About Testing Movies To Avoid Problems - MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR Use Manual

About testing movies to avoid problems

While you develop movies, you might encounter some difficulties because creating interesting
movies and trying out new ideas always involves some experimentation. By testing your movies
according to the simple guidelines described in this section, you can prevent problems from
becoming obstacles.
Testing early in development
When you begin a Director project, it is a good practice to test the functionality of your movie
early in the development process to help ensure that you discover any problems while they are still
minor. Waiting to test lets small problems become larger ones as you add features to your movie
that depend on problematic functionality that was implemented earlier. By incorporating testing
into your authoring process early, you will find these problems and have the opportunity to fix
them before adding features to your movie.
Testing often during development
Testing should be an integral part of your Director development process. You should test the
functionality of each small part of your movie as you add it rather than waiting until the movie's
whole feature set is implemented.
When you build features that are interdependent, you should test each one before adding the
next. If you test this way, you know that the most recently implemented feature is the most
likely source of the problem. If you wait to test one feature until after the next feature is
implemented and one of those features exhibits a problem, you have a more complex set of
possibilities to evaluate.
Save multiple versions of your movie as you progress. When difficulties arise, compare the current
version with the last saved version to help locate the source of the problem.
Testing on all target platforms
When you develop a Director movie, you should spend some time defining its audience. Part of
this process is deciding what the minimum system requirements should be for the computers used
by that audience.
You should determine the slowest processor speed you want your movie to play on and verify that
the performance of your movie is acceptable on a processor of that speed. You should also
determine if there is a range of configurations you have to support (such as Macintosh, Windows
2000, and Windows XP) and test enough of them to ensure success. Be sure to include
parameters such as browser software, screen resolution, and available memory in your testing.
This approach can help you find problems that are specific to an operating system or
configuration, which are distinct from authoring errors.
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