Looking at Sivakatirswami web site (well done!), gave me an idea that I was
wandering if it had more general support...
When distributing Metacard stacks to people who do not have the engine, it
is common practice to include ftp links to the relevant compiled standalone,
or the Metacard ftp site for the relevant "Starter Kit"...
The technique that Sivakatirswami has used for Standalone distribution is
the best technique for distributing MC content. It is similar to the
standard practice for cross platform (PC?Mac only of course) development
with Director - where you supply two minimal engines one PC and one Mac that
both point to a shared named "home" document.
The advantage of the MC/Sivakatirswami technique is that not only can the
engine be very small (less than a 1MB), but that additional resources can be
downloaded by the engine itself whenever required (and indeed in the
background while reading what you have downloaded)...
This is great, and a technique of general use to the Metacard community. My
suggestion is that this is improved and made much simpler for the developer
(ie us), by adapting the Metacard Starter Kit, and it's FTP site to utilise
this "progressive download" technique...
To be specific I suggest that:
1) the Starter Kit be broken down to appropriately compressed minimal
engines for each platform, with "progressive download and save" options for
all the relevant documentation and tutorials.
2) The Metacard site contains a page for cutting and pasting appropriate
cross platform HTML code for use in a developers site.
3) A Javascript version is created for auto-platform detection with
default code for all platforms for non-Javascript browsers
4) Appropriate html code is available for inclusion in emails, so that
the recipient can easily follow the html links in the body of the email
message to download the minimal engine.
To give an example of how this would help, it would mean that all we would
have to do to send someone an example stack is copy the relevant cross
platform html code and include it in the email message alongside either the
attached stack of another ftp link to where you have posted your specific
stack.
This would save everyone having to download all the engines for all the
platforms, for simple quick distributions. The cross platform browser
detection code would also be a useful community resource.
Lessons from History...
Macromind Director's Shockwave and Xtra plugin architecture only really
started to take off when they improved there download site to make it
eas(ier) for people download the Xtra and/or plugins for those people that
did not already have them pre-installed.
As I have to do this in any case, I am offering my services to try and crack
this one. If anyone likes the idea and could help in any way please let me
know what you think/what you could help with. Bullet proof cross platform
browser detection scripts anyone?
> From: Sivakatirswami <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 19:11:37 -1000
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Metacard Site Went Public
>
> We went public tonite with our new Metacard site. You can see the
> announcement advertising "Mystic Mouse" on our daily web page. (and a
> picture of yours truly with our one of our books in Russian.
>
> http://www.gurudeva.org/today
>
> The site itself is at
>
> http://www.himalayanacademy.com/studyhall/
>
> I really want to thank everyone for their support and help along the way.
> Can't believe how easy it was with MC and what a nightmare it would have
> been had we gone with a HTML/JAVA based platform.
>
> We still have a long ways to go. And it will be interesting to see if we can
> do a "paradigm" shift away from the misconception that
>
> web = netscape and or IE.
>
> Scott: I built the PPC with the latest build of 2.3.2b2.1 Let me know a
> month from how if you have any referrals from our domain form our MC
> advocacy page.
>
> Aloha from Hawaii.
>
>
> Hinduism Today
>
> Sivakatirswami
> Editor's Assistant/Production Manager
> www.HinduismToday.com
> www.HimalayanAcademy.com
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
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