On Wednesday, Oct 27 1999, Barry Boepple wrote:
> Thank all of you for your great feedback about Metacard. Sounds great.
>
> I may sound kind of dumb here, but I am still not clear on how one would
> deploy a Metacard Stack via a web Browser. I have only my ToolBook
> experience to draw from. With ToolBook you actually select a menu item that
> converts and exports your project into an HTML (now DHTML) file. It creates
> one HTML page for every page in the project. For quiz questions and other
> items you built with its extended object editors (that are deemed
> convertible), they get converted to JAVA applets. As far as any openScript
> you wrote, it will be lost and does not convert. Now you have project that
> can run as a native HTML application on compatible browsers. The other
> method is to use a plug in called Neuron that runs ToolBook in a compatible
> Browser. It sends the requested pages or interactions in packets. This
> method is fraught with problems and is exceedingly slow.
>
> So the question is, how does Metacard deal with all of this?
There is currently no way to run MetaCard as either a plug-in or as an
export to Java, HTML or DHTML. Producing a plug-in would require the user
to dowload the entire engine, and would be subject to the performance and
environmental constraints imposed on plug-ins. IMHO, Java is a very slow
language which is going just about no-where. Whilst an exporter to Java was
designed by MetaCard corp. some time back, it never got produced because of
the huge performance bottlenecks in Java. There is little point in even
attempting to export MetaCard stacks to HTML/DHTML - if you want to do that,
get a web page editor which will give you a lot more control! The
multi-media and scripted elements wouldn't make it in such a translation,
which leaves you with almost nothing.
Neuron is a good case-in-point. It doesn't run on the Mac or Linux, only
running on some of the browsers available on Windows. The examples I have
seen don't work correctly, and are very limited and very slow. In fact, I
have yet to see a *single* example that actually runs correctly without some
kind of error message or major glitch at some point.
So where does that leave us? MetaCard *can* be configured as a "helper
application" to a browser, meaning that when the user clicks on a link to a
MetaCard stack, it will load it up as a seperate application. The user has
about the same amount of work and downloading to do as installing a plug-in.
But the application gets to run reliably by itself, fully cross-platform in
any browser.
Once you've got a single stack open, you need to dowload content as
demanded. MetaCard stacks can download content and display it in a single
line of script:
put URL "http://www.whatever.com/myimage.jpg" into image "example"
go to stack URL "http://www.whatever.com/contents.mc"
go to stack URL "http://www.whatever.com/example2.mc"
There are also simple commands for downloading asynchronously, allowing you
to display a progress bar during the download (which itself can happen in
the background if you wish).
MetaCard 2.3 (currently in public beta testing) has support for sockets,
meaning that you can use MetaCard to talk internet protocols. Free script
libraries for the common protocols are being developed to go with the 2.3
release, including support for using MC as a web server (run all your CGI
processing from the scripting language), email, ftp, etc.
IMHO, the best solution to delivering MC content over the web is to build a
standalone with a single stack attached (which would display information,
contain a splash screen, etc.) which starts downloading other stacks, or
even individual components such as sound and video if you wanted to render
progressively. The user goes to your site, downloads and starts running.
Its very easy to update the content online, and gives you way more
flexibility than a browser without even having to configure a helper
application. Try it out with the Starter Kit: the possibilities are
considerable, you should find it a very flexible and highly compatible
cross-platform method of delivering interactive content.
Regards,
Kevin
> Thanks again
>
> Barry Boepple
> SUMMETRIC Interactive Software, Inc.
>
> http://www.summetric.com
Kevin Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.xworlds.com/>
Cross Worlds Computing, MetaCard Distributors, Custom Development.
Tel: +44 (0)131 672 2909. Fax: +44 (0)1639 830 707.
