The Designspace

Make other extensions besides ".shtml" process for Server Side includes

The default extensions which IIS reads for Server Side Includes are .shtm, .shtml and .stm.

Suppose you want server-side includes to be processed in .htm files also? For example you may have file with the .htm extension which has been on the web for some time and has numerous links pointing at it. You could replace it with a file with one of the allowed extensions, and put a redirect in its place, pointing to the new file. Or, if you have access to the IIS server settings, you could add the .htm extension to the list of files processed for SSI.

Click on thumbnail images to see larger version.

1. Open IIS Manager and right-click the Default Web Site. Select Properties from the popup menu. The Properties dialog appears.

   

2. Select the Home Directory Tab and click Configuration under the Application Settings area.

   

3. Select the App Mappings tab. Scroll down to the .shtml extension. We want to copy the executable path to use on our new extension. Select .shtml and click Edit.
   

4. The Add/Edit Application Extension Mapping dialog for the .shtml extension will open. Right click the path and copy it. Click the "Cancel" button to close the dialog.

   

5. Now let's add the new extension. Click the Add button. The Add/Edit Application Extension Mapping dialog opens again.
   
6. Paste the path you just copied into the Executable field. Then enter the NEW extension into the Extension field. Under the Verbs area, select Limit and enter "GET, POST." Make sure Script Engine is selected. Then click OK.

   
   

   Posted by ellen at 12:46 PM

Make a directory on a server part of another server's domain

Sometimes it is necessary to have files or an application on one IIS web server (Server B) appear as if they were in the same domain as another server (Server A). For example, you may want

http://serverB.com/content

http://serverA.com/content 

This is useful in cases where you need to avoid cross-doman scripting issues, or simply want to make everything appear to be hosted under one umbrella domain name.

On an IIS server, this can be accomplished by creating a virtual directory on Server A which points to a directory on Server B.

1. Open IIS Manager on Server A and right click on the Default Web Site. Select New Virtual Directory from the menu.

   

2. The Virtual Directory Creation Wizard will start. Click "Next."

   
   

3. Enter the alias name you want to use for the new directory. This will become part of the path.

   

4. Enter the path to the real network directory that this virtual directory will point to. This must be a file system path, not a web path. The real directory have access permissions set to be web-accessible.

   
   

5. Enter the name and password of a network account with the minimum sufficient privileges to access the content in the directory.
   
6. Select the web permissions for the directory.
   
7. Click "next" and you're done! The directory should now be accessible via a URL like;
   http://serverA.com/content as well
   

For more information see Microsoft's Knowledgebase article "HOW TO: Create a Virtual Directory on an Existing Web Site to a Folder That Resides on a Remote Computer"

Posted by ellen at 10:08 PM

Getting Questionmark Perception to work with Docent 6.5

1. Install QMWise (available from Questionmark.com) on the Perception server.
2. Install Content packager (available from Questionmark.com) on your workstation ( tip, do NOT have SSL enabled on the server - it blocks QMWise communication if the certificate is slightly misnamed).
3. Read the Knowledgebase article "How can I call Perception from a SCORM-compliant Learning Management System?"
4. Get the files scorm.pip and perceptionSCO.htm from Questionmark.com.
5. Put scorm.pip in the "pip" folder on your Perception server.
6. Edit the file scorm.pip to shut off topic scoring. This keeps the query strings which are sent back to perceptionSCO.htm shorter, necessary for compatibility with Safari.

   [Settings]
   UseHome=yes
   TopicPercent=yes
   

   My philosophy on topic scoring is that Perception's quiz result reporting tool is now so much better than anything we could possibly build on the Docent side, that it doesn't pay to lose other functionality just to include topic scoring. Individual topics remain reportable in Perception's own report manager, and we will probably never need those scores on the Docent side of things.
7. Put perceptionSCO.htm in a directory on your LMS server, keeping the relative path from the root directory as short as possible:

    \\yourLMSserver.com\somedirectory\perceptionSCO.htm

8. Edit the file perceptionSCO.htm to close the browser window upon clicking the Home button, and change the strings "sStartText" and "sEndText" to say whatever you prefer.

   // Close the browser window used to run the assessment
   // when it finishes
   // set true to close the window, false to leave it open
   var bCloseAtFinish = true; 
   

9. Auto-SCORM template: don't use. Questionmark came out with a new "auto-SCORM" template, which is supposed to eliminate having to click the home button, but it doesn't work within the Docent aicc_frameset across domains, so I don't use it. I think there is a fundamental issue with it with respect to the way Docent needs to work, but I need to experiment with it a bit more.
10. Edit your quiz templates: Add this line to them in the [DOCUMENT] section

    TARGET=TARGET="_self"
    

    This is so that the quiz pages don't jump out of the aicc_frameset that docent uses to communicate with them.
11. A sample template is here. Download file
12. Set up a virtual directory on the LMS's IIS server to point to a directory on the perception webserver server. This is to get around the remaining cross-domain issues NOT addressed by Questionmark's admittedly clever SCORM setup which does not work well with Safari or Mozilla. I'm calling the virtual directory "quiz" for this example. So, for instance:

    http://yourLMSserver.com/quiz/
    

    actually points to:

    http://your.perception.server.com/q/
    

13. Assign the template you created earlier to a quiz.
14. Publish the quiz, so that it is "Live."
15. Create a manifest for the quiz using the Content Packager.
    Settings for Content Packager:
    Base URL -

        
    http://yourLMSserver.com/somedirectory/  

    SCORM Extension:
    

     perceptionSCO.htm?call=scorm&session=&href=
    http://your.perception.server.com/q/session.dll
    

16. Save the manifest to a directory on the perception webserver within the directory pointed to by the virtual directory you just made. The directory must be web-readable.

    http://yourperceptionserver.com/q/manifests/
    

    would be one path to the manifests, but also

    http://yourLMSserver.com/quiz/manifests/
    

17. Edit the manifest to add whatever you want (Mastery score, course code, etc) Save the manifest to the manifests directory on the perception server.
18. In Docent, create an AICC/SCORM course.
    "Manifest filename" will be whatever you named the manifest.
    "Base URL" will be

    http://yourLMSserver.com/quiz/
    

19. hit "continue", and it should import the manifest. Then you can finish entering the course details.

Docent, SCORM and cross-browser issues

• Cross-domain scripting issues
• Mozilla Live Connect Bug
• Domain names not fully qualified
• Query string length

Definitions of terms used in this article:

/docent/lms/scorm/aicc_frameset

http://contentserver.com/manifests/

http://contentserver.com/docent/lms/scorm/aicc_frameset.html

http://lmsserver.com?CMD=GET&file=catalog/aicc/aicc_frameset.jsm",params

 http://lmsserver.com/docent/bin/docentisapi.dll/lms,lmsAPPserver.com,2151/
SQN%3D-52721131/?CMD=GET&file=catalog/aicc/aicc_frameset.jsm 

http://lmsserver.com

 if (urlProps.port != null)
 url += ":" + urlProps.port;

 // if (getServerPort() != null)
 //    url += ":" + getServerPort();

   return generateAppFileUrl(urlBase +
                "?CMD=GET&file=catalog/aicc/aicc_frameset.jsm",
                params
            );

 return generateUrl(genServer(scorm_url_base_props) + 
"/elearning/docent/lms/scorm/aicc_frameset.html",
 {
 lesson_url: genAICCLink(aicc_sid, lessonURL, webLaunch, courseCreator, 
systemVendor, version, scorm_url_base, isSCORM),
 title: title,
 codebase: getScormCodebase(),
 aicc_sid: aicc_sid,
 aicc_url: getAICCurl(playerInfo) // $hotfix 11695 $
 }
 );

"LMSserver/content/file.htm"

"LMSserver.whatever.com/content/file.htm" 

How to publish Powerpoint files for the web

1. Create a standard powerpoint presentation. Save it as ProjectName.ppt in the folder you are using for the project. Make sure every slide has a Title. These titles will be used as the titles of the buttons on the left navigation column in your web page. It helps to use a powerpoint template so that you are definitely creating a title with each new slide.
2. When you are done editing, and ready to make a web version of the presentation, select Save as Webpage from the File menu. The Save As dialog comes up.
3. Navigate to your project folder in the file list area. Double-click on the folder so that it opens and you are working inside it.
4. Click the CreateNewFolder icon just to the right of the Save in: box. (the icon looks like a folder with a spark on it.) A New Folder dialog will pop up. Type learningmodule in the Name box.
5. Hit OK. You will now be "inside" the learningmodule folder.
6. Click the Publish button. The Publish as Web Page dialog comes up. Publish what? should have Complete presentation checked.
7. Click Web Options. The Web Options dialog comes up on top of the Publish as Web Page dialog. Most of the listed options can be left as is, but you may want to play with using different colors for the slide navigation controls - white on black, black on white, etc. Look through the tabs to get an idea of what other options exist.
8. Click OK to get back to the Publish as Web Page dialog.
9. Browser Support should be Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later.
Under Publish a copy as:
10. Click the Change button. The Set Page Title dialog comes up.
11. Choose a title that you would like to appear on the very top title bar of the web page - this can be long and have spaces in it, maybe something like: "Project Name - Corporate Policy" . Type this into the Page title: box. Hit OK.
12. You'll be back at the Publish as Web Page dialog. look a the path listed under file name. It will probably be something like: C:\documents\path\to\learningmodule\ProjectName.htm
13. Change the name of the file to

    index.htm

    so it will now read:

    C:\documents\path\to\learningmodule\index.htm

14. what this will do for you is enable you to give people urls like:

    http://www.med.umich.edu/i/riskmgmt/reportform/learningmodule/