Coursebuilder initialisation error

[Fred Riley]

Hi all

I was going to post this query to the DW newsgroup on the Macromedia news
server, but that appears to now require authentication - have all the Usenet
Macromedia groups bitten the dust in favour of web fora?

Anyway, my wee problem has just started occurring. After running DW MX 2004 on
my WinXP box successfully for a long time, halfway through today I started
getting the following error in a messagebox on startup:

"While executing onLoad in CourseBuilderInit.htm" a Javascript error occurred
in line 13 of CourseBuilderInit.js referring to MM.event having no properties.

This messagebox appears twice, then DW appears to start up ok. This only
started happening an hour or so ago, after I'd been doing some heavy-duty video
editing in VirtualDubMod and RealProducer, so I figured it was probably a
memory problem. I rebooted but it recurred. Can anyone propose a cause and
solution? It's not causing any other problems as yet, but it's always a bit
worrying when an application starts up with an error message so I would like to
get rid of it if possible, as long as that doesn't involve a whole-scale
reinstallation of DW. TIA for any info/suggestions.

Cheers

Fred

[Fred Riley]

As a follow-up to my previous message, I de- and re-installed the Coursebuilder
extension, but no dice. This failed initialisation is causing a problem,
because I can no longer edit my Coursebuilder quizzes in design view - I have
to go right into the Javascript.

The messagebox points to an error in line 13:

C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX
2004\Configuration\Startup\CourseBuilderInit.js

There's no such file in that directory, which contains only two files:
MMinit.htm, helpDocs.js. I did a search in Windows Explorer for
CourseBuilderInit.js but it doesn't exist in the whole /macromedia tree. It
does appear in:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX
2004\Configuration\Startup

and indeed just about all the DW MX config files seem to be duplicated there.

Not that this sheds any more light on the problem, although it has cost me
another hour...

Ah well, I can always fall back on Hot Potatoes ;-)

Cheers

Fred

[ryano]

Fred:

I just discovered I'm having the same problem running Coursebuilder on
Dreamweaver 8.

Started getting all kind of errors, similar to the ones you mentioned, when I
start up Dream 8 now.

And, oddly enough, dumb functions like pasting text into quiz layers wouldn't
work. In fact with the Coursebuilder extension installed, I couldn't use
control-v (paste) on even a blank HTML page anymore. Keep getting an error
message.

So.. I uninstalled and reinstalled Dream8 and I uninstalled Coursebuilder,
and the startup error messages like:
"Configuration\Startup\CourseBuilderInit.js" aren't happening.

But... now I'm getting an error message when I click into preexisting
Coursebuilder quiz fields:

"The following translators were not loaded due to errors: PhP_mySQL.htm; has
configuration information that is invalid".

Would be nice if someone from Macromedia would address this problem. And,
shouldn't the Coursebuilder extension come with disclaimers about it's
incompatibility with Dreamweaver 8?

If anyone else is having these problems, would be curious to hear of any
solutions. (Since now I can't use Coursebuilder at all.)

Thanks

Ryano

[Fred Riley]

Hi Ryano

When I posted this message to the newsgroup macromedia.dreamweaver on the
server forums.macromedia.com (I was trying news.macromedia.com before which is
why I got prompted for authentication - d'oh!), I got the following reply from
Patty Ayers:

"Fred, I was told several years ago that Coursebuilder was not being
developed any further by Macromedia, and only being supported minimally. And
that was a DW version or two ago. So what you're describing doesn't surprise
me, and I can only suggest that you find another way to accomplish your
project than using Coursebuilder. :\"

Given the complete silence of Macromedia staff on Coursebuilder topics, and
its downplaying on the MM website, I think she's got a point. I've always
thought CB was a bit clunky and Heath Robinson anyway, and this latest problem
has convinced me to ditch it in favour of Flash quiz interactions, or Hot
Potatoes ([url]http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/[/url]) which is an excellent tool for
MCQs and crosswords (the only tool I know of for that).

If any Macroserfs are reading this, it would be nice to know the official
position on CB, but in the absence of that I'm going to assume that CB is dead
in the water.

Cheers

Fred