AnFX Frequently Asked Questions

This page contains a list of frequently asked questions. If you have a question that is not answered here or if you have a suggestion please email it to us. Or maybe you even have a tip that you would like to share with the AnFX community.

A question everyone should ask is:
Q. Do I have the latest version of AnFX? Are there new features or bug fixes that I should know about?
A. The AnFX download page has the version number of the latest release displayed in a table. Check this against your current version by running AnFX and choosing Help|About. If not the same version number then just download the latest, uninstall your existing version and install the new version - it's as easy as that to start enjoying all the lastest features and bug fixes! Click here to see the latest version number.

Other resources: Online Tutorial

This page is divided into 3 sections:

AnFX Design Studio - questions and techniques associated with creating AnFX designs in the studio.

AnFX Applet Player - questions to do with playing AnFX designs in the AnFX player applet and installing the player on your web site.

AnFX Purchasing and Licensing - questions to do with purchasing/licensing AnFX technology.

AnFX Design Studio Questions

Q. How do I create a link from an Actor to a web page?

A. Change the current event to "Mouse Clicked".

Select the actor that you want to make a link from in the stage window.

Click on the New Action button (left most in the second row of tool bar buttons) and Choose Go to URL...

You can then fill out the details of the link that you want to go to.

Q. I like the sound of AnFX but do I have to set up a large, nasty array of parameters to build my designs?

A. Part of the AnFX toolkit is a Windows point and click design studio tool called the AnFX Designer. This is one of the things that makes AnFX different from standard applets and is one of the reasons why AnFX is so popular with non programmers - apart from the fact that it so powerful yet compact. It's interface is simple and intuitive - if you know how to use a mouse you can be creating amazing interactive content in minutes!

Q. I have found what may be a bug or a feature that is lacking - how can I tell if a bug is fixed or a new feature added?

A. You should regularly check the release history page. It contains a list of all releases and the bugs that were fixed and the features that were added to each release. If you downloaded AnFX from somewhere else on the web then there is a good chance that you may not have the latest version.

Q. Does AnFX come with any setup Wizards?

A. Yes, as of version 3.11 there are a number of useful Wizards which enable you to build significant designs in seconds!

Q. On your site you have actors that appear to move along a curved path. How do you do that?

A. Moving in a curved path is simple. By default all motion is linear (math jargon for straight line!). To make movement non linear (math jargon for curved!) edit the properties of your path and click on the "Advanced" button. Change the x or y motion to one of the curved profiles and your actor will move in a natual looking curved path.

Q. When working with a long-playing applet, in AnFX, I can jump to the beginning or end, but to maneuver Actors in the middle of the applet, I have to play the applet to that point, shifting actors one frame at a time. Is there a faster way?

A. Yes! You can click the shaded bar at the top of the sequencer to move the animation straight to that point in time.

Q. I can't seem to select my waypoints or actors. It keeps selecting a different object to the one I want to select.

A. If no object is selected and you click in the stage window then AnFX will select the "top most" (see below*) object that it finds at that location. If an object is selected and you click anywhere within that object, even on another object then that original object remains selected unless you hold down the ALT key.

When the ALT key is held down then each time you click the selection will change to the object below the currently selected one until it reaches the bottom most object and then it starts at the top most object again. Keep clicking until the requested object is selected. You can then drag it, size it or right click on it.

Another way to select an object that is obscured by other objects it to choose Edit|Select Actor. You will be presented with a list of actors to choose from. Note that this will select the entire actor (ie., a grey rectangular frame is drawn around the actor). In order to move the entire actor drag it by pressing the left mouse button on the gray frame and moving the mouse. To size individual waypoints or the start point you will need to click inside the frame on a waypoint or start point to select them in preference to the entire actor being selected.

*top most means that object that is above all others. Imagine that each actor in the AnFX stage window is actually painted onto a sheet of clear plastic and that all of these sheets are laid on top of each other to form the scene. Viewers of your AnFX designs just see the total effect with objects on the top sheets obscuring the view of objects on lower sheets. You can change the ordering of the sheets by selecting an actor and choosing Arrange|Bring to front or Arrange|Send to back.

Q. How do I copy all actors from one scene to another?

A. Click on empty space to deselect any selected actors. Now hold down the SHIFT key and drag a rectangle completely around all of the actors that you wish to copy. Choose Edit|Copy and go to the scene that you want to paste them to and the choose Edit|Paste.

Q. I changed my animation size in the designer, but when I go to test it, it only displays the old size, and clips the rest off. How do I fix this?

A. If you already have a HTML file generated from a certain sized applet, AnFX will not replace the size attributes if you change the animation size. You will need to manually edit the HTML code, and locate the area that looks like this:

<applet code="anFXApplet.class" width=400 height=200 align=middle>
<!-- AnFX (c) 1996,2002 Step Ahead Software -->
<!-- www.stepaheadsoftware.com -->
<param name=afxfile value="test.afx">
</applet>

Where it says "width=400" and "height=200", replace the values 400 and 200 with the desired width and height of your animation.

Q. How can I do outlined boxes like on the Step Ahead Software web site?

A. RIght click on a rectangle acor and choose Outline. Set up the thickness of the line in the dialog box that appears.

Q. Can I make images fade in and out with AnFX?

A. Yes! AnFX 4 has introduced the ability to phase images as well as text, rectangles etc., Simply set up an intensity action on an image and the image will phase accordingly. See the online help under "fading" for more details.

Q. In the tutorials, the background changes colour from black to white gradually, and back again at the end. How do you phase the background like that?

A. This is easy. Make a box the size of the applet, and set its colour to black. Change the applets background colour to white. Then, when the applet starts, make the box phase from 100 to 0. It will look like the whole animation is phasing colour.

Q. How do you do XYZ like in the animations on the Step Ahead Software website?

A. Any questions that you have regarding tricks with AnFX can be e-mailed to "anfxsupport@stepaheadsoftware.com", and we will try to answer them for you.

Q. Why don't my images appear as images in the designer?

A. Images are shown in the designer as an outline with the name of the image but they do appear as full images when running in a web browser. If they were shown in the designer, it would clutter up the designer because they would overshadow objects below them and make it harder to select actors that appear behind the images.

AnFX Applet Player Questions

Q. The installation instructions say to upload various files including anfx4main.cab,anfx4rest.cab. I can't see the anfx4main.cab,anfx4rest.cab file in the directory that I installed AnFX to. Is it really there?

A. Yes it is! It's just that in Windows Explorer there is a "Hidden files" option which seems to be on by default in many PCs. In Windows explorer go View | Options. In the View tab there is an option called "Hidden Files". Click on the option that says, "Show all files" and your anfx4main.cab,anfx4rest.cab file should now be visible.

It's not such a problem that you can't see the file in explorer - you really only need to be able to see the file when you are in your FTP application. As long as you can see it in your FTP application then you can upload it to your web site.

Q. How do I get rid of the Loading Animation www.stepaheadsoftware.com etc., message?

A. In the Silver and Gold license versions this can be turned off by entering:

<param name=gold value="true"> or <param name=silver value="true">

in the <applet> tag of the HTML file that contains the animation.

In all versions you can set the background and foreground colors to the same color to effectively make it invisible. See the next question for more information.

Q. Why do my images appear to fade in a strange way when I set up an intensity action?

A. Images always fade to the background color that is specified in your HTML file (see next question for how to do this) NOT the scene's background color. If you have not set up a background color in the HTML file then the default background color is white and all of your images will fade to white regardless of the background color of the scene that they are in. If you use the HTML code generated by AnFX in your HTML files then this color will be set to the color specified in the Production properties form.

Q. When AnFX starts, it displays a "loading" message in the applet with a white background but my page background is black, and it looks out of place. Can I change the background colour of the loading screen?

A. Yes but only for Silver or Gold licenses. In the HTML code for your page, there is a section called <APPLET>. Inside the applet "block", there will be another tag called <PARAM NAME=afxfile VALUE=???.afx> where ??? is your applet name. Directly below this tag, add the following:

<PARAM NAME=bgcolor VALUE=??????>

[Note in version 4 you can also change the foreground color of the message and progress bars use fgcolor as in: <PARAM NAME=fgcolor VALUE=??????>]

where ?????? is the hexadecimal colour code that you want your background to be. Note that the code is entered as BBGGRR, which is backwards to most other programs. Also, leave off the 0x00 from the beginning of normal hex values.

In the case of black, the value would read VALUE=000000. If you are not familiar with hexadecimal, here are some examples.

Q. Are visitors to my site prompted to download a special plug in to make the animations work?

A. NO! This is another major bonus of using AnFX technology. All mainstream browsers in use today comes with Java built in. AnFX is a carefully crafted small and efficient applet that makes use of the technology already present in the browser so your visitors are not prompted to download and install "XYZ" plug in. They just jump to your site and it all happens automatically.

Q. How long do AnFX applets take to download?

A. The AnFX applet is extremely small - which means that, for a 56k modem, it will download (only ONCE it is cached after that) normally in about 3.5 seconds!

Q. When a visitor goes to a new page does the applet have to download again?

A. No! Once the actual applet has been downloaded, it stays cached in the browser. This means that if you visit another page, or view another animation, the applet will not have to download again and the animation will start almost instantly. This makes the AnFX applet far superior to animated GIFs in download time and overal efficiency.

Q. What is the gallery and how do I get to enter an applet there?

A. The AnFX Gallery is a page on the Step Ahead Software website that contains animations that users have submitted. Its purpose is to show new AnFX users (or existing users) new tricks with animation design, or capabilities of AnFX that the viewer may not have known about. You can get your animation into the Gallery by e-mailing the ".AFX" file, along with a brief description of the animation, to "anfxsupport@stepaheadsoftware.com".

AnFX Purchasing and Licensing Questions

What is the difference between the Personal, Silver and Gold licenses? What one is right for me?

• Personal - intended for personal home pages
• Silver - intended for a single professional corporate website or professional personal web site
• Gold - intended for web developers wanting to deploy AnFX on their client websites

For details of each see purchasing.

Can I use AnFX to send multimedia emails? Does my license cover this usage?

The standard licenses above do NOT cover the sending of multimedia content using AnFX. They are for delivering multimedia content to users who are visiting your site using a browser. If you want to use AnFX for this purpose please contact us to discuss alternative licensing structures available to support this usage.

Can I use AnFX to deliver interactive multimedia ads to a number of different sites? Does my license cover this usage?

The standard licenses above do NOT allow the deployment of a banner ad or ad network using AnFX technology. You can of course use the standard AnFX licenses to advertise products related to the sites for which it is licensed. What you can't do is set up a multimedia ad in AnFX and deploy it via an ad distribution structure similar to the familiar animated gif banner ad networks. If you want to use AnFX for this purpose please contact us to discuss alternative licensing structures available to support this usage.