Testing Your Movie - MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR Use Manual

Interacting with browsers
You can use
setPref()
folder found in the Shockwave Player folder.
To write to a preferences file on a local disk:
•
Use the
setPref
Reference topics in the Director Help Panel.
After the method runs, a folder named Prefs is created inside the Shockwave Player folder (in
the same location as the Xtras folder). The
default folder locations for Windows and Macintosh are described in the following list:
Windows
The \Macromed\Shockwave 8 subfolder of the system folder; the system folder is
typically c:\winnt\system32 or c:\windows\system
Macintosh
folder. The OS X path is /my Volume/Users/<me>/Library/Application Support/Macromedia/
Shockwave/prefs.
The
setPref
To return the content of a file that was written by a previous setPref method:
•
Use the
getPref()
method returns
getPref()
For more information about this method, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director
Help Panel.
To specify text in a browser's status area:
•
Use the
netStatus
Reference topics in the Director Help Panel.
Note: Some browsers do not support this method.

Testing your movie

However you decide to create your movie, test it thoroughly before releasing it to the public.
Make sure you test on systems with all common types of Internet connections, especially on slow
modems and at busy times of day. The following list describes things you might want to check
before distributing your movie over the Internet; remember, however, that each movie has its own
special needs:
•
Compare a streaming version of the movie to a nonstreaming version to see if the performance
is different. Some smaller movies might work better without streaming playback.
•
Verify that all linked media elements appear correctly. To see if the movie correctly handles an
error, try forcing the linked media elements to fail.
•
Run the movie on all systems your users are likely to have. For the general public, these include
Windows 98, 2000 or XP. For Macintosh OS X users, these include Power Mac G3 running
OS X 10.2.6 or 10.3 or later. For Macintosh Classic users, a Power Macintosh G3 running
System 9.2. Browsers include Netscape 7.1 or later; Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 or later
and a color monitor.
•
Test your movie on a machine that was not used to develop the content: this is critical.
or
getPref()
method. For more information about this method, see the Scripting
The OS 9 path is The System Folder:Extensions:Macromedia:Shockwave 8
method cannot write to a file that is on a CD.
method. If no
setPref
if called from Lingo or
VOID
method. For more information about this method, see the Scripting
to read or write simple text preference files to the Prefs
method can write only to that folder. The
setPref
method has already written such a file, the
null
if called from JavaScript syntax.
Testing your movie 479