Sunday, February 27, 2011

Why Two Browsers (Or Even Three) are Better Than One and Opera is the Best One of All



I have several different browsers installed on my laptop. In particular, I have Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. I use to have Chrome too but that’s another story. The fact is, I use each and every one of them. I use Firefox and Opera a lot, Safari a little and IE rarely.

Why do I use four browsers? The short answer is: it’s complicated! The main reason I use four browsers is because I’m in the habit of creating learning objects and I need to test my learning objects in the most popular browsers to see whether or not they behave the way I intended. Apart from that I use a particular browser based on what it is that I’m doing. (More on this in a future post.)

Up until about two months ago I wasn’t even using Opera but then there was something very specific which I needed to do that I couldn’t find a way of doing in either Firefox or IE. I was researching an overseas trip and needed to find a way of keeping tabs on a series of web pages relating to each of the cities I was intending to visit. For various reasons social bookmarking didn’t seem to be the way to go. I thought about opening all of these pages in IE then saving them as my Home Pages but IE will only let you save a maximum of eight Home page tabs.

So I decided to download Opera and give it a go. To my surprise the one thing that I really need to do right now can be done in Opera. Using Opera gives me the ability to save a “snapshot” of a series of tabs as a session for viewing at a later date.



It might not sound like much to you but when you’re trying to organise an overseas trip being able to do this can save a lot of time and effort. I have now created a session for each and every one of the cities I will be visiting later in the year. In my next post I'll show you how to save a session in Opera and how to manage your sessions.



Monday, February 21, 2011

How to Publish Articulate Presenter to a Single File

The other day I needed to publish an Articulate Presenter learning object such that the output would simply consist of a single file. Presenter gives you a range of options when publishing a presentation. However, there's currently no option which produces just one file. I remembered seeing a post in the Articulate Presenter Community Forum which mentioned using a program called HTML Executable so I downloaded a trial version of the program and gave it a test run. Using HTML Executable to create a single file was actually fairly quick and easy. Here's the process from beginning to end.

Articulate Presenter
  1. When you are ready to publish your course click Publish from the Articulate menu and the Publish window opens.
  2. HTML Executable

  3. In the Publish window select the WEB tab.
  4. HTML Executable

  5. Choose your Publish Location then review your Publish Properties.

  6. Make any changes necessary to your Publish Properties and then hit Publish.

  7. The Publish Successful window opens.
  8. HTML Executable

  9. Click Close.

HTML Executable
  1. Open HTML Executable and click Start a new project. The Configure project window opens.
  2. HTML Executable

  3. In the Configure project window click Next. The Publication Type window opens.
  4. Start a new publication

  5. In the Publication Type window select Self-Extracting publication and click Next. The Select Source Folder window opens.
  6. Start a new publication

  7. In the Select Source Folder window locate the folder containing the files Presenter just created and click Next. The Choose Homepage window opens.
  8. Start a new publication

  9. In the Choose Homepage window select the 'player.html' file and click Next. The Output File & Finish window opens.
  10. Start a new publication

  11. In the Output File & Finish window, under Executable Output File choose the location where you would like the output file to be placed and click Finish. The Publication Settings window opens.
  12. Start a new publication

  13. In the Publication Settings window under Publication Title give the output file a name and select the Publication Output tab.
  14. Start a new publication

  15. In the Publication Output tab click Compile Publication.
  16. Start a new publication


Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Are You Looking for Articulate Engage Community Interactions?

Articulate Engage is a great way of creating engaging Flash presentations quickly and easily. Engage can be used to create a number of different types of interactions, including Guided Image, Process and Pyramid.

As well as that, Engage makes it possible for you to give something back by downloading the Engage SDK, developing your own interactions and sharing them with the community. Any community interactions you download and install appear in your Community Interactions tab.

Here are some of the community interactions that have been developed so far:

Tic Tac Toe
- Click here to download

Bar Chart, Carousel, Flipbook, Stairstep
- Click here to download

Here's a sample of the Tic Tac Toe community interaction:


Use the comments area below to share other community interactions.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

What Comes After SCORM? Have Your Say in The Future of SCORM at Project Tin Can


The other day I received an email from Project Tin Can which is working on behalf of Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL), the governing body for SCORM, and has been charged with the task of looking at SCORM and "modernizing things". Before they can do that they need to hear from people who care about learning and are actually using SCORM - people like you and I. There's a forum where you can look at the ideas that have already been submitted as well as submit your own. Or you can sign up for a one-on-one interview. Click here to follow Project Tin Can on Twitter.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Do You Need Social Media Icons for Your Blog or Website? Look No Further

The other day, whilst rummaging around on the Internet, I found this great site which offers a huge selection of social media icons in three different sizes. The best part is they're all totally free. No strings attached. Here's a sample:

Social Media Sample

Look to your right and you'll see that I've used some of the icons here in my blog. Click here to go to the actual website.

Monday, February 7, 2011

My Guided Crossword Puzzle at the Melbourne Moodle Users Group Meeting

At last night’s Melbourne Moodle Users Group meeting I showcased a guided crossword puzzle I had recently created using Puzzlemaker, Adobe Illustrator and Articulate Quizmaker. The audience showed much interest and asked lots of questions. Mind you, (as much as I'd like to), I can’t take all the credit. I created my puzzle based on a video I came across from @articulatebrian which steps you through the process from beginning to end. I pretty much followed Brian’s video to the letter. Having said that however, I did make one minor addition. I added a red arrow which flys in and indicates the question about to be solved as you move from one slide to the next. You can see the finished product here. No login required. Simply click "Login as a guest" and you're on your way.