About Authorware 3.5
The software used to construct both the Presentations and Quizzes was
Authorware 3.5 © by Macromedia © .
The Cyber1114 group will be
updating to Authorware 4 © in December of 1997.
Authorware is a visual
authoring tool that can be used to create interactive web sites or stand
alone applications and presentations. Among its notable features are:
- Import and embed audio and video into a presentation
- Perform calculations
- Create hyperlinks within presentations and to other URLs
- Create colorful, animated and interactive interfaces
Currently, Authorware is available only for PC and MacIntosh.
About Shockwave
Shockwave © is a browser plugin-in that Macromedia developed
for viewing Authorware applications within or with the support of a
web browser. Finished applications are compressed in Authorware and
divided up into smaller individual segment files. The "shocked" segment
files are then stored on the http server, where they are downloaded by the
plug-in. The advantage of segmentation is that portions of large
applications are own downloaded only as necessary. Often, successive
segment files can be downloaded while the user is actively engaged with the
previous segment. This reduces the wait time for downloads considerably.
The programmer can define the size of a segment file to enhance
performance. Smaller segment files are quicker to download, but require
more calls back to the server. Larger segment files are slower to download,
but require less calls back to the server. The default is 16K. When a
shocked application is accessed, the plug-in looks for a ".aam" file that
manages the delivery of the segment files. The .aam file tells the browser
the location of the first 16K of the application and where successive
segment files begin and end.