Category: Web Building

A SCORM-ready template: Part 2E. Add the video player to your learning module

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If you are in a hurry, here are two ready-to-use pieces of player code to choose from. All you need to do is choose one, edit a few lines and drop the code into your page. You will need a playlist for both of them, although it can be very simple for the single file player. Save the playlist to the media folder (there is probably a sample one there already in newer modules).

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A SCORM-ready template: Part 2A. Add Flash Video to your learning module

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What files are required to add video to your learning module?

The player we are using for embedding streaming media into the SCORM template. is the Jeroen Wigering media player. Some of the necessary files are already included in the template and do not need to be touched:

  1. includes/mediaPlayer.swf (already included in template)
    this file generates the player according to the settings you include in the content page.
    mediaPlayer
  2. js/swfObject.js (see for more info on swfObject
    this file contains the code necessary to avoid the ActiveX problem with embedded SWFs in Internet Explorer, and generates embed code used by other browsers. A reference to this file already exists in the head of each module page, so you do not need to include it again.
    swfObject
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Synch video with slides in Adobe Presenter

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In my search for the best way to synch video with slides, I’ve tried a number of different software packages. At this time, I’ve settled on the Rich Media Project’s flash extensions as the most reliable way to create synched presentations, but I’m always looking for a better way.

When I came across Adobe Presenter, it seemed like another promising tool for this purpose, and possibly easier for clients to use than anything else so far.

Unfortunately it does not yet seem to be the case, at least not yet. When I tried to sync a video of a lecture with a powerpoint using Presenter, it proved to be a hopelessly frustrating and tedious task.

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dotProject Recipe: speeding up DotProject

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I run a dotproject site on a hosted server. Once more than a few people began using the site at once, we found that peformance was dropping enough to warrant looking into optimization possibilities. So far, it seems that there are two main steps to take: turn on caching, and add indexes to several tables in the database.

1. Turn on caching in gacl.class.php

In the file gacl.class.php, change the following settings to TRUE and FALSE as shown:

/** @var boolean Caches queries if true */
var $_caching = TRUE;

/** @var boolean Force cache to expire */
var $_force_cache_expire = FALSE;
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