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pipwerks

Standards-friendly eLearning and Web development

Posts tagged ‘interface design’

Providing the same UI across browsers

If you change the default controls to match the look and feel of something your visitor has never seen before, you run the risk of creating confusion, distrust, or alienation. Even worse, if the controls are poorly made or conceived — and many are — you might make your site less usable. A cardinal sin.

The more I think about it, the real beneficiaries of a uniform UI across browsers aren’t the site visitors, but rather the designers who demand artistic control and the clients who insist the product looks the same everywhere, without understanding that it’s okay (even expected) to have some differences.

CustomInput Class: Accessible, Custom-Styled Checkboxes and Radio Buttons

I’m currently working on a new quiz system at work, and decided I’d incorporate Filament’s wonderful stylized checkboxes and radio buttons into my project, which meant it was time to roll up my sleeves and code me some Moo.

Flash demos for SCORM ActionScript classes now available

Finally got around to making some Flash files that demonstrate the pipwerks SCORM ActionScript classes. I’ve created examples for both AS2 and AS3. You can get them here.

Both of these examples have been successfully tested using the latest ADL test suites for SCORM 1.2 and 2004.

Building e-learning courses: Should we use e-learning authoring tools?

Buckle your seatbelts, you may not like this statement: Most e-learning tools do not promote the creation of effective courses, do not promote web standards, and do not promote accessibility; they merely make cookie-cutter course development easier for technically inexperienced course developers.

There, I’ve said it. Please don’t hate me.

Loading Captivate files into an AS3 Flash SWF

Update April 7, 2008: I’ve written a new AS3 class named LegacyCaptivateLoader that uses ExternalInterface to bridge the AS3 SWF and the Captivate SWF. Check it out. I guess I’m late to the party, but I only recently realized that although a Flash Player 9 SWF can load an older Flash Player 6/7/8 SWF, it [...]