Autodesk Design Review 2008: Can somebody call me a CAB?

DWF viewing started out with the WHIP! Netscape Navigator Plug-in. Customers would embed DWF files in HTML pages using an EMBED tag that looked like:

<embed
pluginspage=http://www.autodesk.com/products/whip
width=400 height=300
src="thanks2.dwf">

Then we added support for Internet Explorer and customers needed to update their HTML pages to interleave the EMBED tag with the OBJECT tag:

<object
classid="clsid:B2BE75F3-9197-11CF-ABF4-08000996E931"
width=400 height=300>
<param name="Filename" value="thanks2.dwf">
<embed pluginspage=http://www.autodesk.com/products/whip
width=400 height=300
src="thanks2.dwf">
</object>

Over the years Netscape Navigator became just a memory, so the EMBED tag became obsolete. When we made the switch from WHIP! to the Autodesk DWF Viewer, customers had to drop the EMBED tag and update their OBJECT tags to the new DWF Viewer information (highlighted in red):

<object CLASSID="clsid:A662DA7E-CCB7-4743-B71A-D817F6D575DF"
CODEBASE="http://www.autodesk.com/global/dwfviewer/installer/
DwfViewerSetup.cab#version=7,0,0,928"
width="640" height="480">
<param name="Src" value="thanks2.dwf">
</object>

So many of you are thinking, now that Autodesk Design Review 2008 has been released and replaces Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0, what do I need to do to the tags in my HTML pages? The good news is - nothing. I think "nothing" is a customer's second favorite word - eclipsed only by "free." College students also have an affinity for the word free if it is followed by "beer."

Here's why nothing is required on your part. The OBJECT tag has a few key parts.

The CLASSID attribute value specifies the Autodesk DWF ActiveX control as the control to be invoked when a when a DWF file is viewed within Internet Explorer:

CLASSID="clsid:A662DA7E-CCB7-4743-B71A-D817F6D575DF"

The "A662DA7E-CCB7-4743-B71A-D817F6D575DF" value is the same for both the Autodesk DWF Viewer and Autodesk Design Review. For Autodesk Design Review 2008, this value remains unchanged. As a result, users who have Autodesk DWF Viewer 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, or 7.0; Autodesk DWF Composer R1 or R2; or Autodesk Design Review 2007 or 2008 can view your DWF files with this class ID. Internet Explorer will load what the user already has installed based on this one class ID.

The CODEBASE attribute value is the path to the Cab install file. A Cab file is short for Cabinet. An install for a user occurs when a Cab file is downloaded and unzipped on the user's machine.

CODEBASE="http://www.autodesk.com/global/dwfviewer/installer/
DwfViewerSetup.cab#version=7,0,0,928">

For Autodesk Design Review 2008, the name and location of the CAB file will remain unchanged. The DWF Viewer Setup CAB file will be updated to contain the components that make up Autodesk Design Review 2008. So when new users (who do not already have a DWF ActiveX control installed) visit your web pages, they will download and install Autodesk Design Review 2008. No action is required on your part. If you wish to ensure that users have Autodesk Design Review 2008, then you would need to update the version tag portion of the tag to be:

#version=8,1,0,87

where 87 is the build number of the shipping Autodesk Design Review 2008. Updating the version tag is strictly optional.

We want customers to be able to do things with DWF that they would not normally do with paper. Words like "free" and "nothing" facilitate adoption of DWF. Updating the existing DWF Viewer Cab file to install Autodesk Design Review helps in this quest. Anything that makes things easy for customer just helps our credo: Make DWF go beyond the paper.

Comments

[Keath E Long]

Being able to web-ify DWF is a huge win when it comes to integrating DWF editing with web applications. Also, web applications are a natural selection for field applications, when attempting to connect office and field. We have a prototype system implementation in testing here at LVVWD where we produce DWFs having facilities information and provide an html link to the web-based field application. This allows field users fast, easy access to facilities data with the capability to make digital field markups, which are then immediately saved to the DWF stored on our enterprise servers.