This experimental site form 2000 (MLX Item #372), a multi-user application designed to teach students the interplay of variables in the Ideal Gas law, has been getting a fair bit of action lately. Check it out.
I’ve not paid it much attention, but the multi-user server (once available as part of Macromedia Director, now retired) hums along quietly on a Macintosh 8500 sitting in the corner of my office.
This box handles the user-to-user interaction, while the host shockwave site sits on our main web server.
Developing in MUS was pretty complex, but once you got your head aaround the messaging scheme, it allowed some interesting group interaction in real-time.
Although Macromedia dumped MUS technology, this project still functions- content can still thrive, even when the software wilts (all of those HyperCard and mTropolis fanatics out there are believers)
I had been having issues with some other software I was trying to run on this machine (it was my main development computer 4 years ago), so I decided a few weeks ago to reformat the drive (turns out I had abad internal drive) and re-install the system software.
Not long after In turned it off I started getting emails from students asking why they could not access this web site, and via them I got in touch with a high school science teacher using this for a student assignment. assure him it was coming back, and it has been a steady stream of users accessing it since (judging from the MUS server log).
Maybe it picked up some action as I posted it on MERLOT (Hey Merlot, where’s the RSS? What’s the big deal?)
PS- I am writing this mainly to play some more with the TrackBack code we inserted into the MLX
