Digital Workshop

Hi all -

I am evaluating Opus Pro 4 as a development environment to create a basic (no database integration) online and CD based training system for a customer. My customer would like to know what system requirements they will need to run the publications and also any server requirements for hosting the publications.

I was able to find the system requirements for installing Opus Pro 4 as a development environment, but not the system requirements for the customer's users of the publications.

I am proposing to say the following, and I would greatly appreciate advice as to whether it is right:

For the web based format:

Server:
Space to store the OTS publication file(s)
Internet server setup

Customer's users machines:
Windows 98,2000, ME, XP, NT4 (with Service Pack 4)
Pentium II 450 MHz (or equivalent)
Monitor and graphics card capable of:
256 colours at 800 x 600 (minimum)
16 million colours at 1024 x 768 (recommended)
64 Mb RAM
Approximately 50 Mb free disk space
Sound card
Mouse
Direct X v8 or better
Windowns Media Player v6 or better
Quicktime v4 or better
Internet Access and web browser
Configured email system

For the CD Based format:

No server requirement and the same system specs for the users of the publication with the addition of a CD Rom drive.


I would like to get back to them tomorrow, can anyone help me with this? Does the above sound right? Have I left out anything important or over or under specified? Are there any issues with needing specific IE or Netscape versions?

Sabrina

I don't know if DG will agree, but we had problems running Intranet web versions on clients with 2000 and ME. Within the UK police service we are pretty tight with our internal security lockdowns so we believe this is to blame. However have had no problems at all with NT or XP clients. Luckily we only have a few machines running 2000 and ME as an OS.

Also be careful that you get the right plugin versions with the associated development software. We found that the old plugins don't work with productions authoured in the latest version, so keep track of what version of plugins you are using.

Hope this is helpful.

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

Your system requirements match our recommendations, but I would ensure that any NT4 users have installed the latest Service Pack 6a (which includes basic DirectX functionality).

Please note that if the clients do not have access to the Internet, they will be unable to download and install the iO-plugin from our web site when prompted by the web publication. You may therefore need to store the iO-plugin files to an accessible location on the server and use the Plugin Path options in the Publish Wizard to point the clients to this location for plug-in installation.

To do this, first download all of the plug-in components from http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins and place these in a location on the network accessible by all client machines. If you do not have a download manager (such as FlashGet or Download Accelerator Plus) which can download all of the files from this location, you will need to download each file separately using the following links:

http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlug ... mation.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/DWApp.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/DWDraw.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlug ... SVideo.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlug ... fxLib2.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlug ... Object.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/DWInput.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlug ... cktime.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/DWText.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlug ... sition.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/DWUninst.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/DWVector.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/ilm500.cab
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/ILMOle.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/ilmplay.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/ilmplay2.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/ILMSrch.ilf
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/NPILM500.xpi
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/OpusPlugins/Plugins.ini

Once all of the files have been downloaded and placed in the required directory, please launch Opus Pro 04 and load in your publication. Now click Publication > Publish, select the option to Create a Web Publication and click Next. Select the location to which you wish to publish the web publication (for example, the document root of your Intranet) and click Next.

Now click on the Settings button and select the Advanced Settings tab. Enable the Plugin Path option, then click on the ... button and browse to the directory in which the plugin files have been stored. Once selected, click OK. You can now change any other desired settings (such as removing the Made With Opus splash screen under the General tab) and click OK then Next to publish the project.

Now logon to a machine which does not have the iO-plugin installed and try viewing the web publication. The page should now try to download the plug-in from the directory you specified and should run the publication without further problems.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

Hello Andrew and Robin

Thank you very much for your help. I will keep all of the above in mind as I continue on with this project.

Sabrina

Hello again -

I've now provided the system specifications to my customer; I just heard back from them and they are happy with the specs. However, as customers are wont to do, they came back with an additional question, regarding bandwidth: What are the minimal and optimal bandwidths for accessing the training on the internet?

I did a search on the message boards but this doesn't appear to have been discussed lately. Can anyone tell me what the minimal and optimal bandwidths would be for accessing an Opus publication on the internet that used:

Text-only?
Text +images?
Text + images + sound?
Text + images + sound +video?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sabrina

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

The iO-plugin is optimised to 'stream' information from the Internet as required, and will use any available bandwidth for this purpose, so Opus web publications will happily display over 56Kbps dial-up connections or over 2Mbps broadband. The only difference these users of these connections would experience is in the initial load time of the publicatio.n

When the web publication is first visited, the plug-in will try to download the data and components required by first page. Once this data is downloaded, the publication will appear, and the plug-in will then download information about the pages associated with this page, so that these are ready by the time the user navigates to another section of the publication.

The initial load time therefore depends entirely on the resources you have used on your first page. If you have three 10MB videos running on the first page, the user will obviously need to download 30MB of data, plus the page data, before the publication could be displayed, which would result in an initial load time of around 10 minutes on a broadband connection or 100 minutes over dial-up. These resources would therefore not be suitable for a web publication.

However, if your first page consists only of text and buttons, and does not feature any large resources, the page is unlikely to be more than 10KB in size and will download in less than 3 seconds on all types of connection.

Kind regards,

Hello Robin.

Thank you for your help. That answered my question and my customer is happy. I hope you have an enjoyable weekend.

Cheers,

Sabrina