revlet newbie questions

[J. Landman Gay]

Chris Sheffield wrote:
> So I'm wondering, is there a good, single source
> out there somewhere that lists what works and what doesn't work in a
> revlet? Things to avoid in revlets?

I don't think there is a comprehensive reference yet, since the revlet 
engine is still being revised and some limitations may be lifted 
provided work-arounds can be implemented. A big part of the problem is 
how various browsers handle different things, and some capabilities just 
aren't possible with current browser implementations.

What I know about so far are:

1. Only one active window at a time, as both you and Sarah noted. You 
can alternately display more than one window in the same browser page. 
But opening an external (secondary) window is not currently possible. RR 
was looking into the new Firefox release to see if that would allow such 
a thing, but even if it does, IE and/or Safari may not. So to be safe, 
don't use more than one revlet window.

Ask and Answer dialogs were hacked to allow display, since so many 
stacks use those, but it's a hack that still isn't perfect. In 
particular, the user must manually focus on the window by clicking in it 
before any objects inside will activate.

2. Custom cursors: not supported. This includes cursors the Rev engine 
uses (busy, watch, etc.) For now, we only have the default browser cursor.

3. Quicktime and CoreImage visual effects are not supported. QuickTime 
players are only supported in alwaysBuffer mode - this means the 
controller will not work.

On the up side, there have been a few threads here about reading QT 
movies or other files from the local hard drive. No one was able to do 
it, and the work-around for regular files was to use URL syntax to "put" 
the file into the revlet. I've since found out that if you use a fully 
qualified file reference, you can retrieve QT movies from the local 
drive, and I think other files as well.

Don't use normal Rev file references (i.e.: user/folder/file.mov). 
Instead, use a fully qualified file reference similar to an http reference:

   file:///user/folder/file.mov -- note the 3 slashes, indicating localhost

If you refer to QT files that way they can be used as the filename for 
players in revlets.

This discrepancy is due to the automatic relative referencing that Rev 
uses when looking for files on disk. They are going to fix that so that 
in the future we can use file references we're used to for local file 
access in revlets. For now, the above works. You still can't play movies 
with an active controller though, but you can use "start" and "stop" 
player commands normally to manage playback.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com