September 2007 – Page 2 – The Logical Blog

September 9, 2007

Link of the Week

Adobe Announces Full Motion Recording (FMR) Editor for Adobe Captivate 3

The Adobe Captivate Full Motion Recording (FMR) editor is a tool that lets you edit a movie recorded using the Full Motion Recording feature of Adobe Captivate 3.

You can use the FMR Editor to do the following:

Delete frames from an FMR SWF
Insert one FMR SWF into another
Split a SWF into two parts
Preview and play the SWF being edited

Note: You can only use Adobe Captivate FMR editor to edit FMR SWFs created using Adobe Captivate 3.

For information about the Full Motion Recording (FMR) Editor, click here.

September 9, 2007

Writing and Grammar: You can Lead or Be Led. Either Way, You Gotta Get the Lead Out…

Led/Lead/Leading/Leading

When I told a copyeditor I had a request to write about these words, she did a little victory dance involving that John Travolta pointing a finger skyward thing saying, yes, yes, people get that wrong all the time. And it’s no wonder they do, since we have two words that sound alike but are spelled differently, and two words that are spelled alike but sound different.

Between them, "Led, Lead, Leading, and Leading" have three different meanings that are often confused. And to top it all off, these words have other meanings that typically are not confusing at all.

Let’s lead off with (sorry, couldn’t resist) the verb "to lead," pronounced "leed" and meaning to show the way by going ahead of others. In the present and future tenses, it is spelled with the a: I lead the way, he leads the way, and tomorrow they will lead the way. The -ing form of this verb is "leading" (pronounced "leeding"), as in she is leading the way. In the past tenses this verb is spelled "led" and rhymes with "bed": Yesterday he led the way, and he has often led the way.

Now let’s look at the noun "lead," spelled with an a, rhyming with the word "head," and meaning a type of metal, as in she wore a lead shield during the x-ray. It also means the marking material inside a pencil. And it also means the narrow chunk of metal that used to be inserted between lines of metal type to create line spacing. The process of putting that chunk of metal in used to be called "leading," pronounced like "heading." Today we use the word "leading" to describe the space between the lines, or the baseline-to-baseline distance, in typography.

Here are a couple memory-aid sentences that may lead to clarity on this issue: What led you to place so much leading between the heading and the text? That may lead the designer to want to fill you full of lead!

Now how did that victory dance go?

by Jennie Ruby

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing. You can reach Jennie at Jenruby@aol.com

Want help with a grammar issue? Email us your troubles and we’ll turn Jennie loose!

September 5, 2007

Questions of the Week…

Question About Creating Hyperlinks in Adobe Captivate

I have created some CBT training using Adobe Captivate 1. Some of the modules contain references to other modules because they contain related information. Some of the users have asked if hyperlinks can be embedded within a module that will take them to the referenced module (or in another case, to a referenced website). I have checked the Help and training materials, but don’t see anything on hyperlinks. What do you say on the subject, Kevin?

Answer:

Any interactive object (Click Box, Button, or Text Entry Box) in Captivate can result in a hyperlink to a Web site, e-mail address, another Captivate slide in the same project or another Captivate project all together.

For instance, here’s how to create a link to a Web site via a Click Box in Captivate versions 1-3:

Choose Insert > Click Box
On the Click Box tab, select Open URL or file from the On success area
Type a Web address in the URL area

Web Address in Captivate Click Box URL

Click the black triangle to the right of the URL you just typed and choose New (this option will force the link into a new browser window instead of replacing your movie with the Web site)
Click OK

Question About Controlling Audio Quality in Adobe Captivate

We have an on-going need to change sections or individual slides and relevant voiceover’s in movies. This presents a challenge when trying to splice into an existing movie and maintaining the same sound quality.

Due to our environment, using a professional sound recording studio is not an option. In addition, we need to produce the movies in two or three languages. Completing a full voice over each time is unrealistic.

How can we maintain a "reasonable" level of sound quality without a professional studio or completely re-recording the voiceover. I believe the use of quality microphones and recording equipment may aid our cause–it’s also where I’m stuck since I haven’t a clue about this area (either hardware or software). Can you help?

Answer

I’m not an audio expert, although I do play one on TV. In all seriousness, I take audio quality so serious for my customer’s that I always employ professional audio talent when creating audio files for my Captivate projects. However, I understand from reading your email that hiring audio talent is not an option and that you must create the audio yourself. Therefore, I’m going to rely on your fellow Captivate developers reading this newsletter to respond appropriately. If you have suggestions on the best way to maintain audio quality for Captivate audio files that you record yourself, please let me know. I’ll be happy to publish your responses here.

Got a question? Click here.

September 5, 2007

Adobe RoboHelp 6 HTML: PDF’ed About Adding PDF’s to Your TOC? Read On!

You can easily create hyperlinks to just about anything in your RoboHelp project by selecting some topic text (or an image) and choosing Insert > Hyperlink. But what if you want to link to an external file, such as a PDF. And what if you also want to add a link to the PDF directly to your TOC? There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to do that–until you read on…

Linking to external files

Open a topic and highlight the text or image you want to use for the hyperlink
Choose Insert > Hyperlink

The Hyperlink dialog opens.

Select File from the Link to drop down menu

Linking to an External File

Browse for the file you want to link to and click Open
Click OK
Click Yes when prompted and the file will be copied to your project’s Baggage Files folder.

Adding Links to Baggage Files to the TOC

Select the TOC Pane
Add a New Page to the TOC by choose File > New > Page
Give the new page an appropriate Page Title (in the example below, the new page has been given the name Link to a PDF)

Naming a TOC Page

Select Baggage file from the Link to drop down menu

Linking to Baggage File 1

Select the file you want to link to from the Baggage File drop down menu

Linking to Baggage File 2

Click OK

The page you created appears on the TOC.

Linking to Baggage File 3

When you Generate and View the project, the file you selected from Step 5 above will open if the TOC page is clicked.

Want to learn more about RoboHelp? Click here.

September 1, 2007

Adobe Captivate 3: e-Mailing Interaction and Quiz Results

I’ve gotten several emails from people who are absolutely frustrated by Captivate’s apparent inability to send interaction and quiz results via e-mail. Rest assured, you can get it to work. In the lesson that follows, I’ll show you how to successfully force Captivate to send user interaction and/or quiz results to any e-mail address.

But not so fast. Before teaching you how to get the e-mail feature to work, let me stress that while sending the results via the e-mail method will work, it is not an ideal process. For one thing, the e-mail you receive will contain less than perfect data. In fact, the data will need to be migrated into a ColdFusion or Access database before you will be able to effectively use it. In addition, the user can prevent the email from being sent to you–either intentionally or otherwise. And if the user is not using their own computer set up to send email, the email generated by Captivate isn’t going anywhere.

Instead of using the e-mail feature to collect user interaction in your Captivate project, I strongly recommend you use a Learning Management System (LMS) instead. An LMS tracks learner progress in your Captivate course. Even the weakest LMS can track quiz scores and interactivity. However, if you are dead-set on using the e-mail feature, read on…

Setup Adobe Captivate 3 to Send User Interaction via E-Mail

Assuming you have already inserted reportable Buttons, Click Boxes, Text Entry Boxes and/or Question Slides into your project, ensure that none of the objects are set to Send e-mail to from either the If the user clicks inside or the If the user clicks outside area
This is probably the biggest mistake people make when trying to e-mail interaction results. If you were to enable the e-mail feature for individual slide objects, you would potentially end up with dozens and dozens of emails per project. In fact, you should ensure that Send email to is NOT selected for any object or slide anywhere in your project until you get to the next step.
Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences
The Preferences dialog box will appear.
Select Reporting from the Quiz Category
Select Enable reporting for this project
Select E-mail and then type an appropriate e-mail recipient into the E-mail field
Select Attachment if you want the results to automatically be attached to the e-mail instead of imbedded into the body of the e-mail

Enable e-mail reporting in Captivate 3

Select Settings from the Quiz Category
From the Settings area, select Show score at end of quiz

The Show score at end of quiz option will add a results slide to the end of your project. The cool thing about this new slide is that there will automatically be a Send E-mail button on the slide.

Send e-mail button

If the user clicks the button, their e-mail application will start, an e-mail will be created (already addressed to the e-mail recipient you specified above) and the user can easily send the email.

Click OK to close the Preferences dialog box
Publish your project as a SWF (File > Publish) and test the Send E-mail button when you get to the end of the project
Note: If you intend to use the Send E-mail method, test the Send E-mail button from a Published SWF instead of a Preview. During my tests, the Send E-mail feature worked every time when tested via Published files. I noticed that the interaction data did not appear as an attachment when tested via a Preview. Instead, the interaction data was included within the Body Text of the e-mail.

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.