This program has been tested to work in Netscape 3.04. I don't know if it will work on the new Internet Explorer, since it failed to work in 3.0 of IE.
Welcome to Larry's Flash Cards. With this program, you can create a series of questions for your students or children. You provide the program with the questions and the answers. The questions can include text, a graphic, and sound. You can use this program to help someone learn a spelling list, learn another language, practice math, geography, history, or any subject.
Here is an example set of flash cards, so you can see what can be done. If you did not open up this documentation file (flashdoc.htm) by Open in Browser (Ctrl-O) or double clicked the file in Windows Explorer, you'll likely get sound errors in the program. This appears to be a bug in Netscape.
This program only matches the answer entered with the answer supplied and compares it. It can not make any distinction of a close answer, only an exact answer. That is why it's best for spelling or math type questions. However you can make multiple choice questions, to help out in questions where the exact spelling of the answer is not needed. Even in math it's not perfect, because if you use decimals for example, 10.0 is not the same as 10 to the program. The same with fractions, 1/2 is not the same as 2/4 to the program. However for whole numbers it works fine. So it's probably best to explain this to your student, should they wonder why their answer is not correct. To a small extent spelling is not perfect, because to help get a more general answer I don't compare case. So a proper name not capitalized is still correct in this program.
To overcome the problem with exact comparison, you can make the questions multiple choice or true/false. In the question list the multiple choices, and for the answer just enter in the correct choice, such as 2. True/false questions can have T or F for the answer.
With this said about how I compare answers, it's still a good learning tool for students. It's great because a parent or teacher can make up custom questions about what the student is learning. You can even exchange question files with others.
Place all your wav, au, midi, gif, and jpg files along with flash card
files:
flashc.htm, card1.htm, card2.htm, cardlib.js, and cards.js into
one directory. You can create a separate directory for each of your flash
cards. I have placed the flash card files in the directory
runtime. The cards.js in that directory is blank,
so you'll get errors if you try and view those questions You can just copy
all those files into your own flash card directory and edit cards.js with
your own questions.
Open the file cards.js in your text editor, such as Notepad or Wordpad.
Set up your cards
Each card has it's own line that looks like:
cards[number]= new card("question","answer","sound file","image file")
Note that you need to have the quotation marks around all the items..
You start your card numbers at 1. Keep incrementing the number for each card. If you don't want to have a value for a picture, sound file, or text question, give the value as "".
An example of a card would be:
cards[1]= new card("What is 2+2?","4","","")
When using text that has a " or ' or \ you need to place a \ in front of
them.
Examples are:
\" \' \\ .
cards[2]= new card("What\'s 2+2?","4","","")
Formatting commands.
If you want to skip a line, you can use the HTML tag, <P>, to force
a new line in the question. You can also use HTML tags for italic,
underline and bold.
To place something in italic, you place it in <I> </I>. Example
<I>this</I>.
To underline something, the tag is <U> </U>. Example
<U>state</U>.
To make something bold do, <B> </B>, example
<B>city</B>.
In these examples, the '.' or ',' are not part of the tag.
You can even customize the statements that are given when you get a question right or wrong. You can change the text that is displayed and even add in a sound or image. Also you can change the number of tries per question. Even the text font size. You don't need to change these, the program works fine with the defaults.
The default are:
3 tries per question.
No sounds or image.
Correct message is "Your answer is correct."
Incorrect message is "Incorrect answer. Try again."
Font size 2.
To change them, place any or all of these lines in the cards.js file. Replace the example values with a value of your own. The lines in bold are not to be copied, they are only explanations in this documentation.
Correct sound:
correctsound="somesound.wav"
Incorrect sound:
incorrectsound="somesound.wav"
Correct message:
correctmessage="correct"
Incorrect message:
incorrectmessage="incorrect"
Number of tries per question:
tries=3
Correct image:
correctimage="someimage.jpg"
Font Size:
font=number
number can be 1 to 4. Where 1 is the smallest and 4 is the largest.
When you want to view the flash cards, you should not open the file by typing the directory into the location area in Netscape and then clicking on the flashc.htm file; this causes sound problems. Open up flashc.htm from the Open in Browser option Ctrl-O. Otherwise you can double click the file in Windows Explorer.
Use the Next & Previous buttons to select the question.
Enter in your answer in the answer box, then press Enter or click
the Check Answer to see if your answer is correct.
Redisplay will reload the question. This is useful for sound questions, to rehear the sound.
When answering questions, if the question is answered incorrectly, you will be given the option to try again (depending on the number of tries allowed for the questions). When the number of tries are up, and you did not get the question correct, the correct answer will be displayed.
You can slide the frame dividing line up/down, to get more room for the question frame.
Note about use on a web page:
If you plan to place a set of questions to be answered on a web page, there
is a bug in the Netscape 3.0x series. In 4.0x it works fine. The bug is that
it first displays the source code before the program starts. To fix this,
press the Back button in your browser a few times, until the program starts.
I wrote this program to help parents and teachers make up custom learning
exercises. I made this a free program. If you find this program useful, I'd
appreciate a picture postcard.
Please send it to:
Lawrence Goetz
3263 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11210
USA
If you have questions or comments about Larry's Flash Cards, you can e-mail me.
Visit my home page for children's programs, Java applets and other programs.
Thank you,
Lawrence Goetz