Chapter 9. Using MIAWs

What You Will Learn

In this lesson, you will:

• Be introduced to using MIAWs

• Learn about the Display Template inspector

• Learn how to make borderless and irregularly shaped windows

• Use Lingo to open the graph movie within the training log

• Use the Debugger to find and fix a bug

Approximate Time

This lesson should take you about 1.5 hours to complete.

Lesson Files

Media Files:

btn_b.png

btn_b_hi.png

btn_r.png

btn_r_hi.png

btn_w.png

btn_w_hi.png

Starting Files:

myTrainer_start.dir

graph_start.dir

miaw_test.dir

Completed Files:

None

This is the fourth lesson in the Personal Training Log project. In this lesson you'll implement the graphing movie you created in the last lesson, so that it's available from the main application.

The training log graph in a MIAW accessed from the main application

Director allows you to open and play multiple movies by creating additional windows for them to run in. A movie in a window (MIAW) will play while the main window also plays on the Stage. MIAWs have many practical uses: developers use them as navigation controls that need to be universally available, for example, pop-up windows that provide additional information, or custom tools created specifically for use within the authoring environment. In addition, enhancements to the windowing code in Director MX 2004 make MIAWs much more powerful and easy to work with than in previous versions.