[13.7] Can I get other windowTypes than the ones in the manuals?

The readme file for Director 4.0.4 mentions that "floating palette" type windows can be created using windowType 49. This is true for both Mac and Windows versions, but only in the authoring environment. Projectors do not include support for this windowType.

On the Mac, the following additional windowTypes exist -- they are provided by the system software, so depend on the system version (these are from 7.5.1), but this means they should be available to projectors too:

windowType description

1984 - 1987 Apple Guide windoid (like the normal floating palette but uglier!), no zoom box

1988 - 1991 Apple Guide windoid with zoom box

1992 - 1995 Apple Guide windoid with the title bar on the left hand side, no zoom box

1996 - 1999 Apple Guide windoid with title bar on the left and zoom box

2016, 2024 Help balloon with the pointer at the top of the left edge

2017, 2025 Help balloon with the pointer at the left side of the top edge

2018, 2026 Help balloon with pointer at the right side of the top edge

2019, 2027 Help balloon with pointer at the top of the right edge

2020, 2028 Help balloon with pointer at the bottom of the right edge

2021, 2029 Help balloon with pointer at the right side of the bottom edge

2022, 2030 Help balloon with pointer at the left side of the bottom edge

2023, 2031 Help balloon with pointer at the bottom of the left edge

2032 - 2047 A very strange window probably used for drawing those red circles on the screen in Apple Guide. Doesn't really behave like a window at all -- it has no border and often no background, so that only the sprites in your MIAW get drawn, not the MIAW's stage. (This isn't consistent, though -- sometimes the background is cleared.) It doesn't receive events of any kind, so it can't contain interactive elements and it won't update if you move things around it. It is initially created and drawn on top of everything else onscreen. If other windows are moved into its region and out again, they won't update, because they don't know there was ever anything in front of them, and are left with "trails"-like remnants on top of them. By the same token, the MIAW will lose any part of its drawing region that has been touched by other windows. (I don't pretend this is a definitive description of this type, cos I can't get it to behave consistently - this is just my impressions.)

In addition, MacOS allows you to define window-drawing functions of your own (WDEFs) which can be pasted into your movie file or projector using ResEdit. Each WDEF can have up to 16 variants. To determine the windowType to set in Director to access a particular WDEF variant, use:

windowType	description
1984 - 1987	Apple Guide windoid (like the normal floating palette but uglier!), no zoom box
1988 - 1991	Apple Guide windoid with zoom box
1992 - 1995	Apple Guide windoid with the title bar on the left hand side, no zoom box
1996 - 1999	Apple Guide windoid with title bar on the left and zoom box
2016, 2024	Help balloon with the pointer at the top of the left edge
2017, 2025	Help balloon with the pointer at the left side of the top edge
2018, 2026	Help balloon with pointer at the right side of the top edge
2019, 2027	Help balloon with pointer at the top of the right edge
2020, 2028	Help balloon with pointer at the bottom of the right edge
2021, 2029	Help balloon with pointer at the right side of the bottom edge
2022, 2030	Help balloon with pointer at the left side of the bottom edge
2023, 2031	Help balloon with pointer at the bottom of the left edge
2032 - 2047	A very strange window probably used for drawing those red circles on the screen in Apple Guide. Doesn't really behave like a window at all -- it has no border and often no background, so that only the sprites in your MIAW get drawn, not the MIAW's stage. (This isn't consistent, though -- sometimes the background is cleared.) It doesn't receive events of any kind, so it can't contain interactive elements and it won't update if you move things around it. It is initially created and drawn on top of everything else onscreen. If other windows are moved into its region and out again, they won't update, because they don't know there was ever anything in front of them, and are left with "trails"-like remnants on top of them. By the same token, the MIAW will lose any part of its drawing region that has been touched by other windows. (I don't pretend this is a definitive description of this type, cos I can't get it to behave consistently - this is just my impressions.)

    windowType = WDEFresourceID * 16 + variantNumber

WDEFs should be given resource numbers of 128 or greater. Many odd WDEFs already exist and are available on the net, including the popular Infinity Windoid, which looks much the same as Director's windowType 49 -- pasting this into your projector file, and using the appropriate windowType, would allow you to use floating windoids in projectors.

None of the Windows programmers I know have been able to tell me how it is possible to do this kind of thing in Windows, but given that DfW does provide custom window types there must be some way. If anyone has any information on this please let me know!