February 2009 – The Logical Blog

Having been an avid and regular user of Adobe's Acrobat software for more than a dozen years, there are some tools on which I have grown very reliant.

Want to go to the next page? Click the right hand arrow on the toolbar and you're there.

Want to go to the previous page? Click its neighbor, the left arrow button.

Want to go to the last page of the document in a flash? Just click the right-most of the 4 page navigation buttons–the right arrow with the vertical line. WHOAH… if you're using Acrobat 9, you'll ask yourself, "Where did it go?" If you've used Acrobat in the past, you're not going crazy. That button had been there since the mid 1990s, but now it's GONE.

Looking closely, you'll see that Adobe has thrown you a bit of a triple-whammy here. Not only are you missing a last page button, but you will find that you are missing a first page button as well. Now comes the slam dunk… the next page button has changed its iconology completely and now is a DOWNWARD arrow. The previous page button is an UPWARD arrow.

No need to panic. When Adobe released Acrobat 8, they seemed to have favored a minimalist approach to toolbars. They did not remove any tools from Acrobat, but they sure did hide a bunch of them. The same philosophy seems to have been carried over to the new release, Acrobat 9 Professional.

Starting with the release of Acrobat 8, to see the full array of tools available on any toolbar, it was necessary to right-click a toolbar. This revealed a complete list of commands available on that toolbar. Commands with a checkmark were currently visible.

Those without a check were hidden, but one mouse click toggled the tool from hidden to visible. If you seem to be missing a toolbar entirely (such as the super-useful Advanced Editing toolbar), you only need to right-click in a blank spot of the tool bar area. A full list of available toolbars is shown–checkmarks indicate visible, no check means hidden. Click on a hidden one to add a checkmark & enable visibility.

Rather than going through each toolbar's right-click menu individually (a rather time-consuming and tedious chore), Adobe has given you a way of showing, hiding and customizing ALL of the Acrobat toolbars at the same time.

Choose Tools > Customize > Toolbars to open this terrific set of options. Any toolbar with a checkmark will be visible, and any tool with a checkmark will be visible on that toolbar.

If you miss a tool that you think Adobe removed from one Acrobat version to the next, simply right-click. Chances are that the tool you are looking for is available, waiting for you to make it visible.

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Want to learn more about Adobe Acrobat? Click here.

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David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. He is an Adobe-Certified Expert in Acrobat.

February 26, 2009

Adobe FrameMaker: It Wasn’t My Fault!

by Barbara Binder

I'm normally a happy Adobe FrameMaker user and instructor. FrameMaker 8 has been very trying for me, however. In my production work, and for the majority of my students, FrameMaker 8 didn't give much improvement on the unstructured side. It did, however, offer up a number of issues. The biggest issue for me was the Frame to PDF conversion. Initially it worked, and then it didn't.

Hours on the phone with Adobe's Technical support boiled down to: "There is something wrong with your computer. There is nothing wrong with our software." (And I heard the unspoken, 'There is something wrong with you.')

Every time I tried to create a PDF on my Vista system, FrameMaker would crash. On my last project, my Frame to PDF workflow morphed into:

Lay out the documents on the Vista system with the 24" monitor
Back up to a portable drive
Move the files to my XP system with a 15" monitor
Print each chapter (there were 50+) individually to .ps files (because any other technique would cause a crash)
Distill the PS files manually into PDFs
Use "Merge files into a Single PDF" command in Acrobat to put them back together in the right order, which required making my husband read the author names out loud (actually entertaining because they were mostly Cuban authors and he couldn't pronounce them)

Needless to say, I was a less-than-happy camper.

Recently I came across a link that changed everything. The link will take you to a July 2008 post on the Group Wellesely Wire, a BLOG put out by Group Wellesley.

Here is what the post said (credit here of course goes to Group Wellesley):

"Some users of FrameMaker on Windows XP and Vista (including myself) have been vexed by FrameMaker crashes while generating PDF files, and generated PDF files with missing text (not good). The problem appeared to be random, affecting some systems but not others, and some documents but not others.

"The workaround (until now) has been to delete the file 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\FNTCACHE.DAT' and reboot. Many FrameMaker users would delete this file regularly, and some did so automatically through a shutdown script.

"Mahesh Gupta, Product Manager for Adobe FrameMaker, reports that Microsoft has patched the underlying font management issues that have caused these problems. His post in the Adobe Technical Communication blog provides details of the Microsoft patch."

And there was much rejoicing among FrameMaker users!
No kidding! Just deleting "FNTCACHE.DAT" allowed me to generate my first PDF from Frame 8 on the Vista machine in months! Hurray!

Microsoft to the rescue. Who'd a thunk? Hats off to Alan Houser and the Group Wellesley team for BLOGGING about this maddening issue.

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Want to learn more about Adobe FrameMaker? Click here.

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About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers in the world.

February 26, 2009

Adobe Captivate 4: If You Draw It, They Will Come

by Kevin A. Siegel

For the first time in Captivate history, if you need to create objects such as lines (with or without arrow heads), circles, rectangles or complex shapes such as polygons, there is no need to leave Captivate. Now if you find yourself in need of an oval, you can create one using Captivate's Drawing Objects menu or Drawing toolbar to quickly add these kinds of objects to a slide.

Here's how you use the tools on the new Drawing toolbar:

Open or create a Captivate 4 project
Choose Window > Toolbars > Drawing

The Drawing toolbar will appear.
To draw a line, you need only select the Line tool and draw on the slide like you would in any graphics program
To add an arrowhead to the line, right-click the line and choose Properties. There are options on the Line tab to set the Line color, Stroke style, Stroke width and even areas for controlling the Start and End shape for the line (nice).
The slickest tool on the Drawing toolbar is likely the Freeform Polygon tool

Select the tool and draw any shape you can imagine (click, point, click, point and when you're ready to close the shape, double-click).

But here's the slick part: right-click the shape and you can choose Edit Points, allowing you to quickly reshape the object.

But wait, there's more: right-click the shape again and choose Add Text. And bam, you're basically talking about the ability to create custom text captions.

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Need to learn Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

Need to learn Adobe Captivate 4? Click here.

February 26, 2009

Questions of the Week

Adobe Captivate 4 Question: Can I Still Add a Drop-Down TOC?

I'm now using Adobe Captivate 4. When I was using Captivate 3, I was able to add a TOC that appeared on every slide (via the Skin). I know that the new TOC feature creates the same basic navigation as the old TOC, only much better and with many more options. However, I would prefer the same affect as the old TOC (where the TOC menu sat on the slide instead of off to the side). Can I do this in Captivate 4?

Answer

Yes. The TOC feature in Captivate 4 has two styles (via the Setting button in the lower left of the TOC panel): Overlay and Separate.

If you want a TOC similar to what you had in Captivate 3, you would use the Overlay style. I would recommend the Separate style since it is a bit more elegant (IMHO) than Overlay.

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Adobe Captivate 4 Question: When Is Your New Essentials Book Coming Out?

I've just upgraded to Adobe Captivate 4. I used your Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3 book to learn version 3. I was hoping you were going to release a version 4 book for beginners. Two questions: are you and, if so, when?

Answer

I'm actually writing two books for Captivate 4. My Adobe Captivate 4: The Essentials book went to the printer last week. I expect it to begin shipping this week. Those people who pre-ordered the book will be the first to get the book, and then orders for vendors such as amazon.com will be filled. The second book, Adobe Captivate 4: Beyond the Essentials, is expected to be ready no later than late April or early May.

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Adobe Captivate Question: Why Is That Audio Playing?

I am pulling my hair out, please help! I have created a project with audio in Captivate 3. The problem I'm having is that when I publish the project the audio from slide 34 plays when slide 3 is viewed. When I go back to the original file, it all plays exactly as recorded, the problem exists only when published. I also noticed that in the library the two slides I have a problem with are named "recording6." How can this be? Can you tell me how to fix this? I did try renaming the audio file, and that did not fix the issue, I have also tried renaming/saving and publishing, the same issue is present.

Answer:

You probably have the audio attached to something else on the slide. Choose Audio > Advanced Audio. At the bottom left, select Show Object Level Audio. Check and see if slide objects are using the mysterious audio… I'm betting yes.

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Adobe RoboHelp Question: How Can I Get the Previous and Next Buttons to Work?

The Previous and Next buttons don't function in any way that I could find. How do I get them to work?

Answer:

I believe you are referring to the browse sequence buttons (the arrows above the TOC). If so, you'll need to create a browse sequence that mirrors your TOC for the arrows to work in any meaningful way.

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

February 18, 2009

Adobe Captivate 4: Are Your Bits Certified?

by Kevin A. Siegel

My trusty laptop recently began showing signs of decline (it's not as fast as it used to be, and it freezes more than I can tolerate). So off I went to the Sony Style store to pick up a new laptop.

As you would expect, there was plenty of inventory at the Sony Style store to consider. I've purchased hundreds of laptops over the years so it didn't take me long to zero in on a model that would work well for me. I won't bore you with the laptop's features other than to list the big stuff:

Hard Drive: 250GB (not the biggest but that'll work); Memory: 4GB (nice!)
Screen Size: 15.4 inches (nothing to brag about, so I won't)
Operating System : Genuine Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit (I wasn't a fan of Vista six months ago, but the more I use it, the more I prefer it to Windows XP)
And I saved the best for last: $779.00 (I'll bet you can find it even cheaper with a bit of shopping).

So I handed over my credit card and bought my new toy home. And it wasn't long before I had installed my usual software suspects: Office 2007 and the Adobe Technical Communications Suite 2 (FrameMaker 9, RoboHelp 8, PhotoShop CS4 and Captivate 4).

While installing the Adobe Technical Communications Suite, I received a message I hadn't seen before, something about 64-bit blah, blah, blah, but I pushed forward and installed the whole suite without issue.

And then… I started Captivate and noticed some very strange behavior while trying to record a lesson. After clicking the Record button, Captivate pulled the first screen capture as expected. But that was it. After the first capture, Captivate refused to capture anything else. Pressing END on my keyboard to stop the recording process did nothing. In fact, the only way to get Captivate to pay attention was by manually stopping the recording process (by clicking the Captivate icon in the System Tray.

I know that Captivate 4 is Vista compliant. In fact, I was running Captivate 4 on another Vista laptop without incident. This laptop was brand new (just a few hours in service), so I was pretty sure there wasn't a virus causing trouble.

I went to Adobe's Web site to verify Captivate's System Requirements. Here's what you'll see on the Adobe site:

Intel® Pentium® 4, Intel Centrino®, Intel Xeon®, or Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor
Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit editions)
512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
1.5GB of available hard-disk space; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on flash-based storage devices)
DVD-ROM drive
800×600 screen resolution (1,024×768 recommended)

My new laptop certainly meets these specifications. Hmmm. Uh oh. What's that phrase mean: "certified for 32-bit editions?" Certified? As in, won't work otherwise? Say it isn't so, Joe!

Back in Vista, I checked my laptops specifications by choosing Start > System Information. And there it was: System Type: x64-based PC. Most computers running Windows today are 32-bit machines. What's the difference between a 64-bit platform and a 32-bit? Mainly, the extra 32 bits result in increased speed and performance. If your software is 64-bit certified, you might see a speed increase of up to 20% or more. However, if your software is not 64-bit certified, there could be trouble.

And there's trouble for Captivate developers. If you are running a machine using the Vista 64-bit platform, there is no guarantee that Captivate will work properly. What could go wrong? For me, the only problem has been recording actions on the desktop (as I mentioned above, Captivate freezes and won't record anything beyond the first screen). However, when I record within an application (such as a Web browser), Captivate records the lesson as expected. I haven't seen other problems, at least not yet.

There are a few things you can try to get Captivate to work with Vista 64. First, right-click the Captivate application icon and choose Properties. On the Compatibility tab, select Run this program as an administrator and then click OK.

Start Captivate and see if the program runs as expected. If not, you can try one more thing. Right-click the application icon and choose Properties again. Once again on the Compatibility tab, click the Run this program in compatibility mode for drop-down menu and select Windows XP.

Several people have reported that either one or both of these workarounds did the trick. However, in my tests, Captivate just would not work 100% with Vista 64. I'd be curious to hear your experiences with Captivate and Vista 64. Send me your comments and I'll forward them to Adobe. Captivate is such a wonderful program and Adobe very responsive to customer requests and concerns. I have to believe that Adobe is working on the problem and a solution is not far away.

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Need to learn Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

Need to learn Adobe Captivate 4? Click here.

February 18, 2009

Adobe FrameMaker: Character Formats That Work

In my line of business as an Adobe Certified Trainer, students share all sorts of documents with me both in class and on post-class consultations. One of the things that I see regularly that never fails to make me cringe is the duplication of effort in FrameMaker's Character Catalog. When I see names like BoldBody, BoldFootnote, BoldTable, and BoldBullet, all in the same catalog, I know that the client and I have something to talk about.

The reason people end up making four, five or six versions of a Bold or Italic format is because they simply don't understand how the Character Designer works. In my Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker 8 class, I break up the process into creating Character Formats down into six easy steps (five of them are intuitive; but one is very easy to overlook):

Select a range of text that you would like to emphasize within a paragraph
Open Character Designer (you can press [Ctrl] [D]
Click the Commands drop-down menu from the bottom left of the dialog box and select Set Window to As Is
Type in a descriptive name (i.e., name the format Bold).
Select the properties you like to use (i.e., Bold)
Click the Apply button and then click Create

Voila. The new format appears in the Character Catalog and can be used on any text that needs to have bold type.

What makes my list so special? Step number 3. When you select text in step number 1 and then open the Character Designer, FrameMaker picks up every property from the selected text: typeface, type size, color, tracking (spread), etc. The simple act of setting the window to "As Is" makes the software disregard everything about the selected text, except for what you pick.

Now you can select any text, in any size and use your Bold format. The only thing that will change is the weight: everything else remains as is. Try it, and let me know how it goes.

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Want to learn more about Adobe FrameMaker? Click here.

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February 18, 2009

Grammar Workshop: Apostrophes for Plurals

by Jennie Ruby

Apostrophes are normally used to indicate possessive, as discussed in a previous article. However, they are occasionally used to indicate the plural in some exceptional situations. One such situation occurs when you are discussing words and letters. When you discuss words and letters, you italicize them:

The word if is a subordinating conjunction.
The letter W is one of the two widest letters in the alphabet.

When you need to make these plural, you add a non-italic s:

How many ifs appear in this paragraph?
There are three Ws in World Wide Web.

When you are discussing lowercase letters, you add apostrophe plus a roman s, for clarity:

How many s's are there in the word Mississippi?
Please type three x'safter your name.

When you are discussing abbreviations containing multiple periods or a mixture of capital and lowercase letters, you use an apostrophe to create the plural:

How many B.A.'s does she have?
How many PhD's does it take to screw in a light bulb?

When an abbreviation has one period, at the end, you add an s before the period to make it plural:

vol. becomes vols.
no. becomes nos.
Dr. becomes Drs.

When an abbreviation or acronym has no periods, you just add a lowercase s:

VCRs
ATMs

Do not use an apostrophe to make common expressions plural, like these:

Don't give me anyifs, ands or buts.
What are the pros and cons of the plan?
Tell me the dos and don'ts of test development.

But when adding an s is confusing, add an apostrophe for clarity:

He is learning the abc's of designing a document.

Do not use an apostrophe to make a number or a decade plural:

Five 3s in a row indicate an error.
The Internet came into being in the 1990s.

Finally, do not add another apostrophe to create the plural of contractions that contain an apostrophe:

Here is a list of don'ts for preventing your program from crashing.

I have taken this advice from two style guides: the Gregg Reference Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. If you use a specific style guide other than these, you should always check your style guide regarding the use of apostrophes.

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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" 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.

February 18, 2009

Questions of the Week

Certification Question: Can I Get CTT'd?

I noticed that you are a Certified Technical Trainer (CTT) in addition to being an Adobe Certified Instructor. I have a strong background in business to business training. Assuming CTT is different from Adobe certification, can you point me to the company that manages the CTT process?

Answer:

CTT is very different than Adobe Certification. It's actually easier to earn the Adobe Certification. CompTIA has all the information you will need about CTT. Here is a link to their site.

Adobe Captivate 4 Question: Where is the Text to Speech Software?

I am trying to convince my company to upgrade to Adobe Captivate 4 to take advantage of the Text to Speech function. I downloaded the trial version of Captivate. When I try to convert the text to speech Captivate tells me the Speech to Text voices are not installed and to download them from the Adobe Captivate Products page. I can't find the link, can you help direct me to the URL I need?

Answer

Go to the Captivate 4 trial download site like you were going to download the trial again. Login using your Adobe ID (or create one)

You should be able to click the words "Run this executable to install NeoSpeechTM text-to-speech voice databases – one Male voice and one Female voice in English(US)- works with Adobe Captivate 4."

If that doesn't work, here is a direct link to the NeoSpeech installer.

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Adobe RoboHelp Question: What Happened to my Topic List Pod?

I'm using RoboHelp 7. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I've lost my Topic List pod. That's not all, some of the pods are grouped with other pods. I'm not sure how I did that but I would love to put it back to square one. Help!!!!

Answer

Using RoboHelp, choose File > Load Default Environment. That should put your pods and RoboHelp window back to the way they looked they first time you started RoboHelp 7 or 8.

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Adobe Captivate Question: Can I Extract Quiz Data Without an LMS?

I'm using Captivate to quiz my users. I do not have an LMS and instead have Captivate email the quiz results directly to me. The problem is that the ATT files attached to each email are hardly easy to read. Is there a quick way to export the ATT files into Access. My thinking is that I'm good enough with Access that once the data is there, I'll be able to create the tables and reports on my own. But I need something that will take multiple ATT files at one time into Access. Currently, I'm opening each ATT file and copying and pasting. Any ideas?

Answer:

Yes. We created a utility called CaptivateMyData that does exactly what you're describing.

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Adobe Captivate Question: Can I Remove the Borders from Text Captions?

I have a very low level question. I am making some slides using Captivate 4. I have auto-recorded some demo slides. Now I need to add a slide with some introductory comments before the demo slides. I inserted a blank slide. Now my problem is how I can type in the introductory text. The only way I can type in some words seems to be the caption box. But that is not what I want. I just want some text on the slide without the box. I have seen many Captivate 4 slides do just that. But I cannot figure out how. Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer:

Show the Properties of any Text Caption. Select [transparent] from the Caption Type drop-down menu.

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Adobe Captivate 3 Question: Why Aren't My Animations Previewing?

This is crazy! Yesterday an inserted FLV previewed just fine. Today, it's ignored. Can you help?

Answer:

Adobe has updated the Flash player to version 10. I suspect that you have upgraded to that version and it has been documented that the new version is altering the way Captivate previews Flash animation (including FLVs). Published content will not be affected. However, previewing the animation in Captivate no longer displays properly (but it will publish fine).

You have two options: downgrade to the Flash Player you had prior to the upgrade; or preview the project in a Web Browser instead of previewing 5 slides.

This article might prove informative. If you see a Flash Security Warning while previewing in your Web browser, you can get around the warning by following the steps in this article.

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

February 11, 2009

Adobe FrameMaker: Function Key Shortcuts

As I've said before, I love all of FrameMaker's unique Esc key shortcuts. I'm all about using the keyboard to get my work done in a timely manner, but I know that many of my students really find the three-key shortcuts both cumbersome and overwhelming.

How about trying some function key shortcuts?

Here's a quick list. The first column shows the function key; the second column shows the function key's primary function. You will notice that some of the function keys change their behavior when used with the Control, Shift and Alt keys.

Key	Function	Control	Shift	Alt
F1	Help	Align Top
F2	Plain text	Align Middle
F3	Underline	Align bottom	Overline
F4	Bold		Cascade Windows	Exit
F5	Italic		Tile Windows
F6				Toggle between document windows
F7			Set focus back to Document Window
F8	Apply Character Formatting		Set dialog box to "As Is"
F9	Apply Paragraph Formatting	Transpose Characters	Change settings to match current text

I have five favorites in the table above. Here's a little more information on how I use them:

Character Formatting. Highlight a range of text and press the F8 function key. The left side of the status bar lights up with a blue background and offers you a list of Character tags. You can use the arrow keys to navigate to the desired format, or tap the first letter of the format to jump right to it. After you highlight the one you want and just press Enter to accept. To remove Character formats, press F8 and then press Enter.
Paragraph Formatting. Works like Character formatting, but F9 displays a list of Paragraph Tags. Here's a tip for long lists with multiple tags that start with the same character: press a lower case letter to work through the list from the top down, and an uppercase letter to start at the bottom and work up!
Transpose characters. Those of us who try to type far too fast for our own good will love this one. Just place your cursor between two letters and press Control F9. They reverse position instantly!
Shift the focus back to the document window. When you are in a Designer, and want to shift the focus back to the document window, just press Shift F7.
Set dialog box to As Is. The best way to make Character Formats is to begin by setting everything in the Character Designer to As Is. What a pain in the neck. Not anymore: Shift F8 is the way to go. (What? Still struggling with Character Formats? Tune in next week for a quick review.)

You certainly do not have to use shortcuts to be effective in FrameMaker. I simply find that learning and using shortcuts helps me to get the job done quickly and gets me back outside into the sunshine and fresh air.

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Want to learn more about Adobe FrameMaker? Click here.

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February 11, 2009

Adobe RoboHelp 7: Reusing Conditional Build Tags

by Kevin A. Siegel

Conditional Build Tags allow you to generate myriad versions of your Help System for an unlimited number of user groups. However, one thing you might want to do is reuse Conditional Build Tags used in one project with another.

It seems like a simple process to reusing Conditional Build Tags would be to export the tags in one project to a Tags file and then simply import that file into any project needing the tags. The problem is that none of the versions of RoboHelp (including version 7 and the just-released version 8) include an export Conditional Build Tags feature. So what's a Help Author to do? Read on…

There are two ways to get the Conditional Build Tags used in a RoboHelp project. Both methods involve the rhbuildtag.apj file found in all RoboHelp projects (the file is only valuable if you have created your own conditions, or edited the two defaults that come with new projects).

Open the rhbuildtag.apj file containing the Conditional Build Tags you want to use in NotePad
Copy the tags containing the specific conditions you want to reuse to the clipboard
Open the rhbuildtag.apj file in the other project and paste

The simpler route, if you don't mind losing any build tags in the other project, is to copy rhbuildtag.apj from one project and paste/replace the file in the project folder of the other project.

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We are hard at work on our "Essentials of Adobe RoboHelp 8" book and will soon begin offering virtual training classes on RoboHelp 8. Stay tuned to this newsletter for announcements.

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Not ready to upgrade and need to learn Adobe RoboHelp 7? Click here.

Many RoboHelp authors find it's a good idea to have basic HTML skills. Click here to learn about our basic HTML class.

Month: February 2009

Adobe Acrobat 9: Adobe Giveth, & Adobe Taketh Away (but not really)

Adobe FrameMaker: It Wasn’t My Fault!

Adobe Captivate 4: If You Draw It, They Will Come

Questions of the Week

Adobe Captivate 4: Are Your Bits Certified?

Adobe FrameMaker: Character Formats That Work

Grammar Workshop: Apostrophes for Plurals

Questions of the Week

Adobe FrameMaker: Function Key Shortcuts

Adobe RoboHelp 7: Reusing Conditional Build Tags