May 2008 – Page 2 – The Logical Blog

May 15, 2008

Questions of the Week

RoboHelp 7 Question: How Do I Get Topic Titles to Appear Instead of File Names

I am working through the Essentials of Adobe RoboHelp 7 HTML. On page 96, in the Link View section the image displays the title of the individual files and the linking structure. My computer is displaying the file names (which are a tad cryptic). How can I change this to display the title?

Answer

You are currently viewing the files by File Name. Choose View > By Topic Title and you should be all set.

RoboHelp 7 Question: How Can I Get Right-Clicking to Work on the Topic List Pod?

In chapter two, p. 45, or your Essentials of Adobe RoboHelp 7 HTML book, you mention that in the Topic List, topics should sort automatically. However, in my copy of Version 7, there is not File Name/Title at the top of the Topic List. Is there some way to turn this feature on? Also, I’m unable to right click on any of the topics in the Topic List. I know that it’s not a hardware feature because I’m able to right-click other areas in the application. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer

To show the details of the Topic List pod, choose View > Details View. Your inability to right-click is another matter. I tested the Topic List pod and I was able to right-click topics in either list or detail view. Upon playing a bit more, however, I noticed that if the pod is not tall enough, right-click functionality doesn’t work if you are in list view, but does work in detail view.

Captivate vs. Presenter Question: What’s the Difference?

Do you know of any written comparison of same or different features Captivate and Presenter? Our IT department is wanting us to try Presenter instead of Captivate saying it’s a better product. Frankly I’m just now getting decent with Captivate and not excited about switching products. Do you have any advice?

Answer:

The programs meet two entirely different needs. Adobe Presenter is used from within PowerPoint and allows you to basically create SCORM compliant presentations. Adobe Captivate allows you to create interactive software simulations.

Got a question you’d like answered? Email me.

May 12, 2008

Link of the Week

Free Training Video, Part 3: Adding FrameMaker books and Documents in RoboHelp

For the past two weeks, I’ve been telling you about free Technical Communication Suite training videos created by RJ Jácquez, Adobe’s Senior Product Evangelist. This week, I encourage you to complete RJ’s trilogy and watch Part 3, where you will learn about adding FrameMaker books and documents in RoboHelp as live links, and reusing FrameMaker content for creating Online Help systems, Searchable Knowledge bases, Performance Support systems and even Policies and Procedures.

Note: The video includes all exercise files needed for you to follow along with RJ.

Click here to watch the third video.

May 12, 2008

Grammar Workshop: Do I need a Comma There? The problem of the Optional Comma

by Jennie Ruby

The rules of grammar are quite specific about some things. You say she is, not she are, for example. But when it comes to the comma, the rules of grammar break into three parts: commas that are required, commas that are forbidden, and commas that are optional.

One of the optional commas is the comma before and or or in a list of three or more items. This optional comma is so well known that it has a name: the serial comma. Other optional commas are less well known. We’ll take a look at one of those as well.

Use of the serial comma is one of the first style decisions you must make in a piece of writing. Journalistic styles generally do not use that comma; science and technical styles do.

Journalism:

The conference today was attended by three candidates: Clinton, Obama and McCain.

Science/Technical:

The diagram illustrates examples of atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles.

Once you have made your style decision about the serial comma, you use or omit it consistently throughout your document. The same is true for one of the other optional commas: the comma after an introductory phrase describing time or place. The grammar rule is that the comma is optional after a short phrase of time or place, but required for a longer phrase. It is a style decision whether the cut-off is one, two, three, or four words. If your phrase has five words or more, the comma is required.

Short phrases of time or place:

In the morning I will walk the dog. (you could include a comma after the word morning)
In 2007, we introduced a new product. (comma optional)
After the severe tropical storm, the storm drains were flooded. (comma required)
After all, the roads were never meant for so much traffic. (comma required–this phrase is a transition, not about time or place!)

When the comma is optional, you should still make a consistent decision about whether you are going to use that optional comma in a particular document or publication. A student in one of my classes mentioned that her office decided to use the comma after In [year], but not after other short phrases of time or place. By making a clear style decision to use-or not use-an optional comma throughout a document, you spare yourself the agony of making an individual choice on each sentence. And your readers will have a more consistent reading experience.

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.

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

If you’d like to attend a grammar class with Jennie, check out her upcoming virtual class in the article above.

May 12, 2008

Question of the Week

Question: Why Don’t My Branches Jump Backwards

Ripppp!!!! That’s the sound of my hair being yanked out in bunches! Please help! I’ve created branches in my Captivate 3 project. The buttons that go to the next slide work great. The buttons that go back to a previous slide do not work at all. When I click those buttons, the slide seems to refresh, but that’s it! Help!!! Wrrrripppppp! Help!

Answer

Unhand your hair… the solution is probably very simple. First, is the misbehavior occurring when you preview the project? Does the branch work if you publish the project?

Response from the Questioner:

Arghhhhh! I just got your response to my email and published the project as you suggested. The darned branch works wonderfully! What the heck??? I swear that the branch didn’t work when I previewed the slides prior to publishing. I spent hours on this thinking there was a problem! Rip, rip, rip! (One hair left.)

Dear Mr. Uni Hair:

You are not the first person to run into this. If you have a button on slide 10 that branches back to slide 5, but you only preview from slide 10, the button won’t be able to jump back to slide 5 since you didn’t include slide 5 in the preview. While previewing a few slides at a time is a great development strategy, keep in mind that branches may not appear to work unless you preview all of the slides in the branch.

Now, may I suggest Rogaine?

Got a question you’d like answered? Email me.

May 7, 2008

Questions of the Week

Two Questions: How Can I Lower My Captivate Published EXE Size and Can I Include the F-Keys in a Simulation?

We have a client that has some unique needs (including the need to have an active F11 key in the simulation, but wanting the learner to use their keyboard only for all entries).

We published the simulation as an EXE. This resolved the key stroke (F11) issue, but has created another issue. This same client as a maximum 500KB file size requirement due to bandwidth issues. We typically meet this by breaking our simulations up and linking them together (this keeps the individual file size down enough to meet the requirement).

However, when we publish EXEs, our files grow incredibly large. Our developer tested publishing a simulation with just a few slides–the final file size was just over 1MB–which exceeds the size requirements. Any ideas?

Answer

When you publish an EXE file, the Flash Player (required for your users to view the SWFs you publish) is included in the EXE. The player occupies around 800KB, which is why your EXEs are large, even if you only have one slide in the project. As far as I know, there is no way to prevent the Flash Player from being bundled when you publish an EXE, and therefore no way to reduce the size of an EXE to 500KB or less.

Given your size limation 500KB (which I feel is unreasonably low… even users with slow, 56K modems can work with a download smaller than a few megabytes), you’ll end up having to publish SWFs instead of EXEs. Understanding the problems you are having with the F-keys, I can only say that the F-keys have long been a source of frustration for many Captivate developers. Since browsers (such as Internet Explorer) reserve the F-keys, you shouldn’t include them as object shortcuts in your Captivate projects if you can avoid it.

If you must include the F-keys, it is possible to create a JavaScript in the HTML files that accompany your published SWFs. The JavaScript would, in theory, override the browser’s use of the F-keys (I have not tested the results so cannot make any warranties).

Here are some links with discussions about the subject:

Question: What’s the Best Microphone for Audio Recordings?

What specific advice can you give about the kind of microphone to purchase for making good quality audio narrations to accompany my Captivate training sessions, minimizing echo and other audio problems? It needs to connect to my Dell laptop PC.

I would prefer the versatility of a standalone microphone on a stand that could sit on my desk, rather than a microphone built into a headset. I had in mind trying to limit the cost to around $100, but if that isn’t reasonable please tell me.

The two main questions that come to mind are:

Which connection to my PC is going to provide the best audio quality (or at least minimize any reduction in audio quality) — USB; the microphone jack; 802.11 wireless; Bluetooth?
Is there a specific microphone technology, or some common microphone buzzwords, I should look for? Or something specific I should avoid?

Answer

Excellent question! I prefer boom microphones build into the headset since I think the boom keeps your mouth a consistent distance from the microphone. However, audio and the related hardware and software is not my expertise. When it comes to audio, I rely on a team of professionals to create audio files that my clients will love.

I’m going to open your question up to your fellow readers. If anyone has some advice on microphones, please send me your comments. I’ll be happy to post any comments here in a future edition of the newsletter.

May 7, 2008

Grammar Workshop: Old King Cole

by Jennie Ruby

Ring, ring. "Hello."

"May I speak to Jennie?"

"This is she."

This is one of the rare cases in which American speakers of English get the case of a pronoun following a linking verb right. This is she. In other situations that you will hear probably ten times a day we get the pronoun wrong:

That’s him! (The apostrophe-s stands for is, and the pronoun should be he.)
Don’t worry, it’s just us. (Should be we.)
Hello, it’s me. (Should be I.)

In fact, when someone uses the pronoun correctly after a linking verb, we think it sounds funny. (That’s funny peculiar; not funny ha, ha.) Here are some correct examples:

It is I. (Or as one of the three Musketeers might say, ‘Tis I!)
The winners are we.

Linking verbs are non-action verbs, and the ones that cause the most trouble with pronouns are forms of the verb to be: is, are, was, were, will be, has been, and so on through the various tenses. When a pronoun follows one of these verbs, it should have the same case form it would have if it were in front of the verb. (Case forms are the different spellings of pronouns depending on the role they are playing in the sentence, for example, he as a subject versus him as an object.) A perfect memory aid for the correct case form with the verb to be is the old children’s rhyme "Old King Cole."

Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he.

In other words, he was … and was he. The pronoun he is in the subject case form both when it precedes the verb and when it follows the verb. When you use a pronoun after the verb to be, make sure to remember Old King Cole, and use the subject form of the pronoun.

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

If you’d like to attend a grammar class with Jennie, check out her upcoming virtual class in the article above.

May 7, 2008

FrameMaker: Making Quick Work of Wide Tables

by Barbara Binder

Problem: You import a series of data tables into FrameMaker and they are a big mess, extending off the right side of the paper’s edge. Can we make quick work of the cleanup? Sure!

Table 1

Solution: Use the Resize Columns dialog box wisely.

Begin by selecting all of the table’s cells, even those you can’t see, with Edit > Select All of Table
Apply the CellBody paragraph format (press F9, then tap the letter "c" until the CellBody format appears in the lower left corner of the status bar, then press Enter)
Select the body cells of the first column, which is usually the widest column in a data table
Resize to the width of the selected cell’s content
Select all of the remaining body cells in the table
Resize the columns to equal widths by choosing Table > Resize Columns and selecting To Equal Widths Totaling

Table 2

With the remaining body rows selected, just use the sizing handle to distribute the rows all the way across to the right margin

Table 3

Voila!

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and was recently recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide for 2007. Barb will be your trainer for next month’s Adobe FrameMaker 8 virtual class.

May 7, 2008

The Trouble With “Next” and “Previous”

by Quinn McDonald

WordPress does it, and so does Yahoo. So I’ll have to adjust. It’s counterintuitive for me, though, and I think the people who live in this time-warp live in a non-time-based world.

Here’s what I’m talking about: When I’m moving through posts and emails, I think of "next" as those more recent than the page I am on, and "previous" as those earlier in time. So, for me, my next email will come soon, and my previous post was yesterday’s.

Not so with WordPress and Yahoo indexes. If I have moved backwards into March’s posts, clicking on "next" moves me further back, into Februrary’s posts. Clicking on "previous" means the previous page, pushing me into the future, into April’s posts.

The reason, I suppose, is that "next" and "previous" don’t refer to the time the posts were written, but placement in a list–which page they are on. To me, this means that the coders or IT developers are not thinking of how their audience uses the software, but how they see it. A programmer sees information on pages, and the placement of the pages themselves are important. Most users, I would guess, see the date and time they wrote it as important, or perhaps the content, which doesn’t come up as an issue at all.

If you are looking for a post, or a check, or a file on your computer, and you can’t use content as a locater, you will use the date you wrote it, often in conjunction with other dates or events.

"Let’s see, I wrote that right after I saw the movie Atonement, but before we painted the kitchen," is a time statement. I can’t imagine someone saying, "I stored that on the third page back from the beginning," because that isn’t a set place. The more posts you add, the farther back the posts slip.

It’s an information design question, and the user-friendly ones will stay time-based. We can use the arrows to move to the last page seen, but "previous" should retain the meaning it’s always had–"before this moment in time."

About the Author:Quinn McDonald is a writer and nationally-known speaker who has achieved the "Professional" designation from the National Speakers Association. Contact Quinn through her website, QuinnCreative.com.

May 7, 2008

Links of the Week

Free Training Video Part 2: Getting Started with Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite

Last week I told you about the Technical Communication Suite training video created by RJ Jácquez, Adobe’s Senior Product Evangelist. That video introduced you to the power of Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite. If you had a chance to watch the video, I think you’ll agree that it was very informative.

The world loves a sequel… and RJ has created a second training video for the Technical Communication Suite. In Part 2, you will learn how to supplement your technical and instructional design documents with engaging Adobe Captivate demonstrations, simulations and quizzes in the Flash format using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

Note: The video includes all exercise files needed for you to follow along with RJ.

Click here to watch the video.

May 4, 2008

Adobe Captivate: Custom Bullets in Text Captions Made Easy

When inserting a text caption in Adobe Captivate 3, you can add bullets to selected text simply enough by clicking the Bullets tool.

Bullets tool in Adobe Captivate 3

Of course, if you use the Bullets tool, you’ll quickly realize that the tool is a bit limited. If you only want standard (round) bullets, this is the tool for you. But let’s pretend for a moment that you’re feeling a bit frisky. So frisky in fact, that you’d like to use a wacky bullet symbol like a happy face, a sad face, thumbs up… thumbs down. Whatever. Hmmmm… given that the Bullets tool only returns standard bullets, what’s a Captivate developer to do? Read on.

While Captivate’s bulleting ability is limited, you can export your project’s text captions to Microsoft Word, apply a custom character bullet in Word and then perform a round- trip back into Captivate. Once the round-trip is complete, you’ll find that the custom character formatting used on the bullets is retained. Nice!

To Export Your Captivate Captions to Word:

Open a Captivate project
Choose File > Export > Project Captions and Closed Captions
Name the resulting document and specify a save destination; then click Save
You will be notified when the captions have been exported.
Click Yes to view the Word document
The captions will open in a Word table. There will be five columns: Slide ID, Item ID, Original Text Caption Data, Updated Text Caption Data and Slide. You can make any changes you want to the Updated Text Caption Data, but you should not change any of the other information. The Slide ID identifies which slide your edited captions go to. The Item ID identifies which caption goes with which caption data.

To Apply a Custom Bullet Character in Word

Select text in the Updated Text Caption Data column
Choose Format > Bullets and Numbering
On the Bulleted tab, click the Customize button
On the Customize Bulleted List dialog box, click the Character button
Select any Font you like from the Font drop-down menu and then select any symbol you like (in the example below, the happy face Wingding symbol was selected)
Click OK
Click OK
Save the Word document and then close it

To Import The Captions from Word Back into Captivate:

Back in Captivate, choose File > Import > Project Captions and Closed captions
Find and open the document you edited in Word

A dialog box will appear confirming the number of captions that were imported. And that’s that.

Custom Bullets imported

Got a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.