RE: lingo-l [OT] UK Kiosks
Excellent - thanks for the advice guys. Very valid points regarding the design I had not considered previously. Sounds as though I better look out for those Elo displays displays too, I'll try and find someone who uses them. Final question though - how much should we be looking to spend on a very secure unit which would have a robust printer installed? A rough ballpark figure based on previous experience would suffice; say, something in the region of £4000 (which I guess works out around $6500)? It's not for anything fancy, just a visual route planner that gives you a print out. Any ideas?! -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Howdy-Tzi Sent: 24 June 2003 17:50 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: lingo-l [OT] UK Kiosks The Elo touchscreen monitors are pretty decent. I'd recommend using an LCD rather than a phosphor display, because LCDs don't have the burn-in problems and in my experience run cooler. Do NOT let anyone sell you a Windows box. Use a Mac for your CPU. It'll be a heck of a lot more reliable. Virtually every problem I've ever had with kiosk installs is in dealing with stupid Windows crashes. (The client wanted Windows, it's cheaper, bla bla bla, ignoring the real costs of downtime when the systems would fold up for hours on end.) *Always* make sure your CPU enclosure has superb ventilation. A few holes drilled in the sides do not suffice; you've got to have a couple fans in there to force air around. As for UI on the kiosk display, remember most users won't have time to learn or memorize the display controls. Make all the choices very simple, have a very large home button that essentially resets the display so when one person wanders off the next doesn't have to figure out how to start over again, and always make your buttons obviously buttons. Give them a raised or 3D look. Also keep the choices brief. Don't present the user with 15 buttons on one page. That's too many. Try to keep it less than 5. Beware of parallax. The screen glass itself is pretty thick, which means that buttons that are relatively short in height might be very hard to hit accurately with a finger. Make 'em tall, ideally more or less square or circular. Test, test, test. Bring in chuckleheads from off the street who've never seen the display before and pay 'em a few bucks (or quid) to mess around for a while. See where they get lost or where they seem to be unable to understand what's going on with the program. End users will behave in exactly the same fashion with the kiosk. I don't mean focus group here -- focus groups rarely yield useful advice (look at the improvements made with MS Word over the years if you don't believe that) -- but do pay attention to how they respond and, if you need to rehack the UI based on their failures to comprehend it, do it. [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
lingo-l [OT] UK Kiosks
Hi all - sorry for the slightly OT, but does anyone have an experience with producing Director presentations for kiosks? Where's the best place to buy (UK based), any common pitfalls, average costs etc. It's my first kiosk-based project, and we need to supply the unit itself. It also needs to be pretty secure as it's in a public place (hospital), and ideally have an in-built printer. I'm currently at the mercy of salesmen, so any experience/advice would be hugely appreciated. Many thanks Ben [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
lingo-l Audio / Movie Issues
Hi all I have an mpeg (no audio track) inserted in a director movie, which when starting to play from a CD, interupts the already playing background music track for a second or two. The speed of the CD drive has a significant impact on this as generally it occurs on drives of 32x and less - worsening as the speed drops - so I'm guessing it's a preload issue. I've tried setting the preloadRAM in the startMovie, but that doesn't seem to have any impact. I've never really had to deal with preloading before so is there something pretty basic I'm missing here? The mpeg file is as small as it can be (700k), and the audio track is a basic mp3 encoded at 44.1khz, 16bit (2mb). The mpeg is inserted with DirectMediaXtra. Anyone else with similar experiences/thoughts/suggestions?! Help! :) Any response would be really appreciated! Ben [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
lingo-l DirectMediaXtra Screengrab
Hi all! Just come across a wierd little niggle with DirectMediaXtra that I hadn't noticed before. For some reason I can't seem to find a Direct to Stage option that would allow me to screendump the last frame in order to create a smooth transition between the mpeg and the not mpeg, so to speak. There are pretty obvious workarounds to this (ie just grab the last frame in After Effects / Cleaner etc), but I was just wondering if I'm looking in all the wrong places for this option. Does it even exist at all? Any reason why it shouldn't? There are occasions when I like to have this option turned off at runtime for genuine reasons (previously using QT, which does have it) and I can envisage this causing issues in the future for our current project. We're using v2.01, by the way. Any thoughts gratefully recieved! Cheers Ben -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:lingo-l-admin;mail4.fcgnetworks.net]On Behalf Of Agustín María Rodríguez Sent: 22 October 2002 17:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: lingo-l wd3 file to director Jamie Dyer escribió: How do I get all the model's camera's etc. out of an imported w3d file. I want to be able to list them and then modify them with lingo You find useful Ulalla´s tool 3DPI: http://www.3dpi-director.com/ Currently I can access them through their numbers but is there a way to use their names that they were given in the 3d package? put member(imported 3D).model[1].name -- door put member(imported 3D).model(door) -- door HTH -- Agustín María Rodríguez | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | www.OnWine.com.ar [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!] [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
lingo-l Direct to Stage niggles
Hi all I have a fullscreen video that transitions (within the footage itself) to the subsequent interactive interface. It all looks and works a treat, except for a flickering that occurs when the video stops. My first thought was that it was the 'Direct to Stage' turning itself off at the end, which it was. Switching this off does solve the problem, but because the movie is fullscreen (well, 800x600) it really chugs. I'm pretty sure I've seen interfaces before that do transition from video files, and they were all seemless. So I'm guessing some lovely person out there holds the key to getting round this? Any ideas? Cheers Ben [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
