Efofex News

Introducing FX Online!

It is with nervous excitement that we are announcing the inclusion of a totally new tool into FX Draw Tools. Introducing FX Online!

FX Online is a turbo-charged version of FX Draw that is solely focused on the design, uploading and hosting of mathematically aware web lesson sets. FX Online brings the power and familiarity of FX Draw to web-based materials. Here’s an example of a web page from an FX Online lesson set where I have displayed half of the solution.

Anything you can draw in FX Draw, you can now publish to the web with FX Online. FX Online is, however, much more than FX Draw. We have added interactive, web-based features that allow you to create more dynamic web experiences – with much more to come.

Importantly, you don’t need to be a web design expert or understand the vagaries of the Internet. If you have used FX Draw in the past, you are already most of the way to designing and hosting your first lesson set.

FX Online will be included at no extra charge in your FX Draw Tools subscription. There are a few small caveats but for most people, FX Online is a bonus.

Samples

Take a look at this small collection of web lesson sets that we have designed to demonstrate some of the power of the new tool. All of these have been created in FX Online and uploaded to the web at the push of a button. They will give you a quick introduction to some of FX Online’s capabilities.

Introduction to FX Online

Spiralling Triangles

Introduction to Trigonometry

Congruent Halves

The final two lesson sets show how you can create two (or three) different versions of the same material with or without solutions – all from the one file.

Year 10 Test with Solutions

Year 10 Test without Solutions

So Why Are We Nervous?

We are releasing the beta version FX Online earlier than we would really like as it is so applicable to teachers trying to teach students remotely. Had the current crisis not occurred we probably would be announcing this in a few months.

What’s missing is comprehensive training materials, speed enhancements, final testing and some of the nifty new features we have planned. We have decided that, at the moment, a tool that does most of what we intended is better than no tool at all.

What you can expect is a flurry of new materials and updates over the next few months. We have hundreds of things planned for FX Online that will enhance its already huge set of capabilities.

What we can promise is that anything you create now, will be editable in newer versions. As we add new features, you will be able to go back and make your lesson sets even better.

Download Now

The FX Online beta has been added to the latest download. Visit out Downloads Page and start exploring now!

FX Draw allows you to scale selected figures by moving the scale handle.

The latest version of FX Draw allows you to create scaled or translated copies of a figure. To access this feature RIGHT-CLICK on the scale handle.

FX Draw allows you to rotate selected figures by moving the rotate handle.

The latest version of FX Draw allows you to create rotated copies of a figure. To access this feature RIGHT-CLICK on the rotate handle.

Enter the number of copies you want to create and how much to rotate between copies. Then press OK. FX Draw will create the copies, rotate them (centred around the centre of rotation you set) and add them to your canvas.

The latest release of FX Draw adds a movable centre of rotation/scaling.

Previous versions of FX Draw could rotate and scale figures but used a fixed centre of rotation/scaling. The latest release allows you to move the centre to suit your needs.

We have added a new feature to FX Stat and the statistics tool in FX Draw that makes it easier to work with bivariate data.

If you select two columns of data in FX Stat and right click, you will be offered a new option: Copy As Points

If you select Copy as Points, the data will be placed onto your clipboard as a list of ordered pairs (points) that can then be pasted into Word or any other container application.

(31,47.7) (27.8,37.2) (47.5,56.2) (48.2,58.9) (47.1,55.1) (50.1,61.8) (49.7,58.1) (47.4,62.7) (43.4,50) (45.1,51.9)

As noted in our news article from November 2019, Mac OSX Catalina requires that downloaded programs are “notarised” by Apple before they can be run without security notifications. Efofex now provides notarised applications in our downloads so our products should be easily accessed on the new MacOS. Mac users should download the new versions as soon as practical.

We believe that we have managed to organise notarisation our products without breaking compatibility for users using older Macs.

If you are one of the teachers being impacted by the OneNote issue we discussed in May, we have some good news for you from Microsoft.

After a lot of pressure from customers who prefer the OneNote desktop interface, Microsoft have decided to continue developing and supporting the desktop version of OneNote.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Your-OneNote/ba-p/954922

This means that you will very quickly be able to approach your IT staff and ask that the desktop version of OneNote be reinstalled on your computer.

While we have still not been able to get Microsoft to address the pasting issue in the app version of OneNote (despite many approaches), this news will permit teachers to go back to the version that they overwhelmingly prefer (and not just because of our products!).

Just in case you do not know the difference between the two versions, the desktop version has tabs across the top and a list of pages in the current tab down the side.

The app version, which is very similar to the online, web-based version, has the “tabs” and pages on the left.

Microsoft has tried to standardize on the app version but has experienced significant push-back from customers who dislike the new user interface for lots of varied reasons. This blog post means that Microsoft is listening to customers!