The web version of the UKESCC courseware is intended for use over an intranet and requires a browser with an Authorware web player plug-in (available free from the Macromedia's web site).
It is suitable for educational sites where the internet is the prime delivery mechanism for teaching and learning materials. Links to the courseware can be made from web pages provided by tutors, enabling the UKESCC courseware to be fully integrated into their teaching.
A web-based demonstration version of the UKESCC courseware is available to all via the UKESCC web site. This demonstration version operates in the same way as the complete web version so try it first to see how well it works and if there are problems.
http://www.ukescc.co.uk/demo.html
If your browser does not have the appropriate Authorware web player plug-in, you should be presented with the opportunity to download a copy from Macromedia's web site.
The complete web version of the UKESCC courseware is available via:
http://www.ukescc.co.uk/ukescc/earthsci.html
Access to this full version is restricted to licenced web version users. Licenced users need to send us the IP address of their site so we can authorise usage. The IP address of individual computers is in the form 130.88.15.3; we require just the first two sets of digits of your site's IP address.
The web version has been tested on PC and Macintosh computers with browsers going back to version 3 of both Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer. Fewer problems were encountered when using Netscape, and with the latest versions of both browsers.
During the first use on some machines you may get an error message saying you need to hold the Control key down when opening a particular file. This is part of a security facility provided by Authorware which can safely be avoided. Press Control-Q to go back a step, hold the Control key down and click on reload or refresh. A security dialogue box like this may should appear.
Select "Trust All Locations" then click on "Save Settings". The settings you select should be saved on your computer and the security message not appear again on that machine.
One way of linking your web page to provide access to all modules available is to link to the "earthsci.html" file referred to above. The earthsci.html file includes this EMBED command:
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<EMBED WIDTH="640" HEIGHT="480" ALIGN="CENTER" window="onTopminimize" SRC="geology.aam" PALETTE="background" TYPE="application/x-authorware-map" </EMBED> |
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This is the same as 1) above except you link to the html file for the individual module required, e.g. crystal.html for the crystallography module. 21 html files are provided; one for each courseware module.
This is more complicated because in order for the software to navigate to a particular part of a file, e.g. a specific page, variables including page and section numbers have to be passed from your html page to the Authorware file. Several methods for doing this have been tested, e.g. Javascript, and the method found to be reliable, particularly with older browsers, is to use the "FORM" command in the html calling page. This is used in conjuction with a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language (PHP) - which you do not need to know anything about.
This method is used in www.ukescc.co.uk/ukescc/example2.html (and
www.ukescc.co.uk/demo2.html) . If you look at the source code
for these you will find multiple FORM entries like this:
The values for page, section, file and folder (5, 1, basvolum
and basskill in this example) are specific to each entry, are
used for navigating, and obtained from the module's index (for
details see the web page here on Indexes).
In the examples given here, most destination file names have been given without a path, e.g. geology.aam, on the assumption the file is in the same folder/directory as the calling file. If the destination file is in a different folder or on a different server, the path to it must be given.
