Create a web page

This command enables you can create web pages out of an ACORNS lesson that will successfully execute using browser programs that execute on all of the major desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone devices. To do this, choose the Make Mobile App option from the file menu. You can also click on the icon on the toolbar.

The create mobile application option creates a web page plus a multi-media folder (same name but without an extension) containing everything needed for the web page to successfully run within a browser. Both of these are needed, so if you distribute your mobile web ACORNS lessons for general use (i.e. on a CD), make sure to include both the created Web page file and the associated multi-media folder. The ACORNS manual provides more details on this topic.

The mobile application option also creates a file with the '.acorns' extension. This file can be executed on an ACORNS Mobile player application that runs on Tablet and Phone devices. You copy the file with the '.acorns' extension to a DropBox folder, attach it to an email message, or store it in a known web location. Then after installing the gallery application, students can transfer the ACORNS lessons to the ACORNS player, which allows it to execute or be saved into a gallery of ACORNS lessons.

When the create web page program executes, a dialog frame appears. This dialog gives you the chance to select a file name for the web page, a chance to choose a title for the page to be created, and select whether audio recording is enabled.

The recording option gives students the opportunity to record and playback audio, so they can compare their voice to that of a fluent speaker's. It works on desktop computers and Android devices, but not yet on Apple mobile devices. This is because the industry still considers audio recording from a browser to be a security risk. There are draft W3C proposals in the works, however, so this restriction is likely to be relaxed in the near future. For now, we recommend that you leave the recording option disabled. For example, within the Android ACORNS player application, audio recording is always enabled.