Month: April 2007

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Question of the Week

Question: How Do I Prevent a Caption’s Timing from Changing When I Edit a Caption’s Content?
I’ve created projects with hundreds of captions. I’ve set up specific caption timing for every caption (for instance, one of my captions has been set to last for 7 seconds via the Timeline; another is set to 8 seconds, etc., etc.).
Here’s my problem/question/heartache: Every time I edit my captions, the timing changes! What the heck??? This is making me crazy! Help!!!!
Answer:  Turn off Captivate’s ability to calculate a caption’s timing

Choose Options > Calculate Caption Timing and turn the command off (there should not be a check mark next to the command).
Why? Depending on how you look at the world, the Calculate Caption Timing feature is one of those "glass half empty, half full" kind of commands. With the command turned on, Captivate will automatically calculate how long a caption will stay on a slide based on the number of characters contained in the caption. That’s a glass half-full kind of thing–you don’t have to worry about the timing. However, if you specify caption timing on the Timeline and then change a caption’s content, you will inadvertently reset your specified time to Captivate’s calculated caption timing. That’s a glass half-empty kind of thing–and you’ll have to reset the caption’s timing via the Timeline or through the caption’s Option properties.
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Adobe InDesign CS 2: Tracking and Kerning Text

The goal of many desktop publishers is professional-looking and readable typography. To help you reach this goal, InDesign comes with tools to ensure the best visual spacing between words and characters in your layout. To achieve the best results possible, you can use tracking, kerning and variable character spacing. Rather than decide on word spacing and hyphenation on a line-by-line basis, the InDesign looks ahead and behind several lines to make good line-break decisions across the whole paragraph.
Tracking is the process of loosening or tightening the spacing of a selected text. Kerning is the process of adding or subtracting space between two specific characters. Tracking and kerning are both measured in 1/1000 em, a unit of measure that is relative to the current type size. In a 6-point font, 1 em equals 6 points; in a 10-point font, 1 em equals 10 points.
Follow these steps to track large text in your InDesign documents:
  1. Create an InDesign document and type a few words
  2. Select the Text you just typed with the Text Tool
  3. On the Control palette, change the font to Times New Roman and the Font Size to 84
  4. Ensure the text you just formatted is still selected
  5. Find the Tracking area on the Control palette
  6. Type -10 into the Tracking area and press [return]

    Tracking in InDesign CS 2

    The selected text should now be closer together.

  7. With the text still selected, press the following keyboard shortcuts to change the tracking:

    Decrease 20 thousandths em space: [alt] [left arrow key]

    Increase 20 thousandths em space: [alt] [right arrow key]

    Decrease 100 thousandths em space: [alt] [command] [left arrow key]

    Increase 100 thousandths em space: [alt] [command] [right arrow key]

Follow the same steps to track individual letters, except don’t highlight anything. Instead, click between letter pairs to change the spacing between them.

Want to learn more about InDesign, click here. Want to test drive some 100% interactive InDesign simulations? Click here.
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RoboHelp 6 HTML: Creating Hyperlinks and Editing Hyperlink Colors

Hyperlinks give users of your Help system the ability to easily jump from one Help topic to another. After you have added the links and compiled the Help project, your users typically will see the linked topic as blue, underlined text. Clicking the linked text will take the user to a predetermined destination set up by you.
Two types of links are available in RoboHelp HTML: Hyperlinks, which can link to text files, AVI files, PDF files, graphics or URLs and FTPs on the Internet; and Popups, which open a different type of window. (Usually, popup links are good for definitions or glossary terms.)
Follow these steps and you will learn how to add links to your topics.
  1. Open a topic
  2. Highlight a word or phrase intended to be the hyperlink
    and click the Insert HyperLink tool on the Objects toolbar

    The RoboHelp HTML 6 Linking tool

  3. Select a Destination topic from the Select destination (file or URL) area

    Select destination (file or URL) area

  4. Click OK
As mentioned above, the resulting link will appear as blue and underlined, which is fine. But what if you’d like your links to be green without an underline?
Follow these steps and you will learn how to change the color of your project links via a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS).
Note: These steps assume you are using a CSS file on your topics.
  1. Open the Style Sheets folder on the Project pane
  2. Double-click CSS file
  3. Scroll down in the list of styles and select Hyperlink (Unvisited)

    This is the color of a link before your user has clicked it.

  4. Click Modify
  5. Click Format and choose Font
  6. Select any Font color you like   
  7. Click OK
  8. Click OK again
  9. Click Close

Follow the same steps to modify the Hyperlink (visited) color, which is the color of a link after your user has clicked it.

Want to learn more about RoboHelp HTML 6? Click here. Want to try some free RoboHelp simulations? Click here.
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Adobe Captivate 2 Files: How Big is Too Big?

When it comes to producing Captivate projects, I’m frequently asked: "How big is too big?" People who ask this question are referring to the physical size of the project, the number of slides and the .CP file size, not the size of the screen capture area.

There are three numbers to think about with every Captivate project: the size of the production file (name.cp) in megabytes, and the size of the published file (typically that’s a .SWF file) in megabytes, and the number of slides in the finished project.

Should you be more concerned with the number of slides in a project, or the megabytes your project occupies on your hard drive? I’m not worried about either. I’m most concerned with the size of the resulting SWF file when you publish the project, in megabytes, and how long it will take a user to complete your lesson.
I’ve come across projects that are in excess of 250 slides. Wow, that’s big! I think 250 slides in any one project is 100 slides too many. In truth, there isn’t a limit to how big your Captivate project’s can be. When it comes to project size, you’re limited only by the size of your hard drive. However, projects with an excessive number of slides can result in any of the following problems:
  • Slow PC performance
  • Slow previewing (when you preview the project, all of the slides are generated and larger slide counts simply take longer to generate than lower slide counts)
  • Increased chance of the project becoming corrupt
  • Increased publishing time
  • Increased upload time (especially when uploading content into an LMS)
Keep the following in mind when it comes to the size of your Published SWF’s:
  • A SWF will not play until 60% has been downloaded to your users’ computer. Internet connections being equal (I know they’re not, but let’s pretend), it just makes sense that the smaller the final SWF, the faster the SWF download will be.
  • Shorter lessons are better for busy adult learners. If your lesson take 15 minutes or less to complete, learners will be encouraged to take more lessons.

Here’s how you can lower the size of your Published SWF:

  • Keep audio use to a minimum (use it only if necessary)
  • Keep Animation use to a minimum (I’m talking about importing SWFs and using unnecessary Fade In and Fade Out effects on images, captions and text entry areas)
  • Set the slide quality to Standard if possible (Right-click a slide and choose Properties. Optimized, JPEG, or High Quality can increase file size.)
  • Lower the Frames per second: Choose Project > Preferences > Preferences. The default Frames per second is 30, but lowering it to 20 typically works well and could save you significant SWF size)

What can result in Project Bloat?

  • Unused Backgrounds
  • Unused Audio
  • Unused Animation
  • Unused Images (Use the Library’s Select Unused Items tool and delete anything not being used.)
What’s an ideal slide count?
We try to keep our projects under 150 slides. 70-90 slides are ideal.
Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here. Want to test drive some Captivate simulations? Click here.