How Does it Work

Opus Pro and Opus Creator are both designed to let you "design" interactive programs. The programs both have the same interface and both work in a similar way to a desktop publishing package but creates an interactive multimedia publication which displays on a computer or television screen. Opus allows you to lay out screen pages of words, pictures, video and buttons. You can type onto the page, draw frames to hold images and video or draw shapes, symbols and clip art. But then you can add animation, sound and any object can have a series of actions attached so that the pages come alive and your reader can interact with them.

Select and Apply Simplicity

All objects have a set of Properties so that you can apply borders, backgrounds as well as transitions such as flips and scrolls and design effects such as transparency, textures and blends. See Creating Content.

Any object can also have actions attached which can be applied by choosing options. You choose the trigger you want to start the action and then select the action from a set of categories and how it should be performed. See Making Things Happen.

Your publication can be divided up into chapters each with a different style or size if required. You can launch other programs or display existing documents or web pages.

All these properties and actions are applied simply by selecting the relevant settings from a set of tabbed dialogs. There's no programming involved unless you want it.

Ready Made and Ready to Go

Opus is provided with a range of page templates containing many of the basic pages you will need, together with other components, clipart and samples so its even easier to get started.

You can test your publication at any time by running the preview. There's no wait for the project to build.

Once you have finished your publication you then publish it to create a version which will your customers or colleagues will be able to run without having Opus. This can be a standalone Windows .EXE file or it can be a Macromedia Flash file or you can even create DVD-Video for domestic DVD players. See Publishing.