What's in a name?

I ran into a strange problem using an html file produced in Camtasia by TechSmith and delivered through Moodle that must be common amongst Camtasia and Moodle users. Hopefully this post will prevent others from making the same easy mistake.

I uploaded all of the necessary files produced by Camtasia to Moodle then created a link on the course site to the html file but received a strange error when opening the link. I had no clue what was causing the problem because I wasn't doing anything different so I did a quick search and found this post on the Moodle forums that helped me solve the issue. After reading this post I realized there was something different about this file, I left a space in the title. Apparently Moodle doesn't like any spaces or special characters in the file name because Camtasia uses windows naming conventions while Moodle uses Linux. It was the stupid space that I had in the title causing the error!

Quick Fix:
The quick fix for this is to rename the Camtasia project without spaces or special characters, reproduce it, then upload the new files to Moodle. Create a link to the new html file without spaces or special characters and voila!

Long Fix:
If you are like me and no longer have access to Camtasia or just feel like doing a little extra work you will need to go with the long fix. Because I don't have Camtasia anymore and can't reproduce the project, I had to go into the html and XML files to manually edit the file names. It's really not that difficult but is a little more tedious. After renaming the files, open the html and xml files in an editor (I used Dreamweaver) and run a "find and replace" for every file name that you changed. It's not just the flash file that you need to change the name of, you also need to change the names of the javascript and XML files. Once you have changed all of the names you can upload the edited files to Moodle, then create a link to the html file and you are in business.

It was an annoying issue but easy to resolve with the help of the Moodle community and it always feels good to solve a problem. Now that I have this bit of knowledge I'll make sure to avoid spaces in any files I use that will be going on Moodle just to avoid the trouble.

joedeegan.com

I took a big step in my web development skills by moving my portfolio web site to a new web host and domain name that I purchased. Last semesters web design class held my hand through FTP'ing the files to the university web server so I was a little nervous to go out into the big scary Internet all on my own.

Everity was recommended to me as a web host and everything went well minus a small password problem. Everity handled the problem brilliantly and actually responded to my support ticket within minutes. Support like that will keep me with them.

Now that joedeegan.com is up and running I am eager to put some more work into it. At this point it is very rough and needs a lot of work which I hope will bring future opportunities. Suggestions are very welcome.

Software Shopping

Jackpot! Finally got the buy in from the boss to spend some money on Adobe software, mainly for developing eLearning and printed training materials. Thanks to the good ol' educational discount I can really make the most out of a $1000 budget.

Obviously, I need the Creative Suite 3 but that's where things get sticky. I am looking at 2 different packages and the only difference between the 2 packages is that one includes InDesign and the other includes Fireworks. I have never used either of these products and I'm not sure which I could use more.

Fireworks appears to be very similar to Photoshop with some extra features that will come in handy for web development. InDesign looks like a great tool for developing printed materials which I do often. I am tempted to go with InDesign because it is far more robust than the program I currently use (MS Publisher) for printed materials and it seems like all of Fireworks perks can be had in other programs if not Photoshop.

So, I am off to do more research on Fireworks and InDesign. I would just go with the Master suite because with the educational discount it comes in under $1000 but does not include Captivate which I consider a must have. It sure would make my life easier if Adobe would come out with an Instructional Design Creative Suite!

Site Definitions

The web design class I am taking is really getting my feet wet with Dreamweaver and photoshop. I am currently working on my portfolio site which will eventually contain a gallery of my work along with some information about me.

Something that is confusing me about Dreamweaver is the need for multiple site definitions. Our teacher had us set up 3 different site definitions which makes it hard to know which one I should be working out of. Teach say's we will get a better understanding later in the semester. As of now, it seems like it's not neccessarry and only complicates the process.

So far, I have been amazed at what you can do with Dreamweaver and photoshop and I am hungry to learn more.