AnFX History

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AnFX Release History

Rather than make only a few new releases each year AnFX is released more frequently so users do not have to wait long to take advantage of new features or bug fixes. The new features and bug fixes are a result of feedback from many of you loyal AnFX users. We wish to take this opportunity to thank you for your valuable feedback and encourage anyone who thinks of an improvement or sees something that is not quite working to tell us about by emailing anfxsupport@stepaheadsoftware.com.

Upgrades with the same major version number are not charged (eg., upgrading from 5.x to any other 5.x version is FREE but upgrading 4.x to 5.x requires the payment of a modest upgrade fee).

Download latest version now!

You should check this page regularly. If you requested a new feature or a bug fix then chances are it will eventually appear in a new release and be listed here.

* An asterisk '*' beside the version number means that an enhancement was made to the AnFX player in this release (not just the studio as is often the case) and so you should upload the updated player to your web site after you upgrade AnFX if you export your designs to AnFX Java player format. If you export your designs to the Flash format this step is note required.

6.0.2.1
October 23, 2008
Bug fixes

Flash: Fixed problem with initial text in multiline text actors that contain special characters (eg., little characters like á, é, ç, ã). The special characters were not being displayed.

6.0.2.0
October 4, 2008
Bug fixes

Flash: Fixed problem with actions and menu wizard that set multiline actor text to text that contains special characters (eg., little characters like á, é, ç, ã). The special characters were not being displayed.

6.0.1.9
Upgrade from an existing version 5.x license for only 9.95 USD. Click here to upgrade now
April 13, 2008
Features

Studio: Flash previewer now appears in an appropriate place on PCs with 2 or more monitors.
Studio: Fixed problem when running on Windows 98.
Studio: Now supports filenames containing spaces.

6.0.1.8
April 3, 2008
Features

Studio: Generates Flash preview HTML file that is valid according to W3C standards.
Studio: The sizing handles on the corner of a selected actor are no longer constrained to maintaining the aspect ratio of the actor except for ellipses, images and image cyclers.
Studio: AnFX can now run on 64 bit Windows (as a 32 bit app) as well as on 32 bit Windows.

6.0.1.7
March 11, 2008
Features

Studio: AnFX 6 is now compatible with Microsoft Vista's UAC (User Access Control) features
Studio: AnFX help is now in HTML Help format - compatible with Vista (Winhelp is no longer supported).
Studio: New key mechanism does not require a new key each time you format your hard drive.

Bug Fixes

Flash: Fixed a problem with previewing Flash on some PCs with dual core processors.

5.3.4.7
August 25, 2007

Features

Studio: Now uses new XP look and feel for dialog boxes buttons etc.,

5.3.4.6
April 4, 2007

Features

Studio: It is now possible to specify a width for menu items in the menu wizard. The Menu Appearance dialog allows the setting of width in addition to the traditional height setting. Setting the width to (auto) causes the menu with to be calculated in the traditional way.

Bug Fixes

Flash: Fixed a problem with SWFs not appearing transparent in FireFox browser when not using the SWFObject option to remove the activation border.

5.3.4.5
February 16, 2007

Bug Fixes

Flash: Fixed a problem with multi line text actors when displaying some ANSI characters that have accents, etc., above them (eg., àáôòìè).

5.3.4.4
January 2, 2007

Bug Fixes

Flash: Fixed a problem that occurred on closing the Flash previewer for some designs on some PCs. The message "Flash Animation Tool has encountered a problem and needs to close" was displayed after the Flash previewer was closed. This affected the SWF exporter only - it did not affect the currently loaded design in the Studio so no loss of data was experienced. The issue was annoying but had no bad side effects.

5.3.4.3
December 3, 2006

Features

Studio: Provides a warning to user when a text wizard configuration with the "compress" style would result in compressed text that is wider than the stage area and suggests that the user reduces the amount of text or decreases the font height.

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed a problem in Text wizard occasionally causing the wizard actor to become unselectable if the font size and/or number of characters in the text wizard were too large. Now all actors are constrained so that their x and position must be between approximately -32,0000 and +32,000 pixels and their width and height must be between 0 and approximately 32,000 pixels.
Studio: Attempt to fix rare problem on certain Win 98 SE PCs where "image not found" errors can occur. The GDI+ dll is given a different base address. This does not affect any Windows 2K or XP users.

Improvement

Studio: Initial size of text actor font is now 14 point instead of 48 point.

5.3.4.2
November 15, 2006

Features

Flash: clickTAG now supported to allow AnFX movies to function as ads in ad networks such as Google (See Url Link Action in the AnFX Help file for more details).
Studio: Enhanced AnFX application icons: now they have transparent backgrounds.

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed problem with previewing movies that were opened by double clicking on the .afd movie file icon in Windows Explorer when the movie is stored in a directory containing spaces somewhere in its name. The previewer would report an error when closed down. This problem appeared to occur on Intel processors only. It could not be reproduced on any AMD processors.
Studio: Fixed obscure crash in stage window when moving a hidden actor whilst the simulator is playing.
Studio: Fixed "mouse right click not working" bug in 5.3.4.1 beta.
Studio: Added support for drag and drop: Movies can be opened by dragging an AnFX production (.afd) to the AnFX desktop icon or to AnFX itself if already running.

5.3.4.0
October 16, 2006

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed crash after the Action Triggering dialog displays warning message that start time is out of range.
Flash Exporter: Handles errors in a better way. Occassionally the evaluation message would appear when in fact the exporter had generated an error when exporting. This was a false evaluation message. Now also traps JPG files that are not really JPG files.

5.3.3.9
August 17, 2006

Features

Studio: Added new Edit | Copy menu items to allow copying of the HTML code required to insert a Flash or Java movie into a HTML page via Frontpage and other WYSIWYG HTML editors. Simply open a design, choose Edit | Copy Flash (or Java) as appropriate and then paste into the desired HTML page.
Studio: FlashObject.js was recently renamed to SWFObject.js to avoid trade mark infringement as requested by Flash's new owner's, Adobe. AnFX now generates HTML files using this new name and ships with the new swfobject.js file instead of flashobject.js. You should upload swfobject.js to your webserver whenever you have the current flashobject.js file. When you preview in a browser the HTML page will be updated to use SWFObject instead of the old FlashObject.js.
Studio: Search engine friendly Flash and Java. Search engines can not yet follow links within Flash or Java applets but AnFX can now generate a list of all links contained within your movie in the "alternate text" section in the HTML code that embeds your movie into the HTML page. This has been made possible by the use of the new SWFObject.js (formerly FlashObject.js) technology that is used to load your Flash movies. In Production Properties choose "SWFObject" as the method of embedding your movies in the HTML page and all internal URL links will be output into the HTML. The list of URL links will only be seen by search engines and not by your site visitors - they will see the movie playing instead. URLs associated with Text actors and menu items will be named according to their captions. URLs associated with all other types of objects will be named according to the actor name which can be assigned in the studio by right clicking on an actor and choosing "Name...".
Studio: Generated HTML now provides an easy to click on link when a browser does not have the Flash player installed. The link is called "Install Flash" and when clicked on will allow the user to install Flash to make the Flash animations start playing.
Studio: User can now specify "Alternate Text" in the Product Properties dialog. This specifies the text that will appear in a browser when the Flash player is not installed.

5.3.3.8
July 18, 2006

Features

Studio: New dropdownbanner.afd sample demonstrates how to use AnFX to produce "drop down" banners that are becoming a very popular form of advertisting. The ad consumes only a small amount of space until the user moves the mouse over it and then it expands to fill a larger area. When the user moves the mouse away the ad then compresses back to it's compact size.

Bug fixes

Studio: Fixed a problem that occasionally caused problems with some designs when exporting to SWF and AFX format.

5.3.3.7
July 17, 2006

Features

Studio: Added support for transparent backgrounds (supported for Flash exporting only). Turning this on generates HTML code that allows the animation to show whatever is "behind" it on the HTML page. Set this option in the production properties form. This option is especially useful when making movies that initially only take up a small amount of space but then expand when clicked on. This option does not change anything in the movie but changes settings in the HTML code that AnFX generates to embed your design in a HTML page.
Studio: Allows developer to choose the HTML embedding style: 'Standard Object/Embed tag' or the 'FlashObject.js java script'. The FlashObject.js is a file that needs to be uploaded to your web server and so is a little more advanced than using the standard Object/Embed tag but it avoids the need for the user to activate the movie before interacting. Specify this option in the Production properties form. This option does not change anything in the movie but changes settings in the HTML code that AnFX generates to embed your design in a HTML page.

Bug fixes

Studio: Fixed bug in clock checking apparent since version 5.3.3.5

5.3.3.6
July 15, 2006

Features

Studio: Further performance improvements to the studio/simulator.

Bug fixes

Studio: Fixed DEP (Data Execution Prevention) problem that occurred when starting AnFX on a PC with a processor that has hardware support for DEP (newer Intel and AMD processors).

5.3.3.5
July 14, 2006

Features

Studio: Improved the performance of playback in the simulator.

5.3.3.4
June 21, 2006

Features

Studio + Flash Exporter: AnFX now supports a fully functional 15 day trial period. Movies can be exported to Flash (.swf) and executed in a browser.

5.3.3.3
June 20, 2006

Features

Studio + Flash Exporter: Added support for curves in the free form shapes and path actors. Now it is possible to create any arbitrary shape with any combination of curved and/or straight segments.
Studio: Upgrading from previous versions 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 4.x is now available from the Licensing menu. Upgrades from any previous version to version 5 costs only $9.95 US regardless of the previous version. The personal, silver and gold editions have been merged into a single "AnFX' product which is essentially the functionality of the previous "Gold" product. All upgrades upgrade to this level.

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed problem where description of LoadMovie action in triggering dialog was wrong.
Studio: Fixed problem where Play, Stop and Restart actions were not able to have an actor group as a target.
Studio: Fixed problem where LoadMovie was allowing any actor to be it's target instead of only actor groups and layers.

5.3.3.1
May 31, 2006

Bug Fixes

Flash Exporter: Fixed problem with text wizard, ticker tape option - occasionally bits of the right most character were left in the stage after the text had moved past.

5.3.3.0
May 14, 2006

Features

Studio: AnFX is now integrated with a new key management service on our website. Key requests will now be responded to with much greater speed as the process is now completely automatic.

Bug Fixes

Flash Exporter: Fixed problem with actor groups not being positioned properly if they had a waypoint that scaled up or down applied to them.
Flash Exporter: More continuous mouse actions. Whatever state an actor was left in after a mouse clicked action was the state from which any mouse enter actions would start from. This could cause discontinuous changes if the mouse clicked left the actor in anything but its default state (the default state is typically the state an actor is left in after the start of scene action has completed its "intro" actions). Now the mouse enter actions are rendered from the state the actor was in after the start of scene actions. ie., the default state.

5.3.2.9
April 22, 2006

Bug Fixes

Flash Exporter: Fixed problem with 5.3.2.7 & 5.3.2.8 with regard to not displaying scaled images properly.

5.3.2.8
April 21, 2006

Features

Studio: AnFX now implements the Microsoft suggestion of working around the Eolas patent/IE modification that causes a gray "activation" border to appear around ALL active content (including Flash). See this forum topic for a full explanation of how to use this new feature: Forum: "AnFX and the Eolas Patent Issue"

5.3.2.7
April 20, 2006

Features

Studio and Flash Exporter: The origin, the point about which an actor rotates, can now be configured in the design studio. Use the right click menu and choose the "Origin" menu item to configure the location of an actor's origin. When an actor's start point is selected the origin's located is indicated by a small circle enclosing 4 quadrants.
Studio and Flash Exporter: LoadMovie feature added. It is now possible to load an external movie into your main movie. The LoadMovie action can be applied to any actor group. Use it to share common content among movies: eg., an animated company logo can be used in multiple movies by using LoadMovie instead of copying and pasting it into each movie individually and then having to update all copies if the company logo is changed. LoadMovie also means that the movies are smaller because instead of having a copy of the common submovie, they just have a link to it.

Bug fixes

Studio: For free form shape actors the "new node" and "move node" icons were swapped around.

5.3.2.6
April 13, 2006

Bug fixes

Studio: A design exported to the AnFX Java applet player (.afx) in version 5.3.2.5 would not have targeted actions working properly.

5.3.2.5
April 4, 2006

Bug fixes

Studio: A design exported to the AnFX Java applet player (.afx) with scene or URL links could experience problems when loading.

5.3.2.4
Mar 21, 2006

Bug fixes

Studio: Deleting a waypoint whose target actor was different to the owner actor (the one on which the event occurs) did not delete the waypoint correctly.

5.3.2.3
Mar 2, 2006

Bug fixes

Studio: Multi line text actors were not painted in the correct position when they were added to a group. Worked correctly when exported to Flash.
Flash: Fixed bug: False reporting of "evaluation version" when warnings are displayed during SWF export.
Java: Fixed bug: Too many "Font portability" errors when exporting a design to the Java player that uses a font not supported by Java.

5.3.2.2
Feb 25, 2006

Features

Studio: Alpha transparency can now be configured for menu normal and highlight fill styles and also the border. This allows you to make menu's which blend with their background (typically an image) to make a very smooth, cool menu!

5.3.2.1
Feb 23, 2006

Features

Studio: Menu Wizard now asks user if it can automatically increase the item height if there is a chance that it will not accommodate the text due to the font size specified.

Bug fixes

Studio: Fixed problem of menu "walking" from it's previous position after editing when item height was set below a certain threshold.
Studio: Fixed problem of menu "walking" to the left of it's previous position after editing when no fill is used.
Studio: Fixed problem of horizontal menu having extra "hit" area to the right.
Studio: Fixed problem of horizontal menu having hidden bullets when positioned on the right of the text.
Studio: Fixed problem of a vertical menu having displayed borders if only the bottom or right sides are turned on.
Studio: Fixed problem of not displaying border segment between items when only bottom border segment (in a vertical menu) or right border segment (in a horizontal menu) is turned on

5.3.2.0
Bug fixes

Flash: Fixed problem of common layers not showing in a .swf when that swf is embedded (using loadMovie) into another .swf.
Flash: Fixed problem of background layer showing above main layer instead of behind it.

5.3.1.6
New Features

Flash: Enhanced the way the common layers (foreground and background) play. Previously common layers started at the start of a production and just played through to completion. We now have an enhanced strategy: Whenever a scene starts with a common layer turned on that common layer will play continuously from its current point if it was already enabled by the previous scene - this is how it traditionally worked in this case. In the case of a previous scene not having the common layer enabled then when it is turned on in the new scene it will be restarted from the beginning. This means that any fade ins or fade outs etc., that are present in the foreground or background common layers will be seen when the layer is turned on after having been turned off.

Bug fixes

Flash: Fixed problem with multi line text actors in a common layer not appearing properly.

5.3.1.5
Bug fixes

Flash: Fixed problem with actors in the common layer flashing on momentarily at the start of the production when the first scene has common layers turned off.
Studio: Check for newer version function was reporting an error when there was no error.

5.3.1.4
Bug fixes

Flash: Fixed problem with action "set contents of multi line text actor" not working. This was causing mouse overs in menus not to update the text description of the menu item.

5.3.1.3
Bug fixes

Studio: Fixed problem with actor position and size dialog boxes.

5.3.1.2
Bug fixes

Flash Exporter: Fixed an "Access Violation" that could occur when exporting or previewing a design with a text actor that contained the special space characters "no break space" (160) or "soft hyphen" (173) or a character that does not exist in the font.

5.3.1.1
New Features

Studio: Movies can now be as small as 20 x 20 pixels.

Bug fixes

Flash Exporter: The previewer worked fine but under certain conditions it could crash on exit.

5.3.1.0
New Features

Flash Exporter: Now exports .swf files that work properly when embedded into other swf files created by other products (eg.,Macromedia Flash) via the loadMovie or loadMovieNum functions.

5.3.0.1
New Features

Studio: New timeline control: restart. Any layer (including common layers) can now have a "Restart" action applied to it. You can set up a restart action that targets a specific layer to have that layer restart at a regular interval, making it possible to have items in a layer animating through a sequence indefinitely. This effectively allows the creation of independent timelines.

5.3.0.0*
New Features

Flash Exporter: Common layers (background and foreground) now play continuously over scene boundaries. ie., as the movie changes from one scene to another the common layers keep playing continuously: They no longer restart from their beginning each time there is a change of scene. If you add a sound to a common layer then that sound will play without interruption when the player changes from one scene to the next.
Flash Exporter: An actor that fires a scene or URL link action no longer stops playing after firing that action. This new feature, in combination with the above new feature enables a lot more possibilities when using the common background and foreground layers.
Flash Exporter: Uses / (called _root in Flash editor) instead of _level0 for internal referencing so AnFX generated .swfs now work better when embedded in other movies.
Studio: Hand cursor has been replaced by a small arrow and a hand to make it easier to make changes to small elements.

Bug Fixes

Flash Exporter: Fixed bug where sound set to play at beginning of scenes plays at start of all subsequent scenes.
Studio/Flash Exporter: Added new "Stop All Sounds" action - available for Flash export only (not java)
Studio: Fixed erratic movement of a waypoint who's target actor is different to the owner actor.
Studio: Fixed crash when deleting a set of actors where an actor has an action that targets another actor in the set of actors being deleted.
Studio: Fixed problem of deleting a layer with actions then accessing the deleted actions during advancing for a simulation immediately after.

5.2.8.8
Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed problem of adding foreground layer to a scene occasionally causing unexpected program termination.

5.2.8.7
Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed problem on Windows 98 when previewing in Flash.

5.2.8.6
Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed repaint issue which occurred after Cutting or Deleting an actor when the actor's removal changes the size of the imaginary rectangle that bounds all actors.

5.2.8.5
Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed problem that occured when mouse goes over "Actions and the Sequencer" menu item which displayed no help text. On some PCs this may have resulted in an unexpected termination of the application.

5.2.8.4
Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed refresh problem after changing the contents of a single line text actor - the scroll bars were not being adjusted appropriately.

5.2.8.3
Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed some scrolling issues introduced in 5.2.8.2.
Studio: Fixed insignificant refresh problem when moving menu or banner wizard dialog around.

5.2.8.2*
New Features

Rectangles, ellipses and polygon shapes can now be filled with solid, linear gradient or radial gradient fills styles.
Rectangles, ellipses and polygon shapes can now be filled and outlined simultaneously in different colours.
User can set thickness of polygon outlines.
Scrolling increment in the stage window scroll bars is now 5 pixels instead of 1 pixel for a faster scroll.

Bug Fixes

Studio: Clears filename after trying to open a design file that has been moved or no longer exists.
Studio: Fixed crash when editing properties of an image cycler.

5.2.7.7
Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed bug where ellipses were disregarding the Start Angle and sweeping clockwise instead of anticlockwise for positive values of sweep angle.
Studio: Fades text improperly - it fades it to background color instead of a true alpha fade. Fixed.
Studio: Fixed issue with splash screen opening up before main window was created. Detected "window handle not initialized" error when building AnFX with new compiler. It is possible that this could have caused a crash but no user has ever reported this bug.
Studio: Fixed issue with "use of uninitialised variable: res" when deleting an action. Detected with new compiler. It is possible that this could have caused a crash but no user has ever reported this bug.
Studio: Fixed msg buffer too small which could potentially cause a crash when exporting to Java player format.
Studio: Fixed divide by zero error when image actor has no bitmap specified. ie., the user does not browse to
a valid bitmap before pressing enter for a new image actor. (Error occurs when painting the image preview)

5.2.7.6

Bug Fixes

Flash Exporter: Fixed problem with outlined rectangles and ellipses always appearing black.

5.2.7.5

Bug Fixes

Flash Exporter: Fixed problem with Goto Scene action (and possibly other instant actions) not working.

5.2.7.4

Bug Fixes

Flash Exporter & Studio: Color change action is working again. This was affecting the menu fly over color change effect and any color change actions added by the user.
Studio: Text now fades correctly instead of fading to background color.

5.2.7.2

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed crashed caused when editing or deleting a menu with bullets.
Studio: Fixed Shape bug where Position Node and Delete Node menu items were not appearing in the right click menu. (Developer's note: This bug was introduced after the introduction of relative coords)

5.2.7.1

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed intermittent crash in recent release 5.2.6.9 when using the studio to open or edit designs containing multi line text actors.
Flash: Fixed Access Violation in recent release 5.2.6.9 when exporting multi line text actors.

5.2.6.9

New Features

Studio: Now supports the RegNow affiliate tracking program using AnFX product name instead of AnFX Download product name,

5.2.6.8

New Features

Studio: Now supports the RegNow affiliate tracking program.

5.2.6.7

New Features

Studio: Image previews in the sequencer window and stage manager are now shown undistorted ie., at 1:1 aspect ratio.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed bug where images in an image actor icon were shown smaller than they should have been.

5.2.6.6

New Features

Studio: Purchasing menu now links to the new purchasing page that supports payments via the RegNow payment processing service.

5.2.6.5

Bugs Fixed

Flash: Images now rendered without subtle irregularities on some diagonal lines.
Flash: Groups now rotate about their center point instead of their left/top corner.
Studio: Fixed spelling mistake in Purchase item of sample menu.
Studio: Fixed problem of studio locking image files (file can't be saved by other programs eg., graphics editors) for all of the images in the current scene.

5.2.6.4

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed memory leak associated with image actors.

5.2.6.3

New Features

Removed the message that states that JPGs and GIFs not displayed with correct alpha and transparency in the simulator - they now are displayed correctly.

Bugs Fixed

Fixed "Export to Java player" problem that caused banner to be displayed always, even with registered installations of AnFX. Only affected those users who use the Java export option instead of the Flash export option. After installing this latest release open your .afd(s), re-export your .afx file(s) and upload them to your web server
RectangleActor's shadow color was wrong in the simulator.
Shape actor's shadow was not displayed in the simulator.

5.2.6.2

New Features

Studio: Waypoints can now be applied to actor groups and menus. Waypoints that change the size of an actor group will only work in the studio's simulator and the Flash player not the Java player.
Studio: Actors can now rotate in a clockwise (not just anticlockwise!) direction by using a negative value for the angle of rotation.
Studio: Stage border now drawn more accurately. Previously intruded into the stage area by 2 pixels.
Studio: Grouped objects, including those with waypoints, can now have waypoints which move and scale them. Scaling affects child actors in a predictable, intuitive way like in Flash.
Studio: All actors (except multiline text actors) now rotate in the simulator.
Studio: GIF images with transparency now display properly in the simulator.
Studio: The selection area around an image now matches the image size when "Maintain Actual Image Size" is chosen.
Studio: High quality text display in the simulator.
Studio: Text size in menus displayed in studio now more closely matches text size when displayed in Flash player.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed problem introduced in 5.2.6.1 whereby after selecting an actor and making no changes to the design AnFX asks to save when closing the design.
Studio: Fixed small memory leak when loading a design with menu's or buttons.
Studio: Fixed problem of converting very old (.afx) design files to .afd format the state visibility and locking on various icons was not deterministic.
Studio: Fixed problem with a preview/export that produces a warning message and that warning message was not closed for more than 60 seconds - sounds weird - yeah it was but should not have been experienced by most users. If you have lost your original design you should copy _desbak_.afd to your original design's name and delete _desbak_.afd and the warnings will stop.
Studio: Fixed problem with displaying selection rectangle around icons.

5.2.6.1

New Features

Flash: Designs exported to Flash are now even more compact for designs where the same image is used multiple times. In one case the size of a .swf file was reduced by 58%! A further reduction in .swf size can be achieved by placing actors that are common to many scenes in a background or foreground layer.
Studio: Allows previewing and exporting of designs without first prompting to save the design in the cases where there are unsaved changes.
Studio: Removed waypoint positioning dialog that appears after waypoint creation.
Studio: The right click context menu for actors and waypoints has been rearranged making it harder to accidentally select the Delete Actor option.
Studio: Designs with images set up to "maintain original size" no longer falsely indicate that the design needs saving after loading.

5.2.6.0

New Features

Studio: Start-up dialog's recently used files list now has a horizontal scroll bar to accommodate extra long filenames.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed bug with Instant Scripts - after moving they could not be selected again.
Studio: Fixed crash bug associated with saving a design with scene links referring to deleted scenes.

5.2.5.9

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed bug in Scene manager window where right click on scene produces a menu with inactive Properties... and Delete... menu items.
Studio: Fixed bug where newly added background layers were appearing on top of all other layers until the scene was changed or the design was saved and reloaded. Actors added to the background layer were actually appearing on top of main layer or foreground layer actors.

5.2.5.8

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed image actor waypoints not appearing after being added.

5.2.5.7

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed waypoints not displaying properly.
Studio: Fixed menu items in horizontal menus not spaced correctly
Studio: Exploding text effect now ensures all fragments remain in the stage window.
Studio: Scroll bars are set correctly after an actor or waypoint is deleted.
Studio: Deletion of an actor in a scene layer will clean up any references to that actor from actions of actors in a foreground or background layer.

5.2.5.6

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed "GDI Fault" message box appearing when working with an outlined ellipse actor.

5.2.5.5

New Features

Studio: Right click menu for quickly adding a mouse click action now takes you straight to the properties of the URL or the Scene Link. There is now no need to go via the action triggering dialog.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: When creating an image actor with "Maintain actual size" option selected the image actor is now created at the correct size.
Studio: Now supports multiple level subdirectories for the images and audio directories.

5.2.5.4*

New Features

Studio: Restored the stage border to its previous 3D appearance.

Bugs Fixed

Java Player: Fixed Windows menu shadow flicker that sometimes occurred on systems with the latest of Sun's Java Run Time installed when running AnFX animations. Simply install this release and then upload the .cab and .jar files from the program's directory to your website to fix this problem. This fix only effects those who export to Java. If you always export your animations to Flash then the flicker issue does not affect you.

5.2.5.3

New Features

Flash: Loading page now has a progress bar that slides from left to right indicating the progress of the movie download.
Flash: Loading page no longer flashes "LOADING" momentarily for pages that are already loaded (i.e., they were cached after a previous download).
Studio: Menu wizard no longer sets the scene length of the current scene to infinite length when creating or editing a menu. It was assumed that it would be desirable to make scenes with menus infinite length so that the player would stay on the scene until the user clicked on a menu item but it turns out that this is not always desirable: eg., in the case of a slide show - you might have a <previous / next> menu in the foreground layer of all scenes but you might still want the player to jump to each consecutive scene after a specified time.
Studio: Appearance of stage window now different - gray colour outside the stage boundary. Stage boundary now has a "flat" style appearance.
Studio: Text effects wizard - no longer allows text with zero height.
Studio: Gives warning when changing the font properties of a text actor when the current font is not installed on the machine.

Bugs Fixed

Exporter: Fixed error that occurred when exporting text with zero height.

5.2.5.2

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed problem with actor size and position forms.
Flash: Exporter (in 5.2.5.1) produced an error when scaling down an actor that was jittering.

5.2.5.1

Bug Fixes

Studio: Actor size changes could not be undone via Edit Undo.
Flash: Exporter used to stop when it found a go to scene or got URL action acting directly on a scene.

5.2.5.0

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed crash when creating some types of text wizard effects.
Studio: Resizing an application no longer causes "Save file before closing?" prompt to occur even though no changes were made to the production.

5.2.4.9

New Features

Studio: Editing the nodes within a shape is now much more intuitive. The cursor changes to show that you are over a node or whether you are on a line that can be "bent" by clicking and dragging to create a new node.
Studio: Improved painting of start point and waypoint indicators - lighter gray and different font.
Studio: Improved some tool bar button graphics.

5.2.4.8

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed "GDI resource error" problem on PCs set up for only 256 colors.

5.2.4.7

New Features

Studio: When dragging the border to size the animation the stage window no longer auto scrolls (which used to cause a large jump in the dimensions of the animation). Now that auto scrolling no longer happens it is much easier and predictable to size a production via dragging the border.
Studio: Improved some of the tool bar icons.

Bug Fixes

Flash: Fixed problem with foreground and background layers not performing mouse over appearance changes in all but the first scene.
Flash: Outlined ellipses are now working.

5.2.4.6

New Features

Flash: AnFX now has a Flash previewer so that you can see your animations as Flash without needing to go to a browser. The Flash previewer gives almost instant feedback of how your design executes as Flash because it doesn't have to wait for your browser to open and then load the HTML page and then load the movie file. The "Preview in browser" option is still available but its quicker to preview with the built in previewer which makes designing with AnFX even more efficient.

Bug Fixes

Flash: Fixed problem in Flash exporter when it experienced a JPG saved with progressive encoding. Progressive encoding is not supported by the Flash player and should not be used.

5.2.4.5

New Features

Studio: Uses different installer.

5.2.4.4

New Features

Studio: Added user defined layers. Users can now manage sophisticated designs more easily by allocating groups of related actors to their own layer. Layers can be individually locked or hidden.
Studio: Scene manager has been completely rewritten to allow management of the new layer features.
Studio: Sequencer window font changed back to standard windows dialog box font.
Studio: Pasting now leaves pasted actors selected once more.
Studio: Newly added actors become selected once more.

Bug fixes

Studio: Now displays waypoint outlines even if actor is invisible if View Outlines is turned on.

5.2.4.3

Bug fixes

Studio: Fixed crash that could occur when turning off the foreground or background layer in the scene properties dialog.

5.2.4.2

Bug fixes

Studio: Fixed bug that occurred on Win95/98/Me that could cause stretched or rotated text to not display in the studio. This is not affect playback in the Flash player.

5.2.4.1

Features

Studio: Enhanced cursor changes for added feedback as you move the cursor over actors.
Studio: Actor description line in status bar now includes the actor's name.
Studio: Improved mouse selection and dragging. With multiple actors selected you no longer need to click on the gray border surrounding one of them to drag the group - you just need to click on any of the selected actors. When a whole actor with waypoints is selected via Shift+click dragging its start point icon or any of its waypoint icons will drag the whole actor instead of only that dragged icon.
Studio: Edges of tool bar buttons when the mouse is over them is not as wide.
Studio: Scene properties dialog rearranged slightly.
Studio: Replaced the "ugly eye" used to show if an actor is visible or not in the stage manager with a more attractive eye.
Studio: Stage window and scene manager are now all integrated into a single main window with splitter bars for convenient sizing of the individual windows.
Studio: Polygon shapes now appear in preview sections in the user interface.
Studio: Sequencer window totally rearranged for better visual effect and flow.

5.2.3.9

Bug Fixes

Studio & Swf Exporter: Fixed occasional "invalid floating point operation" which may have occurred in certain circumstances on some PCs though there was no reported case of it happening - we thought we'd fix it anyway!

5.2.3.8

Bug Fixes

Swf Exporter: Fixed a long standing problem that caused certain fonts to be rendered incorrectly or not at all in the Flash plug in. Fonts like Papyrus, Rough Draft, Tooney Noodle all work now.

5.2.3.7*

Bug Fixes

Swf Exporter: Fixed a problem that caused warnings to be generated for some designs during exporting (including menus or buttons that linked to scenes).

5.2.3.6*

Features

Swf Exporter: Now supports audio files (.wav) - NOTE: .wav files must be in the following format for the exporter to work correctly: PAM format, 11, 22 or 44 KHz, 8 or 16 bit, Mono or Stereo. If you have problems exporting then use Microsoft Sound Recorder to do a Save As to check the format. If you save as 5.5 kHz the tone of the sound will be altered.
Studio: Action icons for image cycler and audio actions are now displayed in the sequencer window as play, stop and loop symbols.
Java Applet: ImageCyclers can now be set to play once (previously they could only loop or stop).

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed a crash that occurred after deleting an actor that was the target of another actor's action. Links to the deleted actor were not being cleaned up properly like they used to be (in version 5.2.2.6 and before). Thanks to Maarten from loonmuziek.com for his excellent feedback on this one - he guessed what was causing it and was spot on!
Studio: The properties form for an Image Cycler "Goto Frame" action now displays the correct description for the action.
Java Applet: Text actor can now handle a '<' on its own. Previously it was getting confused with the start of a variable tag.
Swf Exporter: Fixed error message displayed when generating an actor that is not supported by the Flash exporter.

5.2.3.5

Features

This release was the same as 5.2.3.6 except the Swf Exporter did not support stereo .wav files and a variety of frequencies. 5.2.3.6 now supports stereo .wav files and a greater range of sample rates.

5.2.3.4

Features

Studio: No longer brings up message when loading an older design into a newer version of AnFX
Studio: No longer prompts to save if no changes were made to an older design loaded into a newer version of AnFX.

5.2.3.3*

Features

Studio: Added new "parabola" which allows realistic the simulation of bouncing and projectile objects. In AnFX go to the the "How do I..." section of the help file and read "Simulating Bouncing" to see how to set up bouncing.
Studio: Added new "half parabola fast > slow" and "half parabola slow > fast" which allows realistic the simulation of falling objects and objects that smoothly approach a destination or do an accelerated exit.
Studio: Profiles can now have an "offset" so that you can say at which point of the profile you want the actor to start.
Studio: New "diminishing" check box allows a cycling profile to diminish over time to provide realistic diminishing of the amount of cycling movement so you could make an image of a bell swing at an ever decreasing angle using a cycling rotate action with a "diminish" turned on. When diminishing is turned on for a parabola the cycle length is automatically decreased over time to give it that realistic bounce effect - as a ball bounces the time between bounces gets smaller and smaller.
Studio: A waypoint can now have independent x and y profile cycling and diminishing characteristics so x can be set to non repeating while y may cycle up and down.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Drawing of dotted line between waypoints now works properly.
Studio: Improved the code that is responsible for deleting actor icons from the stage. Although there were no specific reports of problems in this area we fix up some things that looked like they may have caused problems in certain situations - I know what you're thinking, "If it ain't broke don't fix it" - but we like stuff to not just "look" right but "be" right also!
Studio: Removed duplicate "Add Waypoint" menu item in actor right click menus.
Studio: Fixed display of actor summaries at the bottom of the sequencer window.
Java Applet: Now supports the new features mentioned above - you will need to upload the new player to your website if you export to .afx java player format.
Swf Exporter: Now supports the new features mentioned above.

5.2.3.2*

Features

Studio: Sequencer window background color is now lighter. Instant actions are shown with a more intuitive icon.

Bugs Fixed

Java Applet: Fixed error -4 when playing an animation created with version 5.2.3.0 or later.
Studio: Fixed incorrect drawing of lines between waypoints.
Release 2: Removed extra "Do Stuff" menu item which is a new feature in progress that somehow made it into the initial 5.2.3.2 release. 5.2.3.2 Rel 2 does not have this.

5.2.3.1

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed crash after Edit | Paste operation introduced in 5.2.3.0
Studio: Fixed bug not being able to successfully load some existing .afd files.
An incorrect library was used in the final build of the 5.2.3.0 release which was responsible for the above bugs.

5.2.3.0

Bugs Fixed

Flash Exporter: Export used to fail when a "Reset" action was used in a design.
Studio: Fixed crash after dragging a "Reset" script to the left of time 0 on the timeline.

5.2.2.9

Features

Studio: The look and feel of the sequencer window has been enhanced.
Studio: Scene properties and production properties buttons now added to the tool bar for quick access to these features.

5.2.2.8

Features

Studio: Scroll bar thumbnail areas are now larger, properly representing the page size.

5.2.2.7

Features

Help file: Many topics in help file updated.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed: End of scene actions were not working when exporting to Flash (.swf) format.
Studio: Removed incorrect message box when clicked OK on scene selection form without selecting a scene.

5.2.2.6

Features

Studio: Right click on shape actor node now has an option to set position exactly via a form allowing entry of X and Y values.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: ALT Key + Click to select object underneath current object was not working.
Studio: ALT Key + Click to select object underneath current object when clicking too fast used to bring up the properties form for the object.
Studio: Shape actor nodes used to migrate by a pixel at a time whenever a new node is added or an old one moved. Now the nodes are very stable even when other nodes are moved about making it much easier to create shapes.
Studio: Fixed bug where not all menu options were showing when user clicks on New Action tool bar button

5.2.2.5

Features

Studio: Minor changes to wording in Menu Wizard dialog box and right click menu options.

5.2.2.4

Features

Studio: Banner Wizard replaced by Text Effects Wizard and sports a few new text effects: Shrink Letters and Rotate and Shrink Letters.

Bug Fixes

Studio: Text Effects Wizard (formerly Banner Wizard) fixed bug that caused text to be generated with incorrect spacing between letters.
Studio: Fixed a rare "divide by zero" error when rotating a text actor with only a single space character.

5.2.2.3

Features

Studio: URL action dialog: frame name field is disabled or disabled depending on state of check box. Previously typed in frame names were ignored unless the check box was checked.

5.2.2.2

Bug Fixes

Studio: Corrected grammatical error in obscure error message.
Studio: Changed start dialog to default to new design instead of open design.
Studio: Fixed serious bug in sequencer that produced abnormally large waypoints.
Studio: Undo now works again (was broken last version).
Studio: Minimum duration in banner wizards is now correct (1000ms).

5.2.2.1*

Features

Studio: Menu Wizard - new, more flexible bullet types available.
Studio: Menu Wizard - can turn on/off individual sides, top and bottom of the border.
Studio: Banner Wizard - user can now specify duration of banner animations as well as start time.

Bug Fixes

Studio: No longer asks to save a new, blank design.
Studio: Fixed rare crash on XP when moving actors.
Studio: Menu and Button dialog boxes now bring up the Webpage target URL form in the right place.
Applet: The display of small shapes is now the same as displayed in the studio.

5.2.2.0

Bug Fixes

Studio: Dragging a rectangle around actors selects them like it should.

5.2.1.9*

Features

Studio: Clicking Play when the time is at or beyond the end of the animation should begin play from the beginning.
Studio: Can now drag time indicator in sequencer and have the animation update in real-time.

Bug Fixes

AnFX applet: Transitions now working - player file upgrade (the *.jar and .cab files included in this release should be uploaded to your webserver if you deploy your animations as .afx's and not .swf's)
Studio: Fixed problems with moving instant scripts in sequencer window.

5.2.1.8

Bug Fixes

Studio: Fixed crash when ungrouping actors.
Studio: Fixed cursor not updating properly.
Studio: Fixed problem where the warning that the stage area size had changed was appearing too frequently on Windows XP.

5.2.1.7

Features

Studio: Stage window auto centers whenever a scene is loaded
Studio: Right click on empty space menu now has "Move Stage to Center" feature to scroll the view to the center of the stage.

5.2.1.6

Features

Studio: Stage window now has scroll bars - so now you can scroll around to get to those distant objects!
Studio: Sequencer window scrolling now works better and the look and feel has changed slightly.
Studio: Initial scene length is now 10 seconds.
Studio: Hour glass displays while exporting to Flash and bringing up browser to preview the animation.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Deleting an actor by choosing Delete Actor when a start point or waypoint icon is selected occassionally (rare) caused a crash.

5.2.1.5

Features

Studio: Updated introductory tutorial.

5.2.1.4

Features

Flash Exporter: User is now given the option to display all export warnings after the export has occured instead of showing them one at a time during export.

Bugs Fixed

Flash Exporter: Fixed problem with unsupported actors causing the .swf file to not display correctly. Unsupported actors are displayed as an outline red rectangle.
Flash Exporter: Fixed problem with missing or corrupted image files causing the .swf file to not display correctly - Image actors with missing image files are now displayed as a filled red rectangle.

Known issues

Flash Exporter: Do not use Papyrus font with AnFX. This is a complex font and the AnFX Flash exporter does not cope with it at this stage - stay informed by checking this page regularly for news.
See feature map for an continually update list of features supported by the AnFX Flash exporter and the AnFX Java exporter.

5.2.1.3

Features

Studio: Image properties dialog box rearranged and now explains more clearly the fading methods that apply to the Java exporter. Flash implements true alpha fading only (the AnFX Java player does not) so these options only apply to the AnFX Java player.

5.2.1.2

Bugs Fixed

Flash Exporter: Fixed outline thickness of rectangles incorrect (introduced in 5.2.1 with the new optimization code). While affecting outlined rectangles this also affected the appearance of menus - often leaving a gap between the border of menu items and the filled area.
Flash Exporter: Fixed problem that could cause loading issues in rare situations.

5.2.1.1

Bugs Fixed

Flash Exporter: Fixed "Unknown error while exporting to Flash" caused by an unsupported actor type being exported to Flash. Now whenever an unsupported actor is exported the user is receives a warning message and a red outline rectangle will be displayed in its place to represent the unsupported actor in the Flash movie.

5.2.1

Features

Flash Exporter: Exporter optimizes to create smaller .swf files. The reduction in .swf file size can be up to about 20% for highly interactive designs.
Studio: New scenes now default to "infinite length" instead of 10 seconds.

5.2.0 BIG, BIG NEWS!!! This is the release you've been waiting for! Flash export supports full interactivity!

Features

Flash Exporter: The AnFX Flash Exporter now supports all of the mouse enter, mouse exit, mouse clicked events as set up in the sequencer window (previous versions only had interactivity via the Menu and Button wizards).
Flash Exporter: "Loading" page now looks better and a bar fades in and out while loading.
All: menu wizard now creates menus with a much more smoother fade out/fade in transition when the user slides over different menu options. It gives a more tactile, professional feel.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed bug that caused "Start of Scene" event to be selected everytime a new action was added.
Flash Exporter: Ellipses are now drawn as ellipses and not always forced to be circular.
Flash Exporter: Fixed color action problem - the colors, expecially if changing to blue, were not changed correctly.
Flash Exporter: Fixed: Font used for the loading message was randomly selected from the set of fonts used in the animation. Now it always uses Arial.
Flash Exporter: Fixed an action script error in the "loading" scene which may have caused problems when importing AnFX generated SWFs into other products.

5.1.9
Features

Studio: More actions can now be applied to groups (some of these only work for the Flash exporter).

Bugs Fixed

Studio: No longer prompts to load the AnFX applet files into the directory when you save a design into a directory without them. It defers prompting until the user actually performs an export to AnFX Applet player file format (.afx).
Studio: Fixed crash caused by a text actor with no text within it (only affected 5.1.8). This could happen if such a text actor was experienced when loading an existing design or when editing a design.

Known Issues

Studio: After adding an action the current event type in the sequencer window always reverts to "Start of Scene". If you need to add more than one mouse event action you need to change the current event type back to your desired event type after adding each action.

5.1.8
Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed font display problem - fonts (esp. italic) were drawn outside their boundaries.
Flash Exporter: Fixed font display problem - italic fonts sometimes left debris as they moved across the screen and sometimes a portion of the last character in the text could be clipped and so not completely displayed.

5.1.7
Features

Studio: "Show actions for" combo box in sequencer window now has a graphic to represent each event type.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Current event is reset to "Start of scene" whenever a new design is opened.

5.1.6
Bugs Fixed

Resizing cursors did not appear over newly-created Actors.
Sequencer sometimes appeared scrolled across by 500ms.

5.1.5
Bugs Fixed

Menu item descriptions in Menu Wizard were being lost when creating a new menu.
.swf export: Title not displayed properly for scenes automatically created by the Menu Wizard.
.afx export: The Menu button created on scenes generated by the Menu Wizard did cause a return to the menu when clicked

5.1.4
Bugs Fixed

Solved a display problem when the windows fonts are set to "Large" .

5.1.3*
Features

Studio: Renamed some actor right click menus to make them more intuitive.
Studio: Some action descriptions were renamed to make them more intutive.

Bugs Fixed

Export to SWF format: Rotation of text actors with left or right justification was not performed correctly.

5.1.2
Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed bug that caused stretched/rotated text to not appear in Windows 95/98/Me.
Studio: Improved window display for 800x600 resolution.

5.1.1
Bugs Fixed

Studio: Exports to AnFX Player format (.afx) correctly when "set multiline text actions" are present. ie., there are no little boxes shown where line breaks occur when the set multiline text action is triggered.
Studio: Hard line breaks are now preserved in the description fields entered into the Menu Item Properties dialog in the Menu Wizard.
Studio: Fixed crash after installation when asking to confirm that the latest release has just been installed.

5.0.9
Features

Studio: The spacing between lines of text in a multiline text actor is now slightly larger to allow for accent characters such as Å etc., to avoid running into the line above. This can mean that some multiline text actors now take up a bit more vertical space than before. This may require you to adjust your designs slightly to account for this larger line spacing.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Exports to AnFX Player format (.afx) correctly when multiline text actors are present. ie., there are no little boxes shown where line breaks occur.
Studio: In evaluation mode when exporting to .swf user is informed that the evaluation version substitutes the first letter of each word.

5.0.8
Bugs Fixed

Studio: On Win95/98/Me text actors were not displayed in studio if Stretchable was checked (default) and the text width was changed from its natural width.
Installation: The .afd file extension is now correctly associated with AnFX so that double clicking on a .afd AnFX design file opens the design in the AnFX studio. This problem first occured in 5.0.7.

5.0.7
Features

Studio: BIG NEWS!!! Ability to export animations to Macromedia Flash (.swf) format. See products/anfx/featureMap.htm for more details.
Studio: Better handles for controlling sizing of icons.
Studio: Occasssional Cursor flicker fixed

4.9.12
Features

Studio: Flying text Wizard style now creates characters with correctly sized bounding boxes.

Bugs Fixed

Studio: Fixed crash when Cutting a selection of two or more actors when at least one of them has a waypoint.

4.9.11
Features

Studio: Fixed crash that occured when deleting a scene that had foreground or background layers turned on and then displaying another scene that used them.

4.9.10
Features

Studio: Fixed crash when deleting actors that had been created by clicking the New Scene button in the Button/Menu Item wizard forms.

4.9.9*
Features

Studio: New Button Wizard! Now it's easy to create single buttons and set up their mouse enter/mouse exit and mouse clicked behaviour.
Studio: Green border is no longer drawn around groups.
Studio: The asterisk indicates a start point is no longer displayed when the actor belongs to a group - this reduces clutter and makes for a clearer interface.
Studio: Gray borders around start point icons and waypoints are no longer displayed when the actor belongs to a group - further reducing clutter.
Studio: Default colors for menus have been changed.
Both: The current angle of an ellipse is now relative to the start angle. The effective rotation angle is the start angle plus the angle specified by any action that adjusts the angle. This makes it possible to create ellipses that rotate right around continuously from 0-360 degrees without having to have a start angle of 0. Some of your existing designs that rotate ellipses may require some minor adjustment of the start angles to accommodate this change.

4.9.8
Features

Player: "Goto Next Scene" action wraps around to the first scene when it occurs on the last scene and "Goto Previous Scene" action wrap around to the last scene when it occurs on the first scene. Place a horizontal menu with "< back" and "next >" as the menu items in the background layer. Then edit the properties of each menu item and choose "existing scene" for the link. Select "Goto Previous" and "Goto Next" respectively and you now have a very nice slide show. Remember to turn on the background layer in each of your scenes. Do this in the scene properties menu.
Implemented "Rewind to beginning" option for Scene Link Actions. When the player encounters a "rewind to beginning" action which can be triggered at a particular time or by one of the various mouse events the player will rewind to the start of the current scene, resetting all actors to their initial positions.

Bug Fixes

Player: Mouse Up event was only ever handled properly for an actor if an action was also set up for mouse down or mouse clicked. Now mouse up works fine even if these other events do not have actions associated with them. To see how mouse events work check out our new mouse click example.
Studio: Fixed problem when copying a menu when the multi-line text actor that displays the descriptions is not selected when copying.
Studio: Fixed error message when closing the application after pasting a menu which was copied when the mutltiline text actor that displays the descriptions WAS selected.

4.9.7
Features

Studio: Increased size of status bar font for Windows XP and Windows 2000.
Studio: Now has a media file summarizer so that you can quickly tell which images and audio files a design uses. Open a design file and from the main menu choose File | Show media files used in this design.
Studio: Rearranged Actor menu.
Studio: Now show a message if an attempt is made to add an action when no actors have been created.
Studio: Prompts first time users to open the "Getting Started Tutorial" - a great way to see how easy it is to make animations with AnFX.

4.9.5
Fixes

Studio: The display of position and size of the current actor is now correct in the status bar of the sequencer window.

4.9.4*
Fixes

Player: Fixed occassional problem on some fast PCs with Opera, IE and Netscape. Production would freeze at the "please wait..." screen. Thank you to those who reported this problem. Please let us know immediately if your AnFX experience isn't perfect - it should be!

4.9.2*
Features

Studio: Scene Properties Dialog - Added 4 new scene transition types: scroll up, scroll down, scroll left, scroll right - try them out! Right click on the scene and choose Scene properties and then click on the transition button. Note: Scene transitions are not simulated in the simulator - you will need to view the design in a browser to see these changes.
Studio: Banner Wizard - new type: compress centre - squashes characters from each side into the centre.

Fixes

Studio: Banner Wizard - ticker tape banner problem introduced in version 4.8.6.2 has been fixed.
Studio: Banner Wizard - waving text now remembers its position properly after right clicking and editing its.
Studio: Banner Wizard - flying text now remembers its position properly after right clicking and editing its.
Studio: Banner Wizard - exploding text now remembers its position properly after right clicking and editing its.
Studio: Banner Wizard - imploding text now remembers its position properly after right clicking and editing its.

4.9.1*

Fixes

Studio: Menu Wizard - the default menu settings created a multi line text actor with a zero height which was therefore not visible. This has now been fixed. The height will always be at least 10 pixels so that you can select it and manipulate it. If you have already created a menu that you like and you don't want to delete it but would like to see the descriptions displayed in a multi line text actor then simply edit the menu properties and the click on Menu Appearance. Uncheck the Display Description check box press Ok and then press Ok again. You menu will be regenerated. Now repeat the editing process but this time Check the Display Description check box.

4.9*

Features

Studio: Massively enhanced menu wizard - using combinations of menu decorations you can create a huge variety of menu types. Add borders, bullets, fill colors, description text object.
Studio: Menu Wizard now remembers the current position of your menu when editing its properties.
Studio: Menu Wizard - the display of the description of menu items optional. The description is displayed in a separate multi line text object that can be positioned and edited as you like as it is now a separate object outside the menu group.
Studio: Menu Wizard - ordering of menu items can now be changed using Move Up/Move Down buttons.

Fixes

Player: Rectangle outlines now match the size of a filled rectangle of the same size. This might have caused alignment problems for some users using both a filled rectangle and an outlined rectangle together.
Studio: When reopening a design that had a menu in it with Go To Scene links the description of the scene link used to say Go To Scene (none) even though the link functioned correctly in the player. The description is now displayed correctly.

4.8.7

Features

Studio: Custom colors added by the user in one "Choose Color" dialog are now available in all other "Choose Color" dialogs in the application.

Fixes

Studio: Fixed occassional crash after creating/editing menus with the Menu Wizard.
Studio: Fixed small memory leak when editing an existing menu with the Menu Wizard.
Studio: Fixed potential crash when saving a design.
Studio: When justification of text or multi line text actors is performed using the tool bar icons the display is now updated.

4.8.6*

Features

Studio: Selection of actors and waypoints is shown with a slim line gray rectangle intead of an outlined box. It has is offset from the actor that is selected so that you can see what's behind when doing precise positioning.

Fixes

Studio: Fixed some small memory leaks.
Studio: Fixed occassional crash after adding/deleting actions.
Studio: Fixed occassional crash after deleting an actor that had duplicate actions.

4.8.5*
Features

General improvements to robustness.
Action selection now works much more intuitively. The hit area has been reduced to avoid accidently clicking on the wrong action when moving actions that are close to each other.

Fixes

Player: Fixed problem with error reporting web page appearing in rare cases when there was no error.
Studio: Fixed problem with occasional crash after deleting an action.
Studio: Fixed problem with startup dialog not displaying most recently opened files in the correct order.

4.8.4
Features

Node Edit mode now defaults to ON at start up.
Node Edit mode menu items only appear in shape actor pop up menus.
New scenes are now created with a default setting of background and foreground layers turned off.
When adding actors to a scene the user is only prompted to select which layer to add the actor to if there is more than one layer available for the scene.

4.8.3*
Features

Node Edit mode - right click on any actor to toggle node edit mode on or off. When node edit mode is on nodes within a Shape actor can be edited or created or deleted. When node edit mode is off these operations are not possible preventing accidental changes to the nodes when editing actors nearby to the Shape actor.
New nodes can be created by dragging on a line between two existing nodes in a Shape actor.

Bugs Fixed in this release

When a shape had a way point editing the nodes did not leave the start point icon at the correct size.

4.8.2*
Features

Quick Start option - ability to turn quick start on or off (default is off). When On it causes the first scene to start as soon as its resources are loaded instead of waiting for all resources to load.
Image properties only allows jpg or gif choices - used to allow any extension which was confusing.

Bugs Fixed in this release

A class file was not being copied properly when saving a design in a different directory to the AnFX directory - would not have affected Netscape or IE browsers.

4.8.1
Bugs Fixed in this release

Groups, Text and Banner Wizards and Pasting occassionally did not display the icons for their waypoints or were not properly grouped together in the stage window.
Sometimes the waypoints of an actor in a group were not displayed if the group border was not visible in the stage window.
Waypoints applied to a group did not have a dashed line drawn between them as normal actors do.

4.8*
New Features

User created shape actors - IT HAS FINALLY ARRIVED - the feature you've all been asking us for! Vector Shapes: Now you can make arbitrary shapes made up of line segments drawn between nodes that you control. Complex shapes can be created and are much faster to download because of their compact nature than gif or jpg images. The shapes can be either filled or just a line. See the Online help in the new release for more details.

4.7.6.3
New Features

Updated on line help system. The online help system has been revamped and reorganized now includes dedicated topics for groups and layers.

4.7.6.2*
Bug Fixes

Fixes a problem introduced in 4.7.6 relating to the new feature that starts to play the first scene as soon as the first scene's resources are loaded. In certain cases subsequent scenes could use resources that were not yet loaded and cause problems. Now resources used by subsequent scenes are automatically checked before using them.

4.7.6.1*
Bug Fixes

4.7.6 was not working in Netscape 6.x. Netscape (in their wisdom) decided to break some audio functionality that was working perfectly in Netscape 4.x. This problem prevented AnFX from running at all on Netscape 6.x. This new AnFX player (4.7.6.1) includes some new code to get everything working fine again Netscape 6.x.

4.7.6*
Features

The default fading option for new images is now "full intensity or invisible" instead of "fade to background". This option is provides the fastest start and running performance and so should naturally be the default. In the image properties a user can change the fading options for only those images that need it.
Animation now starts a lot sooner - right after the resources (images and audio) required by scene 1 are downloaded and processed. This makes for a much improved impact from your AnFX designs. If your first scene uses only minimal resources then it will start animating in a very short time. A good strategy is to avoid placing too many large resources in scene 1 so that it starts quickly. The images required by the rest of the scenes will start downloading while scene 1 is playing.
Audio files now preload in Netscape as they always have in IE instead of waiting until the first time they are played.
Image and audio loading errors are now displayed in the player window. This is a great aid to designers when setting up a production on their web site.
Image and audio files are once again assumed to be stored relative to the applet code (class files, etc.,) not the HTML document path.

Bug Fixes

Progress bar only moved for images that had some sort of fading option set. It did not progress for images that had the "Full intensity or invisible" option set ie., what many images are set to.
In the design studio children of a group that had a waypoint applied to it were not displayed at their current position unless the child's starting point was in view.
Fixed bug in player where images that had fading properties set to "Full intensity or invisible" were actually processed for fading when first painted. This fix allows for faster animation start up and uses less memory.

4.7.5*
Features

Actions (namely movement, scene links, URL links and reset) can now be applied to groups! This makes it much easier to move a set of objects around together in a production (just group them and apply a waypoint to the group) or create a button from a group of actors (apply a single mouse clicked event etc., to the group). [Feature available for Gold and Silver licenses only]
Player performance optimized further for GIFs with transparent sections.
When an actor's intensity is at 0 any mouse actions are disabled for the actor and the cursor will not change when the mouse moves over it - ie., it is innactive when its intensity is 0.

Bug Fixes

View | Waypoint Outlines visibility options now work properly - Waypoint outlines can now be hidden when playing a production in the studio's simulator.
A cut or copy immediately after creating a blank production now work properly.

4.7.4.1
Bug Fixes

Fixed: Actors were not being selected properly via the Select/Hide/Show actors form. After you hit Ok the chosen actor was not selected in the stage window. This is now fixed.

4.7.4*
Bug Fixes

Fixed: Major performance issue when loading and processing images that can be faded. Version 4.7.1 through to version 4.7.3.3 had a problem in the player that could cause long delays while waiting for image loading and processing. This new version 4.7.4 is up to 90% faster that versions 4.7.1 - 4.7.3.3!!!
This version 4.7 also has some optimizations that make it up to 60% faster than versions prior to 4.7.x.
You should upload the new 4.7.4 player to your web server now for improved performance.
Step Ahead Software would like to thank Bob H and Mike B for their assistance in tracking down and fixing this problem - your diligence is most appreciated.

4.7.3.3
Bug Fixes

Fixed: It was possible to choose "This Actor" in the action triggering form even if the action did not make sense for "this actor" - it caused a crash when the production was played.

4.7.3.2*
Bug Fixes

Loading Images/Audio takes too long on some machines - player was getting too anxious while awaiting image downloads - it's anxiety actually slowed down the download - Player is much more patient now and so loading is quicker!
Cleaner and more robust stopping and starting of the player - important for browsers like Netscape and Opera.
Occassionally can't see actors even though marked visible. If a layer was marked invisible this overrode the visibility of any child actors marked visible. Now in Select/Show/Hide dialog box making a layer invisible marks its children as invisible but keeps itself visible.

4.7.3.1*
Bug Fixes

Fixes a small but important bug in 4.7.3 which prevented it from playing properly due to an incorrectly named component in the player's cab and jar files!
BE SURE TO UPLOAD THE 4.3.7.1 PLAYER FILES TO YOUR WEB SERVER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

4.7.3*
Features

Common Background and Foreground layers make the production of Powerpoint like presentations and slideshows easier than ever before.

Bug Fixes

AnFX Player only change: Images and Audio are now loaded relative to the HTML document path, not the code path.
Fixed bug in scene title variable tag where the special code <@s> in the contents of a text actor is replaced by the name of the current scene. When the scene changed sometimes the tag was not updated properly.

4.7.2
Bug Fixes

When grid size is 1 the stage window no longer goes solid gray!
codebase="." is no longer placed in the <applet> tag of HTML files generated by the AnFX Studio.

4.7.1 *
Features

Faster loading and processing of images with fewer system resources used.

4.7 *
Features

When images are used multiple times they are only processed once. This reduces the time spent loading and reduces memory usage.

Bug Fix

Intermittent problem with Audio files on NT is now fixed.

4.6.1 *
Bug Fix

The size of text in multi line text actors in the studio now accurately matches the size of text displayed by the player. In addition the size specified now measures the height of the entire line, including the leading (space between lines). This makes it easy to calculate the height of multiple lines of text: eg., a 10 line multiline text actor using a size 14 font will take up 10 x 14 = 140 pixels.

4.6
New Features

It is now possible to adjust the order of actors one level at a time via Arrange | Bring up one level, Arrange | Send down one level.
Right click menu now includes an Ordering menu item.
Every actor can now be named in the designer. The name appears in the select actor form.

4.5.9 *
New Features

Help has been updated with more details on inserting AnFX design into existing HTML pages and runnng locally.

Bug Fixes

Fixed occassional image problem where, under certain conditions, one image in a design was not being displayed.

4.5.8.1 *
New Features

Image Actors can now have a variety of fading effects including: pixlation, circular fade, horizontal blinds, dithered transparency and the traditional fade to background color.
Help has been updated to reflect the new image fading features.

Bug Fixes

When the player can't find the .afx file on the server it now displays the correct error number instead of stopping the loading bar.
Multiline text actor Jitter setting in the right click menu now works correctly.
Multiline text actor Jitter and Shadow are now correctly adjusted by the Jitter and Shadow actions.

4.5.7
Bug Fixes

Fixed crash when adjusting grid options if grid size was set outside of range or an invalid character was typed. This set up a grid option that prevented anfx from starting correctly. This new version can start correctly even with a bad grid setting.

4.5.6
New Features

Actor Right click menu now has a menu to facilitate quick creation and modification of URL and scene links directly from the actor without needing to go to the sequencer window.
Image fading now defaults to 'on'. Be sure to turn it 'off' for any images that do not require fading to save resources and increase loading speed.

4.5.5
New Features

Selection indicators for start point and waypoints is now drawn with a hatched pattern on a white background with the gray sizing boxes in each corner.

Bug Fixes

The tutorial will now open properly always. Previously it would only open properly if AnFX had a design opened in the AnFX directory.
Fixed occassional crash when closing one design and opening another.

4.5.3.2
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