TheDesignspace

Randomizing Captivate Quizzes

Posted on April 27, 2007 by ellen

Captivate quizzes are easy to create, but they lack some often-requested features. Even using version 2, it is difficult, if not impossible, to randomize questions within Captivate. The following method will alter the html wrapper generated when you publish a Captivate project so that it chooses from a bank of alternate Captivate SWF files when the page opens.

Download example HTML wrapper file

When you publish to Flash (SWF) in Captivate, Captivate creates an HTML wrapper which contains the SWF file in an object tag. (Usually titled “ProjectTitle.htm”) There is a variable, “strURLFile ,” which determines which Captivate file is launched. In the unaltered file, this variable is set to the project title you set when you published.

Download my flame file for Apophysis

Posted on April 10, 2007 by ellen

Here are my flame settings for Apophysis, the fractal flame editor for Windows. These are the result of a lot of experimenting and tinkering. Feel free to use them as the basis for your own

Disappearing background in Safari when “top” is used in CSS background positioning

Posted on April 5, 2007 by ellen

In setting up some sliding door tabs, I found there are situations when Safari will not show the background of an element if the background positioning is set to “top”. This example shows how it

Starting out with Terragen: sky doesn’t render

Posted on March 31, 2007 by ellen

My first attempts with Terragen convinced me it was an easy way to experiment with landscapes, with an intuitive interface, and quick results. However after the first few tries, once I started experimenting with atmosphere

A cross-browser keypress detection javascript

Posted on March 30, 2007 by ellen

We have learning modules that have a lot of pages, and it occurred to me it would be easier on people’s hands if they could simply use the right and left arrow keys to navigate through the module.

After a day of great frustration, I realized that it’s nearly hopeless. Not only do all the browsers report different keycodes for the right and left arrow keys, but Firefox and Safari report both of them as “0” which makes it impossible to distinguish between them.

IPod: “Disc cannot be written to” message AGAIN

Posted on March 30, 2007 by ellen

Well, I am just about fed up with this iPod! The “Disc cannot be written to” message is back again, and I can’t sync or copy ANYTHING to it, no matter what method or format

OS X 10.4.9 Cron+Firewire = cpu pegged at 100%

Posted on March 30, 2007November 22, 2013 by ellen

Late last night I tried to do some work on my G5 iMac. It has a large external firewire drive attached. Everything was slow, and the CPU was pegged at 100%. The firewire drive was

CSS expression crashes IE6

Posted on March 26, 2007 by ellen

Since IE 6 does not have a “min-width” ccss attribute, I sometimes emulate it, using CSS expressions. For example:

width:expression(document.body.clientWidth

Create a search form or quick report in asp

Posted on March 25, 2007 by ellen

The example code below shows how to set up a form using Dreamweaver and ASP that queries a database based on the value of one or more form fields.

We have a database containing the transcripts of the results of courses taken in our online learning management system. Each online SCORM course has several sections or lessons. This form checks the status and score on each individual lesson, given the user’s id and the course code.

The tables and fields involved are: