Tag Archives: safari

Day 21: Most used website

This post is part of the #JuneEdTechChallenge series.

chromebook
Image by 377053 from Pixabay

I have no idea. Mainly as I use multiple devices and browsers. 

On Chrome on my iMac, it would be Twitter, but on Safari it probably is something else.

On the iPad it’s probably BBC News, the Guardian or Wikipedia.

Though I didn’t post these posts each day in June (and to be honest I didn’t post it each day on the Twitter either) except the final day, I have decided to retrospectively post blog posts about each of the challenges and back date them accordingly. There is sometimes more I want to say on the challenge then you can fit into 140 characters (well 280 these days).

Google Chrome and Moodle

In my last posting on Chrome I mentioned Moodle issues with Chrome which I had picked up from Kev Hickey’s note on Jaiku.

I have now installed Chrome (on Vista running in VMware Fusion on my iMac) and is running smoothly and very fast as well.

Tried out the Gloucestershire College VLE (we run Moodle 1.5.4) to see how it worked.

Google Chrome and Moodle

Logged in fine, but as you can see in this screenshot when you try to post a disucssion topic (or a wiki page or a lable, etc…) you don’t get the WYSIWYG HTML editor.

Google Chrome and Moodle

Now if you know your HTML you could format that way, but with a wiki page, are all learners going to know HTML, I think not (as does Kev).

The problem is twofold.

Firstly Chrome uses the same backend browser, WebKit, that other browsers such as Safari uses. You have exactly the same issue when accessing Moodle in Safari – which is why I always use Firefox on my Mac when editing the VLE and adding discussion topics on the VLE.

So why doesn’t the HTML editor in Moodle work in WebKit?

This is the second problem, the HTML editor is an old editor which has been discontinued. Newer HTML editors exist which do work in WebKit browsers such as Safari and Chrome.

The answer from browser developers appears to be, update your web sites and applications!

Eventually things will work fine, as Moodle 2.0 uses the newer TinyMCE HTML editor which does work in WebKit browsers.

So if you are using Moodle you may want to avoid Chrome until your Moodle installation is upgraded to Moodle 2.0

My Top Ten Applications for e-Learning

My top ten applications which I use to create and support the use of e-learning are…

Keynote – a superb presentation package, not matter how many times I start creating a presentation in PowerPoint, I virtually always end up in Keynote. The latest version (iWork ’08) is a real improvement on the previous version and I will admit I do like the audience going “ooh” when I use the cube transition.

Toast – not only a superb disk burning piece of software, but extremely capable of converting a range of video file formats and doing it well. Another useful video conversion tool I have started using is VisualHub.

EyeTV – though Windows Media Centre (and now Vista) has a much better interface, the versatility, the editing and exporting functionality make EyeTV the only real choice when it comes to recording and editing television. Combined with Toast and VisualHub you suddenly can record, edit and watch that video wherever, whenever and on whatever you want.

Dreamweaver – steep learning curve, but if you need to get your hands dirty with HTML and websites then this package is perfect. Though I do like Dreamweaver, I know with web tools such as WordPress and Drupal tools such as Dreamweaver are becoming less essential than they were in the past.

Fireworks – For manipulating images for the web then I go with Fireworks every time. Can also be used to create simple animated gifs. I do use PhotoShop, but for web image editing I always start Fireworks first.

Firefox (with Safari a close second and Flock in third place) – I can’t work with non-tabbed browsers, so on the PC it’s Firefox all the time, on the Mac I mainly use Safari. Safari with it’s .mac integration allows me to share my bookmarks over multiple computers and over the web. Now Safari (in beta) is available for Window and I like how Safari for Windows looks almost exactly like Safari for the Mac. Flock is for me relatively new and I do like the integration with online tools such as Flickr, del.icio.us and WordPress.

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