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Text File | 1996-04-25 | 20.2 KB | 484 lines

Backstage 1.0 April 1996 This file contains late-breaking information about Backstage 1.0 for Windows. Information in this file supplements and supersedes the Using Backstage manual and online Help system. For the most up-to-date information about Backstage please visit our web site at http://www.macromedia.com/. Included with the Trial version of Backstage is an online version of the Using Backstage Studio manual. By default, the online manual is installed in C:\Program Files\Macromedia\BackstageTrial\Docs. The Docs folder contains an installable version of Adobe Acrobat reader and the Backstage.pdf online manual. Contents -------- 1. Installation Instructions 2. A Note on Windows NT Installation 3. Web Server Configuration 4. Removing the Backstage Server Service From Within Windows NT 5. A Note About Netscape Plug-Ins 6. HTML Validation 7. HTML Comment Tag 8. Making Use of Formatting and Expressions to Generate Variable Tags 9. Image Maps 10. Path Names 11. Supported Database Data Types 12. Database Updates and Inserts 13. Configuring Your Web Server for Shockwave 14. Configuring Backstage Designer as Default Editor for HTML files 15. Configuring xRes S.E. as Default Editor for GIF and JPEG files 16. ActiveX Support 17. Web Server Compatibility 18. Database Compatibility 19. A Note about HTML Attribute Usage 1. Installation Instructions ---------------------------- To install Backstage, launch SETUP.EXE located on the Backstage CD-ROM. The Install Wizard will guide you through the installation process. Backstage requires that you have 32-bit ODBC installed on your system. If ODBC is not present on your machine, the Backstage installer will automatically install it for you, along with the ODBC driver for Microsoft Access. This ODBC driver is necessary for use in the Backstage tutorial and example files. As a convenience, we provide the Microsoft ODBC driver pack in a separate installer. The installer includes version 2.5 of Microsoft ODBC drivers for desktop databases including Microsoft Access and FoxPro, and Borland Paradox and dBase. This installer requires that you have a 32-bit ODBC-compatible Microsoft product installed on your system such as Word for Windows 95, Excel for Windows 95, Access for Windows 95, Office for Windows 95, Project for Windows 95, Visual FoxPro 3.0, Visual Basic 4.0, or Visual C++ versions 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 4.0 or greater. To install the Microsoft ODBC driver pack, go to the Util\ODBC directory on the Backstage CD, and launch SETUP.EXE. If you currently own Access 2.0 you will need to update you ODBC drivers to use 32-bit ODBC instead of 16-bit ODBC. 2. A Note on Windows NT Installation ------------------------------------ Before installing Backstage on Windows NT, you must log on to your Windows NT system as the administrator, or as a user with the full rights of the administrator. In subsequent Windows NT sessions you must continue to log on with administrator rights in order to access your Backstage configuration. After the administrator has installed Backstage, users who log on as someone other than the administrator must enter the path to the document root the first time they use Backstage. 3. Web Server Configuration --------------------------- To configure your web server to work with the Backstage server, you must set up virtual paths to two Backstage directories. See your web server documentation and the Backstage Introduction chapter of the Using Backstage manual for information on how to do this. Use the administration program for your web server to specify mapping for virtual paths as follows: Assuming you installed to the default location here are the assignments: Standard CGI Mapping: /ibbin to C:\Program Files\Macromedia\BackstageTrial\Bin Document Mapping: /ibimages to C:\Program Files\Macromedia\BackstageTrial\Images If you installed to a different location on your hard disk adjust the above directory assignments accordingly. O'Reilly & Associates' WebSite Web Server installed on Windows NT will not work properly with virtual mappings to pathnames containing spaces. If you are using WebSite on NT, change the Backstage installation directory from C:\Program Files\ to C:\ProgramFiles\. Make sure to make this change during installation of Backstage, when prompted by the Install Wizard. Changing the name of a directory in the path to Backstage after Backstage has been installed will break important links to Backstage files. If you need to change the name of a directory in the path to Backstage, you must first uninstall Backstage before reinstalling it into the correct path. 4. Removing the Backstage Server Service From Within Windows NT --------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to remove the Backstage Server service from within Windows NT, the only way to do so is to run the IBINSSVC program at the DOS prompt. 1. Go to a DOS prompt. 2. Change to the BackstageTrial\Bin directory, which is installed by default in Program Files\Macromedia\BackstageTrial\Bin. 3. Type IBINSSVC "Backstage Server" REMOVE and press ENTER. 4. If successful, you will receive a confirmation. If unsuccessful, you will get a cryptic error message. Make sure the words "Backstage Server" are surrounded by quotes. 5. A Note About Netscape Plug-Ins --------------------------------- Netscape Shockwave Plug-ins are not included in the Backstage Trial version. When including a Netscape plug-in file in your web page, such as a Shockwave for Director movie or Shockwave for FreeHand file, you need to specify the dimensions of the file in the Netscape Plug-Ins Properties Dialog box. The plug-in file will always scale to the width and height values in that dialog box. 6. HTML Validation ------------------ Backstage Designer conforms strictly to the Hypertext Markup Language 2.0 specification, RFC 1866, published in November 1995. All HTML entered manually in HTML Source mode or opened into Designer from a pre-existing HTML file will be validated by Designer according to this specification. This ensures that each file created or edited by Designer will be reliably interpreted by all web browsers. If Designer encounters improperly formatted HTML, a dialog will appear listing the errors encountered. After the dialog is dismissed, Designer will attempt to fix the errors. To access the HTML 2.0 specification, point your web browser to the URL http://www.w3.org/. 7. HTML Comment Tag ------------------- Using the HTML comment tag, you may enter comments or notations in your HTML code that will not appear in Designerís WYSIWYG mode or in the end userís web browser. To enter a comment into your web page, choose HTML Source from the Edit menu in Designer. You may manually enter the comment tag and comment in HTML Source mode. The syntax for a comment looks like this:  Additional comments may be entered within a comment tag in this way:  The following is an excerpt from section 3.2.5 of the HTML 2.0 Specification which further clarifies comment construction. Deviations from this format may cause unexpected results within Designer. Please take note of and adhere to these guidelines: To include comments in an HTML document, use a comment declaration. A comment declaration consists of `<!' followed by zero or more comments followed by `>'. Each comment starts with `--' and includes all text up to and including the next occurrence of `--'. In a comment declaration, white space is allowed after each comment, but not before the first comment. The entire comment declaration is ignored. For example: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <HEAD> <TITLE>HTML Comment Example</TITLE>   <!> </HEAD> <BODY> <p> <!- not a comment, just regular old data characters -> 8. Making Use of Formatting and Expressions to Generate Variable Tags --------------------------------------------------------------------- To display a variable tag (for example, a link whose destination varies at runtime or a bitmap whose location varies at runtime), display the variable part in a text object and use the format specification of the text object to provide the HTML tag. For example, suppose you had a URL column containing a users home page you wished to display as a link. You could assign this column to a text object, then format it with a string format. Make the format string: <A HREF="%s"> Home Page </A> This produces the appropriate results at runtime and displays in the Designer as a link. If you had the URL in one column and a variable label in another column, you could use adjoining text objects which formatted the two parts of the URL: <A HREF="%s"> %s</A> This works at runtime, but creates problems for the Designer display, which will not display anything that looks like a link. In general, if you use formatting to provide partial syntax for HTML tags or unclosed tags, their display in the Designer may not look like a link, though the objects will work at runtime. You also have the option of designing your database queries in SQL to concatenate the appropriate HTML syntax together using expressions involving the returned columns and literal string constants. You can also format variable images: <IMG SRC="%s"> You can make use of Backstage expression syntax to compose variable tags from data values of objects on other pages or other things available in expressions, such as user profile data. Since formatting is available for columns of the table object, you can also use this technique to display columns of links or images drawn from database data. 9. Image Maps ------------- - Relative URLs in image maps are not supported by all web servers. To ensure maximum compatibility, the Browse button on the Image Map Editor generates URLs which are relative to the document root (URLs which start with /). If you want to enter a relative URL in an image map, do so manually. - Image map files conform to the NSCA standard. - Coordinates in an image map file do not get adjusted after you scale an image. If you want to scale your image, be sure to create your image map after you have scaled your image. 10. Path Names -------------- If you use a relative reference to a Backstage page (a page containing Backstage objects), rather than a path from the document root, the page cannot be bookmarked in the end-userís browser. In addition, the page may not always reload when the end-user has chosen "reload" after clicking the "back" button in his or her browser. 11. Supported Database Data Types --------------------------------- Backstage supports the following types: char, numeric, decimal, integer, smallint, float, real, double, varchar ("standard" types) date, time, timestamp, bigint, tinyint, bit ("extended" datatypes. Backstage uses the information to bind the data to the appropriate type of internal buffer and to provide the appropriate type of literal constants for inserts, updates, and deletes. For a given database, there will be some mapping between the data types as described in the database and the known ODBC types or new vendor-specific type codes returned by the driver for types that don't reasonably match anything. See documentation for your ODBC driver. It is usually done sensibly. For example, Access YES/NO columns are returned through ODBC as bit, which allows Backstage to recognize and treat them as integers. Most driver implementers would map a boolean column type this way. Unrecognized types are treated as character data. They are bound internally as character strings. Those columns are referred to using character string literals. This works for vendor- specific data types if coercion to and from character string is legal. 12. Database Updates and Inserts --------------------------------- When a user views database records on a Backstage web page through a web browser, the data has been downloaded along with the web page and is cached. By caching the data, Backstage avoids holding "open cursors" on the database while the data is displayed. In other words, a lock on the record or series of records displayed by the browser is not enforced. In most cases, this is the desirable behavior because it allows other users to view that particular record or other records that happen to share the same table. The degree to which an open cursor on a record locks out other viewers from the database varies among databases. While one user is viewing the cached data, the actual data in the database may have been deleted or updated by another user. If the viewer of cached data wishes to make an update or a delete operation to displayed data, Backstage will compare the cached data to the actual data in the database. If a difference is detected, the user will be informed that a change has been made to the data since it was last retrieved. This is a technique known as "optimistic locking". At this point, the user will see the updated data (if another user has modified it), or to see the next record (if another user has deleted it - it may be the case that there is no longer anything to display). You may then retry your operation, if you still wish to. Note that by using your browser "back" button, you may be able to recover your original data entry. For optimistic locking to be 100% reliable, your database needs to support read locks as well as write (update) locks within transactions. 13. Configuring Your Web Server for Shockwave --------------------------------------------- In order to use Shockwave, your web server must be configured to recognize and handle Shockwave files. The web server must have its MIME or content type amended to include the file types. Shockwave for FreeHand files use the file extensions .fh4, .fh5, and .fhc. These file types need to be identified and associated with "image/x-freehand". How this is accomplished varies in each web server. Shockwave for Director files use the extensions .dcr, .dxr, and .dir and need to have those file types identified and associated with "application/x-director". Consult your web serverís documentation for information on configuring MIME types. If your documentation is not helpful, try some online resources. One web resource that may be of use to you is Web Compare, where you will find a compilation of server information for many types of servers. Web Compare is located at http://www.webcompare.com/ Or visit Macromediaís web site for example server configurations. 14. Configuring Backstage Designer as Default Editor for HTML files ------------------------------------------------------------------- You can configure Backstage Designer to automatically launch when you double-click on an HTML file. In Windows 95: 1. Open any folder. 2. Choose Options from the View menu. 3. Click the File Types tab, then scroll through the list until you locate the HTM file type. The description of this file type in the list will differ depending on your current configuration. For example, if Netscape Navigator is installed, the description type for HTM or HTML files may be listed as "Netscape Hypertext Document". 4. Click on the item in the list, and verify that you see HTM or HTML next to Extension under File type details. If you locate the file type in the list, skip to step 6. If the HTM or HTML file type is not in the list, proceed to step 5. 5. Click New Type. - In Description of type enter: HTML file. - In Associated extension enter: HTM HTML. - Click the New button. Under Action, type Open. - Proceed to step 8. 6. Click the Edit button. Under Actions, select Open. Click the "Set Default" button. 7. Select Open again and click the Edit button. 8. Click the Browse button and locate your installed copy of Backstage Designer. Double click Designer.exe. Click OK, then click Close. In Windows NT, Windows 3.1, or Windows 3.11: 1. Launch File Manager. 2. Under File, select Associate. 3. Next to "Files with extension" type: HTM 4. Click Browse 5. Locate and select Designer.exe, then click OK. Steps 6-7 apply to Windows NT only: 6. Next to "Files with extension" type: HTML 7. Repeat steps 3 and 4. 8. Click OK 15. Configuring xRes S.E. as Default Editor for GIF and JPEG files ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Backstage Trial version does not include xRes S.E. You can configure xRes S.E. to automatically launch when you double-click on a GIF or JPEG file. Apply the steps in section 11 to the file types GIF, JPEG, and JPG instead of HTM and HTML. When the steps instruct you to select Designer.exe, instead select Xres20se.exe. 16. ActiveX Support ------------------- As we went to press, Microsoft was still in Alpha with the version of Internet Explorer that supports ActiveX controls. Although the Backstage Designer supports the Object tag specification, it has not been tested with a release or beta version of Internet Explorer. 17. Web Server Compatibility ---------------------------- Backstage Object Server has been tested with and is compatible with the following web wervers: Web Server Platform Version ---------- -------- ------- The Internet Factory Commerce Server Windows NT 1.0 Microsoft Internet Information Server Windows NT 1.0 Netscape Commerce Server Windows NT 1.1 Oí Reilly Web Site Windows 95 1.1 The following web servers are unsupported, but are known to be compatible with Backstage Object Server. For configuration information contact Technical Support. Web Server Platform Version ---------- -------- ------- EMWAC World-Wide Web HTTP Server Windows NT 0.991 Software Manufakturís Alibaba WWW Server Windows NT 1.0 Process Softwaresís Purveyor Windows NT 1.2 ILAR Folkweb Server Windows NT 1.0.1 18. Database Compatibility -------------------------- The Backstage Object Server will connect to most versions of the following databases. It will fail to connect to any database that is not on this list. It has been tested and is compatible with these versions: Database Platform Version -------- -------- ------- Borland dBase Windows 95 5.5 Borland Paradox Windows 95 7.0 Microsoft Access Windows NT, 95 2.0, 7.0 Microsoft FoxPro Windows 95 3.0 Backstage Designer allows you to create web pages that connect to any database for which you have the ODBC driver. 19. A Note about HTML Attribute Usage ------------------------------------- It is recommended that you do not set the value of any attribute to be the same as the name of the attribute. (Attributes are generally set in an object's Properties dialog box. For example, the Name field of a text object's Properties dialog box is used to assign a value to the NAME attribute of the text object.) You should not enter NAME as the value in an object's NAME field. This would generate the HTML code NAME=NAME, which is an ambiguous HTML statement and might be interpreted differently in different web browsers. Likewise, you should not enter VALUE in the Initial Value field of an object's Properties dialog box, as this would generate the HTML code VALUE=VALUE. If you do not know an attribute's name, you can enter values in the fields of a Properties dialog box, then choose Edit | HTML Source to view the HTML source code and see what the attribute names are.