Solving technology problems, one at a time
Download this example Scored Survey XML file.
We’ll start at the end first: in order to communicate with the learning module, your Qualtrics quizzes will all need to reference a custom End of Survey message, which will be located in your Qualtrics message library.
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IMPORTANT If you have never used the SCORM-ready learning module template before, please go back to Part 1: Features, Outline your Module to learn how to set it up correctly.
If you are looking through the code on your site and find a mysterious call to a javascript in the domain “cetrk.com,” you may wonder what it is and if it is a malicious script
Continue readingOne of my colleagues wrote that she had used the right-click feature in her latest Captivate project. When she previewed the file using Preview > Project, it worked fine. But when she attempted to publish
Continue readingTo create a nicer looking Flickr badge, use Flickr’s badge creation tool to get the right user code and content codes for your badge.
Go to:
Create your own Flickr badge and make the selections as specified:
This search form is based on the PHP and AJAX Live Search example from the w3schools.com site. I adapted it to show how it might work with ASP classic. This form finds all courses in
Continue readingIf you’ve used javascript much, you are probably familiar with arrays. Typically arrays are used to manage lists of items. I frequently use arrays for maintaining information about the state of pages and quiz questions in learning modules, storing a series of properties for each item.
But, there is a problem. To find the particular item you want to use, you must loop through the whole array. Sometimes you can get yourself into a situation requiring multiple loops to get one item of information and performance will suffer.
I recently got to wondering if there weren’t a way to jump straight to the desired item, if the ID of the item were known. Yes there is!
Enter “associative arrays“. Associative arrays allow you to index items by any string key, not just the usual arbitrary index numbers. So you can go straight to the exact item by name without testing for property matches while looping through the array.
Continue readingWhen creating a Google gadget that pulls data from an XML file, you will probably notice that the data doesn’t update right away in the gadget even after you have changed the file. This caching behavior can make it very difficult to troubleshoot, and you’ll probably want to shut it off while developing.
It took me a while to find this so I’m posting it here:
From Google’s “Refreshing the Cache” instructions:
To make sure your gadget fetches fresh new content at least once per interval, simply specify a value (measured in seconds) for the refreshInterval parameter. For example:
// Fetch fresh content every half hour
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: (60 * 30) });
// Fetch fresh content every 10 minutes
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: (60 * 10) });
// Fetch fresh content every 30 seconds
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: 30 });
// Disable caching completely and fetch fresh content every time -- !! Try to avoid using this !!
_IG_FetchContent("http://news.google.com/?output=rss", callback, { refreshInterval: 0 });
function callback(response) { ... }
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If I had to choose one piece of advice for new web developers, I’d tell them to learn to use Firebug. Firebug is probably the most valuable debugging tool available, but if you are just getting started, it may seem pretty opaque at first.
In addition, some things do not appear to work as advertised. In particular, the “cd” function does nothing as far as I can tell.
The page that documents the commands you can use within Firebug lists the cd command as a way of changing the window scope:
