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teacher tools |
| We focus our projects on creating richly interactive applications for communtiy college teachers, and Director/shockwave provides all of the flexibility we need to make it happen.
We have quite a few shockwave applications designed for students to use as well as other ones created as re-usable templates for our faculty. For the latter, we always create step by step guides to help our teachers learn to re-purpose the tools. Since we can create shockwave applications that can derive their functionality from external files or the shockwave embdedding HTML tags, we merely have tyo create the materials and then provide instructions for editing the tect files that drive these tools. |
 the clicker Dir 5.x (June 1996) This was designed as slick, but tiny 7k slide show controller that is easily configurable via paramaters passed via HTML. Targets multiple frame panes and has options for streaming Shockwave audio or linked AIFF/WAVE audio. Runs locally and/or from a web server. The concept was to allow teachers to create web base slide shows that could be configured to have multiple language captions, and audio that was attached to each image in the slide show. To make it flexible, there can be 0-2 caption sets, the audio can be shockwave audio, WAV, or AIFF files. A step by step guide shows how to arrange the image and HTML files needed to create a slide show. All of the options are controlled by editing the paramters sent to shockwave via the embedding HTML file. Later we also created online workshop materials to make the process even easier to understand.
Lingo Snippet : slide display handler |
 correlation meter Dir 5.x (Sept 1995) is just a simple on-screen control to illustrate the differences between positive and negatively correlated data. Originally created to be called from a HyperCard program Research Methods in Social and Naturally Sciences, later converted to a web version, it was also used as a demonstration tool by psychology teachers. This might have been my first Director movie I ran through Shockwave while beta testing in the fall of 1995. See it also in action with java
Lingo Snippet : handler for a contrained slider.
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 How to Draw a Labyrinth Dir 5.x (March 1996) demonstrates step-by-step, how to draw a classic seven circuit labyrinth design. It also links to a free form drawing tool that feaures variable brush size, stroke, and color.
Lingo Snippet : drawing handler
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 the FlipSite Dir 5.x (June 1997) a shockwave front end to some perl/cgi magic to simulate a virtual coin flip ocurring every 5 seconds, and tools for examining streaks and frequency histograms.
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 Explore the Inner Labyrinth Dir 5.x (Jun 1996) An explorative guide inside a Labyrinth, with questions to answer along the way. In the days of old, we had to break up sequences like this into a series of connected shockwave files.
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 Language Grouper Dir 5.x (March 1996) a tool for anthropology students to drag and group different languages based upon the similarities of common words. Lingo Snippet : Sprite drag/swapping Source Code for Movie : Mac [16k] ~~ Win [12k]
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 Planetary Paths Dir 5.x (September 1996) A moon circles around a planet that revolves around the sun. Vary the path diameter and rate of revolution! Then drag the sun! Control,the Universe! Could to be re-done with parent-children. In my spare time. Right. Despite the crudeness, this one appears on the Zeeks Games site.
Lingo Snippet : revolving planey handler
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 Negative Reinforcement University (NRU) Dir 5.x (Aug 1996) This project represented the conversion of content originally created for CD-ROM to shockwave. To minimalize the bandwidth consumption, the screen size was shrunk, the quicktime movies were dropped in lieu of a timed series of still images and Shockwave Audio, and most importantly, the individual scenes were broken down into small connected movies each 15-60k in size. This project was a finalist for the Macromedia People's Choice Awards at UCON 97.
Lingo Snippet : Shockwave to Browser communciation |
 The Quizzer Dir 5.x to 6.x (March 1996) a versatile multiple choice quiz that snags the data for each quiz using GetNetText() command. The title of each quiz is read via HTML paramters and a secret encrypting method calls up the correct data file. Once read in Director, quiz data is defined by a property list containing the question, 4 possible answers, 4 corresponding text for feed back, and a flag indicating the correct answer. A random list generator is used to both present the questions in random order and to shuffle the order of appearance of the answers. The first version required an ugly format for the data files while the newer version features a Projector application for creating the data files as well as generating the HTML code for embedding the shockwave file with the appropriate parameters. There is more complete information in a work shop we created for teachers.
Lingo Snippet : Randomizing and File name encrypting code Source Code for Dir 6 : Mac [148k] ~~ Win [107k]
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Research Methods in the Social and Natural Sciences Dir 6.x (Mar 1997)
Shockwave provides the functionality for the practice and exercise sections of an educational web site. JavaScript records the users name and later passes it to shockwave. Small use of getPrefs to store data for sections done as well as some CGI for creating a report of test scores (for printing).
Uses the same algorithm for randomizing the items as the quizzer.
 Tri Fractals Dir 5.x (Sep 1996) watch the serpinski triangle dance, a mathematical fractal pattern! The animation was done with some simple parent-child scripting, trails, random, and math hijinks. This was created as a demonstration of a simple fractal pattern for math students.
Lingo Snippet : Typing Behavior
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animated fun |
| Why would you use shockwave, its weight and baggage as a dreaded "plug-in"? Well when it first came out, there were very few options for web page animation. Even with animated GIFs, which became universally supproted, you were resreticted to linear animation. In shockwave, you can create intelligent aniamtions, non-linear pieces that can react tot he user, external inputs, information fed/retreived from databases, etc.
But mostly, it is fun. These were pieces created without an end purpose in mind, except exploration. |
 chuck berry pinky action Dir 5.x (July 1996) the reason why my music career fizzled or never materialized... Silly lyrics set to poorly played guitar, but of course, that's the whole concept! Actually my first experiment with shockwave audio. Audio was digitized right from my acoustic guitar into a Mac microphone. All moving parts in this one are quickdraw shapes, in the interest of small file size.
Lingo Snippet : handler for animating guitar.
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 Grave Mistake in Direct-L Ville Dir 5.x (Jun 1996) an implementation of a director movie that was in original form, 640 x 480 and about 1.5 Mb in size. This fun poke at Director and the Direct-L listserv was part of the Halloween project of 1994. Later versions were streamlined to break up transmission of large files. It includes presenting on screen animation and/or text while a new movie is loaded. All the shockwave is done within a single page, and the environment uses gotoNetMovie to jump between small shockwave files. Lingo Snippet : animated tumbleweed Source Code for Movie : (graveyard scene) Mac [271k] ~~ Win [186k]
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 Maricop-A Sketch Dir 5.x (May 1997) was not the first nor the last web-a-sketch, but used some nifty lingo for animating the knobs. It can run in a familiar "manual" mode or in a screen saver like "random" mode. Made it's way into the Bob Schmitt's excellent book Shockwave Studio and also appears on the Zeeks.com game site.
Lingo Snippet : handler for rotating knob
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 Petals Around the Rose Dir 5.x (Dec 1997) Test your observation and pattern recognition skills with this dice game. Try to guess the trick behind the animated rolling die. The animation only uses 3 cast members to animate five dice that can be in 8 different rotation angles at random locations. Petals appears on the Zeeks.com game site.
Lingo Snippet : parent object for dice
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 no picasso zone Dir 5.x (Feb 1996) A shockwave coloring book that is about half-done. It allows you to create drawings using shape tools that can be resized and set to colors. If it were full done, we could save drawings by recording the locations and properties of the sprites.
Lingo Snippet : handler for animating guitar
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 Ocotillo Jigsaw Puzzle Dir 5.x (December 1997) A shockwave jigsaw to go along with the web site for a retreat activity. Pieces are scrambled and your moves are counted. Great use for the Mac control panel to create the pieces...
Lingo Snippet : initialization scripts
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 No Java Shop Dir 5.x (Sep 1996) was the first makeup of this shop. It used some squishy animated buttons, some random movement for the coffee cup, and what was then new lingo to jump to other web pages. Nothing magical at all these days.
Lingo Snippet : Random movmeent for coffee cup
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 Ruby's Art Pad Dir 5.x to 6.x (April 1995) a fun coloring tool, named for an elephant at the Phoenix Zoo who had a natural gift for painting (much more skill than I). This is more or less a plain Director 4 era movie I've shrunk, squeezed, and optimized for the very first version of shockwave. It just uses some Lingo to vary sizes, shapes, colors of a few paint objects as well as trails. There is a little trick to have it keep the drawing tools from being covered. Ruby appears on the Zeeks.com game site.
Lingo Snippet : Tool selection code
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 Smoke Rings Dir 5.x (April 1996) a cheesy and cheap effect created for Steve Bullock's Shockwave "bauble" site. The goal was tiny k for file size.
Lingo Snippet : smoke ring vertical animation
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director techniques |
| Shockwave became an elegant way to demonstrate on the web, a coding or animation technique specific to users of Macromedia Director. These examples represent small code tidbits. each linked to a source director file.
Ultimately one could have created a vast library of these, except there was other work to do! |
 cheap rollovers Dir 6.5 (Octoner 1998) Sample movie for a low-end Director Scripting behavior to create different rollover effects for text members, one mode provides a hiltie color, another willl "jiggle" the text during rolover, and it allows you set custom cursor.
Lingo Snippet : offsetting sprite location
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 Birth Me a Popup Menu! Dir 4.x (Nov 1995) demonstrated how to create pop up menus in Director without using Xtras, using the parent-child objects delivered to us in Director 4 (that is as old as it gets- the birth handler!).
Lingo Snippet : parent script for pop-up menu
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 Dialing For Behaviors Dir 6.x (Sept 1998) a Director Behavior for a (lingo only) needle to be used on dials and gauges that are rotated around a circle, or part of an arc.
Lingo Snippet : Dial Behavior
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 Faux Typing Dir 6.x (Aug 1998) by special request by Arthur Moers on Direct-L, a simple modification of a behavior I was using elsewhere. Arthur wanted something that would generated a chaacter by character message whenever any key was pressed; I was using this to auto generate message. Well, this means more for director programmers than anyone in general...
Lingo Snippet : Typing Behavior
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 Filling a Cone Dir 6.x (Sept 1998) Quick demo for using the mask-ink effect for creating animated filling of a cone or funnel with a solid color.
Source Code for Movie :
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 Log Scale Meter Dir 5.x (December 1997) simulates an analog lab meter using a logarithmic scale. Required some lingo hi jinks to pull it off.
Lingo Snippet : moving the meter
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 Sweeper Dir 5.x (March 1996) animate a sweeping circle, to represent the utter passage of time? It must have a use somewhere.
Lingo Snippet : circle sweep handler
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net interaction |
| One of the most useful techniques for shockwave was its ability to communcate with a web server via direct calls to a CGI. This opened the door to reading and writing data stored on the server, and thus could be used to build shared data systems.
In the early days (1995-1996) there were some tight restrictions on how much data could be sent via a CGI URL, but with Director 7, the door was flung wide open by addition of a POST method. |
 shockwave poll Dir 5.x (Sept 1995) was a very early, and horribly clunky use of CGI with a shockwaved flick. The Vote movie sends info the CGI expects. The CGI script merely updates a the tally of responses for each answer and the time/date of the last change. The CGI returns a page that then uses the <head><meta http-equiv="refresh" ...></head> tag to return to the poll page. The Shockwave Poll movie reads in the data with GetNetText and charts the numbers. At this point it does not work exactly right and has not been tweaked in several years ;-)
Lingo Snippet : using getNetText to communicate to server via CGI
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 shockwave list o' sites Dir 5.x (Nov 1995) a list of shockwave equipped net sites for the Director Web- the list itself is a shockwave movie (pretty cool, novel concept eh?). Our CGI form allows others to register their sites, which is then written to a text file on our server. The shocked movie reads in the file, parses the data, sorts it alpabetically, and sets up a scrolling field index which is hotlinked to the listed sites. As the list grew, we had to segment it to three separate files as it exceede the (then) limit of 32k per text field member. Last time I looked, it had about 1000 entries.
Lingo Snippet : handler grabbing URL from site listings returned from CGI.
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