A Review of Granite Kitchen Countertops in Tennessee

Everyone should know which normal pebbles are generally important for the elegance and its particular wide variety of uses. Valuable gemstones like diamonds, granite and marbled are not merely useful for creating various kinds of surface encountersgadgets. Unlike gemstone, both marbled and also granite engage in a very crucial part in the field of structure. Since we all know there are several structures and also monuments, created suing marbles as well as granites that happen to be designed countless many years in the past. Until finally night out these kind of treasured gemstones are used throughout structure regarding a variety of reasons. One of the traditional types of a new monument that's created using granite and also marbled will be our very own, taj mahal, that's thought to be as one of the Several Amazing things with the Planet.




Today, probably the most ordered to provide pure rock pertaining to design intent is the �granite�, these gems are elevated in desire because of its fashionable look which often improves the look of each and every constructing, and yes it provides loaded glimpse where ever these are. Aside from the longevity in addition to lot of various other attributes of granitic, that is amongst the most significant reasons for the particular raising calls for involving granites in the market.




Granites can be utilized regarding floor coverings on the overall household, but typically they're found in your kitchen because counter tops. It�s adequately identified how the kitchen's is amongst the meticulously utilized pieces of the house. The kitchen counter tops would be the nearly all used section of the kitchen area, simply because most the work can be performed on the countertop. Therefore it always smart to go with a robust and also stable material for ones counter top, as well as granitic is the better appropriate. These are long lasting as well as stunning also. Consequently it�s best to possess a corian countertop pertaining to home.




Of course stone counter surfaces supply a rich as well as classy turn to virtually any cooking area they offer many other gains far too. Granite also comes in a multitude of hues along with styles and also in several kinds where they're available while partial complete as well as thoroughly complete slabs or tiles. These kind of granitic countertops possess the common function involving adding a feeling involving high end to help any kind of kitchen. Much more around the idea stays since new as ever, it doesn't matter the amount of decades it has been, as you are mounted that in your cooking area. There're simple and also fresh to take care of. They're resistant for you to breaking, itching and chipping. These kinds of granitic work tops can be used by any means you want, you would like not really be gentle or even be very careful whilst working away at this. Since it is usually warmth repellent also, you can also retain scorching pans to them prior to deciding to shift those to your home. It assists in easing decrease your own home are this performs wonderful as a chopping and also chopping mother board




And these include a number of the disadvantages involving granites, which may be simply around searched as they are not of which important.




Stone counters don't have any homogeneous routine as well as coloring. It will eventually make your current blades straight-forward, if applied as being a cutting aboard These kind of counters should be mounted by simply specialists, since it's not necessarily probable to run the idea your self. Joints is seen clearly, however good the installation software will be.




Plugging all of them stops this seepage as well as staining. However, the sealant isn't going to protect the particular natural stone through actual physical injured. Regular gemstone just like stone really should be permitted to take in air as effectively. Regarding system pebbles do not breathe similar to we all perform, so what on earth does the last affirmation indicate? surface encounters Granite was made in place of countless cellular levels regarding deposits, as well as so that the actual strength on the gemstone, these uric acid need to connect to fresh air and components, obviously breathable oxygen. Furthermore, virtually any normal water containing previously seeped in the tiny holes have to be able to evaporate by transferring by using these types of rooms until eventually the idea extends to the top spot. Exploration provides proven in which, the actual conversation amongst the deposits of stone as well as the an incredible number of germs which are now living in the skin pores can be an vital factor in the stone construction. These kinds of bacteria engage in an essential component in sustaining this ethics on the natural stone. Taking the actual in excess of components under consideration, it's encouraged of which Polymer-bonded sort sealants or maybe impregnators always be definitely avoided. These totally obstruct this microscopic holes which enable it to damage the particular located bacteria or lessen the actual action connected with normal water steam towards surface area. This specific can bring about this marble kitchen counter primary establishing a new crack if your bottom turns into also moist. Furthermore, it becomes genuinely difficult to remove these kinds of sealants in case utilized excessively. Consequently your current corian countertop may well wind up looking for uninteresting or discolored. It truly is excellent to use sealers are generally natural based items and also made up of efas most of these because cleansing soap, as soon as plugging granite kitchen countertops. These types of can be put on at the time of usual cleanup treatment to help fill up the actual close up in addition to clear from the very same period. These types of essential fatty acids fill your tiny holes yet usually are not because harsh or perhaps stubborn to eliminate as polymer sealants. They provide just one more way to obtain vitamins for the pleasant microbes and also increasingly being partial difficult will not limit this evaporation of normal water. Plugging corian design kitchen counter top is usually a relatively easy job and no distinct skill as well as information can be implement the sealants. If you would like, you are able to typically contact some sort of regional stone look to do this vocation, nevertheless perhaps way, it really is proposed to complete this at least once a new yr. A single of the extremely considerable inclinations at the moment inside residence deb?? cor in addition to redecorating are stone counter tops. Besides tend to be they really wonderful for the eye, fortunately they are durable in addition to happen in a variety of colours along with patterns out there. Organic and natural rock counter tops possess various rewards. Given that they are generally created from any rock and roll obtained in dynamics simply no a pair of counters are alike, pigmentation modifications, pits, as well as little chips in addition to defects are normal just which include towards the organic style. This implies each countertop can be individual on the customer. Normal stone can also be very longer lasting contrary to some other laminate or perhaps marbled you can assume granitic to keep up their lure more than moment and you will be significantly less probably in order to decline through each day utilization. Upon having went using granite for ones counters generally there a small number of points which usually you have to take into consideration. Undertaking a small analysis will help you obtain the many worthy of to your profits in addition to abandon that you simply happy consumer. Very first, any time picking a coloration surface encounters find the schemes presently as part of your household, you desire your current cupboards to match as well as boost your own residences previously fairly impression.

www.onlinereputationmanagement1.com Online Reputation Monitoring

Precisely what is on-line reputation management? Why is it essential? On the internet reputation management is not just concerning tracking a person's actions but in addition with regards to getting their own views. It is in relation to accommodating develop in which beneficial brand recognition in particular by acting on those ideas. Everyone should know the value of your great reputation, exactly how the item influences these and also the good results of these organization. Of course, name can be the sole thing that will number in relation to small business.



With all the actually expanding fact that the web on earth which of online ad, organization web sites are becoming a lot more exposure by means of the net. With increased people to see and also facilities that can help these individuals express their thoughts, one particular bad opinion on the web may really injured the net standing of any kind of small business. Make sure you remember the item typically takes many years to develop a person's standing and only thing as a possible anonymous thoughts to help separate the item. Search engines like google such as The search engines, YAHOO and also Askjeeve etc. rely on your appropriate articles while list the websites looked from the web users, while the people typically go for in which list that is listed for the very first page involving google. With this really purpose reputation management can be the majority of vital presently. Now, there are various involving solutions to protect a person's name coming from damaging bloggers or maybe defamatory content material. Only when the major search engines rated by means of top quality as an alternative to relevance than a real issue won't crop up. It's also due to this very cause that will both untrue stories as well as a genuine problem spread simply. These kind of techniques consequently work as the safety device towards this kind of actions. The primary concentrate suggestions to control exactly what most likely clients can easily see. Presently on the internet reputation is simply not adequate 1 also need to have a very clear on the internet image to develop and assure good results. Don't ever forget a poor judgment and also acquire heed regarding sincere kinds. Constantly try to help to make adjustments to the better. Acquire essential ways towards those that plan to tarnish your current status. Also, don't forget to check out the social network web-sites as well as listen closely meticulously to the conversations in relation to ones brand name.



1. Creating regarding Bing alerts to monitor what's transpiring on the net. Customizing RSS followers intended for manufacturer following. Furthermore observe a related web sites. only two. Studying your online asset such as corporate web page solutions, business websites along with member of staff information sites. 3. Eliminating internet sites that create damaging result. Don't forget to look at articles. some. Making your personal websites. Generating profiles in popular social media websites just like Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter. 5. Engaging in web page link constructing tactic to be able to make certain that that they rank very well searching motors. 6. Adding good quality items for instance blogs, articles or blog posts as well as press announcements as well as using successful SEO strategies to appearance an individual's company's public judgment. Generally really the only aim of reputation management should be to support your business present the very best face on the internet. These people not merely provide advertising and marketing security but additionally assistance to safeguard the corporation towards out of hand defamation.



What's on the net reputation management? The reason why the item essential? Online reputation management is not merely with regards to tracking ones own measures but in addition about having his or her ideas. It's about accommodating develop that will constructive model attention particularly by means of working on those opinions. We all know the importance of an beneficial standing, just how that has effects on these people as well as the achievements with their enterprise. In fact, popularity can be the one thing in which counts in relation to small business.



With the ever before rising significance about the internet in the world understanding that associated with on the web advert, enterprise websites are getting an increasing number of direct exposure through the internet. With additional individuals to see along with establishments to help you these individuals http://onlinereputationmanagement1.com express their particular opinions, one particular bad review online can easily seriously harm the net standing of just about any organization. Make sure you remember the item often takes a long time to develop your popularity and a mere factor as an nameless comment in order to crack the item. Search engines like yahoo for instance The search engines, BING as well as Yahoo for example. count on your applicable content material whilst itemizing those sites looked for because of the internet surfers, as the users normally buy that number that's listed about the very first site regarding the various search engines. For this quite purpose reputation management is most vital these days. Right now, there are many associated with methods to guard an individual's reputation via adverse writers or perhaps defamatory content. If only the major search engines rated by good quality as an alternative to relevance when compared with a real dilemma wouldn't normally crop up. It's also as a result extremely purpose that will each misinformation and a good concern propagate simply. These kind of methods consequently represent a defense system against like actions. The principle focus the following is to regulate just what potential buyers is able to see. These days on the internet existence is not sufficient a single also needs to have a very clear on the net image to cultivate in addition to guarantee achievement. Don't previously neglect a damaging thoughts and opinions and acquire take regarding honest kinds. Often make an attempt to make modifications for your much better. Take essential methods against those that will tarnish your current standing. Moreover, bear in mind to check out the actual online community web sites as well as hear very carefully towards interactions regarding ones model.



1. Setting up regarding Bing signals to observe what is considered going on on the internet. Customizing FEED viewers for brand name following. Likewise keep an eye on the similar web-sites. 2. Inspecting your web resource for instance corporate internet site solutions, business blogs along with member of staff websites. 3. Eradicating web sites that induce adverse result. Remember to see the content articles. 5. Generating your individual sites. Generating single profiles in well-known social media internet sites such as Facebook or myspace, LinkedIn and also Bebo. 5. Starting web page link constructing method whilst to be sure that they rank properly browsing search engines. 6. Introducing top quality contents like blogs, articles in addition to press announcements or perhaps making use of effective WEB OPTIMIZATION strategies to condition an individual's company's open thoughts and opinions. In general the sole aim of reputation management would be to assist your business provide their best face online. That they not simply deliver marketing balance but help to safeguard the organization next to uncontrolled defamation.



Safeguarding the online world reputation management of your respective organization is essential nowadays. An example I will visualize will be if the garlic bread corporation everyone should know about acquired an upset staff innovative video displaying anyone that they produced garlic bread using the toughest kinds of ingredients. This kind of video obtained distributed all round the web, in not only this persons began referring to it. This this aspect your garlic bread organization began carrying out many destruction management, although sad to say it absolutely was slightly a touch too later and his or her product sales vomited increasingly.



Source:

http://onlinereputationmanagement1.com

http://carpetcleaningatlanta1.info Leading Pro Carpet Cleaning In Atlanta georgia - Same Day Service provider

Carpet cleaning ideas are extremely essential when you desire to uncover the very best way to have got a spotless a person. Carpets are great room fixtures which can turn very simple inside developing into an extravagant and flamboyant design that might unquestionably give a touch of sophistication in your dwelling. Whenever a carpet is applied into your design and style notion, there's no denying the fact that there is apparently a component of sophistication. Numerous men and women have employed this for the very same effect on their homes but have observed that cleansing it is a really major headache. There are numerous issues to take into consideration on the subject of cleansing carpets and most that are not informed with carpet cleaning strategies will be in for any globe of disappointment. The issue would be the reality that you will find a lot of ways to thoroughly clean a carpet but this range of assortment stems in the simple fact that there are other ways to deal with quite a few unique stains presented the wide range of supplies and weaves used to develop carpets. The very procedure itself could be very laborious and lots of are not generally as much as the process, so searching for skilled enable is advised. You will need to do your research with regards to your carpet to ensure that you understand just how it was built and what it was manufactured from. Upon obtaining a maintain of this information, we must discover out the carpet cleaners who concentrate on these specs. By learning all of those, you will grasp the idea tips on how to take treatment of your carpet.
A vital part about many carpet cleaning tips would be to make sure that your carpet is held



cleanse. Prevention is better than heal and the ideal approach to clean a carpet is always to preserve filth away and preserve its kind. This also is an incredible solution to conserve capital when you will never should commit a great deal of for the cleaning products which are needed to clean it. In some cases although, finding dirt on your own carpet is unavoidable. In these kinds of cases it'll be far better to get it cleaned by professionals or risk creating the stain worse.
To receive specialized enable by hiring licensed carpet cleaners would be the carpet cleaning atlanta most effective carpet cleaning tip you may get. These persons are professionals concerning this and they will most certainly have the ability to complete the task a great deal superior than you'd probably. Nevertheless you should make sure that they're the ones who're well-versed concerning the kind of carpet cleaning service you are attempting to avail of.
A suggestion in picking out the carpet cleaners could be to check out the tactic and products they utilize when cleaning your carpets. Provided that you are aware of the particular components and strategies employed by the corporate, you can be able to gauge should they will be able to dealing with the job with excellent performance and competence. In order to perform this, you must do the research regarding the carpet you have

to make sure that you happen to be mindful with the very best signifies to get the carpet cleaned in accordance with the complications you are enduring along with your carpet. Should the carpet cleaners can match up properly while using the desires of your carpet, then they may be good.
One more carpet cleansing suggestion when picking out the carpet cleaner to suit your needs would be the price. It may look like a miserly consideration, but the final issue you wish to transpire if you have your carpet cleaned is to be fleeced by your carpet cleaner. This determination will not be determined by finding the most cost effective carpet cleaner in town, but instead a choice you make on who presents http://carpetcleaningatlanta1.info the top services and fees the fairest quantity for his or her solutions. You need to uncover out what equipment and components carpet cleaners use once you look for the carpet cleaner to use. Afterwards, you have to examine their qualifications to find out should they hold the right certification to your desires. Should they move those people prerequisites, you must find out how considerably they cost. With these in mind, you'll be in a position to pick out who to hire.
Another carpet cleaning tip when selecting the carpet cleaning firm to select will be to verify their staff. You will need to come across out when the folks employed through the business are merely subcontracted (i.e. not total time personnel) or are working


solely for that organization alone. It seems an odd factor to look at, but it is essential to understand that the staff of the firm are working completely for your enterprise, as this allows you to realize that the carpet cleaning firm will likely be liable for any problems which may be built due to the fact they're those who are answerable for these people. If they are independently employed, such a factor can not be predicted from your organization, as they will not be accountable for independently hired workforce.
While you can see, you will discover really a couple of details to contemplate when picking out the carpet cleaning business to suit your needs. It could appear tedious at the beginning but you will uncover that the concept is in fact rather straightforward. All you actually will need is information and facts if you want to ascertain the way to correctly contend with carpet cleaning and routine maintenance.

why internet marketing

I’ve been itching to write some about the proliferation of mobile devices in the wake of Tablet computers like the Apple iPad, the Samsung Galaxy, the Blackberry Playbook and a myriad of others for quite a while. Much of what I’ve read is very technical and always seems a little heavy on hype and light on practical solutions for eLearning. The salient question is, should we as eLearning developers be looking at ways to move our content onto these mobile devices in order to more effectively reach our audience? The answer is that we of course should, but also that we are faced with a host of new challenges as soon as we attempt to do so. So in this post I’ll try to answer as much of that as I can, as objectively as I can, without getting lost in the specifics of the technology.

A little Context

First it should be noted that the idea of notebook computing didn’t originate with the iPad, it began long before with a host of solutions that attempted to offer the comfort and familiarity. The real breakthrough with the iPad is probably owed in part to a great GUI (graphical user interface) in part to aspirational marketing (it’s what the guy next to you oggles on a long flight) and in part to the availability of enough networking access to make user experiences on cloud based devices a positive experience.

In many ways notebook computing is also a terrible step backward. It doesn’t allow you to run your most used software applications, it is often slow to download and slow to perform, and it really doesn’t facilitate many of the most potent uses of the Internet because of it’s lack of in-browser Flash support. The notion that our devices and our software do this little dance of two steps forward and one step back is not at all new. We have been doing this dance for a long time. One lifelong eLearning developer infamously cracked “I could do that 20 years ago with Authorware” to virtually every “new” feature touted by various eLearning software vendors. He was of course quite correct, that we had better control of the computer years ago, and that the ongoing battle between ubiquity, accessibility, ease of use and ever-evolving hardware has often reduced the amount of control we have over the devices that display our eLearning content.

Social implications

The push-pull of technologies vs. ease of use is only one of the concerns we should examine as we consider migrating content to mobile devices and tablets. There are social considerations as well. Are we demanding too much of people? Are we introducing an expectation that they be ‘always available’ by providing technologies that facilitate constant connection?

This process, of push and pull between our desire to be free from the inherent restrictions of our technologies and our desire to take full advantage of them is a theme that has been replayed throughout the ages, even long before our technologies were digital. Certainly it’s something we see echoed in literature. Consider for example Neal Stephenson’s dystopic and all-too often prophetic novel “Snow Crash.” Stephenson describes a world that is almost inseparably chained to it’s technologies. He further extends the metaphor by introducing a notion of mental ‘programming’ and in essence makes us all the products of a vast machine.

We hear everyday in our incidental conversations the evidence that for many of us, the ‘always on’ interconnectedness of social networks, emails and web communities creates a difficult balance of welcomed interaction and unwelcome interruption. Tablets fall into this picture as a device we hope can help mediate, can make it easier to keep up with everything. They can make it easier for us to remain connected, and hopefully the software thereupon can help us filter and sort the vast array of communications we receive.

State of the dream technology

The tablets we have today, fall short of those promised us in Science fiction films and novels like Snow Crash, Minority Report or Avatar. In our imaginations and aspirations we are promised a totally mobile solution that will effortlessly enable transfer between any of our computing devices with little more than a flick of the wrist. It can be difficult to comprehend why then, we now see a technology industry that appears to be moving in the opposite direction. It appears that operating systems are splintering – and forming walls of incompatibility.

Today’s tablets do attempt to share data across devices, but generally each one prefers to lock it all into it’s own little silo. The data is often in different formats from device to device, and operating systems differ on each device making it often quite difficult to work with things in the same authoring applications across various devices. While some software companies are working actively to create cloud based application solutions, many of the creators of cloud storage systems and hardware appear to be prepping for a protocol and standards showdown. There’s nothing new in such efforts, it is in fact the way we have seen technologies evolve for ages.

The role of standards in technology adoption

Consider the historical example of Philo Farnsworth, who brought us Television. Farnsworth was only 15 when he came up with the idea for projecting television (which most then would have thought of as radio with pictures) by observing the back and forth motion of a plow tilling a field. Farnsworth and RCA, then RCA and Zenith and a variety of others would then begin a long series of law suits both to establish ownership of the invention(s) but also subsequently to establish the universal standard that would allow all televisions to receive a consistent ‘type’ of signal. Whether its VHS/Beta or TV standard A vs. TV standard B, we generally see media fall into these kinds of early disputes whenever there are encoders and decoders that need to standardize in order to ensure inter-operability.

In the early days of the World Wide Web we had similar competing standards for the distribution and sharing of information, including things like Telnet, Gopher and the early HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). While HTML quickly became the dominant standard, the individual companies which produced decoders (we call them web browsers) and encoders (we call them Web page editors) all used different standards to determine how to decode or encode the messages. In fact HTML is still implemented in a variety of ways today across different browsers – that’s why you often hear a tech geek say, well open it in a different browser, when you have trouble with seeing the content on a given web page. Adobe even has a cloud based service called Browser Lab that allows web developers preview overlays of their websites as they would appear on each of the major browsers, so that they can avoid big differences.

Plug-ins and extensions bridge the compatibility gaps

One of the big reasons plugins like Shockwave, QuickTime, Flash & Reader became so common as add on’s to a web browser, was because they could render things exactly the same way on any machine in any browser, so designers and producers preferred them because its much cheaper and more efficient to produce things one time than it is to produce them many times. The other reasons were because these plugins enabled levels of interactivity that the browsers could not.

Understanding the Why Now of HTML5

So why does that seem to be changing? Like everything, web page technology is evolving and improving. The most recent definition of Web page standards is soon going to be HTML5 (yes it isn’t really fully in place yet.) This new fifth generation of HTML (web pages) supports much deeper levels of interactivity than earlier versions. It also has better support for video, audio, animation, and interaction. So many of the things that couldn’t be done with a web page alone in the past, will soon be possible without using any kind of plugin like Flash. There are also a lot of things that still won’t be possible without that plugin, but the excitement is about the possibilities of creating more engaging content without the need for a plugin.

Now while it’s simpler to think of things in a single format and as a single output, this thinking doesn’t yet really apply well to our desktop computers the same as it does to our mobile devices. Phones have become smarter, and tablets are beginning to look and feel a lot more like computers, but the purposes and abilities of the devices are not yet really identical. So while we might imagine it would be great to just grab something from the computer and toss it to our tablet – the real experience is usually more frustrating and less plausible.

For now, we’re going to see folks keep producing content that is optimized for the desktop experience, but we’ll see an increasing desire to ensure that it will also play on mobile devices.

This change comes with a couple of big potential problems. First, virtually all of the content created for eLearning that exists today has been created and deployed using Flash technology. Regardless of whether you author your content with Captivate, Presenter or most any other technology – the output is most likely Flash. If a potential playback device doesn’t support Flash playback in a browser, then even if the new content you create is all outputting HTML5, the older content you’ve already created will still not play back on such a device. That’s nothing to shrug off. There are literally millions of course modules out there that people use every day, that are inaccessible on some mobile devices.

Now the only major playback environment that doesn’t support Flash in browser is called iOS. This is the operating system on Apple devices like the iPad, iPod and iPhone. Unfortunately for eLearning developers this is a very popular environment, so the push-pull strikes us hard here, where we either have to recreate all of our content (dating back more than a decade) or we tell our users that they cannot use these devices to access our content, or we need solutions that will help us make this content available on the iOS devices.

What should we do then?

This leads to the next potential problem. There aren’t yet any good authoring solutions for publishing to HTML5 rather than Flash, and still retaining the workflows, interactivity and other experiences that we have adopted for eLearning. There are some ways to author HTML5 content, but they are not workflows that have been customized to eLearning. The good news, there are some early contenders that are making fast progress, and that are enabling developers to continue to work in both the Flash and HTML5 environment, therein maximizing compatibility.

The Adobe Captivate Team is leading this charge. They’ve recently announced a public Beta of the Captivate SWF (Flash) to HTML5 converter. Yes, you can just click that link to download it. This amazing converter actually takes your Captivate 5.5 created flash projects and converts them into web pages that use the HTML5 standard. It is being hosted on Adobe Labs, which is a sort of test bed for Adobe projects that may or may not one day be integrated into actual products.

One of the coolest things, is that it’s totally free and you can download it already and play around with it. Another is that it makes web pages, so any content you create is yours forever – it’s just a web page after all. The first version only supported the basic workflows and elements commonly found in application capture, but at eLearning Guild’s DevLearn conference last week I was able to give folks a preview of the next version. This new version includes support for most question types (so yes, you can create quizzes in HTML5 using the Captivate 5.5 editor) and even supports integration with Scorm compliant Learning Management Systems. As far as I know this will make Captivate the first full featured eLearning editor to support quizzing and Scorm compliant reporting both in native Flash and in converted HTML5. So if you’re looking for a solution for those iOS devices today – Captivate’s new HTML5 converter is likely your best bet.

You’ll also find similar HTML5 converters from other teams at Adobe, Including an HTML5 converter for Illustrator, and HTML5 editing solutions for Dreamweaver. There is also the Wallaby project for general Flash conversion to HTML5, specializing on animation as well as the recently announced Adobe Edge. Edge and Dreamweaver are HTML5 editors for creating dynamic and engaging HTML5 content, while the others are essentially converters.

I suspect we’ll see solutions like this for a while and it’s no surprise that Adobe is leading the way with a custom HTML5 editing and creation utility like Edge which is already available for public use via labs.adobe.com. If you are familiar with After Effects or Premiere, the interface of Edge will seem pretty instantly familiar. It’s easy to use and you can build animations with relative ease.

Final reflections

HTML5 was clearly the hot topic at this year’s DevLearn conference in Las Vegas. To be honest I found it both exciting and more than a little frustrating. In the area of eLearning we’ve managed for a long time to create specialized software solutions that simplify interactive media creation for eLearning developers, Instructional Designers, and Subject Matter Experts. In my opinion, this frees trainers and learning specialists up to focus on the education rather than spending their time becoming multi-media developers.

The world of HTML has, to be honest, never done much to mitigate the technology – in fact historically HTML editors have always been very careful to always expose the code under the hood quite easily. From a media developer’s point of view, this is a big plus – it makes it easier to make small changes if something in the graphical editor isn’t behaving as needed. From an eLearning developer’s point of view – I think this presents a sizeable challenge. The balance between ease-of-use and power is a constant theme in software. I’m just a little worried that a rapid shift toward HTML5 may be an enormous shift away from the ease of use that is now very popular in eLearning authoring.

Converters of course give us an ideal ease-of-use scenario. We can just keep using our tools and convert as needed. It’s also reasonable to expect that some extant tools will at least in part support output to HTML5. Editors might be fine, but I think we’ll want to see specialized editors for eLearning, ones that accomodate our needs, and accelerate our development time-lines. For a while, we may well end up publishing two versions of things, one for general consumption and one for people on iOS devices.

We might also see the landscape (or in this case the divergent operating systems) splinter even further before standards are broadly enough adopted to move us back onto a more stable situation. Times like these are wonderful for innovation – and I expect we’ll see some exciting new ideas bubbling up. But they are also generally not at all good for steady, reliable growth. It becomes difficult to know what to expect – and you can find yourself creating or preserving content that you don’t feel certain will remain viable in 5, 10 or 15 years.

I wouldn’t expect that you’ll have serious problems or limitations with your current Flash based content, nor would I guarantee that HTML5 content will remain viable – but realistically that level of uncertainty has existed for the bast 20 years as well. Perhaps the most realistic approach is to expect the materials you create today will have a shelf life, which is likely given their content anyway.

Specific Recommendations for Action (A ToDo list for HTML5 / Mobile):

Begin a mobile solutions pilot at your organization. Do some initial experimentation with converting your Captivate content to HTML5 and then putting it on mobile devices.

Evaluate your legacy eLearning content. Adobe and others are all clearly working on HTML5 converters to do this work for you, but it will most likely only work with the latest updates, so it might be time to upgrade either now or in the next iteration – to ensure you can convert your older materials using the latest technologies.

Consider the potential for mobile to improve your learning communications pipeline. Are there opportunities to deliver on site, on demand micro-modules, videos or other short form content as job aids?

I know you all will have questions, comments and concerns as it relates to HTML5. Don’t be shy – fill the comments section below with all your ideas. Let’s get this discussion underway.

I’ve been itching to write some about the proliferation of mobile devices in the wake of Tablet computers like the Apple iPad, the Samsung Galaxy, the Blackberry Playbook and a myriad of others for quite a while. Much of what I’ve read is very technical and always seems a little heavy on hype and light on practical solutions for eLearning. The salient question is, should we as eLearning developers be looking at ways to move our content onto these mobile devices in order to more effectively reach our audience? The answer is that we of course should, but also that we are faced with a host of new challenges as soon as we attempt to do so. So in this post I’ll try to answer as much of that as I can, as objectively as I can, without getting lost in the specifics of the technology.

A little Context

First it should be noted that the idea of notebook computing didn’t originate with the iPad, it began long before with a host of solutions that attempted to offer the comfort and familiarity. The real breakthrough with the iPad is probably owed in part to a great GUI (graphical user interface) in part to aspirational marketing (it’s what the guy next to you oggles on a long flight) and in part to the availability of enough networking access to make user experiences on cloud based devices a positive experience.

In many ways notebook computing is also a terrible step backward. It doesn’t allow you to run your most used software applications, it is often slow to download and slow to perform, and it really doesn’t facilitate many of the most potent uses of the Internet because of it’s lack of in-browser Flash support. The notion that our devices and our software do this little dance of two steps forward and one step back is not at all new. We have been doing this dance for a long time. One lifelong eLearning developer infamously cracked “I could do that 20 years ago with Authorware” to virtually every “new” feature touted by various eLearning software vendors. He was of course quite correct, that we had better control of the computer years ago, and that the ongoing battle between ubiquity, accessibility, ease of use and ever-evolving hardware has often reduced the amount of control we have over the devices that display our eLearning content.

Social implications

The push-pull of technologies vs. ease of use is only one of the concerns we should examine as we consider migrating content to mobile devices and tablets. There are social considerations as well. Are we demanding too much of people? Are we introducing an expectation that they be ‘always available’ by providing technologies that facilitate constant connection?

This process, of push and pull between our desire to be free from the inherent restrictions of our technologies and our desire to take full advantage of them is a theme that has been replayed throughout the ages, even long before our technologies were digital. Certainly it’s something we see echoed in literature. Consider for example Neal Stephenson’s dystopic and all-too often prophetic novel “Snow Crash.” Stephenson describes a world that is almost inseparably chained to it’s technologies. He further extends the metaphor by introducing a notion of mental ‘programming’ and in essence makes us all the products of a vast machine.

We hear everyday in our incidental conversations the evidence that for many of us, the ‘always on’ interconnectedness of social networks, emails and web communities creates a difficult balance of welcomed interaction and unwelcome interruption. Tablets fall into this picture as a device we hope can help mediate, can make it easier to keep up with everything. They can make it easier for us to remain connected, and hopefully the software thereupon can help us filter and sort the vast array of communications we receive.

State of the dream technology

The tablets we have today, fall short of those promised us in Science fiction films and novels like Snow Crash, Minority Report or Avatar. In our imaginations and aspirations we are promised a totally mobile solution that will effortlessly enable transfer between any of our computing devices with little more than a flick of the wrist. It can be difficult to comprehend why then, we now see a technology industry that appears to be moving in the opposite direction. It appears that operating systems are splintering – and forming walls of incompatibility.

Today’s tablets do attempt to share data across devices, but generally each one prefers to lock it all into it’s own little silo. The data is often in different formats from device to device, and operating systems differ on each device making it often quite difficult to work with things in the same authoring applications across various devices. While some software companies are working actively to create cloud based application solutions, many of the creators of cloud storage systems and hardware appear to be prepping for a protocol and standards showdown. There’s nothing new in such efforts, it is in fact the way we have seen technologies evolve for ages.

The role of standards in technology adoption

Consider the historical example of Philo Farnsworth, who brought us Television. Farnsworth was only 15 when he came up with the idea for projecting television (which most then would have thought of as radio with pictures) by observing the back and forth motion of a plow tilling a field. Farnsworth and RCA, then RCA and Zenith and a variety of others would then begin a long series of law suits both to establish ownership of the invention(s) but also subsequently to establish the universal standard that would allow all televisions to receive a consistent ‘type’ of signal. Whether its VHS/Beta or TV standard A vs. TV standard B, we generally see media fall into these kinds of early disputes whenever there are encoders and decoders that need to standardize in order to ensure inter-operability.

In the early days of the World Wide Web we had similar competing standards for the distribution and sharing of information, including things like Telnet, Gopher and the early HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). While HTML quickly became the dominant standard, the individual companies which produced decoders (we call them web browsers) and encoders (we call them Web page editors) all used different standards to determine how to decode or encode the messages. In fact HTML is still implemented in a variety of ways today across different browsers – that’s why you often hear a tech geek say, well open it in a different browser, when you have trouble with seeing the content on a given web page. Adobe even has a cloud based service called Browser Lab that allows web developers preview overlays of their websites as they would appear on each of the major browsers, so that they can avoid big differences.

Plug-ins and extensions bridge the compatibility gaps

One of the big reasons plugins like Shockwave, QuickTime, Flash & Reader became so common as add on’s to a web browser, was because they could render things exactly the same way on any machine in any browser, so designers and producers preferred them because its much cheaper and more efficient to produce things one time than it is to produce them many times. The other reasons were because these plugins enabled levels of interactivity that the browsers could not.

Understanding the Why Now of HTML5

So why does that seem to be changing? Like everything, web page technology is evolving and improving. The most recent definition of Web page standards is soon going to be HTML5 (yes it isn’t really fully in place yet.) This new fifth generation of HTML (web pages) supports much deeper levels of interactivity than earlier versions. It also has better support for video, audio, animation, and interaction. So many of the things that couldn’t be done with a web page alone in the past, will soon be possible without using any kind of plugin like Flash. There are also a lot of things that still won’t be possible without that plugin, but the excitement is about the possibilities of creating more engaging content without the need for a plugin.

Now while it’s simpler to think of things in a single format and as a single output, this thinking doesn’t yet really apply well to our desktop computers the same as it does to our mobile devices. Phones have become smarter, and tablets are beginning to look and feel a lot more like computers, but the purposes and abilities of the devices are not yet really identical. So while we might imagine it would be great to just grab something from the computer and toss it to our tablet – the real experience is usually more frustrating and less plausible.

For now, we’re going to see folks keep producing content that is optimized for the desktop experience, but we’ll see an increasing desire to ensure that it will also play on mobile devices.

This change comes with a couple of big potential problems. First, virtually all of the content created for eLearning that exists today has been created and deployed using Flash technology. Regardless of whether you author your content with Captivate, Presenter or most any other technology – the output is most likely Flash. If a potential playback device doesn’t support Flash playback in a browser, then even if the new content you create is all outputting HTML5, the older content you’ve already created will still not play back on such a device. That’s nothing to shrug off. There are literally millions of course modules out there that people use every day, that are inaccessible on some mobile devices.

Now the only major playback environment that doesn’t support Flash in browser is called iOS. This is the operating system on Apple devices like the iPad, iPod and iPhone. Unfortunately for eLearning developers this is a very popular environment, so the push-pull strikes us hard here, where we either have to recreate all of our content (dating back more than a decade) or we tell our users that they cannot use these devices to access our content, or we need solutions that will help us make this content available on the iOS devices.

What should we do then?

This leads to the next potential problem. There aren’t yet any good authoring solutions for publishing to HTML5 rather than Flash, and still retaining the workflows, interactivity and other experiences that we have adopted for eLearning. There are some ways to author HTML5 content, but they are not workflows that have been customized to eLearning. The good news, there are some early contenders that are making fast progress, and that are enabling developers to continue to work in both the Flash and HTML5 environment, therein maximizing compatibility.

The Adobe Captivate Team is leading this charge. They’ve recently announced a public Beta of the Captivate SWF (Flash) to HTML5 converter. Yes, you can just click that link to download it. This amazing converter actually takes your Captivate 5.5 created flash projects and converts them into web pages that use the HTML5 standard. It is being hosted on Adobe Labs, which is a sort of test bed for Adobe projects that may or may not one day be integrated into actual products.

One of the coolest things, is that it’s totally free and you can download it already and play around with it. Another is that it makes web pages, so any content you create is yours forever – it’s just a web page after all. The first version only supported the basic workflows and elements commonly found in application capture, but at eLearning Guild’s DevLearn conference last week I was able to give folks a preview of the next version. This new version includes support for most question types (so yes, you can create quizzes in HTML5 using the Captivate 5.5 editor) and even supports integration with Scorm compliant Learning Management Systems. As far as I know this will make Captivate the first full featured eLearning editor to support quizzing and Scorm compliant reporting both in native Flash and in converted HTML5. So if you’re looking for a solution for those iOS devices today – Captivate’s new HTML5 converter is likely your best bet.

You’ll also find similar HTML5 converters from other teams at Adobe, Including an HTML5 converter for Illustrator, and HTML5 editing solutions for Dreamweaver. There is also the Wallaby project for general Flash conversion to HTML5, specializing on animation as well as the recently announced Adobe Edge. Edge and Dreamweaver are HTML5 editors for creating dynamic and engaging HTML5 content, while the others are essentially converters.

I suspect we’ll see solutions like this for a while and it’s no surprise that Adobe is leading the way with a custom HTML5 editing and creation utility like Edge which is already available for public use via labs.adobe.com. If you are familiar with After Effects or Premiere, the interface of Edge will seem pretty instantly familiar. It’s easy to use and you can build animations with relative ease.

Final reflections

HTML5 was clearly the hot topic at this year’s DevLearn conference in Las Vegas. To be honest I found it both exciting and more than a little frustrating. In the area of eLearning we’ve managed for a long time to create specialized software solutions that simplify interactive media creation for eLearning developers, Instructional Designers, and Subject Matter Experts. In my opinion, this frees trainers and learning specialists up to focus on the education rather than spending their time becoming multi-media developers.

The world of HTML has, to be honest, never done much to mitigate the technology – in fact historically HTML editors have always been very careful to always expose the code under the hood quite easily. From a media developer’s point of view, this is a big plus – it makes it easier to make small changes if something in the graphical editor isn’t behaving as needed. From an eLearning developer’s point of view – I think this presents a sizeable challenge. The balance between ease-of-use and power is a constant theme in software. I’m just a little worried that a rapid shift toward HTML5 may be an enormous shift away from the ease of use that is now very popular in eLearning authoring.

Converters of course give us an ideal ease-of-use scenario. We can just keep using our tools and convert as needed. It’s also reasonable to expect that some extant tools will at least in part support output to HTML5. Editors might be fine, but I think we’ll want to see specialized editors for eLearning, ones that accomodate our needs, and accelerate our development time-lines. For a while, we may well end up publishing two versions of things, one for general consumption and one for people on iOS devices.

We might also see the landscape (or in this case the divergent operating systems) splinter even further before standards are broadly enough adopted to move us back onto a more stable situation. Times like these are wonderful for innovation – and I expect we’ll see some exciting new ideas bubbling up. But they are also generally not at all good for steady, reliable growth. It becomes difficult to know what to expect – and you can find yourself creating or preserving content that you don’t feel certain will remain viable in 5, 10 or 15 years.

I wouldn’t expect that you’ll have serious problems or limitations with your current Flash based content, nor would I guarantee that HTML5 content will remain viable – but realistically that level of uncertainty has existed for the bast 20 years as well. Perhaps the most realistic approach is to expect the materials you create today will have a shelf life, which is likely given their content anyway.

Specific Recommendations for Action (A ToDo list for HTML5 / Mobile):

Begin a mobile solutions pilot at your organization. Do some initial experimentation with converting your Captivate content to HTML5 and then putting it on mobile devices.

Evaluate your legacy eLearning content. Adobe and others are all clearly working on HTML5 converters to do this work for you, but it will most likely only work with the latest updates, so it might be time to upgrade either now or in the next iteration – to ensure you can convert your older materials using the latest technologies.

Consider the potential for mobile to improve your learning communications pipeline. Are there opportunities to deliver on site, on demand micro-modules, videos or other short form content as job aids?

I know you all will have questions, comments and concerns as it relates to HTML5. Don’t be shy – fill the comments section below with all your ideas. Let’s get this discussion underway.

carpet cleaning atlantacarpet cleaning atlantacarpet cleaning atlantacarpet cleaning atlanta

carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta carpet cleaning atlanta

I’ve been itching to write some about the proliferation of mobile devices in the wake of Tablet computers like the Apple iPad, the Samsung Galaxy, the Blackberry Playbook and a myriad of others for quite a while. Much of what I’ve read is very technical and always seems a little heavy on hype and light on practical solutions for eLearning. The salient question is, should we as eLearning developers be looking at ways to move our content onto these mobile devices in order to more effectively reach our audience? The answer is that we of course should, but also that we are faced with a host of new challenges as soon as we attempt to do so. So in this post I’ll try to answer as much of that as I can, as objectively as I can, without getting lost in the specifics of the technology.

A little Context

First it should be noted that the idea of notebook computing didn’t originate with the iPad, it began long before with a host of solutions that attempted to offer the comfort and familiarity. The real breakthrough with the iPad is probably owed in part to a great GUI (graphical user interface) in part to aspirational marketing (it’s what the guy next to you oggles on a long flight) and in part to the availability of enough networking access to make user experiences on cloud based devices a positive experience.

In many ways notebook computing is also a terrible step backward. It doesn’t allow you to run your most used software applications, it is often slow to download and slow to perform, and it really doesn’t facilitate many of the most potent uses of the Internet because of it’s lack of in-browser Flash support. The notion that our devices and our software do this little dance of two steps forward and one step back is not at all new. We have been doing this dance for a long time. One lifelong eLearning developer infamously cracked “I could do that 20 years ago with Authorware” to virtually every “new” feature touted by various eLearning software vendors. He was of course quite correct, that we had better control of the computer years ago, and that the ongoing battle between ubiquity, accessibility, ease of use and ever-evolving hardware has often reduced the amount of control we have over the devices that display our eLearning content.

Social implications

The push-pull of technologies vs. ease of use is only one of the concerns we should examine as we consider migrating content to mobile devices and tablets. There are social considerations as well. Are we demanding too much of people? Are we introducing an expectation that they be ‘always available’ by providing technologies that facilitate constant connection?

This process, of push and pull between our desire to be free from the inherent restrictions of our technologies and our desire to take full advantage of them is a theme that has been replayed throughout the ages, even long before our technologies were digital. Certainly it’s something we see echoed in literature. Consider for example Neal Stephenson’s dystopic and all-too often prophetic novel “Snow Crash.” Stephenson describes a world that is almost inseparably chained to it’s technologies. He further extends the metaphor by introducing a notion of mental ‘programming’ and in essence makes us all the products of a vast machine.

We hear everyday in our incidental conversations the evidence that for many of us, the ‘always on’ interconnectedness of social networks, emails and web communities creates a difficult balance of welcomed interaction and unwelcome interruption. Tablets fall into this picture as a device we hope can help mediate, can make it easier to keep up with everything. They can make it easier for us to remain connected, and hopefully the software thereupon can help us filter and sort the vast array of communications we receive.

State of the dream technology

The tablets we have today, fall short of those promised us in Science fiction films and novels like Snow Crash, Minority Report or Avatar. In our imaginations and aspirations we are promised a totally mobile solution that will effortlessly enable transfer between any of our computing devices with little more than a flick of the wrist. It can be difficult to comprehend why then, we now see a technology industry that appears to be moving in the opposite direction. It appears that operating systems are splintering – and forming walls of incompatibility.

Today’s tablets do attempt to share data across devices, but generally each one prefers to lock it all into it’s own little silo. The data is often in different formats from device to device, and operating systems differ on each device making it often quite difficult to work with things in the same authoring applications across various devices. While some software companies are working actively to create cloud based application solutions, many of the creators of cloud storage systems and hardware appear to be prepping for a protocol and standards showdown. There’s nothing new in such efforts, it is in fact the way we have seen technologies evolve for ages.

The role of standards in technology adoption

Consider the historical example of Philo Farnsworth, who brought us Television. Farnsworth was only 15 when he came up with the idea for projecting television (which most then would have thought of as radio with pictures) by observing the back and forth motion of a plow tilling a field. Farnsworth and RCA, then RCA and Zenith and a variety of others would then begin a long series of law suits both to establish ownership of the invention(s) but also subsequently to establish the universal standard that would allow all televisions to receive a consistent ‘type’ of signal. Whether its VHS/Beta or TV standard A vs. TV standard B, we generally see media fall into these kinds of early disputes whenever there are encoders and decoders that need to standardize in order to ensure inter-operability.

In the early days of the World Wide Web we had similar competing standards for the distribution and sharing of information, including things like Telnet, Gopher and the early HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). While HTML quickly became the dominant standard, the individual companies which produced decoders (we call them web browsers) and encoders (we call them Web page editors) all used different standards to determine how to decode or encode the messages. In fact HTML is still implemented in a variety of ways today across different browsers – that’s why you often hear a tech geek say, well open it in a different browser, when you have trouble with seeing the content on a given web page. Adobe even has a cloud based service called Browser Lab that allows web developers preview overlays of their websites as they would appear on each of the major browsers, so that they can avoid big differences.

Plug-ins and extensions bridge the compatibility gaps

One of the big reasons plugins like Shockwave, QuickTime, Flash & Reader became so common as add on’s to a web browser, was because they could render things exactly the same way on any machine in any browser, so designers and producers preferred them because its much cheaper and more efficient to produce things one time than it is to produce them many times. The other reasons were because these plugins enabled levels of interactivity that the browsers could not.

Understanding the Why Now of HTML5

So why does that seem to be changing? Like everything, web page technology is evolving and improving. The most recent definition of Web page standards is soon going to be HTML5 (yes it isn’t really fully in place yet.) This new fifth generation of HTML (web pages) supports much deeper levels of interactivity than earlier versions. It also has better support for video, audio, animation, and interaction. So many of the things that couldn’t be done with a web page alone in the past, will soon be possible without using any kind of plugin like Flash. There are also a lot of things that still won’t be possible without that plugin, but the excitement is about the possibilities of creating more engaging content without the need for a plugin.

Now while it’s simpler to think of things in a single format and as a single output, this thinking doesn’t yet really apply well to our desktop computers the same as it does to our mobile devices. Phones have become smarter, and tablets are beginning to look and feel a lot more like computers, but the purposes and abilities of the devices are not yet really identical. So while we might imagine it would be great to just grab something from the computer and toss it to our tablet – the real experience is usually more frustrating and less plausible.

For now, we’re going to see folks keep producing content that is optimized for the desktop experience, but we’ll see an increasing desire to ensure that it will also play on mobile devices.

This change comes with a couple of big potential problems. First, virtually all of the content created for eLearning that exists today has been created and deployed using Flash technology. Regardless of whether you author your content with Captivate, Presenter or most any other technology – the output is most likely Flash. If a potential playback device doesn’t support Flash playback in a browser, then even if the new content you create is all outputting HTML5, the older content you’ve already created will still not play back on such a device. That’s nothing to shrug off. There are literally millions of course modules out there that people use every day, that are inaccessible on some mobile devices.

Now the only major playback environment that doesn’t support Flash in browser is called iOS. This is the operating system on Apple devices like the iPad, iPod and iPhone. Unfortunately for eLearning developers this is a very popular environment, so the push-pull strikes us hard here, where we either have to recreate all of our content (dating back more than a decade) or we tell our users that they cannot use these devices to access our content, or we need solutions that will help us make this content available on the iOS devices.

What should we do then?

This leads to the next potential problem. There aren’t yet any good authoring solutions for publishing to HTML5 rather than Flash, and still retaining the workflows, interactivity and other experiences that we have adopted for eLearning. There are some ways to author HTML5 content, but they are not workflows that have been customized to eLearning. The good news, there are some early contenders that are making fast progress, and that are enabling developers to continue to work in both the Flash and HTML5 environment, therein maximizing compatibility.

The Adobe Captivate Team is leading this charge. They’ve recently announced a public Beta of the Captivate SWF (Flash) to HTML5 converter. Yes, you can just click that link to download it. This amazing converter actually takes your Captivate 5.5 created flash projects and converts them into web pages that use the HTML5 standard. It is being hosted on Adobe Labs, which is a sort of test bed for Adobe projects that may or may not one day be integrated into actual products.

One of the coolest things, is that it’s totally free and you can download it already and play around with it. Another is that it makes web pages, so any content you create is yours forever – it’s just a web page after all. The first version only supported the basic workflows and elements commonly found in application capture, but at eLearning Guild’s DevLearn conference last week I was able to give folks a preview of the next version. This new version includes support for most question types (so yes, you can create quizzes in HTML5 using the Captivate 5.5 editor) and even supports integration with Scorm compliant Learning Management Systems. As far as I know this will make Captivate the first full featured eLearning editor to support quizzing and Scorm compliant reporting both in native Flash and in converted HTML5. So if you’re looking for a solution for those iOS devices today – Captivate’s new HTML5 converter is likely your best bet.

You’ll also find similar HTML5 converters from other teams at Adobe, Including an HTML5 converter for Illustrator, and HTML5 editing solutions for Dreamweaver. There is also the Wallaby project for general Flash conversion to HTML5, specializing on animation as well as the recently announced Adobe Edge. Edge and Dreamweaver are HTML5 editors for creating dynamic and engaging HTML5 content, while the others are essentially converters.

I suspect we’ll see solutions like this for a while and it’s no surprise that Adobe is leading the way with a custom HTML5 editing and creation utility like Edge which is already available for public use via labs.adobe.com. If you are familiar with After Effects or Premiere, the interface of Edge will seem pretty instantly familiar. It’s easy to use and you can build animations with relative ease.

Final reflections

HTML5 was clearly the hot topic at this year’s DevLearn conference in Las Vegas. To be honest I found it both exciting and more than a little frustrating. In the area of eLearning we’ve managed for a long time to create specialized software solutions that simplify interactive media creation for eLearning developers, Instructional Designers, and Subject Matter Experts. In my opinion, this frees trainers and learning specialists up to focus on the education rather than spending their time becoming multi-media developers.

The world of HTML has, to be honest, never done much to mitigate the technology – in fact historically HTML editors have always been very careful to always expose the code under the hood quite easily. From a media developer’s point of view, this is a big plus – it makes it easier to make small changes if something in the graphical editor isn’t behaving as needed. From an eLearning developer’s point of view – I think this presents a sizeable challenge. The balance between ease-of-use and power is a constant theme in software. I’m just a little worried that a rapid shift toward HTML5 may be an enormous shift away from the ease of use that is now very popular in eLearning authoring.

Converters of course give us an ideal ease-of-use scenario. We can just keep using our tools and convert as needed. It’s also reasonable to expect that some extant tools will at least in part support output to HTML5. Editors might be fine, but I think we’ll want to see specialized editors for eLearning, ones that accomodate our needs, and accelerate our development time-lines. For a while, we may well end up publishing two versions of things, one for general consumption and one for people on iOS devices.

We might also see the landscape (or in this case the divergent operating systems) splinter even further before standards are broadly enough adopted to move us back onto a more stable situation. Times like these are wonderful for innovation – and I expect we’ll see some exciting new ideas bubbling up. But they are also generally not at all good for steady, reliable growth. It becomes difficult to know what to expect – and you can find yourself creating or preserving content that you don’t feel certain will remain viable in 5, 10 or 15 years.

I wouldn’t expect that you’ll have serious problems or limitations with your current Flash based content, nor would I guarantee that HTML5 content will remain viable – but realistically that level of uncertainty has existed for the bast 20 years as well. Perhaps the most realistic approach is to expect the materials you create today will have a shelf life, which is likely given their content anyway.

Specific Recommendations for Action (A ToDo list for HTML5 / Mobile):

Begin a mobile solutions pilot at your organization. Do some initial experimentation with converting your Captivate content to HTML5 and then putting it on mobile devices.

Evaluate your legacy eLearning content. Adobe and others are all clearly working on HTML5 converters to do this work for you, but it will most likely only work with the latest updates, so it might be time to upgrade either now or in the next iteration – to ensure you can convert your older materials using the latest technologies.

Consider the potential for mobile to improve your learning communications pipeline. Are there opportunities to deliver on site, on demand micro-modules, videos or other short form content as job aids?

I know you all will have questions, comments and concerns as it relates to HTML5. Don’t be shy – fill the comments section below with all your ideas. Let’s get this discussion underway.

I’ve been itching to write some about the proliferation of mobile devices in the wake of Tablet computers like the Apple iPad, the Samsung Galaxy, the Blackberry Playbook and a myriad of others for quite a while. Much of what I’ve read is very technical and always seems a little heavy on hype and light on practical solutions for eLearning. The salient question is, should we as eLearning developers be looking at ways to move our content onto these mobile devices in order to more effectively reach our audience? The answer is that we of course should, but also that we are faced with a host of new challenges as soon as we attempt to do so. So in this post I’ll try to answer as much of that as I can, as objectively as I can, without getting lost in the specifics of the technology.

A little Context

First it should be noted that the idea of notebook computing didn’t originate with the iPad, it began long before with a host of solutions that attempted to offer the comfort and familiarity. The real breakthrough with the iPad is probably owed in part to a great GUI (graphical user interface) in part to aspirational marketing (it’s what the guy next to you oggles on a long flight) and in part to the availability of enough networking access to make user experiences on cloud based devices a positive experience.

In many ways notebook computing is also a terrible step backward. It doesn’t allow you to run your most used software applications, it is often slow to download and slow to perform, and it really doesn’t facilitate many of the most potent uses of the Internet because of it’s lack of in-browser Flash support. The notion that our devices and our software do this little dance of two steps forward and one step back is not at all new. We have been doing this dance for a long time. One lifelong eLearning developer infamously cracked “I could do that 20 years ago with Authorware” to virtually every “new” feature touted by various eLearning software vendors. He was of course quite correct, that we had better control of the computer years ago, and that the ongoing battle between ubiquity, accessibility, ease of use and ever-evolving hardware has often reduced the amount of control we have over the devices that display our eLearning content.

Social implications

The push-pull of technologies vs. ease of use is only one of the concerns we should examine as we consider migrating content to mobile devices and tablets. There are social considerations as well. Are we demanding too much of people? Are we introducing an expectation that they be ‘always available’ by providing technologies that facilitate constant connection?

This process, of push and pull between our desire to be free from the inherent restrictions of our technologies and our desire to take full advantage of them is a theme that has been replayed throughout the ages, even long before our technologies were digital. Certainly it’s something we see echoed in literature. Consider for example Neal Stephenson’s dystopic and all-too often prophetic novel “Snow Crash.” Stephenson describes a world that is almost inseparably chained to it’s technologies. He further extends the metaphor by introducing a notion of mental ‘programming’ and in essence makes us all the products of a vast machine.

We hear everyday in our incidental conversations the evidence that for many of us, the ‘always on’ interconnectedness of social networks, emails and web communities creates a difficult balance of welcomed interaction and unwelcome interruption. Tablets fall into this picture as a device we hope can help mediate, can make it easier to keep up with everything. They can make it easier for us to remain connected, and hopefully the software thereupon can help us filter and sort the vast array of communications we receive.

State of the dream technology

The tablets we have today, fall short of those promised us in Science fiction films and novels like Snow Crash, Minority Report or Avatar. In our imaginations and aspirations we are promised a totally mobile solution that will effortlessly enable transfer between any of our computing devices with little more than a flick of the wrist. It can be difficult to comprehend why then, we now see a technology industry that appears to be moving in the opposite direction. It appears that operating systems are splintering – and forming walls of incompatibility.

Today’s tablets do attempt to share data across devices, but generally each one prefers to lock it all into it’s own little silo. The data is often in different formats from device to device, and operating systems differ on each device making it often quite difficult to work with things in the same authoring applications across various devices. While some software companies are working actively to create cloud based application solutions, many of the creators of cloud storage systems and hardware appear to be prepping for a protocol and standards showdown. There’s nothing new in such efforts, it is in fact the way we have seen technologies evolve for ages.

The role of standards in technology adoption

Consider the historical example of Philo Farnsworth, who brought us Television. Farnsworth was only 15 when he came up with the idea for projecting television (which most then would have thought of as radio with pictures) by observing the back and forth motion of a plow tilling a field. Farnsworth and RCA, then RCA and Zenith and a variety of others would then begin a long series of law suits both to establish ownership of the invention(s) but also subsequently to establish the universal standard that would allow all televisions to receive a consistent ‘type’ of signal. Whether its VHS/Beta or TV standard A vs. TV standard B, we generally see media fall into these kinds of early disputes whenever there are encoders and decoders that need to standardize in order to ensure inter-operability.

In the early days of the World Wide Web we had similar competing standards for the distribution and sharing of information, including things like Telnet, Gopher and the early HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). While HTML quickly became the dominant standard, the individual companies which produced decoders (we call them web browsers) and encoders (we call them Web page editors) all used different standards to determine how to decode or encode the messages. In fact HTML is still implemented in a variety of ways today across different browsers – that’s why you often hear a tech geek say, well open it in a different browser, when you have trouble with seeing the content on a given web page. Adobe even has a cloud based service called Browser Lab that allows web developers preview overlays of their websites as they would appear on each of the major browsers, so that they can avoid big differences.

Plug-ins and extensions bridge the compatibility gaps

One of the big reasons plugins like Shockwave, QuickTime, Flash & Reader became so common as add on’s to a web browser, was because they could render things exactly the same way on any machine in any browser, so designers and producers preferred them because its much cheaper and more efficient to produce things one time than it is to produce them many times. The other reasons were because these plugins enabled levels of interactivity that the browsers could not.

Understanding the Why Now of HTML5

So why does that seem to be changing? Like everything, web page technology is evolving and improving. The most recent definition of Web page standards is soon going to be HTML5 (yes it isn’t really fully in place yet.) This new fifth generation of HTML (web pages) supports much deeper levels of interactivity than earlier versions. It also has better support for video, audio, animation, and interaction. So many of the things that couldn’t be done with a web page alone in the past, will soon be possible without using any kind of plugin like Flash. There are also a lot of things that still won’t be possible without that plugin, but the excitement is about the possibilities of creating more engaging content without the need for a plugin.

Now while it’s simpler to think of things in a single format and as a single output, this thinking doesn’t yet really apply well to our desktop computers the same as it does to our mobile devices. Phones have become smarter, and tablets are beginning to look and feel a lot more like computers, but the purposes and abilities of the devices are not yet really identical. So while we might imagine it would be great to just grab something from the computer and toss it to our tablet – the real experience is usually more frustrating and less plausible.

For now, we’re going to see folks keep producing content that is optimized for the desktop experience, but we’ll see an increasing desire to ensure that it will also play on mobile devices.

This change comes with a couple of big potential problems. First, virtually all of the content created for eLearning that exists today has been created and deployed using Flash technology. Regardless of whether you author your content with Captivate, Presenter or most any other technology – the output is most likely Flash. If a potential playback device doesn’t support Flash playback in a browser, then even if the new content you create is all outputting HTML5, the older content you’ve already created will still not play back on such a device. That’s nothing to shrug off. There are literally millions of course modules out there that people use every day, that are inaccessible on some mobile devices.

Now the only major playback environment that doesn’t support Flash in browser is called iOS. This is the operating system on Apple devices like the iPad, iPod and iPhone. Unfortunately for eLearning developers this is a very popular environment, so the push-pull strikes us hard here, where we either have to recreate all of our content (dating back more than a decade) or we tell our users that they cannot use these devices to access our content, or we need solutions that will help us make this content available on the iOS devices.

What should we do then?

This leads to the next potential problem. There aren’t yet any good authoring solutions for publishing to HTML5 rather than Flash, and still retaining the workflows, interactivity and other experiences that we have adopted for eLearning. There are some ways to author HTML5 content, but they are not workflows that have been customized to eLearning. The good news, there are some early contenders that are making fast progress, and that are enabling developers to continue to work in both the Flash and HTML5 environment, therein maximizing compatibility.

The Adobe Captivate Team is leading this charge. They’ve recently announced a public Beta of the Captivate SWF (Flash) to HTML5 converter. Yes, you can just click that link to download it. This amazing converter actually takes your Captivate 5.5 created flash projects and converts them into web pages that use the HTML5 standard. It is being hosted on Adobe Labs, which is a sort of test bed for Adobe projects that may or may not one day be integrated into actual products.

One of the coolest things, is that it’s totally free and you can download it already and play around with it. Another is that it makes web pages, so any content you create is yours forever – it’s just a web page after all. The first version only supported the basic workflows and elements commonly found in application capture, but at eLearning Guild’s DevLearn conference last week I was able to give folks a preview of the next version. This new version includes support for most question types (so yes, you can create quizzes in HTML5 using the Captivate 5.5 editor) and even supports integration with Scorm compliant Learning Management Systems. As far as I know this will make Captivate the first full featured eLearning editor to support quizzing and Scorm compliant reporting both in native Flash and in converted HTML5. So if you’re looking for a solution for those iOS devices today – Captivate’s new HTML5 converter is likely your best bet.

You’ll also find similar HTML5 converters from other teams at Adobe, Including an HTML5 converter for Illustrator, and HTML5 editing solutions for Dreamweaver. There is also the Wallaby project for general Flash conversion to HTML5, specializing on animation as well as the recently announced Adobe Edge. Edge and Dreamweaver are HTML5 editors for creating dynamic and engaging HTML5 content, while the others are essentially converters.

I suspect we’ll see solutions like this for a while and it’s no surprise that Adobe is leading the way with a custom HTML5 editing and creation utility like Edge which is already available for public use via labs.adobe.com. If you are familiar with After Effects or Premiere, the interface of Edge will seem pretty instantly familiar. It’s easy to use and you can build animations with relative ease.

Final reflections

HTML5 was clearly the hot topic at this year’s DevLearn conference in Las Vegas. To be honest I found it both exciting and more than a little frustrating. In the area of eLearning we’ve managed for a long time to create specialized software solutions that simplify interactive media creation for eLearning developers, Instructional Designers, and Subject Matter Experts. In my opinion, this frees trainers and learning specialists up to focus on the education rather than spending their time becoming multi-media developers.

The world of HTML has, to be honest, never done much to mitigate the technology – in fact historically HTML editors have always been very careful to always expose the code under the hood quite easily. From a media developer’s point of view, this is a big plus – it makes it easier to make small changes if something in the graphical editor isn’t behaving as needed. From an eLearning developer’s point of view – I think this presents a sizeable challenge. The balance between ease-of-use and power is a constant theme in software. I’m just a little worried that a rapid shift toward HTML5 may be an enormous shift away from the ease of use that is now very popular in eLearning authoring.

Converters of course give us an ideal ease-of-use scenario. We can just keep using our tools and convert as needed. It’s also reasonable to expect that some extant tools will at least in part support output to HTML5. Editors might be fine, but I think we’ll want to see specialized editors for eLearning, ones that accomodate our needs, and accelerate our development time-lines. For a while, we may well end up publishing two versions of things, one for general consumption and one for people on iOS devices.

We might also see the landscape (or in this case the divergent operating systems) splinter even further before standards are broadly enough adopted to move us back onto a more stable situation. Times like these are wonderful for innovation – and I expect we’ll see some exciting new ideas bubbling up. But they are also generally not at all good for steady, reliable growth. It becomes difficult to know what to expect – and you can find yourself creating or preserving content that you don’t feel certain will remain viable in 5, 10 or 15 years.

I wouldn’t expect that you’ll have serious problems or limitations with your current Flash based content, nor would I guarantee that HTML5 content will remain viable – but realistically that level of uncertainty has existed for the bast 20 years as well. Perhaps the most realistic approach is to expect the materials you create today will have a shelf life, which is likely given their content anyway.

Specific Recommendations for Action (A ToDo list for HTML5 / Mobile):

Begin a mobile solutions pilot at your organization. Do some initial experimentation with converting your Captivate content to HTML5 and then putting it on mobile devices.

Evaluate your legacy eLearning content. Adobe and others are all clearly working on HTML5 converters to do this work for you, but it will most likely only work with the latest updates, so it might be time to upgrade either now or in the next iteration – to ensure you can convert your older materials using the latest technologies.

Consider the potential for mobile to improve your learning communications pipeline. Are there opportunities to deliver on site, on demand micro-modules, videos or other short form content as job aids?

I know you all will have questions, comments and concerns as it relates to HTML5. Don’t be shy – fill the comments section below with all your ideas. Let’s get this discussion underway.

http://forum.mu-kaimas.lt/index.php?action=profile;u=38563;sa=summary http://forum.phuketnext.com/index.php?action=profile;u=35200;sa=summary http://femflex.net/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=129964;sa=summary http://3bindustries.com/support/index.php?action=profile;u=744001;sa=summary http://alabamafishingbuddy.com/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=14831;sa=summary http://anubis-tattoo.com/www/index.php?action=profile;u=47489;sa=summary http://anyveteran.org/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=47124;sa=summary http://arizona.ghostlygateway.co.uk/forums/index.php?action=profile;area=summary;u=48819 http://board.psd-dreams.net/index.php?action=profile;area=summary;u=6885 http://canoenglish.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=5598;sa=summary http://chudahs-corner.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=41251;sa=summary