Shockwave Browser Compatibility; Previewing A Movie In A Browser - MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR Use Manual

For more information about how to distribute Xtra extensions with projectors, see
TechNote 13965 in the Director Support Center at www.macromedia.com/go/director_support.
Although the note might refer to Director 7, the information is the same for more recent versions
of Director.

Shockwave browser compatibility

Shockwave can play Director movies in the following browsers on the listed platforms:
•
For Microsoft Windows: An Intel Pentium II with 64 MB of available RAM running
Windows 98, or an Intel Pentium III with 128 MB of available RAM running Windows 2000
or Windows XP; one of the following web browsers: Netscape 7.1, Microsoft Internet Explorer
5.01 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet
Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, and a color monitor
•
For Macintosh OS X: A Power Macintosh G3 with 128 MB of available RAM running Mac
OS X 10.2.6 or 10.3; one of the following web browsers: Netscape 7.1, Microsoft Internet
Explorer 5.2 or later, or Safari; and a color monitor
•
For Macintosh Classic: A Power Macintosh G3 with 64 MB of available RAM running System
9.2; Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1; and a color monitor
When it first encounters an HTML page that references Shockwave content, Internet Explorer
for Windows asks the user for permission to download the Shockwave ActiveX control if it is not
already installed. If the user approves, it downloads and installs the control.

Previewing a movie in a browser

You can preview a movie in a browser on your local computer to view JPEG-compressed bitmaps,
and to check the movie design, script, and any other performance issues related to playing a movie
in a browser. Previewing a movie creates temporary Shockwave (DCR) and HTML files that open
in a browser.
Note: When you use the Publish command rather than the Preview in Browser command (with the
Preview after Publishing option selected in the Publish Settings Format tab), you can create
permanent DCR and HTML files. These permanent files (as opposed to temporary ones created
simply by using the Preview in Browser command) can then be placed on a web server for viewing
with a browser via http.
You may notice that linked media do not work as expected when you preview a movie in a
browser. Because of security restrictions, movies playing in browsers may not be able to read files
from a local disk unless they are in the dswmedia folder (also called the support folder), which is a
subfolder of the folder containing the Shockwave Player. Therefore, to preview a movie that uses
linked media, you may need to put the movie and all of its linked media in the dswmedia folder.
The movie can open any file in a subfolder of dswmedia, provided that the relative paths have not
changed. If you move the movie and its media to another server, the linked media will continue to
work if you preserve the same folder structure. For more information, see
folders and the support folder to publish Shockwave
To specify the browser to use for previewing:
Select Edit > Preferences > Network.
1
Note: If you are using a Macintosh OS X operating system, select the Director menu, instead of
the Edit menu, to access Preferences.
In the Preferred Browser box, enter the path to the browser application file.
2
448 Chapter 23: Packaging Movies for Distribution
"Using dswmedia
content".