QuickTime 3 Reference
The movie controller supports URL linking.
The QuickTime Sprite Export XTRA for Macromedia Director has been modified to support authoring sprite movies in this way. The exporter looks for a special script in the cast member that contains an "on qtUrlLink" message handler and uses the contents of that message handler as the URL link. This isn't the best way to author, but Director doesn't have a specific property associated with each image that indicates which URL to link to.
At playback time, you can retrieve the URL associated with a sprite by calling SpriteMediaGetURLLink . Note that this routine takes as a sprite index, not an image index. This is intentional so that in the future, if sprites support URLs directly, applications will still behave correctly.
pascal ComponentResult SpriteMediaGetURLLink( MediaHandler mh, short spriteIndex,
Handle *urlLink )
Use SpriteMediaGetURLLink to retrieve the URL associated with a given sprite. The index of the sprite is passed in the "spriteIndex" parameter. Usually this value will be obtained by using a function such as SpriteMediaHitTestSprites to determine which sprite the user clicked on. If the sprite has a URL associated with it, it will be returned in the handle pointed to by the "urlLink" parameter. The call SpriteMediaGetURLLink is responsible for disposing of the returned handle. If no URL is associated with the specified sprite, the returned handle is set to nil . SpriteMediaGetURLLink gets the URL from the image currently displayed for the specified sprite.
QuickTime's Movie Controller component has also been updated to be aware of URL links in sprite movies. Currently, if the user option clicks on a sprite that has an associated URL link, the Movie Controller will extract the URL and send it to itself using the new Movie Controller action mcActionLinkToURL . The parameter for the mcActionLinkToURL message is a Handle to the URL. The Handle contains no leading length byte or trailing null. The length of the URL string can be determined by calling GetHandleSize. Clients of the Movie Controller can hook the mcActionLinkToURL action and take care of URL linking themselves. For example, the next version of the QuickTime Netscape Plugin will hook this message and redirect it to the browser to link to the requested URL. If the mcActionLinkToURL message is not handled by the client of the Movie Controller, the Movie Controller will attempt to link to the URL itself by using Internet Config. If Internet Config is installed and configured, this will cause the browser to be brought to front and the requested URL opened. If the browser is not running, Internet Config will launch it first.
This capability can be used by any QuickTime movie controller that needs to perform URL linking.