Program Executables You Can Add To A Mastery Course

Program Executables

Inserting other programs into Mastery a Course
The “Run Application” command in MODIFY™ lets you run other programs as “guest” courses or as lesson segments as if they were “movies”—natural elements of the course. Theoretically the possibilities of this command are limitless. However, it is not possible to thoroughly test, or even superficially test, all the programs our users will ever incorporate into their Mastery Platform™ courses. We have tested some of the more popular programs and offer our findings here. We welcome assistance from our customers in helping us lengthen this list by sharing their experiences with other programs. Please contact us.

Macromedia Authorware
Authorware executable (.exe) files play great. The transition between other script elements to and from the Authorware presentation is very smooth and seamless. Playback is unencumbered. We are not aware of any program, system resource, or driver conflicts.

The script command entry for playing an Authorware presentation is:

Command

Option 1

Option 2

Run Application

[file name]
omit “.exe”

Prepare the course to play Authorware presentations by copying the presentation's .exe file and all required external files into the course directory.

Microsoft PowerPoint
PowerPoint presentations play well. You have two options here. You can play the presentation intact by calling PowerPoint’s ppview32.exe program, or you can export the individual slides to the course as JPEG files.

During course playback the initial transition to JPEGs (exported slides) is perfectly smooth and seamless. The transition to the ppview32.exe program is less smooth. Ppview32 displays a tiny window momentarily (appears as a small “flash”) at the beginning revealing the “seam” between the two programs.

Playing the presentation intact
The script command entry for playing a PowerPoint presentation is:

Command

Option 1

Option 2

Run Application

[ppview32]
omit “.exe”

[complete file name]
include “.ppt”,

Prepare the course to play PowerPoint presentations by installinging the ppview32.exe program to the course directory then copying the presentation (.ppt) files into the course directory.

Exporting PowerPoint Slides as JPEGs. Export the slides from PowerPoint. Go into PowerPoint, open your presentation and:

Check “File”>“Page setup” to be sure you’ll get the right screen resolution for your output files. It should be set to “Custom” with the width set to 6.6", and the height set to 5.0".
(NOTE: To avoid distortions caused by resizing, it’s best to create the slides with the above settings rather than resizing after they are created.)
Select “File”>“Save As”, then select “JPEG” or “JPG” as the file type. Set the save location as the course’s directory. PowerPoint will name the files SLIDE1.JPG, SLIDE2.JPG... and so on.

Microsoft Word Documents
You can easily include Microsoft Word documents in your courses by simply using Microsoft’s WordView program. WordView is free from Microsoft and is freely distributable. The MODIFY CD-ROM contains both a 16-bit and 32-bit version of WordView in its “UTILS” directory.

The script command entry for displaying a Word document is:

Command

Option 1

Option 2

Run Application

[wordview]
omit “.exe”

[complete file name]
include “.doc”,

Prepare the course to display Word documents by copying the wordview.exe program (after it has been fully installed on your system) and the document (.doc) files, into the course directory.