Previewing A Movie In A Browser; About Xtra Extensions - MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX-USING DIRECTOR MX Use Manual

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, Lingo, 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, you can create
permanent DCR and HTML files that let you view the movie in a browser.
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 cannot 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 need to put the movie and all of its
linked media in the dswmedia folder. The movie can open a file in a subfolder of dswmedia
provided 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
details about security issues when playing a movie in a browser, see "Director and Internet
Security" in the Director Support Center at www.macromedia.com/support/director/internet/
security/.
To specify the browser to use for previewing:
Select Edit > Preferences > Network.
1
In the Preferred Browser box, enter the path to the browser application file.
2
To preview a movie in a browser:
•
Select File > Preview in Browser or press F12.

About Xtra extensions

All Xtra extensions a movie requires must be installed on your user's system when the movie runs.
When you distribute a movie, you must either include these Xtra extensions or provide the user
with the means to download them. Using the Movie Xtras dialog box, you can specify the Xtra
extensions to include in a projector and whether Xtra extensions should download for use with
Shockwave movies. The Movie Xtras dialog box contains a list of the most commonly used Xtra
extensions. Including all these Xtra extensions ensures that your movie will work in most cases
but makes the projector much larger. You may want to remove Xtra extensions you know you
aren't using.
Each time you create a sprite that requires an Xtra extension, Director adds the Xtra extension to
the list of required Xtra extensions in the Movie Xtras dialog box. If you remove the sprite,
Director does not remove the Xtra extension from the list, in case you later re-create the sprite.
Director cannot detect Xtra extensions required in Lingo code. You must manually add any Xtra
extensions required by your Lingo code to the list in the Movie Xtras dialog box. See "Managing
Xtra extensions for distributed movies" on page 574.
Managing Xtra extensions controls the size and capabilities of the movie you distribute. Many
important features in Director, such as text and vector shapes, are controlled by Xtra extensions,
as is the ability to import all types of linked media. If you don't use a feature or import a media
type that is controlled by an Xtra extension, you should not distribute the related Xtra extension
with your movie. This is especially true for movies distributed on the Internet.
572 Chapter 26