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An Introduction to Microsoft Agents |
The Microsoft Agent ActiveX Control lets you add interactive characters like Genie, Merlin, Peedy, and Robby to your application or Web page. These characters can be used to introduce, guide, and entertain visitors to your web pages. Now, thanks to work of folks like Slade Mitchell of Asymetrix Learning Systems and Jeffrey Rhodes of Platte Canyon Multimedia Software Corporation, you can add these characters to a ToolBook application. These characters provide animation and text-to-speech ability to either a web page or a ToolBook page. Slade Mitchell was one of the first to incorporate the Agent into ToolBook. A utility called MASH (Microsoft Agent Scripting Helper) allows you to write a script for a web page to display these characters on the Web. Another useful utility, AgentPad, allows you to create scripts (VBScript or JavaScript) to add your Web page that display these characters. You can also use this utility to create E-Mail stationary or a standalone executable. There are today a host of other characters that you can download and use either in ToolBook or on your Web Page provided that the page is viewed in Internet Explorer.
To take advantage of this technology you must have installed the Microsoft Agent core components, the text-to-speech engine, and the characters: Merlin, Peedy, Robby, and Genie. The Microsoft Agents will not work with Netscape.
Getting Started
A good site to use to get started is this one: http://chemware.co.nz/AgentSupport.htm
Just click the links on the above page to get the files you need.
1. Download and install the core components of Microsoft Agent.
| 2. Download and install one or more of the character files. |
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3. Download and install the text-to-speech module by click the L&H TruVoice American-English link.
If the character does not speak, it is likely that you have to install the SAPI 4 runtime. You can get it by clicking the SAPI 4 link.
Relevant Links