Efofex News

Current versions of our products no longer upload copies of your graphics to our servers for backup. This should have no impact on your use of Efofex products. If you mostly use our products in Microsoft Word, you can safely ignore the rest of this post.

For the last decade, our products have been backing up your graphics to our servers (if possible). This was done for two reasons:

1. It provided a backup of your work.
2. It made it easier to use our products in a cross-platform way as it allowed for easier movement of graphics between Windows and Mac machines.

Over the last few years, this feature has become significantly less valuable for two reasons:

1. If you are using MultiDocs or Classic Mode in Word, your data is now stored within the document and does not require “backing up”.
2. School security policies have prevented the system from operating at all in many school situations.

As the feature is no longer central to our products, and was causing some issues in school situations, we have now decided to turn it off by default. For the vast majority of our users, this will have NO IMPACT on their use of our products and you are unlikely to even notice the change.

If your workflow still requires you to use the online backups, you can turn it on by choosing Preferences from the Tools menu and going to the Advanced tab.

Place a check mark in Allow Online Data Backup and the system will operate as it has in the past.

A high level root certificate has recently been revoked on Windows machines. This is an old certificate, so it does NOT affect any recent versions, but downloads of some old versions (specifically FX Draw 5) may not work on current computers. Efofex has no way of rectifying this issue as it is due to certificate from a certificating authority.

If you are a current subscriber, you can ignore this issue. Just make that you are using a reasonably up-to-date version. This issue only affects downloads which were released approximately 10 years ago.

If you still use one of the old, affected versions of our products (especially FX Draw 5), you may be forced to upgrade to a newer version.

We have recently recommenced work on our FX Library materials (which are designed to showcase the capabilities of our new MultiDocs technology) and started work on an interesting activity which we have decided to share early. As we were working on the activity, it proved to NOT be particularly suited to parametization but did develop in unexpected and interesting ways.

Semicircle Areas (Word document)

The activity is an interesting extension question for geometric series where students are asked to use their knowledge in an unusual way. If you are looking for an investigative activity for your higher-level students, this might be perfect!

As with all of our FX Library, the materials are provided with VERY generous copyright conditions. If you are using the activity in a school situation, you basically have free reign. Download away!

We recently included a new (and much simpler) way of using data parameters to draw statistical graphs. You can now use parameters in statistical graphs using formulas.

For example, if you create a data parameter using randnormal…

$p = randnormal(50,10,25)

This will create a data parameter containing 25 values which come from a normally distributed population with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10.

We can use this data parameter in a statistical graph by going to a cell in a column and right-clicking – then choosing Edit/Set Formula

The formula window will appear and we enter $p

The data in $p will fill column A and can then be used to draw a graph. The data will be updated every time we regenerate.

The release of MultiDocs has created a lot of excitement and many schools want to start using the new system to its fullest. This week we released a collection of new videos that can be used to get you and your staff up to speed on the new systems.

The full set of videos are a comprehensive look at the new features and are likely to go further than you initially need. We recommend that you start at the beginning and work your way through them at a pace that suits you.

To begin with, take a look at our Introduction to MultiDocs video. This gives you a quick overview of what it can do and how to get started.

Once you have the basic idea, we recommend that you look at basic parameters and the inline calculator.

Once you have mastered the basic processes, there are other videos available on Multiple Choice questions, statistical data, more advanced parameters as well as how to move a school to the new system. Visit the MultiDocs video training page for more details.

We have released a new build of FX Draw Tools, specifically for anyone using the MultiDocs toolset.

The main change is that we have added a new Efofex MultiDocs app. This is a one-click way of starting both FX Draw and FX Equation, ready for use in a MultiDoc. Not only is this faster than the old, manual startup process, it also allows us to setup Word, FX Draw and FX Equation specifically for use in MultiDocs. This eliminates most issues users were having making the change.

You can still use the MultiDocs Edition to edit Classic Mode graphics and equations. This is not a one-way change.

If you are a Mac user, you will only have the choice of the MultiDocs edition. There are few changes that will affect you regardless of how you use it. If you want to use MultiDocs, run the Efofex MultiDocs app. If you are not using Microsoft Word and, hence, MultiDocs, you can still start FX Draw and FX Equation from your App Launcher.

If you are a Windows user, you can choose to download the Classic Mode Edition which operates as it always has. If you wish to use MultiDocs on Word (which we STRONGLY recommend) download the new MultiDocs Edition.

Moving From Classic Mode to MultiDocs

Just a reminder, MultiDocs includes a tool to help you move Classic Mode documents over to the new system. Moving to MultiDocs has no downside.

WIth the release of our new MultiDocs Edition of FX Draw Tools, we are also publishing a number of MultiDocs training videos. These provide the equivalent of a face-to-face training session in video form.

So far we have released two videos:

Introduction to MultiDocs (18 minutes) – This provides a quick introduction to the concepts and processes behind MultiDocs. It is an ideal introduction to use with all of your teachers.

Moving Your School To MultiDocs From Classic Mode (13 minutes). This video helps you work out a manageable action plan to move your existing Classic Mode documents over to the new MultiDocs systems.

More videos coming soon!

The inline calculator has two new commands that calculator prime factors. The primefactors command returns a list of NUMBERS which you can access individually. The primefactorstring command creates a string that you can output directly.

{primefactorstring(75)} will produce…

whereas primefactors(75) will give you access to the individual prime factors which can be used in further calculations.

The full description of the commands can be found here:

PrimeFactorString Command
PrimeFactors Command

We have added table and grid commands to the our equation tool. These can be used in FX Equation and FX Draw’s equation tool.

The table and grid commands operate in identical ways – the only difference is tables have lines and grids do not.

Tables and grids can be nested within each other which creates a huge amount of flexibility in your layouts.

The table and grid commands are NOT intended to replace the full power of Word’s table editor but DO provide you with a lot of flexibility in how you format your output.

The full description of how to use tables and grids is available in our knowledge base.

Equation Table Command

FX Equation (and the equation tool in FX Draw) have a new Tally command that can be used to create graphics like this.

The command can be used in any equation and can be combined with parameters and/or tables to produce complicated output such as:

You can also use a second parameter with the tally command that limits how many groups are displayed on one line. For example the command tally(64,4) will produce this output.