Making Websites with GDL Publisher

[david nicholson-cole]

I downloaded the most recent copy of GDL Publisher. Its very impressive in the speed and quality of the page so created - put the GDL objects in one folder, specify a destination folder - and Hey presto! Its done. THE GDL List is written, little preview images are made, and its nicely set out. Even easier to use than Adobe Photoshop's Automate>Gallery function.

Unfortunately, i cant read the result.

i have Mozilla Firefox in Windows XP on one machine and it displays the QUICKTIME images and sounds for each object instead of showing the object. Is there a way to make Firefox read GSM objects as library objects and not as little quicktime files.
On the Mac, in OS9.2, with Explorer, it comes up looking right, but the GDL logo never stops shimmering and the objects never come into view as objects. (both of these are looked at locally on disk, not viewed over the web).
I dont have Explorer on the PC, and on OSX I have Firefox too. In OSX, with Safari and Firefox and Explorer, it also works with the Quicktime icons, and makes a horrible noise as it tries to 'play' the object as a piece of sound.

Does the GDL object web technology work on Explorer only, in XP and OSX? surely, the plug-in that you need to view the objects is downloaded automatically if its not present? (thats how it used to work).

[Djordje]

david wrote:
Unfortunately, i cant read the result.

i have Mozilla Firefox in Windows XP on one machine and it displays the QUICKTIME images and sounds for each object instead of showing the object. Is there a way to make Firefox read GSM objects as library objects and not as little quicktime files.

Remove GSM from QuickTime's file association panel

[david nicholson-cole]

Djordje wrote:
Remove GSM from QuickTime's file association panel

Thanks. I am not savvy enough to know how to do this with Windows or Mac OSX. Does everybody across the globe who wants to see a GDL object on a website have to do this? Do web site creators have to send this message to every possible viewer?

Surely , if Quicktime is essential to the operation of ArchiCAD (which it is, you cant run ArchiCAD if its not installed), GS could have chosen a better 3 letter suffix for objects than .GSM? Or make the webviewer include a workaround that would get it right - after all the Active-X object has to download something from GS website, so it must know its a GDL object thats being viewed, not a Quicktime file.

The GS website say that the web object technology does not work with FireFox. So I suppose thats Game Over for GDL objects on the web. People want to use Firefox. I unfortunately cannot install Explorer on my PC, all i can find on Microsoft's files area are Updates and Service Packs. (it also doesnt work on Safari on OSX) - how does one remove the Quicktime association with that?

[Jochen Suehlo]

I had the problem long ago (the first time I installed the Web Plugin); it is easy to deactivate the gsm-setting in Quicktime. Open Quick Time, go to Quick Time settings, choose Browser Plugins, got to MIME settings, go to Audio, uncheck gsm-files.

I had another problem with Firefox: the browser refused to install the GDL web plugin. With a tip from Frank it worked nevertheless.
I had parallel installed Netscape 6 and there the GDL Web Plugin.
Because both browsers work with the same engine I just had to copy the files from the Plugin Folder of Netscape to the Plugin Folder of Firefox.
And now it works.
Nevertheless Internet Explorer 6 is much faster with the Web Control than Firefox with the Web Plugin; only god knows why.

(You can recognize the plugin files that belong to the GDL plugin in Windows if you put the mouse over the files and wait for the quick tips).

[david nicholson-cole]

Even with simple things, i despair of ever getting it completely right. I have just been doing simple things with a navbar in a table and CSS, and yet they all look different, with different colours etc, depending on which platform or software one looks at it with.
Its massively frustrating, made worse by the idea of the browser storing recent pages, so even if you update a page on the site, it may take several Refreshes, until you really see the change.