FlashICT.net

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….

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Anchors Aweigh divx [Just as every other Flash blog has already posted ] download In the Cut dvd I signed up for IFBIN earlier in the year as it looked like a really promising service. I was interested in developing a way of generating wordsearches using .xml and Flash. Thus I put this forward as [...]

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I admit it now – I was wrong about Adobe. I was worried that they would completely destroy everything that was great about Macromedia – that they would remove, limit and discourage the Macromedia community, that they would throw popular products out, that they would produce some horrible combined version of Flash and Acrobat.

I was completely wrong – and I hope that I continue to be. Adobe have made some great progress recently and I don’t think we would be wrong to say that it is largely because of Macromedia! Nevertheless, Adobe’s willingness to take Macromedia ideas on board is clear to see. In some ways, one might even speculate that Macromedia seem to have taken Adobe over, rather than the other way round.

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Obviously I’m writing this from the perspective of a teacher, but I’m really keen to explore the benefits of what used to be known as the Flash Communication Server. I’ve always looked inquisitively at what could be done, but I’ve never really had the time or impetus to even begin experimenting with it. Flash Media Server, according to Adobe, offer: “…. the unique combination of traditional streaming media capabilities and a flexible development environment for creating and delivering innovative, interactive media applications to the broadest possible audience.“

Eh? I’ve long been confused about how it could be used, but I’ve always just had the feeling I was missing something or not understanding fully. I’ve developed lots of Flash based activities such as my Interactive Diagrams, Interactive Storyboards and games like Penalty Shootout. I’ve also been very keen to make much more of the ‘Communication’ aspect of ICT for students. All my activities, even though I say this myself, are really good when the student is using it themselves or with a group of students in class. Yet I would really like to enable collaboration while the activities are being used. Perhaps just multi-player games, but I’m more after the ability for students to log in and create their own collaborative mind-map.

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Bride Wars trailer Midnight Chronicles divx Surviving Christmas movie download Dread divx Suspect Zero hd download King Kong movie Alien Trespass movie Caligula movies Gallipoli divx House of 9 hd Command Performance the movie Just visited Adobe.com and it all seemed strangely familiar. No longer was I looking at a site which seemed to be [...]

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Flash is an amazing program – I know this! However, why specficially is it so useful in schools? Some might say it is too complicated or tricky for students to understand. I really don’t think that it is. The reason for this post is that I want to challenge that – I’d like to establish what Flash is good for in terms of education.

As an ICT (Information, Communication, Technology – the term for computer use in education in the UK) teacher it would be easy for schools just to deliver a standard curriculum using Microsoft products. Get students to use PowerPoint to create a presenation about themselves, use Excel to calulate their pocket money, use Word to write a formal letter – so on and so on. There is a role for such activities as students need to gain those skills. Yet most secondary school students can do all of these things by the age of 12. The main requirement for ICT teachers, as I see it, is to stretch student achievement and essentially, to engage students with something more challenging and interesting.

Hence – Macromedia / Adobe Flash

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I can’t really type what I’m feeling at the moment. Thus, instead please think of the rudest possible expletive you know, imagine you are shouting it out loud and that equates to about 10% of how annoyed I am.

I installed Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 yesterday to check out all the problems with Flash. Problems that mean Flash, video and nearly all other interactive content have to be ‘activated’ before they work. The whole thing because Microsoft lost a court case and thus had to change the way Internet Explorer works.

It is really annoying and irritating, but ways around the issue seems to be being found and I hope it won’t cause too much trouble anyway.

So, having found out the problems, I thought I’d give IE7 a good go anyway. I click on the IE7 icon on my desktop. Error message. I try once more – error message again. Looked to me like Internet Explorer 7 was a real non-starter for me. Not a problem I thought. The ‘new’ beta contains an ‘uninstall’ option that allows me to remove Internet Explorer 7 and swap back down to version 6. (Obviously in reality this means just continue using Firefox ).

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Appropriately, I’m typing this on our Mac Mini, or is it our Mini Mac? Anyway, don’t miss Steve Job’s keynote speech at MacWorld. Despite never quite being completely taken in by all things Mac, this yearly speech is nevertheless one not to miss.

The content of this year’s speech isn’t quite as outstandingly brilliant and amazing as previous years, but it is still great to see the way Apple make such effective use of style – the Apple brand is incredible. What they never seem to mention is the actual Apple market share of computing, which I’m sure I recently read is around 3%….

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Didn’t take long! If you look at ‘about this site’ on the new impressive looking Adobe Motion Design site you’ll see the following listed:

It has to be fairly obvious that the main product line will be as is shown in the above image. It is certainly a powerful product line and probably what most web design professionals will already use. Nevertheless ….

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Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come. The wonderful Macromedia site is now the site formally known as Macromedia. The carefully crafted menu bar is a rather ugly grey, the background has turned white and the Adobe logo is now clearly displayed at the top of the site, accompanied by an ugly badly aliased Macromedia graphic:

It just all looks rather clunky and thrown together . You can read more about the actual design changes here. I guess it all makes sense as Adobe has to demonstrate how all the Macromedia content is now part of Adobe. I also suppose the fact that the main business has related to the company takeovers rather than any huge investment in stylistic changes. However, it is beyond doubt that the Macromedia website in recent years has been an excellent example of brilliantly crafted and user orientated web design. It will be an immense shame if the Macromedia design disappears and is replaced by a bland Adobe design.

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