Month: January 2007

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English Grammar: Vexed About Verbals?

Verbals are words that are derived from verbs but function as another part of speech. We have three types of verbals in our language: participles, infinitives, and gerunds.

Participle: adjective. Ends in –ing in the present (walking, running) and in –ed or an irregular ending in the past participle (walked, run).

Infinitive: noun, adjective, or adverb. The word to precedes the dictionary form (to walk, to run).

Gerund: noun. Always ends in an –ing (walking, running).

Since both participles and gerunds can end in – ing, you have to know whether the verbal is functioning as a noun or as an adjective.

Examples of Verbals

  • Her shopping spree got her in serious financial trouble. (Shopping is a participle because it is functioning as an adjective modifying the noun spree.)
  • Shopping is Samantha’s favorite pastime. (Shopping is a gerund because it is functioning as the subject of the sentence; therefore, it is a noun.)
  • Samantha loves to shop. (To shop is an infinitive because the verb shop is preceded by the word to. The infinitive is functioning as a direct object; therefore, it is a noun.)

Want to learn more? Click here.

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Flash 8 Basic: What’s a Vector, Victor?

Flash uses two primary types of graphics—vector graphics and raster (bitmap) graphics. Although Flash is primarily a vector-based tool, sometimes one image type is better than the other.

Raster graphics include the Windows Bitmap format (BMP) as well as JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, PICT and others. Raster graphics use pixels to determine the location type of each piece of color information. While bitmap images are great for high quality images, such as photographs, they can be very large (in file size), which can be problematic when used on Web pages. If not compressed, a large bitmap can take forever to download on the Web. A solution to the large bitmap file size is compression. But bitmap images tend to lose quality when scaled to a higher size.

Vector images use mathematical values to reproduce the appropriate display and can, therefore, be scaled without distortion. As a result, the file size of vector images such as EPS, Adobe Illustrator (AI), Macromedia Freehand (FH8 or FH9) and others are significantly smaller than bitmaps. Unfortunately, vector images can be demanding of a computer’s processor and generally do not reproduce high-quality details without a significantly larger file size.

Click here to learn more about Flash Basic 8.

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Adobe RoboHelp 6 HTML: Pick Your Shots

RoboHelp 6 HTML now ships with a tool called RoboScreenCapture. The new tool, which can be accessed via the Tools panel, allows you to capture screen shots just like programs such as SnagIt and FullShot. (The big benefit to using RoboScreenCapture is that you won’t have to buy those other tools.)

Here are some of the features you will find in RoboScreenCapture:

  • Quickly capture your screen in 10 efficient modes, including Free Hand, Virtual Screen, and Multi-Region
  • Easily capture screens with an easy drop-down menu, assign your own keyboard shortcuts, and even control RoboScreenCapture with voice commands
  • Easily capture those difficult-to-grab screens such as DirectX, Direct3D, 3Dfx, Voodoo, and Glide mode games
  • Capture more than is visible on the screen, such as long Web pages
  • Save your screen capture in over 20 image formats
  • Have screen captures automatically saved to graphics files
  • Quickly add image stamps, frames, drop shadows, and more
  • Change image colors, flip or rotate images, and crop images to a smaller size
  • Add identifying stamps to each screen capture, such as a company name or logo
  • Call-out specific areas of your capture with shapes, shadow effects, etc.

Here’s how you can use RoboScreenCapture to capture an image to the clipboard and paste it into a RoboHelp 6 project.

  1. Double-click RoboScreenCapture to start the program
  2. Choose Capture > Capture Settings
  3. Select the Copy & Print tab
  4. Select Copy each capture to Clipboard
  5. Choose Options > Configure Hot Keys
  6. Notice that [Ctrl] [Shift] [W] is the application default for pulling a screen shot
  7. Click Close
  8. Minimize RoboScreenCapture and start the program you want to capture
  9. Press [Ctrl] [Shift] [W] to start RoboScreenCapture
  10. Point at the window you want to capture and click one time

    The captured window appears in the RoboScreenCapture editing area, and the capture is on your clipboard.

  11. Close RoboScreenCapture
  12. Back in RoboHelp, open a topic
  13. Click where you want the image to appear
  14. Choose Edit > Paste

    The screen shot you created appears in the topic.

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Adobe Captivate 2: When Good Files Go Bad

I’m a big fan of backing up my Captivate projects. Since drive space is truly infinite, and hard drives are inexpensive, save your work every few minutes and backup to a network drive every day. You might also want to consider saving your Captivate projects with different names (v1, v2, v3, etc.) as you reach milestones in your project. For instance, if I’m about to delete hidden slides, I give the project a new version number. I can always import the deleted slides into the newer version should I need them.

Any file created with any program can become corrupt. That’s a simple fact of life. When a Captivate project becomes corrupt, it typically will not open. How can Captivate projects become corrupt? Here’s the short list:

  • Editing a project on a network drive. (You should do all of your work on your local hard drive and backup to the network drive.)
  • Closing Adobe Captivate improperly.
  • Using an older version of Adobe Captivate (for example, Macromedia Captivate 1.0).
  • Copying and pasting objects/slides in an older version of Adobe Captivate.
  • Using Adobe Captivate on a system that does not meet or exceed system requirements.
  • It’s a really, really bad day.

If your Captivate project becomes corrupt, the quickest thing to do is throw that corrupt file away and get a copy of the project from the network drive. If you haven’t been practicing “safe backup,” and your Captivate project becomes corrupt, you may still be able to rescue the project using the following techniques.

  • Upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Captivate and try to open the project.
  • Create a new blank project with the same dimensions as the original project.
  • In the new project, choose File > Import Slides/Objects from other Captivate projects
  • Browse to and import the corrupted project.

    If no slides show in the import dialog box, sorry to say but your project is beyond hope.

    If slides do show in the import dialog, click OK.

  • Once the slides have imported, save your project.

    You should now have an uncorrupted Adobe Captivate project.

    Note: You cannot import Question slides.

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Adobe/Macromedia Flash 8: Look Ma, Two Drawing Models…

There are two drawing models in Flash 8: Merge and Object. Depending on the model you select before you draw an object, Flash can behave in some unexpected ways when you attempt to select objects.

To switch between the two models, all you have to do is click the Object Drawing Tool on the Tools panel. If the tool is gray, you are in the Object Drawing Model. If not, you are in the Merge Model.

Regardless of the model you use (Object or Merge), shapes are usually drawn with the tools on the Tools panel. Remember the following when dealing with Shapes: (1) They can be edited within Flash unlike imported images. (2) In the Merge Model, strokes and fills are independent of each other, (something you will learn very, very soon); in the Object Model, shapes are instantly grouped. (3) In the Merge Model, overlapping objects of the same color will merge into one new object. That can be a bit of a rude awakening if you’re not ready for it. This seemingly bizarre behavior will not occur in the Object Model. (4) In the Merge Model, overlapping objects of different colors will be erased by the top object’s shape—not so in the Object Model. (5) Objects can be reshaped by dragging their edges in Merge Model; drag the edge of an object drawn in the Object Model and the object will resize.

If you Group two or more shapes drawn in the Merge Model, the group will look like the individual shapes, but will not have the individual shape properties. Most importantly, grouped shapes will no longer erase each other when overlapping, nor will they treat strokes and fills independently. Imported images and text (both of which we will look at later) are groups and can’t be edited with the tools on the Tools panel like Shapes can.

Want to learn more about Flash 8 Basic, click here.

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Adobe RoboHelp 6: Mark of the Web

RoboHelp fanatics rejoice, there’s a new version in town. Adobe announced RoboHelp 6 earlier today, and not a moment too soon.

Among the myriad improvements to RoboHelp you will find:

  • Improved Word Import Filter
  • RoboScreenCapture
  • Captivate 2 integration
  • Mark of the Web integration
  • Improved RoboHelp Server Publishing
  • Improved Conditional Build Tags
  • User Defined Variables

During the next several newsletters I’ll introduce you to all of the new features. In this issue, I’ll discuss the Mark of the Web.

Mark of the Web is a comment added to the HTML markup for a Web page. When a user opens the Web page from their local machine, Internet Explorer references this comment to determine the security zone in which it should run the page.

Available through the properties of a WebHelp, WebHelp Pro, FlashHelp and FlashHelp Pro layout (by right-clicking and choosing Properties), you would select this option if you didn’t want your output (saved on your machine) to get blocked by Internet explorer 6 and above when you viewed the output.

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Adobe Captivate 2: Do an “Edit with” End-around

One of the more useful features of Captivate 2 has been the Library panel.

If you have been playing with the Library, you will have noticed by now that it offers you the ability to easily open images and sound files in your favorite editing application. This is a really cool feature. But it’s just a bit lacking. What if you have more than a single image editor you like to use? You can seemingly only choose a single editor. Or can you? 😉

One of the really useful features Microsoft Windows provides, is the ability to create shortcuts inside folders that point to other folder locations and applications. You can use this to your definite advantage with Captivate and the library. Notice that when you first try this, the Edit item is disabled on the context menu and in the toolbar. So your only option is choosing Edit With… The default location that opens is C:\Program Files. So my favorite trick is to create Windows shortcuts to my favorite image editing applications in this folder. I personally bounce between good old Windows Paint, SnagIt and Fireworks. So I’ve created Windows shortcuts to each of these items. I labeled the shortcuts as follows:

  1. Paint
  2. SnagIt
  3. FireWorks

I labeled them this way so that they would naturally float to the top of the list when I view in Details mode. Next, copy the three shortcuts and visit each location where the applications are stored. Paste into each location. Then you will probably want to delete the shortcut that points to the application in the folder where you are. After all, it’s redundant.

From now on you will be able to choose Edit With and easily pick and choose the desired application!

by Rick Stone