[MWForum]microworlds on website

[Wendy Petti]

I want to emphasize and expand on Shawn's remarks:

> Please note, that you should only user lowercase characters in the
> file names.

1) Sometimes .WAV or .AVI files might have the extension itself written in
capital letters, such as: dogbarking.WAV

*** Ironically, despite Shawn's important advice to use only lowercase
characters in file names, the media files included on the MWPro 1.1 CD (and
included with at least some of the earlier versions of MW too) are named
entirely with uppercase letters, for the file name and the extension name!
***

When you include media files containing uppercase letters, everything seems
to work fine when you use the project offline, but viewed online through the
webplayer, the media files will not load if the file names OR extension
names are capitalized.

It is not apparent when you look at the file name if the extension itself is
written in upper or lower case; you can't see the extension name itself.
But if you use an FTP program (such as WS_FTP Pro) to upload your files, you
can then see the full file names with extension, and you can edit them to
make the extension names lowercase.

As a precaution, whenever I create my own media files (including animated
GIF's), I always type in the extension name in lowercase as I am naming the
file.  Using the example above, I would type:
dogbarking.wav
rather than just dogbarking
when I am naming the file.
This overrides the default capitalization of extension names built into some
applications.

2) Also:  be aware that not all computers can access all types of media
files.  If you use external files, it is possible that a subset of your
potential users (for instance, Mac users) may not be able to access the
project at all (not just the media file) if you incorporate an external file
into your project.  I've had this experience but I don't remember if it
occurs whenever an incompatible external file is included anywhere in the
project or only when it is part of a startup procedure.

3) Finally:  bear in mind that dial-up connections usually load files at the
rate of around 4 kilobytes per second (that would be 240 kb per minute).  If
you have a project and related files requiring (let's say) 1 mb of file
transfer, it would take a typical user roughly four minutes just to access
your project.  In the meantime, the page just hangs there, and most people
decide there is something wrong and leave the site.  So if you feel you
*must* upload a huge project, please issue a cautionary note next to the
link to that page, stating the total file size and warning that the project
might take several minutes or longer to load.  I always include screenshots
of the project, too, so that the user can get a quick sense of the project
environment before deciding if it is worth the time and trouble to view the
project itself.

Wendy Petti
OWL's MicroWorlds in Action
http://mia.openworldlearning.org
Math Cats
http://www.mathcats.com