Run World in Browser Problem

[jperry]

I have followed the steps in the tutorial about checking current version of Java, and downloading the 2 java files (3D and Java media).

When I open the HTML file for a world, I get the ActiveX control warning about blocked content, so I click on the yellow warning line and then click OK to allow blocked content.

I get a display that includes the outline of a rectangle, inside are the controls for pausing, stopping and resuming the playing of the world (no Play button however). The controls do not visually appear to be operational. Then I get two progress bars, one for downloading (which fills quickly) and then one for extracting (which takes a bit longer).

When the extracting progress bar finishes I get a quick flash of the controls in what appears to be an operational state, and then my browser window closes immediately.

Any thoughts on what might be happening would be appreciated.
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HONEY OIL

[jperry]

I just finished installing everything (Alice, Java, Java3D, and the Java Media Framework) on my tablet PC and everything works fine. I can export to an HTML file, and open that file in a Browser and it works.

Very strange. Not sure what I did on my main computer, but will probably uninstall some of these files and start over.
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LOAN PROTECTION INSURANCE FORUM

I can run Alice-generated web pages in IE7 but not in Mozilla Firefox 1.5. Don't know why.

Dick Baldwin

[jperry]

And I have IE 7 on my desktop, which will not run the web page, but IE 6 on my laptop that does run the web page. I am still planning to reinstall everything on the desktop computer to see if I can get it to work.

As an off-topic aside, the Alice material you have made available have been very valuable to me. I am just getting started with Alice in developing a Community College course that has a focus of helping students improve their math and english skills in a way that keeps them in technology programs.

I guess that is what Alice is all about.

Thanks again for your "stuff".
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Ford sync specifications

Thanks for the positive feedback on my online material. I'm very glad that you are finding the material useful.

You probably will want to be cautious when using the Alice export web page feature. While it sounds like a great idea, the jar file for an Alice web page for a new world that has no added objects and no code contains more than 1000 Java class files. This is large by Java applet standards. Apparently every such jar file contains a large Alice library. I believe that this is part of what contributes to the problems encountered when trying to run them in various browsers on different systems.

Dick Baldwin

I'm afraid this comment is just that and not a very systematic analysis - but two things (among many) that the export to web page option doesn't like are anything other than very basic rendering options (no transparency, for example) and also even moderately sized .wav files.

One thing I do occasionally before trying a web page export is to see how the world runs in "slow and steady" Alice. This will at least highlight the majority of the rendering problems - still doesn't predict the appearance of text objects.

While I haven't had any personal experience with either IE7 or Mozilla Firefox 1.5, I'm not really surprised that these newer browsers might give problems - I believe the export to web page code was developed well before either was available - and the advanced features they support are also in the areas that give Alice problems with web page exports.

[jperry]

Based on the previous comments I have concluded that exporting to a web page will not achieve the objective I had in mind, which was to give students an "easy" way to make their projects available to others. The two options I see are (1) exporting to a web page, which requires the set of Java downloads by anyone who wants to run the project, or (2) just have folks who want to run project download Alice. So I am going to focus on #2 for now.

Again, thanks for the comments, this is a great forum.
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MAGIC FLIGHT LAUNCH BOX

Wise choice.

At this point, I believe that your option 2 is the only practical alternative for an executable file. I will be teaching my first Alice course this summer and I plan to have my students submit their lab assignments as fileName.a2w world files.

The web page approach is simply too unreliable to entrust a student's work to that format.

In some cases, I will also have them set their Edit/Preferences to "Java Style in Color" and submit their source code in the HTML file produced by File/Export for Printing (or words to that effect).

Dick Baldwin