Speedware opened an HP 3000 resource this week for online courses, the first step in Speedware's mission to host 3000-related training materials and free software. The initial service in the hosting covers HP's Unix training, but a more 3000-specific course is also online: Eloquence training from Marxmeier Software.
The Eloquence course was hosted on HP servers until Hewlett-Packard closed its HP 3000 labs last year, according to Speedware's Nicolas Fortin. Speedware will also be hosting the Jazz freeware as well as HP's 3000 documentation on the new 3000 resource site.
Registration is required to access the materials at the Speedware site, www.speedware.com/hp3ktraining. The company wants to collect name, company, address, telephone and e-mail information in exchange for access, "so we can track course usage and contact you when we have related news." The good news is that the materials do not require a "click to accept" button beneath several thousand words of HP's hosting agreement.
Nothing is perfect in life, or on the Web for free, so the training classes have a flaw: you cannot view them in anything other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. HP built these materials to require Active X controls installed in the browser, and only IE supports ActiveX. Firefox, Opera, and Apple's Safari won't show video from the training courses, so the slides are unavailable. The shot above shows everything we could get out of the "streaming" option which Firefox users will see. The IE version of the same Unix course, below, includes the slides.
About 2 users out of every 5 use something other than IE by now, in part because of the security threats that Microsoft's browser makes possible. The Mozilla Organization, which makes Firefox, explains why Active X is less secure than plug-in options.
"When you select media on a web page, Internet Explorer downloads the
content and calls the appropriate ActiveX control, as requested by the
web page, to load the playback application in the browser, potentially
with little or no involvement, by you. Because this system is capable of automatically downloading
new ActiveX controls without your involvement, it has been exploited by
spyware, viruses, and other malicious software. Internet Explorer has
improved ActiveX security in a number of ways, and many of the security
loopholes have been closed in IE 7. However, it is still relatively
easy to download and activate a malicious ActiveX control on your
computer."
The access to online materials HP created and once hosted has always been problematic for some HP 3000 users who are making a transition, but 60 percent will experience no delay at all in viewing the courses at the new site. Speedware has done its good deed of offering these transition materials in the same format as HP created them.