lickydog

We picked this up also on a Freedom 2 media book, and again on some Dells 360/760 (sans audio drivers) flash content would either not load correctly of have weird button failures unless a headphone was plugged in before launching the application - with Abacus Evolve and BBC Active software.

Sounds like it could be the Java VM... that would handle some of the file operations, and might explain why the Mac is unaffected.

I have passed this back to the development team, but to the best of my knowledge this was done to support the broadest possible range of deployment options/technologies without relying on third-party tools and systems. This is to address an introduced issue with Flash-based content. For security reasons, Microsoft and Adobe removed support for UNC paths with locally served Flash content. Prior to this change, our preferred option was indeed to specify UNC. The flash-based content cannot self-set focus - the interface has an omission (click here to continue) for example - again, this is a security 'feature' introduced by Adobe and Microsoft. Once focus has been set during a session it tends to be persistent. Again, I have passed this on to the development teams. I know this doesn't address the issues for you, but it may go some way to understanding the why...

If you have V6 already installed, then you might try some replacement files: ftp://ftp.pearsoned-ema.com/Public/YoYo/ICT4L_1_0_GM6.zip It's not an 'official' support patch but effectively it gives you a server-deployable installer with .gmk files replaced with .gm6 - it was created specifically for a CC3 deployment... so make sure you are comfortable with what it is doing. The GM7 msi can be found here: ftp://ftp.pearsoned-ema.com/Public/YoYo/GameMaker7.msi

The Paid for version is only if you want to use the Pro release in school (and this is the discount price). You are still free to use the LITE version for no cost as per the terms of the Lite licence (irrespective of whether you are a personal or school user). The only caveat is that there is a prompt on launching to suggest that you upgrade. I don't think this can be suppressed. They have got an MSI available for the Lite version for rolling out across a domain, but at the moment you have to request this - they are going to add this as a download to an educational section of the site at some point. "Please send me the GameMaker Lite 7 MSI installer"... Or contact Longman who publish the ICT4Life software directly - we should be able to smooth things through

Does anyone have a marked preference from their Maths departments over which maths tools are installed/used? I know there are a whole range out there, but the same names do crop up... I guess that it's going to vary by dept, but this would help us (!) make a decision on which to support... obviously each software house would claim to be the best solution, but I'm very interested in OSS solutions in particular. Any information in addition - particularly if in 'Other', would be very well received. Ian