Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Multimedia and Manila?

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I’ve finally gotten around to doing some work under my new job title. I need to help train teachers to use a new Social Studies multimedia classroom. The idea is to work teachers through three levels of proficiency from using the tools to present, integrating the tools for basic production of multimedia projects (PPT, etc.) , and finally, production of higher end projects using multiple media.

Of course, as I’m prepping all of this, my brain keeps coming back to Web logs. (Go figure, right?) I’m wondering what kinds of multimedia capabilities Manila has. How can I (or even can I) use it to create a Web site that incorporates Flash, sound, and interactivity? Are there any examples out there of Web logs as multimedia project space?

Comments

  1. Sarah Lohnes says

    Sure you can go multimedia! Because Manila’s templates are just HTML, you can embed anything you want, including Flash files. You can upload sound and movie files as gems, or embed them right into the template as well. Examples:

    Barbara’s got a little Flash movie playing at the top of this blog:
    http://wl.middlebury.edu/EL170B/stories/storyReader$72

    A student has a QuickTime movie embedded in this page:
    http://wl.middlebury.edu/lifemusic/stories/storyReader$37

    Of course, all the prep work has to be done in external apps – Manila’s just the presentation space.

  2. Sam D says

    Will,

    It is possible to do things with flash and manila (I know there were some editthispage.com sites that talked about it you could try a search over that subdomain??) you upload them as gems and embed them in the pages. It may be that you need to enable the tags (make them legal server side) or even add some tags to config.mainResponder.prefs.legalTags but for the most part you can do it. It is harder to deal with linking in that you don’t get the “free lunch” that you get with manila shortcuts and the like.

    Other forms of multimedia are a little harder, javascript can be a real pain, unless you do large script externally and upload them as gems and load them in pages. One thing I wish one could do (I guess if I had the time, I could do it) is to define urls and file locations on a mime type basis, why you ask. That way you could upload a quicktime movie and have it get routed to a QTSS server and have the links correct (perhaps even have an embed shortcut made)

    Any way the only way you are going to find out if you can do something is try, and if it doesn’t work, ask, and if you need a feature, request it. (Of course if you can get Dave W. to need it you can bet it will get done “:->”

    Sam D

  3. James Farmer says

    Eh up!

    Yes, exactlh the kind of Q I’ve been asking (although admittably to myself!) for a fair while.

    In the ‘grand vision’ of weblogs as LMSs the ability to incorporate multimedia will, I reckon be key. What I’m interested in, as well, is the possibility of hooking up discussion boards, simple ID/login systems & content management tools… if you’ve got all that, with Frontier, who needs to spend $1m+ a year on Blackboard/WebCT etc.

    If I disappear over the next few days… you know who did it ;o)

    James

    p.s. VERY interested in how you develop your ideas here!