Slow progress - but progress!
Monday, October 30th, 2006I’m preparing the very first course (http://letexa.com/courses/1/). Progress is slow, because designing practically from a blank sheet is tough, and so much depends on these very first pieces of infrastructure! It really is not much, but as with any building, the very first stones don’t look like much but later tons of others need to be supported by them. So I rather take my time and think three times, and go back to an earlier point many times, rather than rushing forward.
I also needed to do some research about related technologies that I am going to use in the courses. For example, the decision for HTML or a Flash-only course infrastructure is tougher as it may seem. Flash is a must - because of the video alone. Mediaplayer? Windows only. Realplayer? Displays too many ads for my taste and is too intrusive, too few people have it. Flash just released the first Beta of Flashplayer 9, so in 2007 Flash is going to be a great platform for the multimedia stuff. Still, I’m going to use HTML for the course with all the problems associated with it, because this is better for working together on such projects - many more people know HTML than Flash/Actionscript and (D)HTML components are far easier to integrate (oh yes, that so-called “Web 2.0″ stuff).
So future plans dictate (D)HTML/CSS, multimedia dictates Flash.
If only the major browsers would natively support SMIL…
Mörre Noseshine