Macromedia Authorware - Using the Macromedia Flash Asset Xtra: What you can do with the Flash Asset Xtra

What you can do with the Flash Asset Xtra

The Macromedia Flash Asset Xtra provides you with far more than just the ability to play a Flash Player movie in an Authorware piece. Here are some of the most important features:

Use Flash movies as you would any other media type. A Flash movie plays with its full animation, sound, and interactivity in place.

Import a Flash movie into an Authorware piece so it's always stored with the piece and immediately available. Or, add a Flash movie as a linked file. When Authorware encounters the Flash movie on the flowline, it automatically loads it into memory from disk, from a network drive, or from anywhere on the Internet. You can choose to load the file entirely into memory before displaying it or have it play immediately while Authorware continues to stream it into memory in the background.

Use Flash movies in either packaged or web-packaged Authorware pieces. Flash movies are particularly effective in web-packaged pieces because, as vector-based media, they are extremely small and therefore load much more quickly than most other media types.

Manipulate the Flash movie. Because Flash movies are vector-based, you can scale and rotate them while still maintaining their sharpness.

Create Flash movies so they can communicate with a piece by sending events that Authorware functions can capture and process.

Use a wide variety of Authorware functions to control precisely the Flash movie's behavior and appearance. You can pause and play a movie, jump to specific frames, and precisely control the movie's scaling and rotation.

Create cross-platform projects. Flash and the Flash Asset Xtra both come in fully cross-platform Windows and Macintosh versions.

The possibilities are limitless. Here are just a few examples of what you can do:

Create "splash screens" for web-packaged Authorware pieces that load with lightning speed and entertain your users while the rest of the piece streams into memory.

Create interactive maps in Flash that users can pan across. Let them zoom in to reveal details with vector-based precision.

Use a single vector-based Flash movie to provide exciting effects such as rotating an image—an effect that would take many versions of a bitmapped image to create.

	Use Flash movies as you would any other media type. A Flash movie plays with its full animation, sound, and interactivity in place.
	Import a Flash movie into an Authorware piece so it's always stored with the piece and immediately available. Or, add a Flash movie as a linked file. When Authorware encounters the Flash movie on the flowline, it automatically loads it into memory from disk, from a network drive, or from anywhere on the Internet. You can choose to load the file entirely into memory before displaying it or have it play immediately while Authorware continues to stream it into memory in the background.
	Use Flash movies in either packaged or web-packaged Authorware pieces. Flash movies are particularly effective in web-packaged pieces because, as vector-based media, they are extremely small and therefore load much more quickly than most other media types.
	Manipulate the Flash movie. Because Flash movies are vector-based, you can scale and rotate them while still maintaining their sharpness.
	Create Flash movies so they can communicate with a piece by sending events that Authorware functions can capture and process.
	Use a wide variety of Authorware functions to control precisely the Flash movie's behavior and appearance. You can pause and play a movie, jump to specific frames, and precisely control the movie's scaling and rotation.
	Create cross-platform projects. Flash and the Flash Asset Xtra both come in fully cross-platform Windows and Macintosh versions.

	Create "splash screens" for web-packaged Authorware pieces that load with lightning speed and entertain your users while the rest of the piece streams into memory.
	Create interactive maps in Flash that users can pan across. Let them zoom in to reveal details with vector-based precision.
	Use a single vector-based Flash movie to provide exciting effects such as rotating an image—an effect that would take many versions of a bitmapped image to create.