In our previous tutorial, you learned how to analyze text using Revolution.

But computers have developed well beyond simple text presentation of information. Users expect visual presentations of data and rich, dynamic, responsive user experiences. Revolution has an extensive toolkit of routines designed to present solutions with visual impact. And they're just as easy as the commands you've learned already.

As regular computer users, we don't usually notice the hundreds of subtle touches that go into a professionally produced software interface.

For example, even the most simple of buttons will reveal sophisticated logic behind its presentation: A change in color when the mouse is moved over it; another change when the mouse is clicked; tool tips; focus indicators; disabled and default states; and more. Revolution not only provides for the correct behavior of standard buttons (and modifies them appropriately for whatever operating system is currently being used), but also lets you specify completely custom buttons that use your own effects for these states.

Beyond basic user interface, Revolution is adept at manipulating a variety of graphics and other media, enabling you to streamline content production, or just lend a contemporary look to your solution. Sometimes a standard button or progress bar won't create the impression you're seeking.

The power of simplicity

In this workshop, we present a sampler of some visual effects that are very easy to create with Revolution. You'll learn about transparency, custom window shapes, visual effects, laying out your solution effectively, customizing the user interface, and more.

You'll also receive a full sample game of Sudoku, written in Revolution, which employs many of the techniques presented in this series. You can inspect the scripts and properties of this sample game to learn how to write your own games.

Revolution is adept at handling a variety of graphics formats, multimedia files such as MP3 audio tracks and MPEG movies, and object-oriented graphics with antialiasing. Using natural words like "show" and "hide" you can create dynamic applications that are highly responsive to user input.

Interactive Workshop: Learn How, Now

Try out the compelling media and rich user interface abilities in Revolution right now by downloading this workshop. In it, we show you how to complete several common tasks. As your understanding grows, you can change the examples and see the effects right within the workshop, or just drop the example code into a new project and create something completely new.

Get it now from within Revolution by opening the Message Box from the toolbar then pasting in the following and pressing return:

go stack URL "http://www.runrev.com/ws/multimedia.rev"

Or you can get it by downloading it from:

http://www.runrev.com/ws/multimedia.zip

We hope you find this tutorial useful. Don't miss the next installment in the series, which will explore working with the internet.