Brain 4

This article relates to Brain 4. For other version of brain, see: Brain.

What is Brain 4?

Brain 4 is ICOM's first ActionScript 3 (AS3) course brain. It has more features and capabilities than the AS2 brain products, and is the only version supportable in Adobe CC or above. It is in active development, and slated for developer beta release in the fall.

What makes Brain 4 different than Brain 2 or 3?

Brain 4 is developed in AS3

This means that:

  • We can develop content for it in versions of Adobe software after CS6.
  • Our content should run faster and more reliably than older AS2 content.
  • Content we create for Brain 4 will be able to be leveraged in Adobe's tools that output AS3 content as HTML5 content. Note: code is not automatically converted, but gives us lots of options when we start building HTML5 content.
  • Brain 4 was developed using OOP (object oriented programming), which has a host of benefits from performance to code readability, etc.
  • Brain is undergoing industry standard code testing methods, so we should run into less brain related bugs, they should be easier to squash when we do find them, and they should never return once we've solved them.

Brain 4 is developed by a team, not an individual

This means more eyes and hands on the code, more people to support and maintain the code, and less chance that development / maintenance will be affected when someone is away.

Brain 4 fixes a lot of problems that exist/ed in older Brains

Many issues we run across throughout a course's life cycle are related to things that happen in Brain, or due to the tools related to Brain. As we've all had to struggle through them, we're resolving as many as we can and this should lead to a smoother course design/development/deployment.

Brain 4 adds a host of new features to our courses

Brain 4 introduces many new features that have been requested over the years. We'll discuss the specifics here: Brain 4 Features, but examples are truly non-linear courses and purely video (flv/f4v) based lessons.

Brain is developed for developers

Every decision made during the development of Brain 4 has been made with developers in mind. If you're a developer new to Brain 4 course development, check out: Brain 4 Developer Documentation.