Food Safety Auditor—Series 9 Flexible Learning Toolbox

Technical guide

Food Processing FDF03

Series 9 Flexible Learning Toolbox

Certificate IV (FDF40103)/Diploma (FDF50103) of Food Processing

20/02/2006: Version 1.4

© Commonwealth of Australia 2006
The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Commonwealth of Australia.
This work is copyright. It may be reproduced in whole or in part for study or training purposes, subject to the inclusion of an acknowledgement of the source and it is not used for commercial use or sale.

Reproduction for purposes other than those indicated above requires the prior written permission from the Commonwealth. Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction and copyright should be addressed to the Branch Manager, Technology and Information Services Branch, Industry Skills Development Group, Department of Education, Science and Training, GPO Box 9880 Canberra City, ACT, 2601.

flexiblelearning.net.au

Food Safety Auditor—Series 9 Flexible Learning Toolbox

Contents

Introduction 1

System requirements 2

To play 2

Hardware 2

Software 2

To customise 2

Developer hardware and software (for customising) 2

To serve 3

Server hardware and software (for RTO) 3

Customising Toolbox content 4

What features can be customised? 4

Basic editing 6

Web development software package 6

Text editor (MS Notepad) 7

Keeping to the standards 7

Visual design 7

Global formatting with CSS 7

CSS style descriptions 8

‘Skin’ images 8

Navigation 8

File structure 9

Accessibility 9

Text equivalents of rich elements 9

Links 9

Navigation aids 9

Tab index 10

Technical support 10

Installation on a web server 10

Installing into a SCORM compliant LMS 10

Producing CD-ROMs for distribution 11

Known issues 11

Frequently asked questions — FAQs 11

Keyboard access 11

Computer crashes 12

Documents 12

Flash 12

Printing 13

Downloading files 13

The Toolbox Help Desk 14

Before contacting the Toolbox Help Desk 14

References 14

List of tables and figures

Table 1: Customisable elements 5

Fig 1: Example of editable XML file used to customise Adobe® Flash content 6

Table 2: CSS style list for style.css 8

Table 3: CSS style list for unit2.css 8

Australian Flexible Learning Framework 15

Technical Guide

Food Safety Auditor—Series 9 Flexible Learning Toolbox

Introduction

The Food Safety Auditor Toolbox is a multimedia resource that has been developed to support you in delivering training in the mandatory competencies required to become certified to undertake food safety audits. It’s been designed to allow for flexible delivery across a variety of platforms and learning environments: it can be delivered from a CDROM, a web server or integrated into SCORM compliant Learning Management Systems.

The Toolbox has been designed so that RTOs and teachers can disaggregate and customise it to suit local or individual needs. It conforms to W3C Accessibility Priority 1.0 Guidelines and makes use of an integrated navigation system that is accessible even when JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are disabled. This improves the Toolbox experience when using a screen reader.

This Technical guide contains the technical details relating to installing, running, customising and troubleshooting the Toolbox.

The Technical support section gives details of how to install or copy the Toolbox into various platforms and learning environments and includes solutions to potential problems in these processes.

The Teacher guide on the other hand gives you information about the content and components in the Toolbox as well as suggestions for delivering the Toolbox in various learning situations.

This Technical guide is divided into three sections:

·  system requirements

·  customising Toolbox content

·  technical support (FAQs, troubleshooting, help desk).

System requirements

The minimum hardware specifications and software versions that you’ll need to use the Toolbox successfully are listed below.

Higher specification hardware or later versions of the software will improve Toolbox performance.

To play

Hardware

·  IBM® compatible with a 1000 MHz processor running Windows 2000, XP (both with Service Pack 2) or

·  Apple Macintosh® with a 500 MHz processor running OSXv10.2.0

·  128 MB of RAM

·  800 x 600 pixel display and 16 bit colour

·  CD-ROM drive

·  Internet access

·  Sound card

Software

·  Internet Explorer® 6.0, or Firefox® 1.0

·  Microsoft® Word 97 or a similar word processing program to open and use downloadable forms, checklists and worksheets.

·  Adobe® Flash Player 7. If you don’t have this plug-in, you can download and install the latest free version from Adobe’s website www.adobe.com.

·  Incorrect or earlier versions of these applications could result in information not being displayed properly or not shown at all.

To customise

Developer hardware and software (for customising)

Same as client hardware and software above, with the addition of:

·  An HTML text editor such as Homesite®, BBEdit® or Adobe® Dreamweaver.

·  A word processor such as Microsoft® Word to edit documents.

If customisation of multimedia interactions is required, then the following applications may be necessary:

·  Adobe® Flash Professional 8

·  Adobe® Dreamweaver or an XML editor, such as CookTop, that will allow editing of the XML files without interfering with the formatting of the content they contain.

To serve

Server hardware and software (for RTO)

·  IBM® compatible computer with a 1000 MHz processor (or Unix equivalent)

·  128 MB of RAM

·  4 GB hard disk space free

·  CD-ROM drive

·  2xISDN (128k), T1 preferred

·  Internet server software

Customising Toolbox content

This Toolbox can be modified and redistributed with minimal licensing or copyright encumbrances but must not be on-sold. It has been designed so that some things, such as content, are easily customisable. Other things such as the structural components, are possible to modify with a lot of work, but are better left as is.

You are encouraged to customise this Toolbox. However before embarking on any modifications or customisation, we suggest that you:

·  check http://toolboxes.flexiblelearning.net.au/license.htm to ensure that any customisation does not contravene licensing conditions

·  have the required trained personnel

·  retain the original files in CD-ROM format as a backup (should you require them at a later stage).

What features can be customised?

Some aspects of this Toolbox can be easily customised, for example changing the text of a unit introduction, or instruction to learners. However, there are other aspects of the Toolbox that are more difficult to modify. We recommend that you only proceed with complex customisation if you have the relevant trained technical personnel.

Examples of customisation are:

· 

o  editing an HTML file to change some content text or a graphic reference

o  changing the content of an Adobe® Flash interaction by editing the content sections of an XML file

o  editing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

o  editing JavaScript

o  changing interaction functionality in source Adobe® Flash files.

More information on customisation is in Table 1 below.


Table 1: Customisable elements

Element / To Customise
Description / Name and location
Toolbox home screen / Formatted entirely in HTML, edit with Adobe® Dreamweaver. / index.htm
Content text / Most text in is standard HTML. Browse to the location in the Toolbox, take note of the URL, and use that to find the appropriate file in the learning object or unit directory.
Open the file in Adobe® Dreamweaver (or a text editor) and make the changes. / For example:
\conduct\05_meeting\ *.htm
or
\manage_audit\*.htm
Self-check quiz / Question and feedback text is in HTML, however feedback appears in popups and each is in a different .htm file with the word ‘feedback’ in its name. They’re stored in the same place as the other LO content text, so finding and editing them is the same procedure as for content text above. / For example the first feedback popup-screen in the Research kit is:
\manage_audit\plan\01_research \ 01_research_feedback_04_00.htm
Adobe® Flash interactions / The functionality of interactions can be customised by people with appropriate Adobe® Flash skills.
To change their functionality open and edit the relevant .fla file. After doing this, republish the .swf file to each folder it’s used in, ie the \flash folder in the relevant learning object or manage_audit folder.
These interactions draw their content from an external XML file. The content can be customised by editing the relevant XML file and then refreshing its associated .swf file to check the changes.
The XML file is located in the _data folder in the relevant LO folder. The tags in the XML files are descriptive and therefore easily edited. See Fig 1 for an example. / For example:
\source\media\plan_audit\*.fla
\manage_audit\plan\ flash\*.swf
\manage_audit\plan\ _data\*.xml
\manage_audit\plan\01_research\images*.jpg

Fig 1: Example of editable XML file used to customise Adobe® Flash content

Figure 1 shows part of an XML file which is used to provide content for the Adobe® Flash activity in the task Research the company. The tags in blue (and one purple) are self-explanatory, and the content that can be modified is shown in red boxes. This example is from CookTop: the colours and layout will vary depending on which program you choose to edit the XML file.

Before making changes to any file, make sure you have a backup in case you need to restore it. After making changes to any part of the XML file eg image, sound, transcript, question etc, you need to save it and then refresh the HTML screen that its associated Adobe® Flash activity is embedded in to check your changes.

Basic editing

The approach to editing the content of this Toolbox is similar to editing pages that might be found on any website. Table 1 outlines what files can be customised, where to find them and how to modify them.

A basic understanding of HTML and the software package is essential.

Web development software package

  1. Download the complete Toolbox contents into a folder on your computer.
  2. Find the index.htm file in that folder and double click it to view the Toolbox. Identify the pages you’d like to edit. The files and their paths are displayed in the:

·  address bar towards the top of the browser window, or

·  status bar at the bottom of the browser window when you roll over an item in the left hand menu.

  1. Open each file in your web development package (i.e. MS FrontPage or Adobe® Dreamweaver) and make appropriate changes.
  2. Save each file.
  3. Check your changes in a web browser to see if they display properly. If they don’t appear according to your changes, refresh the browser window.
  4. If your changes still don’t display, you may not have saved the file properly. Go back to step 3 and start again.

Text editor (i.e. MS Notepad)

  1. Download the complete Toolbox contents into a folder on your computer.
  2. Locate the file you wish to edit, as described in step 2 above.
  3. Open the file using a text editor (i.e. MS Notepad).
  4. Make appropriate changes, following the CSS styles as outlined in Table 2.
  5. Save each file.
  6. Check your changes in a web browser to see if they display properly. If they don’t appear according to your changes, refresh the browser window.
  7. If your changes still don’t display, you may not have saved the file properly. Go back to step 3 and start again.

Keeping to the standards

This Toolbox has been developed in accordance with a number of internal conventions and international standards. These standards may be related to accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, or just to enable the easy location and customisation of content.

Keep this in mind when you are customising, as whatever you produce will need to be accessible, cross-browser compatible, and able to be further customised.

Try to ensure that any changes you make are conformant with the following standards.

·  W3C Priority One - Web Accessibility Initiative—http://www.w3.org/WAI/

·  XHTML 1.0 Transitional—http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

·  CSS 2—http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/

You can check individual pages for compliance using the free WebXCAT at http://webxact.watchfire.com/ or check the whole Toolbox using Watchfire WebXM found at http://www.watchfire.com/

Visual design

This Toolbox uses:

·  Cascading Style Sheets (CSS2) for visual layout and site structure.

·  Only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option have been specified.

If your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets at all, the content and menu structure of each page is still readable.

Global formatting with CSS

This Toolbox has been created with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This will enable you to make global changes to the look and feel of this Toolbox. If you don’t have a good understanding of HTML and an appropriate understanding of CSS you should get somebody with this knowledge to help you.

The two main CSS files are style.css (for the Toolbox home page) and unit2.css (for all other pages). There are other CSS files that relate to various components of the Toolbox such as the navigation, but they shouldn’t be customised. File style.css is located in the food_auditing\css and food_auditing\shared\css folders. File unit2.css is in the food_auditing\shared\css folder. If you disaggregate the Toolbox into LOs, you need to have a copy of the shared\css folder in each LO.

CSS style descriptions

Table 2: CSS style list for style.css

Style Name / Font / Size / Description
p / Verdana / 75% / Body text
h1 / Verdana / 85% / Heading level 1
H2 / Verdana / 80% / Heading level 2
link / Arial / 70% / Bottom hyperlinks – initial state is black. Hover/roll over state is underlined. No visited state.

Table 3: CSS style list for unit2.css

Style Name / Font / Size / Description
body / Verdana / 100% / Main body font.
h1 / Verdana / 125% / Page heading level 1 – should only appear once per page
h1.LOTitle / Verdana / 85% / Breadcrumb text at top of learning object (kit) page
h2 / Verdana / 105% / Heading level 2
h3 / Verdana / 90% / Heading level 3
h4 / Verdana / 90% / Heading level 4
p.caption / Verdana / 90% / Caption text style for graphics
link / Verdana / 100% / Indicates a hyperlink. Initially grey, with hover/rollover state pale green. No visited state.
strong.b / Verdana / 120% / Bold, emphasises information of significance

There are many other styles listed in unit2.css to style other possible layouts and formats eg table styles. These are well commented to explain their potential use.

You can find out more about CSS at: http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/.