Distance education and nontraditional classrooms have the capability to reach more students using specialised instruction, self-paced learning and virtual laboratories (and/or virtual instruments). While a good learning experience can be obtained from such a purely simulation systems, in many situations, it is commonly recognised that effective and complete learning, especially in engineering and science, requires a mixture of theoretical and practical sessions. This paper presents development work to design multimedia courseware: applied photonics. This courseware is based on: 1) multimedia document about the basic theory of applied photonics; 2) simulation and measurement supporting multimedia programme package able solving selected CAD and CAE problems in applied photonics. As special application of practical session web-based interactive fiber optic instrument is described in details.