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Among the many new features and improvements
in Authorware 6 comes enhanced
support of controls that use ActiveX,
a technology from Microsoft that adds functionality
to a program by calling external components.
To show you how to make use of ActiveX controls,
this article walks you through an implementation
of them in Authorware—namely, the Microsoft
Agent control.
Before I begin, let's take a look at the options
available for extending Authorware so that you
understand the tremendous power that ActiveX
controls offer you as a developer. |
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Extending
Authorware then and now
Programmers have been developing external utilities to expand
Authorware's functionality for years, starting at the level
of the lowly dynamic link library (DLL). That wasn't easy
because DLLs are cumbersome to use (you have to specify each
function's name, argument types, and return value in order
to load it) and finding documentation for DLLs is not always
easy; even when it is, many functions cannot be used in Authorware
directly. |
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| To
make DLLs easier to use, Macromedia developed the "user
code document" (UCD) format, which enables third-party
developers to extend Authorware. UCDs are essentially Authorware-specific
DLLs. As with DLLs, you must load functions from the UCD before
they can be used in Authorware. However, you don't need to
specify a function's argument types and return value because
this information is built into the UCD. Some UCDs fill a very
specific need by including just a couple of functions. Other
UCDs are so feature-rich, you could build an Authorware program
almost exclusively from the functions they provide. |
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| If
you've been using Authorware for any time at all, you're familiar
with Xtras, which
provide Authorware with access to external functions just
as DLLs and UCDs. Rather than load these functions individually,
you simply place the Xtra in Authorware's Xtras folder to
make it immediately available. Some Xtras are native to Authorware
(for example, bmpview.x32); you cannot always access individual
functions within them (in some cases they're essential for
your program to work properly). However, Xtras developed by
third parties are loaded with functions that you can call
upon as needed to achieve certain tasks that could not readily
be done with Authorware alone. |
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| Even
though many easy-to-use UCDs and Xtras are available—some
free, some for sale—you've undoubtedly run into cases
where no UCD or Xtra exists to overcome a specific challenge
you face. |
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| UCDs
and Xtras are great, but as Macromedia was making external
utilities easier for developers to use, Microsoft was enhancing
their technology rooted in object linking and embedding (OLE).
The result: the ActiveX control. There are thousands of these
components available, many of which are free or available
at a very low cost. Although Macromedia began supporting ActiveX
controls in Authorware 4, they weren't very useful because
the majority of their functions could not be accessed in Authorware.
Now in Authorware 6, you have access to these previously hidden
ActiveX features. |
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| If
you put your mind to it, you can accomplish amazing things
using the functions and variables native to Authorware. However,
if you use ActiveX controls in conjunction with Authorware,
there's hardly a thing your program can't be coaxed into doing. |
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Employing
ActiveX controls
ActiveX controls, which emerged from Microsoft's OLE technology,
are simply OLE controls that support additional features,
including Internet distribution, smaller file size, and additional
security mechanisms. An ActiveX control includes methods,
events, and properties that you can access to achieve particular
programming objectives, such as text boxes, video players,
charting utilities, and so on. A basic difference between
an executable program and an ActiveX control is that the operating
system cannot directly execute an ActiveX control. However,
these reusable components can work in conjunction with—and
as a seamless part of—a variety of programs; they're
not specific to a single executable. |
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| ActiveX
controls are a lot like DLLs, UCDs, and Xtras. All have the
ability to expand on what Authorware does by itself. Using
an ActiveX control in Authorware is quite a bit different
than using a DLL, UCD, or Xtra. You'll see how to use controls
in Authorware in this article. Once you get the hang of the
techniques and scripting required, you will find that ActiveX
controls are a powerful addition to your development arsenal.
Let's take a look at a specific ActiveX control: Microsoft
Agent. |
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Introducing
Microsoft Agent
Microsoft
Agent is a technology that allows developers to incorporate
interactive animated characters into their Windows programs.
(The technology is not available on the Macintosh operating
system.) Characters range from a couple of simple cartoon-style
images to rich 3D personalities. Using Microsoft Agent, these
characters can speak to the user of your program working in
conjunction with a text-to-speech (TTS) engine or through
prerecorded WAV audio files. Characters can even be programmed
to respond to voice commands. |
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| Computer
and web-based training (CBT and WBT) designers and developers
can make wonderful use of a Microsoft Agent character. It's
ideal for situations where you need a guide. For example,
a guide can replace a text-based online help system or provide
remediation for students. Using a TTS engine, you can embed
variables into the text that the character speaks, allowing
it to communicate with the user using his or her name, the
day's date, the user's test scores, and so on. Because the
character can be animated, Microsoft Agent is great for enhancing
simulations for software systems training. |
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The
fellow you see to the left is Jake, a custom character designed
for an application that GanTek Multimedia is developing
for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials. He's an online guide in a CBT program for winter
road maintenance personnel.
Microsoft Agent is powerful and a lot of fun to work with,
but don't get carried away! While it may be fun to make
your character perform all sorts of silly tricks, it can
quickly distract the userŅor worse, become a nuisance. Use
a character sparingly and always provide the user with a
way to turn it off. |
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| This
article assumes you have Microsoft Agent components installed
as well as a TTS engine and at least one character. Microsoft
Agent ships as part of the standard operating system for Windows
98 Second Edition, Windows ME, Windows XP, and Windows 2000.
Windows 95, early versions of Windows 98, and some custom
Windows installations may not have Microsoft Agent installed.
You can download all of the necessary files from the Microsoft
Agent web page. In order to distribute Microsoft Agent
components, you need to sign an annual license agreement with
Microsoft. The license is free but it does come with some
restrictions, so be sure to read it carefully. |
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| I have
developed a small Authorware program that demonstrates how
to implement and use some of the more common Microsoft Agent
features in Authorware. You can download
the file below (it's called agent_control_demo.a6p). Let's
look at some of this code now. |
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Checking
for components
Prior to inserting an ActiveX control on the Authorware flowline
you should verify that the control is installed on the user's
system. This is done through the ActiveXControlQuery function
provided in ActiveX.x32; you will need to ship this Xtra with
your application. |
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| The
ActiveXControlQuery command checks to see if the control's
Class ID is registered on the PC. How do you know a control's
class ID? Generally, this is provided with the control's documentation.
However, you can copy the Class ID from within the control's
sprite icon properties dialog. Let's see how this is done.
(I'll discuss how to install any missing components in a few
moments.) |
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| Click
on the flowline where you want to insert the ActiveX control
sprite icon and choose Insert > Control > ActiveX: |
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 |
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| Assuming
you have the Microsoft Agent components installed on your
development machine, scroll down and select Microsoft Agent
Control 2.0, as shown below. If you don't see Microsoft Agent
in the list of controls, you should exit Authorware and install
the components according to the instructions on Microsoft's
website mentioned earlier. |
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| After
selecting the ActiveX control and clicking OK, click the URL
button on the right side of the ActiveX Control Properties
dialog box: |
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 |
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| Notice
the Classid field at the top of the ActiveX Control URL dialog
box. Although this field is uneditable, you can click the
Copy button to the right of this field to capture the control's
Class ID and then just paste it into your calc icon. |
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| If
the Class ID of the control is not recognized by the user's
system, the control needs to be installed and registered.
For some controls, you do this by copying the control to the
user's PC and then registering the control using the ActiveXControlRegister
function in the ActiveX Xtra. Microsoft Agent includes a self-extracting
installer that copies and registers the program automatically.
Look through the agent_control_demo.a6p
demonstration program to see how this is done. |
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| If
you want to include text-to-speech capabilities, you will
need to ship a TTS engine with your program. There are many
engines commercially available. Microsoft has a couple of
free ones, such as the Lernout & Hauspie TruVoice TTS.
However, please note that these engines are only licensed
for use with Microsoft Agent; the distribution license does
not allow you to use the engine without Agent. Read
more about TTS engines on Microsoft's Agent website |
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| Likewise,
if you want to allow your users to issue commands by voice,
you need to install a speech recognition (SR) engine. Although
Microsoft's SR engine supports natural speech, because of
processor-power requirements you may want to limit your program's
supported voice commands to one or two words, such as "Stop"
or "Hide." Read
more about speech recognition on the Agent website. |
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| The
Microsoft Agent ActiveX control recognizes whether a TTS or
SR engine is installed and will work with them if so. This
makes things easier for you. Although you need to check for
the presence of the desired engines and install them if necessary,
you don't need to add separate sprite icons to the Authorware
flowline. Microsoft Agent has functionality to access these
controls. Of course, if you want to use a TTS or SR engine
without Microsoft Agent, you will need to place a sprite icon
for the respective control on the flowline. |
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Acquiring
a character to distribute
The character you distribute with your program is a file with
an .acs extension. Microsoft has several very high-quality
characters available on its website. Like the Agent control,
these free characters come with a few (reasonable) restrictions
on how they can be used. There are also many characters developed
by third parties that are either free or available for a nominal
fee. Check the Microsoft
Agent Web Ring for sources of character files. |
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| If
your program requires a custom character, you can contact
a designer/animator specializing in Microsoft Agent character
development (again, see the web ring for sources) or you can
give it a try yourself. The process involves the creation
of dozens or even hundreds of individual 256-color frames
and then compiling these frames in Microsoft's free Character
Editor to generate an ACS file. As you can imagine, this
is a very time-consuming process. If you wish to engage a
specialist to develop a custom character comparable in quality
to those available free from Microsoft (such as a 3D appearance
with 50 or more animations), expect to pay up to $10,000 or
even more. |
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| Decide
where to install the ACS file on the user's machine. The default
directory is the \Msagent\Chars folder in the Windows directory
(such as C:\Windows\Msagent\Chars). You can programmatically
change where the Agent control looks for character files,
however that's beyond the scope of this article. In any case,
your program should check for the existence of your ACS file
and, if it's not in the designated folder, copy it to that
folder. |
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Activating
the control
Now that you have ensured that the necessary components are
installed on the user's machine and have implemented a sprite
icon to work with the control, you're ready to activate it.
To make it easier to reference the sprite, I have given the
sprite a descriptive name ("MS Agent 2.0 Control").
I attached a calc icon to the sprite and assigned the sprite
icon title to a custom variable. Although not the case with
some controls, the Microsoft Agent control must be explicitly
activated. The Connected property can be set with the SetSpriteProperty
function: |
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 |
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| Notice
too that I disabled errors. When pausing the program during
development, a working ActiveX control can cause both small
problems (like disappearing from the presentation window)
and really big problems (like displaying error messages or
crashing Authorware). Microsoft Agent often does the latter
when developing in Authorware. Therefore, to minimize this
negative effect, you probably should disable the error messages
by setting the RaiseRequestErrors property of the Agent control
to 0 (or False). |
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Loading
a character
Before you can display and animate a character, you need to
load that character into the control: |
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 |
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| In
this calc icon, I have assigned a custom variable, CharName,
to the character named "Merlin" and stored the Merlin.acs
file in the custom variable, CharFile. By using variables
to store the character name and ACS file, you can allow your
program's users to try out different characters before deciding
on one to use as their guide. The two remaining pieces of
code in the calc icon shown above are used to load the character.
This is done through the CallString method of the CallSprite
function. I dissect this procedure next so you'll see how
to "show" the character just loaded into the control.
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Using
the CallString method to access the control's properties and
methods
The control is activated and ready for commands from the sprite
icon. Now it's "show" time! Let's use the Show method
to display the character on the screen. You can't simply do
this with the SetSpriteProperty function, however; you need
to use the CallString method to do this. The string passed
to the CallString method contains concatenated property or
method calls. |
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| Here's
why the CallString method is necessary. Many ActiveX controls
contain properties and methods that return simple data types,
such as integers, real numbers, or strings. These properties
and methods show up in the Properties and Methods tabs of
the ActiveX Control Properties dialog box, shown below. You
access this dialog box by double-clicking the control's sprite
icon and then clicking the Options button on the sprite's
property dialog box. |
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| Some
controls, like Microsoft Agent, include properties and methods
that return complex data types, such as references to interfaces
of other controls. Those properties and methods do not show
up in the Properties and Methods tabs. CallString works around
this limitation by passing the return value of one call as
a parameter to the next. You can see the CallString functions
available in a control by clicking the CallString tab in the
control's Properties dialog box: |
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 |
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| To
display the character on the screen, pass a string to the
CallString method. This, in turn, passes it to the Agent sprite
icon through the CallSprite function: |
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 |
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| To
make things easier to follow, I've split this into two steps.
First build the string you want to use, then pass it through
the CallSprite function. |
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| How
do you know what the syntax of the string should be for a
given property or method? Ideally, the documentation accompanying
the control will thoroughly describe the format that the functions
take. However, all is not lost if your control's documentation
is insufficient; you can browse the CallTarget tab of the
sprite's Properties dialog box and usually uncover what you're
after. |
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| Double-click
each property or method to drill deeper into it. As you do
so, the string syntax builds along the bottom of the scrolling
list of properties and methods, shown below. Click the Copy
button (located to the right of the syntax shown in the screen
shot below) and paste the string into a calc icon. |
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 |
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| Let's
look back at the calc icon contents used to show the character: |
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|
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| Here's
the syntax to show the character: |
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Characters('Character
Name').Show |
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| When
you build a CallString in a calc icon, it's important to enclose
parameters within parentheses using single quotes. The string
to load the character Merlin, for example, would be: |
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Characters('Merlin').Show |
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| In
our case, we use the variable CharName to store the character
name and the variable String to store the complete string: |
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String
:= "Characters('" ^ CharName ^ "').Show" |
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| Note:
Don't forget those single quotes; they are
absolutely necessary! |
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| Once
you build the string that you want to pass to the CallString
method, use the CallSprite function to put it all together: |
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CallSprite(@AgentSprite,
#CallString, String) |
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| You
could also manually enter the Microsoft Agent control sprite
icon and the string as literals all in one line, like this: |
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CallSprite(@"Microsoft
Agent 2.0 Control", #CallString, "Characters('Merlin').Show") |
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| But
you're likely to find it much easier to use variables first
to build the string to be passed to the CallString method.
These extra steps make your code much easier to read (some
strings can get pretty long, particularly for text that you
want the character to speak) and to add flexibility. |
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Putting
the character through the moves
Earlier we took a look at code for loading and showing a Microsoft
Agent character. There are many things you can do with the
character. We'll discuss how to move the character around
the screen, play a character animation, and make the character
speak. |
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| Always
keep in mind that your character should engage the user and
have a unique personality befitting your application. One
way to do this is to move the character occasionally about
the screen. Watch out, though: Too much gratuitous movement
makes the character nothing more than a distraction. However,
the ability to relocate the character becomes a very important
feature when you want the character, for example, to point
out an object on the screen. In the calc icon shown below,
we move the character down the left side of the screen. |
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 |
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| It's
important to move the character in relation to the user's
screen dimensions, not the presentation window's dimensions.
For example, suppose your string is written as this: |
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String:="Characters.Character('"
^ CharName ^ "').MoveTo('20','250')" |
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| If
your application's window is set at 800 x 600 pixels but the
user has the monitor set to 1024 x 768, the character will
not appear over your program's window. Use the internal Authorware
variables WindowLeft and WindowTop to ensure the desired character
positioning. |
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| One
feature that really gives your character personality—even
though it requires much consideration on your part—is
the implementation of character animations. Animations should
be carefully choreographed to the character's dialog and user
actions. If the user does something that would have made a
teacher or mentor smile, make the character smile; if the
user does something unexpected instead, perhaps let the character
respond with a confused look. Because of the effort required
to preplan the character's responses to user activity, you're
likely to have a much better program as a result because you're
forced to think through your program's interactions very carefully. |
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| Each
character contains its own set of animations. Some characters
have just 4 or 5 animations, whereas others have 80 or more.
Microsoft suggests that characters include what they define
as the "standard animation set," which includes
approximately 60 motions such as Blink, Explain, GestureLeft,
Greet, Read, Wave, and Write. Whether you're using a free
character, one that is commercially available, or one that
was custom designed for you, be sure the animation set suits
both the content of your program and the personality you want
the character to present. |
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| Below
is a calc icon showing how you can play a character's Surprised
animation using the ActiveX control: |
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 |
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| One
caveat here: Be sure the animation name you insert into the
Play command is supported by your character before attempting
to use it. (Spelling counts!) If you try to play an animation
not defined in your character's ACS file, and you do not disable
the Microsoft Agent control's error messages using the RaiseRequestErrors
property (as I explained earlier),
your program's users will be presented with a confusing error
message. |
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| To
make the character speak, use the Speak method: |
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 |
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| The
Speak method causes the character to speak the text you specify
(assuming you have a TTS engine installed). The text also
appears in the character's speech balloon. One thing to watch
out for when building your text string is the use of the single
quote. You cannot place a single quote between the Speak parameter's
single quotes. Instead, swap out the standard single quote
( ' ) for keycode Alt-0146 (with the keyboard's Num Lock key
turned on, hold down the Alt key and type 0146
on your numeric keypad). This way, the single quote still
appears in the text balloon but won't trip up the CallString
method. |
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| If
you find that the character sounds too mechanized using Microsoft's
free engines, you can evaluate and purchase high-quality TTS
engines, such as AT&T
Natural Voices. However, exceptional-quality engines often
include complex or expensive licensing requirements and generally
require a lot of disk space on the end user's PC. |
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| If
you cannot find a TTS engine to suit you or your client, replace
the text string with a path to a WAV file. Microsoft makes
available a free utility, called the Microsoft
Linguistic Information Sound Editing Tool, that preprocesses
WAV files so that a character can lip-sync to the audio track.
At GanTek Multimedia, we strongly recommend to our clients
that they use a TTS engine rather than prerecorded audio.
It's very easy to change what the character says if you keep
the dialog in a simple external text file, and it makes program
enhancements a snap—even something clients can do on
their end. Consider also the power of using variables embedded
in the text. The character becomes a true guide users can
relate to when they are addressed by name or when they hear
other unique information—such as scores, progress times,
and the like—directly from the character. |
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| Practice
using the Show, Move, Play, and Speak commands. There are
many other properties and methods within the Agent control
but these are the commands you will likely use most often.
When you want to remove the character from the screen, use
the Hide command. This keeps the control active while hiding
the character from the screen. |
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| Finally,
when the user exits the program (or when the character is
no longer used in your application), it's always best to erase
the control's sprite icon and unload it as well, as shown.
This unloads the control from memory. |
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Learning
more about Microsoft Agent
Keep in mind that Microsoft Agent includes much more functionality
than what I have covered here. This ActiveX control allows
you to monitor Agent events (such as when the user starts
or stops dragging the character), make two characters interact,
scale the character's size, have the character speak in different
languages, etc. Read Microsoft
Agent Software Development Kit (book and CD, Microsoft
Press, 1999). All information in this kit is also available
for download at the Microsoft
Agent website but the book provides the information in
a handy format. |
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| Microsoft
Agent allows you to incorporate conversational characters
in your applications. The technology is particularly well-suited
for electronic learning applications. Prior to Authorware
6, you could only implement Microsoft Agent using a third-party
DLL, UCD, or Xtra. Now with enhanced support for ActiveX controls
in Authorware 6, the possibilities of what your program can
do are nearly limitless. |
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| You
should already be familiar with the calc icon and Authorware's
own functions and variables before embarking on a program
requiring the use of an ActiveX control. Once you are comfortable
scripting the CallString method in general and the particular
ActiveX control you want to use, you'll find incredible power
and freedom in your development efforts. |
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| You
can download GanTek Multimedia's Agent control below: |
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| About
the author
Steve Gannon is the owner of GanTek
Multimedia, a multimedia consultancy specializing in
Authorware development and training. Since 1993 Steve has
used Authorware to develop award-winning custom software
applications for organizations across the U.S. and around
the world. He is a frequent speaker at industry meetings
such as the Alternative
Authorware Conference and the Society
for Technical Communication. Steve holds engineering
and MBA degrees. He resides in the woods of Colorado with
his wife and two boys. |
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