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Friday April 3, 1998
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News Index 1)Allegro Update #2
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Friday April 3, 1998
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News Index 1)Allegro Update #2
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| Allegro In Alpha Images! |
We have only a hand full of images for you at this time, we promise more by Monday or later this week.
Allegro Images
About Allegro New Find New Appearance CDEV If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
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| GoLive CyberStudio 3 UPDATE! |
It wasn't long after we published our initial GoLive CyberStudio report, that we received word of a later version with many improvements and advancements over the version tested by our sources. Not to mention a totally reworked interface in most aspects of the application. We proceeded to obtain a copy of the newly released CyberStudio 3.0b2, and nevertheless, we were quite impressed over all.
To ease the pain of our negative remarks as to the HTML handling in the development version of CyberStudio3, the HTML handling and preview in beta 2 is much improved and up to par with the rest of competitive high-end web development environments. Though still, none of the visual editors are in sync with the way Netscape and I.E. actually display a page. Much of the interface aspects have been reworked since the development version, including the visual editor, animation time line, and so on.
Because of deadlines, and time limitations, we were unable to test the application fully, however, we took some time to test the DHTML support/Animation functionalities of CyberStudio3, since this feature seems to have caused the most excitement. We must say, this stuff is EXTREMELY impressive, and quite fun to work with. It took us all of five minutes to fully understand the process of creating multi-layer DHTML animation's with CyberStudio. CyberStudio 3.0 will come with completely detailed documentation in PDF form which provides for even better understanding of the basic concepts.
Again, we have many screen shots to share with you. Click on the links to view the corresponding images. Below are summaries of the advancements and features we found to be most impressive.
Floating Layer Boxes Easily inserted via drag & drop from GoLive CyberStudioís Palette, Floating Layer Boxes are independent objects within an HTML page that are suspended above the normal flow of HTML and operate via the Cascading Style Sheets Positioning specification. They accept all normal HTML content, including text, images, tables, multimedia elementsñeven GoLive CyberStudio layout grids. Unlike previous HTML objects, these Floating Layer Boxes can be absolutely positioned, layered, and animated on a Web page. Without having to write code, CyberStudio allows you to control their properties: absolute position, visibility, stacking order (z order). In this way, CyberStudio brings both the precision of page layout and the dynamism of multimedia to Web Authoring.
Style sheet Window From GoLive CyberStudioís Style sheet Window you can easily view and control the entire set of properties specified in the W3Cës CSS recommendation. You can access the various ways that styles are saved, including external style sheets, imported style sheets, classes, IDs, and tag selectors. You can then easily assign all of the different properties to both external, site-wide style sheets internal page-specific style sheets. In this way, CyberStudio puts full design power of Cascading Style Sheets directly into your hands.
Layout View Controller The Layout View controller is a new Inspector window that brings an unparalleled flexibility to GoLive CyberStudioís Layout functions. When used with Cascading Style Sheets, the Layout View Controller allows CyberStudioís Layout mode to emulate different browser versions (including versions for different platforms) so that you can see how a browser will interpret particular style sheets as you design. For example, you can see how active and visited links will appear in a particular browser. The Layout View controller will highlight the elements on your page affected by each style as you make style choices. You can even turn on and off overlapping layers in order to edit individual elements. Finally, it lets you preview your Web pages without having to switch to the Preview mode, thus greatly increasing productivity.
Easy to Use Dynamic HTML With GoLive CyberStudio, you can automatically generate sophisticated JavaScript-based animations and Actions. Without writing code or learning complex multimedia tools, GoLive CyberStudio lets you fully animate and add interactivity to your Web pages. Youíll quickly produce dynamic Web pages that work well on virtually every DHTML-capable browser. An image of the source view can be viewed here.
Easy to Use Dynamic HTML
With GoLive CyberStudio, you can automatically generate sophisticated JavaScript-based animations and Actions. Without writing code or learning complex multimedia tools, GoLive CyberStudio lets you fully animate and add interactivity to your Web pages. Youíll quickly produce dynamic Web pages that work well on virtually every DHTML-capable browser.
Actions GoLive CyberStudio Actions are ready-to-use JavaScript scripts, compatible with all major browsers. You trigger Actions through other page elements, such as links, text, images, or image maps. Actions can be easily used, for example, to begin an animation sequence, open specified windows, swap the content of an image, and show or hide an object on a page. You can even use an Action within the page header to automatically link to different pages based upon a clientís browser. In this way, Actions make creating interactive Web pages simple.
GoLive CyberStudio Actions are also fully editable and extensible. GoLive CyberStudio 3 ships with several fully editable Actions. You can also download additional Actions from the GoLive Web site or write your own Actions from within the application. CyberStudio users can share libraries of Actionsñeven customize the Inspector Window interface for particular Actions.
Actions shipping with GoLive CyberStudio 3 include:
Open Alert Window Set Image URL Flip Move Set Image URL Goto Link Set Status Move To ShowHide Open Window Stop Complete Play Scene Stop Scene Set BackColor Stop Sound
Timeline Editor GoLive CyberStudioís Timeline Editor is a key frame tool that is used for controlling the behavior of Floating Layer Boxes. Unlike complicated timelining tools, the Timeline Editor makes creating animations an easy to perform visual process. Using CyberStudioís unique animation Record function, you can simply move a Floating Layer Box around the page, visually defining a timeline and animation path You can easily add new key frames to an existing path by manipulating a Layer Box and clicking on the timeline. And, you can preview animations directly in GoLive CyberStudioís layout mode. In this way, CyberStudio brings breakthrough ease of use to the art of creating sophisticated animations.
The Timeline Editor also provides professional-level control over the animation process. It contains a dedicated track for each floating box on the current page. Action tracks can be used to activate Actions at points within a timeline. You can also select and apply different animation types to sections of a timeline, including jumps, linear, curves and random behaviors. Further, you can define and edit loop areas on a timeline. Add color key frames within the timeline editor to organize your work. You can select multiple timelines within the editor, as well as copy and paste between timelines. Using the Timeline Editor, you can choose the visibility and stacking order of multiple Layer Boxes. You can even define and control multiple animation scenes for each page. In this way, GoLive CyberStudio makes creating sophisticated animations an integral part of creating killer Web pages.
WebObjects 3.5 Support
Through connections to Appleís WebObjects, you can create dynamic Web sites that are fully integrated with existing corporate data and applications. GoLive CyberStudio 3 includes numerous changes for compatibility with Appleës latest WebObjects release. New WebObjects 3.5 features include:
HTML 4.0 Forms Support
GoLive CyberStudio supports three new forms tags and the general user interface enhancements specified within the HTML 4.0 standard. In addition, CyberStudio will automatically generate and control tab indexing. CyberStudio also supports the Mac OS 8 appearance for forms elements. Specific HTML 4.0 form elements supported within GoLive CyberStudio 3 include:
Download Web Page
A WebPage Download option enables users to download the HTML, and corresponding contents of a published webpage to their hard drive and promptly displays the page in the visual editor for editing.
Upload/Download FTP Access
The built in FTP client has a brilliant interface, and allows for quick access of your ftp directory; for quick uploads and updates.
Additional Images
In addition, we have images of the greatly improved Find function, Spell Checker and Color Palette. The toolbar has been slightly altered, and the preferences dialog provides for fashionable, full customization of the authoring tool.
To conclude, our short experience with this application proved to be very positive. You'll need a bit of ram to run this puppy, but it's worth it. Contrary to our initial report, CyberStudio3 has something for just about everyone. Whether your authoring a news site, or a high-tech multimedia site, this is one of the best tools for the job, and again, the DHTML functionalities is alone enough to cover the cost of the app.
GoLive should be releasing a public beta of CyberStudio3 in mid April. We encourage you to download a copy at that time and try it out, see for yourselves. CyberStudio3 is also being featured at Apple.com. Quite impressive, if you ask us.
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| Yellow Win98 and NT 5.0? 3/30 |
Just when you thought you've read your last rumor on Rhapsody and its yellow box, we're here to take you on an imaginary journey, one that may prove not to be so far from reality.
Last week, the Reality staff receive a piece of startling news from a source who continues to prove themselves extremely reliable. According to this source, Windows 98 and the first service pack for Windows NT 5.0 will ship with Yellow Box APIs! In the past there have been talks of a Yellow Box for NT, but nothing final. Apparently, the inclusion of the Yellow Box APIs in Windows 98 and NT 5.0 will be more of a Microsoft project, than an Apple one.
What does this mean, if true? This may mean a lot of things, most importantly, it could revolutionized computing. Think of the Yellow Box APIs as JAVA APIs, and the Yellow Box as JAVA, 400% as powerful, and without the limitations. This means that applications written for Rhapsody will run on Rhapsody PPC, Rhapsody Intel, Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0, and with the rumored inclusion of the Yellow Box in future versions of the MacOS, even on your Macintosh.
This means developers write one set of code, compile once for each platform, and have it run on everyone of the modern day consumer Operating Systems. This also means that PC owners will not need to purchase Rhapsody for Intel to take advantage of the Yellow Box. Though, reasons for purchasing Rhapsody for Intel will still be eminent
This is something we don't see to be too far out, as far as it implementing, but final results will be a whole new beginning when it comes to software. This may be means for a serious gaming platform for Macintosh users, and a friendly environment for PC users, just for starters.
We'll be working around the clock to find some form of confirmation to this set of rumors. At the very least, it is interesting to speculate over the possibilities. As always, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Obviously Microsoft executives can't roll out of bed one day and decide to include the APIs without consulting with Apple and formulating contracts. Nevertheless, you can bet there is a lot of inside discussion going back and forth between Apple and Microsoft. Something to look forward to, and as always, we'll keep you updated as soon as we obtain further information.If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
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| Mighty Cat's Release 3/30 |
Though some would doubt the PowerBook 2400 is much to fancy over, Macintosh users overseas would beg to differ. Ever since its introduction, this 4.1lb (4.4 with floppy) portable, running at 180Mhz, has been a smash in Japan. This hasn't been the case in the United States, however. The blame for this lies at Apple, and their marketing efforts. A 4lb laptop could go a long ways these days, if someone actually heard about it.
With the poor results in the US, Apple has made the decision not to release the speed bumped version of the 2400, code named 'Mighty Cat', within the United States.
With much confusion as to the actual release date of the Mighty Cat, a trusted Reality source has informed us that the PowerBook 2400c/240 603e will be released in Japan on April 8th. The unit should ship with MacOS 8.1, and a 3-5 Gigabyte hard drive. Other specifics should remain the same, including the standard 16 MB of RAM. (To ship with the new Apple standard of 32 MB, an alteration to the current mother board would need to be made in order to allow for a 32 megabyte DIMM and still allow the single free slot.) At 16 MB, users will be able to slip in a 64 MB DIMM to max out Mighty Cat at 80 MB of RAM.
Rumors floating around Japanese sites suggest that there may be some work in the area of a 128 megabyte DIMM for the single open slot within the 2400c, which would ultimately allow for a maximum of 152 megs of RAM. However, this could not be confirmed at the present time. Suggested retail price for the speed bumped version is around $3,500 US dollars. Though prices vary depending upon currency exchange rates.If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
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| Apple's CEO, A Done Deal? 3/30 |
The Apple Stockholder meeting, set for April, has the keynote speaker slot reserved to Steve Jobs. Jobs has also been scheduled to keynote the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) which takes place from May 11-15 at the San Jose Convention Center.
Some may see a trend building in all of this, a trend rushing straight into Grand Central Station at New York for the MacWorld New York Expo in July, and thereon afterwards. Though these rumors may be premature, a trusted Reality source recently hinted that Apple's CEO spot is a 'Done Deal', and if not so, very close to it. Of course we are talking about Jobs, who else? Do you see him about to slip off the ledge lately? He's building barracks, and warriors (his executive team) to accommodate him on his joy ride.
After all, lets not forget that Steve Jobs has waited patiently, or not, for over 10 years to once again take hold of 'his baby'. He has returned Apple to profitability, build an alliance with Microsoft that only he could hold together, and positioned himself as the figurehead for both consumers and investors (though some would beg to differ on the last note). Nevertheless, it would take the entire Iraqi army to pry this man from his seat.
In addition, Oracle has based a large portion of its future on Apple Computer. Jobs and Ellison are also known to be best friends. Ellison would never have agreed to such a partnership if he was even presented with a hint that Jobs would pass the position off to some lonely CEO candidate. Ellison and the entirety of Board of Directors are extremely please with the way Jobs has turned Apple around. They are routing him on with all force. We've heard rumors of board members pleading, and even getting down on their knees asking Jobs to just accept the position permanently, already.
Finally, Jobs has terminated a major portion of Apple's Asian market by discontinuing UMAX's cloning license. This suggest a major change in Apple's Asian market efforts. And they would by no means alter management just prior to inflicting these new measures and advancements.
We could without a doubt go further and state that Jobs is the mastermind behind the Apple NC, the AMP, and he's leading the way for Rhapsody; projects that have yet to be completed. It's our strong belief that Jobs has been playing mind games with the media for months. He's still waiting for the 'Right Time'. Hell, look at all the publicity it is getting Apple. Numerous stories have been authored and based on the likely hood of Jobs accepting the position, or why he hasn't done so already. He may be terribly arrogant, and that comes with the money, but he's a leader, and a great visionary; something that Apple has lacked for the past 10 years. We could be wrong, but if you ask us, you won't see him running from kettle any time soon.
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| GoLive CyberStudio 3 Sneak Peek 3/30 |
GoLive recently announced an outstanding upgrade to their CyberStudio, web authoring and design application. The upgrade will feature support for style sheets, Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language (DHTML), Web Objects 3.5, and HTML 4.0, among other things. The good people over at GoLive have already posted a set of press releases and product overviews at their site, so we'll not repeat their words. Instead, a source who shall remain anonymous recently forwarded the Reality staff a set of images from a development version of CyberStudio 3.0, code named 'Shanghai'.
CyberStudio 3.0 Beta Splash ScreenBelow are links to the variety of Screen Shots, with a short description of each.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Microsoft Active X Inspector; for use with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Animation Inspector, and preferences.
- CyberStudio 3.0 DHTML animation;control timeline window.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Form Button Inspector; for use with form button behavior.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Button Inspector; for use with button behavior
- CyberStudio 3.0 Drag and Drop Palette; the main tabbed palette which contains 90% of the components used to author a standard page, including a tab for forms, text, WebObjects, tables, frames and so on. Dragging a clipping from this table to the editor window will create the corresponding object.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Editor Window. This is the main visual HTML editor window.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Source Outline View Window. This is the outline view source tab of the editor window that provides the user with the source code side of their page, a very impressive one none the less. Image previews in the source are also available as one can see from the image.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Free Memory palette is a new addition which displays the current memory allocation, how much is free, and so on.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Image Inspector; for use with implementing image behavior, functions and appearance.
- CyberStudio 3.0 JAVA Applet Inspector; for use with implementing Applet behavior, functions and appearance.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Link Inspector; an extremely cool palette in the new CyberStudio 3 which displays the HTML link structure in tree form.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Script Inspector; for selecting language and location.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Script Window; the built in Scripting environment.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Shanghai Splash Screen (Beta); it looked cool, so we figured that we'd throw it in.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Style Sheets implementation window.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Table Inspector, which hasn't seemed to change much since the previous version of CyberStudio.
- CyberStudio 3.0 Text Inspector; A very advanced text inspector, that wasn't quite completed at the time this beta was previewed
In all, it's an impressive update from their already strong web authoring software. The only downside to this application is that it previews HTML differently from Netscape and Internet Explorer, and every other visual page editor for that matter. Each web based application follows its own guidelines for HTML, some more strict than others. Someone needs to create a standard sooner or later. CyberStudio 3.0 requires chunks of RAM, but reports state that the beta ran smoothly with about 16 Megs of RAM allocated to the application. This is a high-end web development application, for those who want to create the most impressive sites. Has Macromedia met its match?
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| WallStreet Updates 3/30 |
With most of the news on WallStreet out of the way, we have a few additional specifics to add, thanks to a series of trusted industry sources who've been able to come in contact with WallStreet Production Models.
First off, all WallStreet units will use the same external plastics (casings). Each unit will have a jet-black case with a white Apple logo on the top and rubberized areas for better gripping.
Second, WallStreet will be available as a Built-to-Order (BTO) Machine, with many available configurations.
Thirdly, all WallStreet models can have screens (displays) ranging from 12.1" to 14.1". In other words, you don't need to purchase the 292MHz version of WallStreet to get the 14.1" screen.
All versions of WallStreet will have video out (RCA), and the high-end configuration will ship with S-Video out. There will be an optional DVD-ROM on all configurations, as well.
Several sources have mailed us concerning a release date. Each source is consistent in touting a May announcement. Better yet, sources in Apple Europe state May 6th or May 7th for the introduction of the new line of PowerBooks.
Full Size WallStreet Images
Jason over at Ogrady.com has posted some great full size images the WallStreet Production models. He deserves most of the credit for the WallStreet images floating around the web these days.
You can check them out at...http://ogrady.com/wallstreet1.stm
and
http://ogrady.com/wallstreet2.stm
Check back on Thursday, as we may have further information regarding the new line of PowerBooks.If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
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| Reality Chat - Today at 7:30 PM EST (4:30 PST) 3/30 |
We'll be hosting our first formal Online Chat tonight, Monday March 30th, in the Reality Chat Room starting at 7:30 PM EST, that's around 4:30 for those of you on the west coast. We welcome you to stop by and chat with us about Apple, news, and rumors. Or just stop in to speak your mind or ask questions. The requirements for the accessing the chat room are listed below. At approximately 7:00 - 7:15 we'll provide a link from the main page directly to the chat room.
See you there,
-Jeff
Requirements To Use Chat
The chat client and server are 100% JAVA, and there for you will need a browser that supports JAVA. We recommend that you use Netscape or Internet Explorer 3.x or greater, with around 8 megs of memory allocated to the browser and Java enabled. The more memory you give your browser, the better the chat applet will perform.
Users can use the the chat room for real-time interaction, or send private instant messages back and forth to each other. Very similar to private messages on the Hotline client. You can ignore users, highlight users, create a profile, look up profiles, select custom icons and a lot more.
Load Time
The Login page may take anywhere from 60 seconds to 4 minutes to load on a 28.8 modem line. So please be patient, and do not try and reconnect. That will only start the process all over again. We promise you that the results you'll see are worth the short wait. We also are assured that we have chosen the most advanced Java chat server/client software available. So please try it out, and have fun.
Proceed to the Login Screen
Please send all feedback on the chat room to chat@chat.macnn.com
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