FlashICT.net

After a long absence - basically because this site is the last website that I end up updating and I haven’t ended up updating many of my sites recently - I’ve updated this site. More to do with Wordpress hacking exploits but also to do with the latest version of Wordpress which continues to be a fantastic tool.

My main focus on my Flash work is the ContentGenerator.net website. This is still growing fantastically well, currently with over 12,200 registered forum members. I’ve been very pleased with the work related to SCORM and Moodle - but am still working extremely hard to produce finished versions. If you are interested, head over to the ContentGenerator.net forum for more.

I’ve also got an entirely new game which I plan to release extremely soon - Teacher Invaders. Basically Space Invaders but with some evil-alien-teacher-style graphics. See a sample below - designed for me by the brilliant Iconshock.

Anyway - just a quick post to update the site. More soon

Edit: Despite the fact I was very pleased with this theme - it looks like it is impossible to view previous comments (despite them appearing in the ‘recent’ comments) box near the top-right. Looks like I’ll have to find another theme instead.

Not an event I was able to attend because I was teaching, but it looked really good. A number of sessions have now been uploaded so you can watch it again. Not as wide ranging as actually being there, but some in-depth, interesting and detailed presentations are all online.

http://www.adobelive.co.uk/livefeed.asp

Also some very clever use of Flash on the actual site - extra bits and pieces to make the site come alive, but also Flash-based applications that helped you see how the event is organised and what was on. This is Flash being used in a practical and useful way - not trying to be ‘Flashy’ but enabling the end user to get more out of the page in as straightforward a way as possible.

So - have a good look around!

I’ve been developing a Flash-based application for my websites called ‘Practice Paper’ for over two years now. The first one was on my ReviseICT.co.uk site, which I then developed further to appear on my SchoolHistory.co.uk site. Basic printing was on offer, but it didn’t work very well.

Last year I posted extensively about the issues I was facing - see this post, also titled ‘Printing in Flash 8′ - the basic conclusion was that if you printed text from Flash everything would work out fine unless you wanted to print more than one page. Then the trouble starts - I tried an exhastive number of solutions and not one worked….

Or did it? Well, in some respects - no it didn’t at all. As my programs are used directly by students I work incredibly hard to make sure that they work as simply and as clearly as possible. The immense benefit of using Flash for educational tools is that you can wrap everything up in a single .swf and upload, share or save this file anywhere.

What I ended up doing with Practice Paper was to develop an extremely complex solution which breaks out of just using a single .swf. I was really annoyed by this but I’m utterly convinced for the requirements of the application I have taken the most appropriate action.

Basically, the Practice Paper application was working well unless someone tried to print more than one standard page of text. I simply couldn’t leave this bug in the finished program as it would be a frequent occurance that a student would print more than one page.

The solution was to get Flash to generate a pop-up .html window with the text that needed to be printed. Yet what seemed quite a simple solution turned into an utter coding nightmare with the following issues:

• Creating a pop-up window from Flash - by default pop-up windows are blocked
• Flash needs a JavaScript wrapper (or equivalent) to trigger a pop-up window
• Yet this wasn’t just a matter of triggering a pop-up window - here a unique window with the text from Flash has to be generated
• Flash has to send the data (i.e. what the student has written) to the newly generated JavaScript window
• There has to be an easy way for a student to print their work - the main aim
• Yet to print the work without requring further use intervention would require even more coding.

I did manage to get it working - but it took ages and hours of fruitless work. Breaking out from using a single .swf file was the only solution that I found but this caused headaches at even the earliest stage - I had to make sure that the .swf file was correctly embedded without needing additional clicks ‘to activate’. To pass data from Flash to JavaScript to the new window meant each working part has to be correctly and carefully labelled.

Added to all this I found that the best way to store ‘model answers’ - which are presented to the user when then submit their own work - was to store these within the .html page that my application generates. Thus to make the application work I send data via JavaScript to Flash but then when someone wants to print their work the data is sent back from Flash to JavaScript. This rapidly became incredibly complex.

To cut a very long story short you can firstly see why I haven’t been posting to this blog that frequently, but I have now got the application working.

As with all my ContentGenerator.net programs, the teacher (or other user) adds their own content using Flash-based interface that runs as a quasi-projector file on the desktop. When they had added all their content they press ‘generate’ to create the finished application. Normally this generates a .swf file that can be used on its own, together with an .html file to embed the application correctly. Not so with Practice Paper…. it uses the following files:

• .swf file - this is a custom .swf that contains the title, details and information about the exercise
• .html file - again, a custom file this .html file is packed fully with question data - all urlencoded and potentially extremely long (view the source of the example above)
• .js file - this is a fixed .js file (i.e. it isn’t changed at all when the application is generated). This JavaScript file contains a large amount of code. It is made up of the code that allows Flash to send data to JavaScript, which in the end with IE7’s communication issues came down to using FSCommand. It also contains code to create a unique JavaScript pop-up window, together with a small amount of CSS to create a fake information bar option to print the text. It also contains the fantastic SWFObject code to get the .swf file working and communicating correctly without any additional hassles.

The final solution, whilst appearing contrived and uncomfortable does work. The JavaScript is hidden away in one file, and the .html file contains an extensive amount of data. They key test was with students - with this latest version they were just able to use it - no hassles with printing and it just works!

Flash - the publishing tool of the century

Very interesting article from the Guardian [click the link above] - makes some excellent comments and helps explain why Flash is such a useful tool. It isn’t detailed enough to cover the uses in Education (which is what my blog is about) but it doesn’t take much to fill the gaps in.

Whilst I’m talking about the Guardian - I was delighted that my SchoolHistory.co.uk website was featured as one of the top 10 picks for revision websites a few weeks ago.

Alongside public and commercial services, teachers’ own internet sites stand up well. Students, and indeed publishers, could learn from them. For instance, schoolhistory.co.uk shows one teacher’s talent for creating fun activities to teach his subject….

… This teacher’s site outshines most of the commercial offerings. Someone’s joy and skill in their subject is evident from its cocktail of quizzes, games and activity that need more than a superficial click to do. For example, lessons are punctuated by questions that demand answers before you’re allowed to move on. For revision lessons, look out for the excellent and challenging “interactive diagrams” where you have to build a topic map for yourself.

See the online version for the full report.

I haven’t posted on this blog for absolutely ages - simply because I’ve been too busy. I’ve got many developments that I’ve been working on but because they are all still in progress I need to spend what limited time I’ve got finishing them off. As I have time I want to explain how:

1. How I finally got my Practice Paper application working - and most importantly - printing from Flash.
2. The coding behind my latest game - En Garde
3. Uses of Flash within education - ideas and suggestions
4. A scheme of work I’m putting together for students to learn Flash.
5. The brilliant new programs from Adobe that I’ve been priviledged to beta test.

More very soon - although surely it is rather ironic that I’ve titled this the ‘Publishing tool of the century’ when I’m not even using Flash to publish it? Anyway - Happy Easter!

Do drop by my ContentGenerator.net forum for more details about the programs and the EffectiveICT.co.uk forum for more general education + ICT discussions. I promise to keep this blog updated more too….

I’m having enormous hassle printing a dynamic movieClip from Flash. Basically I’m trying to develop my Practice Paper application further (more details later). This tool allows a student to be given a question and they type their answer. When complete, they press a button and are shown a model answer. For the whole thing to be more useful, the student should also be able to press a button and print out their work.

The whole thing works well apart from the printing. OK, actually the whole thing has been a right pig (apologies to pigs) to setup and put together due to immense difficulties getting Flash to process all the rich-text fields. Anyway, that is behind me now. What I’m currently stuck with is how to get the PrintJob class to print more than one page effectively.

If I want to print just a single page - i.e. if the student has a short answer, meaning the total text doesn’t go over a full page - then it works. However, I’ve been stumped for hours trying to figure out a workable solution.

Through literally hours of internet searching and experimenting I’ve found many nearly solutions, but not one that really works. What I hope to do with this post is actually start out not knowing the solution and end up knowing it.

Currently, the best solution I’ve found so far is at WebdotDev.com - here they lead you through the standard PrintJob guidance (which I’ve read about far too much of recently) but then - crucially - move onto more helpful ground. This final page produces a solution that does, quite literally extend a text-field across multiple pages. So why aren’t I delighted? Unfortunately, so far all this does is maximise the space available and prints text across the entire page and can also cut text off the bottom. However, this is nearly there - so I hope a little more experimentation might find a solution.

I’ll update this further later on - although if you are reading this and have any ideas, please let me have them.

As part of a well written piece about web accessibility I was very pleased to see the BBC identifying something that everyone needs to be made aware of. Far too often so called ‘experts’ say using Flash is a complete waste of time in terms of accessibility, unfairly criticising the technology.

In the short article the BBC identify how Flash can be used in a really positive way to make things more accessible.

Designing a more accessible web

To quote the middle part of the article:

Harry Potter author JK Rowling recently launched the first site to use a new form of Flash, which is often used to add interactivity and animation to a website.

Two years ago, Adobe updated this technology so designers using Flash could build in accessibility features.

Leonie Watson says: “Flash is a very interesting topic in terms of web accessibility. It’s actually capable of being very accessible indeed.

“It has means for building in captioning for people who are hearing impaired; it allows soundtracks to be imported very easily so that audio description can be provided for people with visual impairments; it has a lot of very easy ways to build in accessibility, providing the developer sets out to do that from the beginning.”

So, well done the BBC for promoting something that more ‘experts’ should really know so much more about.

The furore that stood for my (and other’s) attempts to install and uninstall Internet Explorer beta 2 back in April is well documented - see this post. I consequently held off installing Beta 3, simply because I didn’t have the heart to tackle all the problems again. However, with the impending ‘urgent’ automatic installations of Internet Explorer 7 via Windows Update which are expected some time this month, I thought I’d get things over with.

What follows are a few images that show the ‘progress’ of the installation. If this all sounds a bit too pointless and pathetic, well - possibly true - but then you must have missed my joys at Beta 2.

With no further ado, the installation of Internet Explorer 7 RC1….

I downloaded the installation from the IE7 homepage and then meet with the first ironic message:

This file can potentially harm your computer? You’re not wrong - beta 2 completely destroyed my computer. On run software from publishers you can trust! Ha! Trust? What about last time? Anyway, I decide to continue….

The ‘welcome to the party’ screen. All seems to be going very smoothly so far. I’m thus very worried indeed. Recalling the problems from last time, I make sure I have copies of the entire installation in an easily accessible folder. I certainly don’t want to horrors of Normalize.dll returning. Anyway, I decide to continue and press ‘Next’. Not particularly visible in this screenshot, I do admit, but just go with the flow here. There hasn’t been a crash, there hasn’t been any swearing. Yet.

“You must restart your computer before using Internet Explorer 7″. The last time I did this our PC locked up for about eight hours. You’ll also note the comments on the IE blog in the background of this image “…. screwed up explorer.exe… refused to run at all…”. Oh dear. What have I done? What should I press? I need to test this latest installation just to make sure that the fixes to ensure Flash runs smoothly on my websites work - but it certainly isn’t worth all the hassle of last time.

I decide to stop messing about and just restart. With trepidation I click ‘Restart Now’…..

Last time this caused immense problems and locked everything up. A lovely message letting me know how “normalize.dll wasn’t found” was all that was said. Windows loaded and that message appeared. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. What would happen this time? Do we really care? Well, yes - we do - and no laughing at what happens…..

Windows restarts itself. The Windows ‘welcome’ screen is displayed for a little longer that normal but then the following image appears:

… with absolutely no problems at all! I repeat - with absolutely no problems at all! Windows loads without any “normalize.dll” messages, no “Cannot be found” or “Unlucky - it crashed - as has Windows”. It works!

I run Internet Explorer and the strange things keep happening. It continues to work - no crashes, no error messages - just a browser. Ok, an ugly browser, but it works:

Amazing. No nightmares, no errors. Internet Explorer 7.

So, what have I done differently? Nothing really. I’m no longer running Norton Antivirus, having replaced it with F-Secure. Don’t know if this makes a difference, but some users did point to certain anti-virus software causing problems. I’m just amazed it worked. It shouldn’t really be like that - but with the previous nightmare installations this one literally went like a dream.

Thank you Microsoft. So, what now for my browser choice? Straight back to Firefox. Internet Explorer 7 is strictly for testing purposes only.

I’ve just signed up for a virtual tradeshow - the PC Magcast virtual tradeshow. Not sure there is going to be an enormous amount of specific interest in relation to education and ICT, but it got me thinking in that so many events need to be more like this. Granted, the major positive thing about shows and conferences is the networking and social interaction, but I really do think there is a role for things like this.

How about if the BETT show was like this? [The BETT show is the British Education Technology Show that takes place in London every January] You certainly wouldn’t have an opportunity to gain as many pens for your classroom, but I think there might actually be benefits from taking things in a different direction. I remember not being incredibly impressed with the whole thing this year.

The main aim at the BETT show - at least for me - is to see ideas how ICT can be successfully and effectively used in education. Now, I think if companies paid for schools to put on webcasts or online events showcasing their work - actually in the school or clasroom - then you could really see the impact of the ICT. If you are trying to persuade SMT that a specific product works, a glossy handout doesn’t really do it, but an active, interesting presentation would.

I think this is the way for the BETT show to go. Forget about paying for expensive travel, stands, glossy literature. Instead focus on the key content - the effectiveness of the product in classroom. Companies would save and so too would schools.

Anyway, have a look at the above link - it could be the way things could go….

[Finally - I’ve disabled comments for this blog now as I’m fed up with getting spammed. However, feel free to leave your comments on the EffectiveICT.co.uk forum - you do need to register, but it honestly isn’t much hassle]

I hasten to add I’m pretty sure it isn’t an issue with Firefox, but I’m not entirely sure. As I’m developing Flash content, I constantly preview the content using Firefox, but the .html displaying the .swf and the .swf directly. It never used to happen, but since being automatically updated to the latest version of Firefox (1.5.0.5) the browser seems to crash from time to time.

I cannot really identify specifically when, but it seems to be when I’m running multiple instances of Flash across about 10 different tabs. I don’t think it is my Flash programming as I’m not getting any Flash error messages (including the dreaded - “… do you want to abort this script”). What seems to happen is that Firefox just hangs.

I’m mortified! Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I’m going to reinstall Firefox and the Flash player to give it a try, but I’m concerned….

You might be aware of my exploits with Internet Explorer beta 2 - if not have a look at the most popular post on FlashICT.net, ‘uninstalling IE7 beta 2‘. I wasted an entire evening of my life with the software and, from the number of responses, it appears that many others have done exactly the same. Yet Microsoft have now had Internet Explorer beta 3 out for over a month now.

Is it going to be worth the hassle all over again? Probably not….

With my various websites and Flash learning materials, I do feel the need to keep up to date with Microsoft’s latest releases so I can make sure that everything is working as it should. I am a 100% Firefox user and don’t see this changing. Yet it is vital to have other browsers installed so everything can be checked. This is especially true for Internet Explorer 7 which Microsoft will force all Windows users to install when they release it as a critical update. As a side note, I wonder if another anti-trust lawsuit could get them to make Firefox a critial update too

Anyway, I do feel the need to install beta 3, but I’m too nervous - I don’t have time to waste fixing my PC and I certainly don’t want to see those dreaded error screens again. So, at the moment, I’m not going to - but I will see how others have got on and I hope it won’t have all the problems of beta 2.

So, at the moment, this is one I’m staying well away from. I just hope nothing else has been ‘introduced’ to mess up Flash content.

• See the latest beta of Internet Explorer 7
• Known issues and some really useful tips about installing / uninstalling