 |
Upgrade required in order to work with ToolBook 9.0+ and 9.5
See User Guide for upgrade details. |
Most people add audios to their ToolBook projects by
putting an audio player on each page and then assigning an audio file to
the player. This works great until your project gets bigger and every page
has an audio player on it. Eventually, your project will crash if it gets
too big. And then, what if you want to add two or three audios
onto a single page? The answer to this is to put the audio player on the
background and then assign the audios to the player when they are needed. Easier said than done. -
Right?
Enter the Audio Player Widget :-)
Click here to view
a demonstration of the Audio Player Widget.
What is the Audio Player Widget?
The Audio Player Widget is a tool that allows
you to use ONE audio player for your entire project (or one per background
if you have multiple backgrounds). Then you assign audios
as often and whenever they are needed (even multiple times on the same
page :-). This is achieved by simply adding the audio filenames to a recordField
in the Widget. The Audio Player Widget will automatically trigger the play audio
when ToolBook enters the page.
You can set the audios up to play in a series
(sequence), when one audio is finished the Audio Player Widget will automatically
play the next audio in the "Play List".
The "Play List" can be assigned at author level or
you could allow the user to select the sequence and/or list to be played.
Why Do I Need the Audio Player Widget?
There are lot of ways you can use the Audio Player
Widget including:
For a no hassle way to move your audio from the
foreground to the background to keep your book from coming to a grinding
halt or worse yet, crashing.
If you want users to be able to
trigger multiple audios
on one page using buttons (for example, to provide more detailed question
object feedback or perhaps to provide audio hints as shown in the
demo).
To allow users to assemble and play their own custom
audio. For example, in a simulation that I developed in ToolBook for
the Australian Army, users would select the longitude and latitude
coordinates to a target before firing. The course would then confirm
their entry for example, "Two Zero Zero Alpha etc": This
was simply a series of ToolBook clips played in the order that the user
instructed by typing in the coordinates. Back then, there wasn't a way
to do this so that it would export to the web... but now there is with the
Audio Player Widget :-)
The possibilities are
endless...and, you can use this Widget together with my
PopText Widget and you will
have an extremely powerful and interactive application without any hassle
:-) Click here to see what I
mean.
How Does the Audio Player Widget Work During
Development?
Simply drag and drop the Audio Player Widget from the
Catalog onto the background and you are ready to start entering the audio
file names into the recordField for each page.
The Audio Player Widget uses
the Windows Media Player so unfortunately it will not work in Netscape.
Who Developed the Audio Player Widget?
I am the creator of
the Audio Player Widget. I have used similar functionality in various
projects I have worked on over the years. Putting audio into
ToolBook projects can be a big hassle for developers, especially when the
player should be put on the background. I developed this widget so
that adding the player and the audio files themselves is easier for folks who don't want to spend a lot of time on
this task.
Audio Player Widget Features
Audio Player Widget™ Pricing
$149 per
Developer License. Quantity Discounts
are available.
|