placement of button text and button images; choose between normal and toggle styles; adjust fonts and colors; and even markup you text using dozens of XAML tags – including hyperlinks right on your buttons! By default, the xButton styles itself according to whatever operating system it is being run on. If your application is running on Vista, the button looks like a standard Vista button. If you're running it on Windows 7, it looks like Windows 7. However, you can easily override this and choose from many included styles like Flat, Office 2000, Office XP or many different Office 2007 styles. Or hundreds of MSSTYLES themes… The options are endless.
Checkbox lists are a long awaited addition to AutoPlay Media Studio! We've integrated this feature into the existing Listbox object – you just need to turn it on. Once you do, you can easily present lists of items with corresponding checkboxes. Actions are included to get and set the checkbox state for any listbox item with ease. You'll find dozens of great uses for this one!
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 adds another layer of protection to your applications and scripts. A unique random encryption code is now generated every time you build your project, making "hacking" of your applications much more difficult. As we all know, anyone determined enough can break any protection system given enough time and resources, but the use of rolling codes renders generic attacks ineffective. You can now sleep a little easier!
You're no longer limited to just one timer event per page! You can now set as many "named" timers as you want. Having multiple timers running really opens up the creative possibilities for animations, games, status updates and dozens of other applications.
Easily control Windows Services using the seven new actions included in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. Everything you need is included, such as Create, Start, Stop, Pause, Delete, Query and Continue.
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 includes a set of built-in FTP actions, enabling your application to easily download files over the Internet from FTP servers. These new FTP actions make use of the WinINet API to ensure compliance with the RFC 959 File Transfer Protocol specifications. Actions include FTPWI.Download, FTPWI.GetErrorInfo and FTPWI.GetFileSize.
This trio of system restore actions are extremely powerful and essential for any application that might want to make system changes or install software in a failsafe manner. By creating a system restore point using System.SetRestorePoint before making changes to the computer, the user can easily rollback those changes using the operating system's "restore" feature (found on Windows Vista or later). Actions include System.IsSystemRestoreAvailable, System.SetRestorePoint and System.RemoveRestorePoint.
Here's an action that'll find a lot of use! The Dialog.ComboBox action is used to pop up a dialog box presenting the user with a drop-down list of items they can choose from. You simply pass in a list of items to select from, choose if you'd like them sorted or not and whether or not to restrict the user to just the items in the list, or allow them to type in their own text response. It's a fast and compact way to get user input, while offering suggestions to them at the same time!
In addition to the standard popup tooltips you're used to from previous versions, AutoPlay Media Studio 8 now lets you display Balloon tooltips! It's an extremely attractive option for presenting context sensitive help within your application. It's also much more useful than the old style tooltips, as you can use multiple lines of text to present your instructions. In fact, multi-line tooltips were so useful, we also added the feature to the standard looking popup as "extended" tooltips.
AutoPlay Media Studio has always looked pretty slick, but that wasn't good enough. The entire project workspace has been overhauled. Selection boxes, toolbars, context menus – everything has been redone using a consistent color palette, light source and 3D perspective. You spend a lot of time working on your projects. Your tools should serve to increase your productivity, rather than distract you. With AutoPlay Media Studio 8, you'll find everything is more logically arranged and attractively presented – so you can get more done.
Action Plugins and Object Plugins are one of the best features of AutoPlay Media Studio. They allow 3rd party software developers to extend and expand the product in an extremely integrated and seamless fashion. By simply dropping a plugin into your project, you can easily save yourself hours of work and add significant functionality to your application. The great news is that with AutoPlay Media Studio 8, plugin developers can now fully leverage the advantages of the Lua 5.1 language. The Plugin SDK v2 is available for free download on the indigorose.com website.
Working with data grids in AutoPlay Media Studio is more useful than ever, especially with the new integrated database features in v8. As always, the grid object allows you to add spreadsheets, grids and list controls to your applications. With over 110 scriptable actions, it is extremely powerful. To help you easily preload data, you can now even specify a CSV (comma separated value) data file at design time.
The Adobe Flash object now supports calling and responding to Flash actionscript functions with the addition of the new "Flash.CallFunction" and "Flash.SetReturnValue" actions and new "On FlashCall" event. Access to Flash's external API opens up many new uses for the Flash object and advanced interaction with your AutoPlay Media Studio application such as playing FVL video files using a Flash loader.
The web object now uses the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer SDK. New scrollbar and border options have been added to give you increased visual control over the object - allowing you to better integrate web pages into your AutoPlay Media Studio applications.
We've made it easier for you to debug syntax errors in your scripts by providing you with better error reports. Error messages now include additional details about exactly where the problem occurred – right down to the event name and line number!
Testing and debugging your projects is much easier in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. You can now send all debug message to a human-readable text format log file, to a debug window or simultaneously to both locations. Between the automatic "Trace Mode" logging, "Event Context" information and "Last Error" actions, you've got a formidable collection of tools to help squash those pesky bugs and logic errors!
Easily match colors thanks to the new eyedropper style color picker. Integrated into all color choosers, simply move your mouse pointer off the dialog and watch it turn into an eyedropper cursor. Click on the color of any pixel on your screen and voila – you've automatically set the color to match.
All of the dependency modules have been updated in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. Dependency Modules make it fast and easy to detect whether or not common 3rd party software applications and technologies are installed on the user's computer. AutoPlay Media Studio 8 can detect the current versions of such products as Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, Apple QuickTime, Windows Media Player and more. If the required product is not detected, the user will be alerted to the problem and conveniently directed to the appropriate website for download and installation.
In order to enable you to create applications that can look and feel exactly like those created using traditional Windows platform SDK development tools, we went through all of our existing objects and updated them. For example, objects like the Checkbox, Radio Button and Progress Bar will now take on the look that users expect to see on their operating system. On Windows 7, they'll look consistent with the standard operating system theme. On Windows XP, they'll look like XP – and so on. The best part though is that they'll also now respond correctly to changes in the application theme or MSSTYLES skin files that are supported in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. It all adds up to a 100% professional look!
The Action Wizard now marks any actions that are contained in Action Plugins with a "plugin" identifier. This makes it much easier to quickly identify what is built-in to AutoPlay Media Studio and what you've added later through 3rd party additions. It's especially handy when you're looking for documentation, help files, samples and technical support.
The Video object has been modernized with a variety of new graphic styles. Choose from attractive new blue, green and gray skins. If you don't find a style you like, it's super easy to create your own video transport skins using Photoshop or any other graphics editor. We've also made the skin format more flexible, removing the constraining height restrictions that may have hampered your creativity in the past.
The Paragraph object in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 has been updated to default to Windows 7 style scrollbars. This will give any of your scrolling textboxes a much more up-to-date visual appearance. Of course, you can still make your own scrollbar styles from scratch (or download shared skins from http://www.autoplaymediastudio.com) or choose from old favorites such as Chrome, Euro, Corporate, Charcoal, Industrial and more.
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is all about helping you get things done faster and easier. Even small things like the startup welcome screen have been improved! The startup screen now gives you fast access to multiple recently used projects, one-click restore of the last used project, or simply creating a new project using a template or blank project. Additionally, an integrated RSS feed keeps you updated on product improvements, updates, bug fixes and news!
The Project Explorer in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 has been revamped to give you a better overall view of your project. Things like better icons, collapsible Dialog and Page categories and better visual indications for hidden and locked objects will be much appreciated. Additional context-sensitive right-click menus have been added and reworked to present you with only the most appropriate commands for working with objects, pages, dialogs and events.
A variety of changes were made to the script editor to help more quickly write your code. Of course the popular Action Wizard, Code Completion and Intellisense are still there to guide you. We've also expanded and reorganized the one-click "Quick Script" feature. Many common programming "snippets" are included, making it super easy to add loops, control structures and other often-used bits of script. Additionally, "object tables" have been moved into their own category in order to help you find what you’re looking for at a glance.
With all the new possibilities available to AutoPlay Media Studio 8 developers, we've put together a centralized archive to help organize everything. At http://www.autoplaymediastudio.com you'll find an easy-to-navigate repository for everything related to AutoPlay Media Studio. You'll find action plugins, object plugins, application themes, Lua modules, video transport skins, scrollbar skins, MSSTYLES skins, custom .BTN format button files, background images, project templates, example projects, scripts, audio files, tutorials, tools and lots more.