• Firefox 3 was finally released out of Beta, and it’s pretty sweet. I’m using a bunch of extensions that are helping out my productivity and workflow quite a bit.
• I’m using the ScribeFire extension in FF3 to post this to the blog.
• I’m using the Remember the Milk extension to flesh out a Tasks pane that’s available from my Gmail interface. I’m also using the RTM extension for Google calendar to keep track of my tasks by day, in case I’m in there, too.
• I went through the tutorials for SproutCore, which is a Ruby application to produce RIAs using only HTML and JavaScript with OS X-like interface features. It’s the basis for Apple’s MobileMe applications. And, for once, unlike everyone else trying SproutCore, I’m having absolutely no issues (compared to the people on the GoogleGroup for SC who couldn’t get it to work until this morning).
• I’ve been playing with JSON out of Flickr with jQuery to build cute little slideshows using Flickr’s API.
• I’ve also been playing with some Flickr/MooTools/SlimBox for nice gallery features. This particular feature was helped a lot by Ted Forbes’ Satellite code.
  

I’ll be the first to admit, this project could’ve gone wrong from jump in so many ways. We had an internal client who, like many clients, was very risk-averse, so the thought of doing a “game” was a risky move and required a lot of handholding. They could have bailed at any time. We had an incredibly tight deadline for a project like this. Normally, a multimedia-heavy project like this one, you’d like a solid six months to develop it out. We gave our vendor three, and by a lucky break for all of us, the delivery was delayed by a month which was needed.

We used a brand new vendor who was brought to us initially by our CLO. I’ll be the first to admit based only on the sample products they provided that I would not have chosen them — mostly because they seemed more like an Agency than a game development house and the look and feel of the products I saw were similar in nature, and I felt their production would be a disconnect with our audience (and our internal client). When the project was emerging from the Instructional Designer on the project, I ballparked the project at a certain cost. I expected the vendor to come in high and then we’d have to haggle and negotiate. I expected that working with the vendor, like many vendors I’ve both worked for and worked with, would be a painful tug-of-war, followed by some finger pointing, followed by relief that the project just “got done.”

I could not have been more wrong about this vendor, and I’m very, very happy to say so. They came in so close to the number I ballparked, I began to think they were taking us seriously. I waited with baited breath to see their first draft of the storyboards indicating the look and feel for the game, and having taken the time to visit and talk with one of our branch stores close to their office, they produced storyboards that I felt so perfectly blended my expectations for how to be at once “cool” and at the same time “mindful” of the people we were looking to instruct, as well as the complexity of the subject matter we were looking to demystify. They made learning the material (and the subject itself) “fun” and still “tasteful.” I was very impressed, and I’m the kind of person (as you know on this blog) that doesn’t run out of opinions. I became hopeful that this really could work.

They created the project in a very complete Alpha state. We tested it in our network and found that the bandwidth required would be a major obstacle for the target audience. We talked with our vendor about reducing the audio and video quality a bit and retesting it in our network before doing any more work on integrating it with the LMS — because if it wouldn’t perform as “content” out of the LMS, there was no point on troubleshooting the LMS communication. They had new files to us in a matter of days. We retested and got a green light on performance.

Then we moved onto LMS integration. I put together the API Wrapper and the rest of the SCORM packaging for our vendor, because they had not built for an LMS deployment before, and it would be just silly to make them go through the learning curve when I could just do that heavy lifting with little effort. They were able to write and read from the LMS at the prototype level (we did a technical test before they even tried to get the real content working to debug the communication issues). Not looking at their ActionScript at all, when we noticed some issues with suspend_data not being sent to the LMS, even though the code was the same as the prototype. It turned out that the content was sending consecutive JavaScript calls, which goes back to the whole synchronous/asynchronous deal about ActionScript and JavaScript (we had to use Flash 7 Player because my organization had not upgraded to Flash 9 Player at the time). Moving the calls so they were separated and event-driven made a huge difference. I was on the phone for a day and a half with the vendor. In ten years, I never worked as, for or with a more willing partner.

For reasons I’m sure you can understand, I can’t show you the game. I probably can’t talk much about what the game is about or what we’re trying to teach. I probably can’t broadcast the vendor we’re working with (though if you ask me offline, depending on whom you work for, I’ll be happy to tell you).

The point of this posting is to get off my chest in as public a means as I can how happy I am to be able to help make the vision of one of our Instructional Designers a reality — even if all I am is the babelfish (Hitchhiker’s Guide reference). We have our foot in the door for serious gaming. I’m betting it’s going to be a smashing success and will usher in a shift in instructional approach, both as far as what we propose and what our internal clients will consider.

And… I’m just happy as hell that after years of producing cool and not-so-cool page turning stuff, I get to finally be part of something different. I worked with a fantastic Instructional Designer and a really incredible Project Manager (I actually am gushing over Project Management and Instructional Design) — both of whom really “get it.” I had a boss who was willing to take a chance and a CLO who was ready to be a sponsor on something different. Best yet: I had an internal client who, despite their concerns, was willing to trust us and get the job done right.

And one more thing: I’m very humbled that there are vendors out there that can really be a partner in making great learning experiences, on-time, on-budget and far-exceeding expectations.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have a happy project story and it didn’t kill us.

When creating your Flash content, you’ll call a popup like this:

getURL( "javascript:popUpWindow('your_file.html',left,top,width,height);" );

where…

• left = a number indicating how many pixels off the left edge of the screen you want the popup to be placed (use 0 for the edge)
• top = a number indicating how many pixels off the top edge of the screen you want the popup to be placed (use 0 for the edge)
• width = a number indicating how wide you want the popup
• height = a number indicating how tall you want the popup.

You can download the modified player.html file here.

Whew, it’s been a long time since I actually touched code, but after three months of writing up nothing but process and standards documents, an email (and guestbook entry) really got me motivated to do something I’ve talked for a while now.

What I’ve assembled here is a full-on SCORM 1.2-conformant content package of how Flash 8 can use ExternalInterface to work with the good ol’ ADL APIWrapper.js to get information in and out of Flash. I even incorporated bookmarking to give you an idea of just how easy it is.

After toiling away on the job stuck in Flash 7 last year, and clunking around the noble (but limiting) Flash-JavaScript Integration Kit from osFlash, it was fun to tinker around in just a little bit of time and get the underpinnings down for talking to an LMS all out of Flash.

It even runs in Saba :O.

Anyway, the content package is here. It includes the .fla. Feel free to comment away or ask questions.

Click here to download or view the podcast yourself.

Actually, I’m a very busy man. Since the launch of the SCORM 1.2/2004 API Wrapper last year, I’ve moved from PA to Chicago, and switched jobs in Chicago already. That’s less than a year, actually. So if you wouldn’t mind cutting me a little bit of slack, I’d appreciate it.

It’s not just me that let us all down, either. Alan left CTC not long after I did, and he hasn’t returned to the world of E-Learning since then. I don’t think he’s going to — he’s got a sweet gig. We also didn’t garner a lot of support in the open-source developer community to find champions to pick up the cause. So in the last couple of months, when developers are desperately looking for answers about working with SCORM and Flash, I’ve had a few comments on the blog, and they all seem to indicate that there are some interoperability issues with SCORM 2004, which will likely never be addressed by me. Mea culpa.

So what should you do if you’re in a jam and looking for one API wrapper that just… works? Talk to Mike Rustici of Rustici Software about the http://www.scorm.com/products/scormdriver.aspxSCORM Driver. It’s, with no doubt, exactly what I was hoping to accomplish by the SCORM 1.2/2004 API Wrapper. Except his is easy to use… and it just works.

Another user on the forum posted this link to Macromedia’s DevNet which details how to work around the various sandbox security settings in the new Flash player.

Awesome!

flash, security, scorm, flash player, macromedia, e-learning, development, javascript

Josh wrote on the ADL Forums:

>My concern about the new security model is more based on the fact that I cannot test my SCORM courses for compliancy using the SCORM conformance test suite. I have a Flash course that communicates to the API wrapper using the Flash/Javascript Integration Kit. The Test Suite requires that it test a course that is running on the local file system, which is now restricted by Macromedia from making Javascript calls from Flash. > >When my course is running on a server, I can make all the JS to Flash calls I need, but if the course is running from the file system, I can’t make any if I use the Flash 8 plugin. So, I’m stuck in a cyclical bind where my courses work from a server, but I can’t test them in the Test Suite to verify that they are conformant. > >Does anybody know of a workaround for this?

My short answer is to downgrade the Flash Player to 7.0.19 to test your Flash 7 and below content, but that doesn’t necessarily undo the problems that a learner might have with the Flash Player 8 installed and the potential for your content to break.

Please comment here or in the ADL Forums to discuss this further…

flash, security, scorm, flash player, macromedia, e-learning, development, javascript

Email me at aaron.silvers [at] gmail [dot] com

Obviously, this is slightly obfuscated so that I don’t get a ton of automated spam. You can also register for this site and include your e-mail address if you’d like me to contact you directly, either for answers on SCORM and your specific needs, or any consulting you need in that space if you need more in-depth help.

Griffin asked me about a bug we saw in Firefox where a Flash movie embedded into a hidden div was just plain never showing up. The fix Griffin applied while perusing W3C validates XHTML 1.0 Strict:

Pay particular attention to that “wmode” parameter. That seems to do the trick.

Technorati Tags: flash, javascript, xhtml, w3c, css, dhtml