Microsoft® DirectAnimation® is a Java API that enables different types of multimedia content to be tightly integrated and deployed, associating the media pieces with a timeline and user events. This topic provides late-breaking or other information that supplements the Microsoft® DirectAnimation® documentation and includes the following sections:
Overview
Requirements and Dependencies
Additional Information
Known Bugs
General Information
Graphics
Contact Information
DirectAnimation is released as an integrated component of the Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0 and later minimal install. This provides unprecedented animation and multimedia capabilities built into a major Internet browser (no special download is needed). Furthermore, DirectAnimation is integrated with Dynamic HTML (DHTML), and hence is especially suitable for adding compact and lightweight animation effects to Web pages.
DirectAnimation is the component of the Microsoft® DirectX® family of APIs that provides rich animation and integrated media support for Web pages, CD-ROM titles, and multimedia applications. DirectAnimation provides a unified and comprehensive support for the different media types, including: 2-D vector graphics, 3-D graphics, sprites, audio, video, and a rich time and event model that applies uniformly across the different media types. DirectAnimation is a COM API and an underlying engine/runtime whose functionally can be accessed in different ways by different user groups:
The supported media types are as follows:
In the case of movies and sounds, additional media formats can be supported by supplying Microsoft® DirectShow® CODECs for those formats.
One of the key DirectAnimation classes is the Behavior class. Different types of media are incorporated into the animation by encapsulating them as DirectAnimation Behavior objects. Behavior objects can be used interchangeably, and have a number of methods applied to them, independent of the media type they are encapsulating. Of course, you can still access methods that are specific to the different types of behaviors based on the type of media.
The minimum requirements to run Microsoft® DirectAnimation® applications and content are as follows:
The DirectAnimation runtime comes as part of IE4 minimal install . DirectAnimation is also part of Windows 98 and future releases of Windows NT; the upcoming release will be called Microsoft® Windows® 2000.
The DirectAnimation SDK includes an extensive set of documents and samples that illustrate the breadth and depth of functionality. For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/directx/dxm/ .
Significant enhancements since the prerelease version have been the addition of support for scripting languages (JScript and VBScript), as well as the integration of the multimedia controls (in Internet Explorer 4.0) with the DirectAnimation runtime. In addition to the multimedia controls, a windowed control is provided, which can be used with Microsoft® Internet Explorer 3.02 and with Visual Basic. With the addition of the multimedia controls, content developers can now access DirectAnimation functionality through different levels, from PARAM tags at the control level, to scripting, to raw COM.
The DirectAnimation Java classes are dependent on the version of the Microsoft virtual machine that ships with the Microsoft SDK for Java and Internet Explorer 4.0. Microsoft® Visual J++® 1.1 was used to author the Java samples.
The following is a list of current known problems. Microsoft strongly encourages you to send mail if you find a problem (dxmbug@microsoft.com). There are newsgroups set up to allow DirectAnimation content developers to discuss issues and ideas. However, mailing a bug description is the only sure way to get a fix for a bug.
Audio
3-D
Movies
movieImport = m.ImportMovie("http://movie.avi"); movieImg = movieImport .Image; // This is the work-around. movieBBox = movieImg.BoundingBox; solidImg = m.SolidColorImage(m.White); solidImg = solidImg.Crop(movieBBox.Min,movieBBox.Max); movieImg = m.Overlay(movieImg,solidImg);
Controls
Microsoft has set public news groups on the msnews-gw NNTP server as a forum for the DirectAnimation user community. We encourage you to post all questions related to the use of DirectAnimation on the appropriate news group. To access the Microsoft.public newsgroups, go through the msnews.microsoft.com server. If you use Outlook Express as your news reader, add this server to your list from the Tools menu, and choose Accounts.
For reporting bugs against the preview version, send mail to dxmbug@microsoft.com. When you do so, make sure to be specific about the operating system, PC/graphics card, version of Microsoft® Internet Explorer, and the host language/control that you're using to access DirectAnimation.
For other issues or comments that are not appropriate for the forums previously mentioned, send mail to dxmbeta@microsoft.com.