FAQs and Hints (v1.38)

[Hans Nücke]

Here I list some questions and answers that were addressed to us by email.
Hopefully you will find this useful also...

List of questions answered below as quick overview:

Q01: Where and how to place the megazine folder to make it work on a server?
Q02: How do I change colors and shape of the buttons in the GUI, and how to position them differently?
Q03: What to do if my exe file does not work (projector file)?
Q04: When I hover across the menu I see a big pink area across my book; what went wrong?
Q05: Is it possible to have sub or superscript charaters in a book?
Q06: Can I import a swf movie with links to other pages in the magazines?
Q07: How can I change the Preloader?
Q08: Why is the navigation bar not shown on small screens?
Q09: How to go to the next picture if in zoom mode?
Q10: How can I hide the page buttons (row of "bubbles")?
Q11: Why are my video controls not working?
Q12: How can I use forms on a page of the book?
**NEW** Q13: How can I avoid the preloader and delete the "Powered by" stuff


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• Q01: Where and how to place the megazine folder to make it work on a server?
  
  A01: copy the whole folder as you downloaded it from our website to a subdirectory on your server.
  If you put it at the root you do not have to modify anything else but your megazine.xml file, which at the end defines and creates your book!
  Please see for details here:
  http://megazine.mightypirates.de/forum/index.php/topic,487.msg1526.html#msg1526
  
  
• Q02:How do I change colors and shape of the buttons in the GUI, and how to position them differently?
  
  A02: Easiest will be to move over to version 2.0
  It is available as beta at: http://megazine.mightypirates.de/forum/index.php/topic,472.0.html
  
  Version 2.0 is all new and a clean plugin system now. Very helpful if you plan to modify/extend the functionality as a developer.
  And it offers now a great way to do exactly what you are looking for: changing colors of buttons, the position and shape of the buttons, hide buttons and more.
  All without writing a single line of code; just by simple modifications in the appropriate .ASUL files (ActionScript User Language).
  
  Information about how to do that is already available in the new wiki at http://megazine.mightypirates.de/wiki
  
  
• Q03:What to do if my exe file does not work (projector file)?
  A03:Please check the publishing settings in Adobe Flash under the Flash tab for "security with local presentation".
  And set it to "Access only local files".
  For details see this thread: http://megazine.mightypirates.de/forum/index.php/topic,485.0.html
  
  
• Q04:When I hover across the menu I see a big pink area across my book; what went wrong?
  
  A04:What you see is one of the masks used in MegaZine3 to define areas for elements.
  Those masks should not be visible, it is for test purposes only.
  So something went wrong…
  
  Possible solutions:
  
  • Do you use the latest version of the flash player? Please update
  • Did you modify the code? Then please download the standard Zip File with the Binaries again
  • Do you download the sources with SVN and build the Binaries yourself?
    Then please be aware to select the right folder:
    TRUNK always gives access to the actual version under development.
    TAG contains the released and Beta versions; actually v1.38 and V2.0 Beta
  • Do not mix modules of different versions
    
    
• Q05:Is it possible to have sub or superscript charaters in a book?
  
  A05:In a “text” attribute you can have HTML formatted text.
  Example: <lnk URL="someURL"><![CDATA[<b>Some text</b>]]></lnk>
  
  This would show a bold list entry with the text "Some text" and is listed in the documentation (search for CDATA).
  
  Other standard HTML tags should work to format text. Most probably also those for sub and superscription I did not test that)
  
  Nevertheless, since it is risky to trust Flash Players and Browsers to correctly present everything the way you intended , we suggest you put your special text into an image (.jpg, .png).
  Then you can be assured it will look as you expected.
  
  
• Q06:Can I import a swf movie with links to other pages in the magazines?
  A06:Please follow this link: http://megazine.mightypirates.de/forum/index.php/topic,10.0.html
  There you will find all answers to your questions...
  
  
• Q07:How can I change the Preloader?
  A07:The Preloader is called in the index.html file. You there can point to your own preloader
  
  
• Q08:Why is the navigation bar not shown on small screens?
  
  A08:In version 1.3x the navigation bar by default is located below the book pages.
  If the book is too high for small screens, then the navigation bar is out of reach.
  A work around is to modify the index.html
  Substitue the 100% value at the very end of that file with an absolute pixel value.
  
  This gives room to the navigation bar up to book sizes with a height of up to ~800..900 pixel.
  Worst case try different settings.
  If the screen is less height than the 1000 pixel, a scroll bar should appear, so visitors at least can sroll down to the navigation bar.
  
  Please adjust height values in both: div.outer and #megazine area.
  
  Side remark 1:
  For Books on digital media, e.g. DVD, this "trick" does not work, since the megazine.exe file (Flash projector) does not support scrolling.
  We suggest to provide 2...3 books with different sizes, together with a suggestion for "best fit monitor sizes" for each version.
  Then visitors can choose and optimize.
  
  Side remark 2:
  MegaZine3 Version 2.0 offers different options, e.g.:
  - position the navigation bar on top of the book
  - use liquid scaling / "real zoom" (YES, we believe we can include that functionality already in the coming release end of September 2009!)
  
  In the following example I choose 1000 pixel instead of 100%:
  
  

Code: (xml)

        div.outer {
            height: 1000px; /* was 100%; */
        }
        #megazine {
            height: 1000px; /* was 100%; */
            outline: none;
            width: 100%;
        }
 
 

• Q09:How to go to the next picture if in zoom mode?
  
  A09:In version 1.3x the "zoom mode" is no real zoom mode (liquid scaling). This only will be available with version 2.0
  
  But there is an easy way to achieve a similar behavior: Use the Gallery Function, and put all images into the same gallery, i.e. give it the same name!
  
  If you provide hires images AND define the same gallery="name", then there will be navigation buttons on the top right edge of the screen (in V1.38, in 1.36 I think it is different).
  And you could use the cursor keys (righ/left arrow) also to navigate to the next or previous picture!
  
  Example

Code: (xml)

		<page >   
		   <img src="img/s007.png" position="center middle" showbutton="false" hires="img/f007.jpg" gallery="test"></img>
		</page>
		<page >   
		   <img src="img/s008.png" position="center middle" showbutton="false" hires="img/f008.jpg" gallery="test"></img>
		</page>
 
 
 

• Q10: How can I hide the page buttons (row of "bubbles")?
  
  A10: There is an undocumented (sorry!) way to achieve this: just add to the tag hidebuttons the parameter pages.
  Example:
  

Code: (xml)

<book hidebuttons="pages" pagewidth="400" pageheight="600" lang="es,en,de"  ....   > .... </book>
 

• Q11:Why are my video controls not working?
  The video plays, the controls are visible. But I cannot operate, i.e. pause or stop the video!
  
  A11:
  Check if you also have an image on the same page. If you load the video first and then the image (most probably a .png file that covers the whole page and is transparent in the area you position the video), then the image lays above the video and video controls and "hides" them and makes them inaccessible.
  SImply change the order and it should work.
  So instead of
  

Code: (XML)

<page>
   <vid src="src/video.flv" width="400" height="300" gui="elements/vidgui.swf"/>
   <img width="400" height="600" src="src/page13.png" />
</page>
<!-- incorrect order obave, try this: -->
<page>
    <img width="400" height="600" src="src/page13.png" />
   <vid src="src/video.flv" width="400" height="300" gui="elements/vidgui.swf"/>
</page>
 
 

• Q12:How can I use forms on a page of the book?
  
  A12: please find some code samples in this post: http://megazine.mightypirates.de/forum/index.php/topic,279.0.html
  
  
• Q13: How can I avoid the preloader and delete the "Powered by" stuff
  A13: Easy, and allowed even without development license ;-)
  Edit the index.html and substitute the link to preloader.swf by your own preloader file or simply megazine.swf
  
  And at the bottom put the "powered by" in a comment or simply delete it
  
  
• Q14:
  
  A14:
  
  

[Hans Nücke]

Q: Where and how to place the megazine folder to make it work on a server
A: copy the whole folder as you downloaded it from our website to a subdirectory on your server. Like in this example:



 

I renamed the root folder to mz3-example in this case so I can have several different folders; like mz3v2alpha here.
The highlighted megazine.xml is the file that you modify and where you enter the elements like <page>, img>, ... to create the book with your pages.
You could/should add additional folders to hold you images (like the folder “img” in my case; or video or sound).



WIth version 2.0 you need the "js"-Folder at the right place; see here:




This megazine.xml is very simple and looks like this:



 

You can check the output in just following this link: http://vservu.de/mz3-example/index.html or cut and paste it into your browser.
This is the example of my tutorial in YouTube about how to create a book in a fast way using the element “pages”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUxvTVBihQ
The index.html is the slightly modified one from the download. I just corrected the path to point to the correct folder where megazine.xml is located: mz2-example

You also can check the other example under mz3v2alpha.
Here the index.html looks like this:





And if you follow the link you should see the book I created to test version 2.0 Alpha:




 

Hopefully these examples help you to get started with your own book!