SIUE Web Robot Online

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

That is odd.  I suspect that it is a difference in the order controls of the same depth are drawn on the applet.  I will look into bringing the text to the front somehow.  I looked again at the message I got from the Mac User.  He does not describe exactly what he sees or send a picture, but I think he was able to see the text, but not control the robot.  Have you tried moving the robot around with your Mac.  If not let me know at my SIUE e-mail account or phone at 2398 and I’ll work out a time for you to give it a go.  I have used the system on a Linux PC, and the only problem was the refresh of the image.  I am having problems with that on Windows PC’s as well, but it is less pronounced.  There will be at least two tests times next week, and probably three depending on a possible conflict I have with the Wednesday hours.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

There are three problems with this solution; however, you may be gratified to hear that we did consider using Flash during the original design.

1. Flash is not as widely distributed as Java.  Many Linux systems do not have support. Java is much more powerful programming language than the jscript attached to Flash and there was a strong possibility that we would have needed to use Java in some way to support the Flash regardless.  This would require all our users to have both, thus reducing the number of people we support.

2. Flash’s Clock does not run at a consistent interval.  I did two Flash assignments in Flash MX for my CyberArts class http://www.siue.edu/~rlamoni/flashAssignment.swf (is the cooler one) the other was a clock and it was hard to keep it synced with the local users system clock.  This would make it near impossible to keep synced with a remote server.

3. Flash has limited server interaction.  One of the reasons we ditched Flash was that it did not support real sockets.  It only supports something called XML Sockets.  Now I know what XML is and I know what Sockets are and I have used both extensively, but I cannot think of a way to merge them that would not be silly or restrict the user to accessing static-data only.

Flash has no doubt improved since I used it last, but my limited experience with it leads me to conclude that it would be better for client-side interactions then for server-client interactions.