Subject: RE: [IFETS-Discuss] Flash
david@hellam.net
Date: Thu 15 Jun 2000 - 01:04:43 MEST
From: david@hellam.net Subject: RE: [IFETS-Discuss] Flash Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 16:04:43 -0700
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Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
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> could anyone give me some advice on using "Flash" as a tools to develop
> online courseware?
>
> As I know, "Flash" is very likely to slow down the download time
Compared to what?
Certainly true when compared to just plain text, but, remember Flash movies
are made up of scalable vector graphics and are therefore much faster to
download than complex bitmaps. Plus, there's the whole issue of
interactivity, which for me is a big plus.
As far as download speeds for Flash/Shockwave go - Flash produces *much*
smaller file sizes - although Shockwave (produced by Macromedia's Director)
offers a much more sophisticated programming environment. The people in the
know on the various Flash lists I subscribe to appear to suggest that
Director should be used if you're developing CD-based courseware and Flash
if it's web-based.
Database integration is possible (although Generator is a tad expensive if
you're a small developer)...
There are serious drawbacks that you might want to consider:
1) Indexing in search engines - a search engine will just view a
Flash-enhanced page as a page with a large 'graphic' on it - so unless you
keep an additional copy of the text you want cataloged in the page head, you
won't get it correctly indexed.
2) Demographics of your audience - not everyone has a plugin for Flash. If
you're dealing with people who are all using recent generation of browsers,
fine.
> not as user friendly as html,
Not too sure what you mean by that - actionscript, as a programming
language, is more intuitive to my students than javascript (which would be
another way of offering more interactivity on a page). It gives the same
quality of immediate feedback that helped make Logo so popular amongst
people like me.
> however, my institute's managers insist to
> use it to develop a language web-based course.
Well, if you want to see how I've used Flash with one of my students, you
can see some pages we put together at http://www.hellam.net/algebra/ as a
result of our discussions of what web-enabled courseware can do that more
conventional methods can't...
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