Month: March 2009

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Adobe Captivate 4: Personalize Your Projects and TOCs

 
In the early Captivate days, you could create a menu for your Captivate project using a TOC feature found via the project skin. Basically, you could enable or disable the TOC. The resulting TOC overlayed your slides and was pretty much devoid of customization or personalization features. Thank goodness for Captivate 4 and the much improved TOC feature.
 
In addition to its ease-of-use, the new TOC feature lets you quickly add personal touches such as your contact information and even your photo.
 
Add your personal information to the project:
  1. Choose File > Document Info
  2. Fill in the information with your personal information (the information that you type here can appear on the TOC–which you will see in a moment)

    Project information filled in

  3. Click OK

 

Add a TOC to the Project Skin

 
  1. Choose Project > Skin Editor
  2. On the TOC tab, select Show TOC

    By simply clicking Show TOC, every slide in your project will be added to the TOC. There is nothing wrong with including everything; however, it might be a bit less cluttered if you only include the major parts of the lesson.

  3. Remove the check mark from any slide that you do not want to appear on the TOC

    TOC with some slides selected

  4. Click OK
If you Preview the project , you will notice that your TOC (also known as a menu) appears at the left of your lesson. As you move through the lesson, green check marks are automatically added to the TOC. Nice!
 
Add your personal information and image to the TOC

 

  1. Open the Skin Editor and, on the TOC tab, select the Info button

    Hmmm… it appears that the Project information you added a moment ago isn't here. Or is it?

  2. Click the Project Info button and the fields in the TOC information field will automatically be filled with the Project Information you added earlier.

    Information appearing on the TOC

    All that's needed now is a picture to go with the name.

  3. On the TOC tab, click the Info button
  4. In the Photo area, click the three dots to Browse

  5. Click the Import button
  6. Open the image you'd like to appear on the TOC
  7. Resize/Crop the image as appropriate
  8. Click OK as needed to close all of the open dialog boxes

    And behold… the image, name and contact information will appear on the TOC when you preview or publish the project.

    TOC info with a picture of Biff

 
***
 
Need to learn Adobe Captivate 4? Click here.
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Adobe FrameMaker: Learn to Love Your LOMs

 
Last week I wrote about how to display shorter chapter titles in a running FrameMaker head.
 
I work with several international authors who use a variety of accented characters in their text. The chapter titles in my Adobe FrameMaker documents are set in all caps, and don't need the accents. The table of contents is set in upper and lower case, and needs the accents. How do you reconcile that issue? Check out the Marker dialog box. 
  1. Select a chapter title
  2. Choose Special > Marker
  3. Click the Edit button from the Marker Type list
  4. Type a descriptive name such as TOC Title
  5. Click Add
  6. Edit the Marker text to match what you want in the Table of Contents and click the New Marker button

When you are ready to generate a Table of Contents, don't. Create a List of Markers instead.

  1. In your book window, choose Add > List of > Markers
  2. Double-click your custom marker from the Don't Include list to scoot it over to the Include Markers of Type list
Everything else is exactly like creating a generated TOC, but the suffix will be LOM (list of markers).
 
Pretty cool. I use this technique whenever I need to modify the TOC entries from the source documents. Luckily it doesn't come up all that often in my work, but when it does, I love my LOMs!
 
***
 
Want to learn more about Adobe FrameMaker? Click here.
 
***
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.
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Questions of the Week

Adobe Captivate 4 Question: Where Are The Click Boxes Hiding?
 
I recently upgraded my copy of Captivate 3 to 4.  I have a PowerPoint 2007 presentation that I imported into Captivate (New > From  from MS PowerPoint). I had the "Advance Slide on Mouse Click" option selected in the Convert PowerPoint Presentations dialogue box (which added a "click box" to each slide. Everything worked great.
 
My content expert came in and recorded his audio on each slide. He decided it would be best if the slides auto-advanced rather than advanced on mouse click, so I deleted the click box from the timeline on each slide. When I published the project, I found that the some of the slides auto advance while others do not. It seems that the click box's action (to pause the timeline)  was retained even though I deleted the click box from the timeline. I've checked the properties of the slide to make sure that the "on slide exit" drop-down is set to "Go to next slide"–it is. I've also dragged the slide's timeline to make it longer or shorter, hoping this would somehow get rid of the pause–it didn't work.
 
A short project has turned into a 3-day nightmare. I have about 130 slides, and the "ghost" click box action is sprinkled throughout the project. I can't figure out how to fix this.  I've even uninstalled Captivate and reinstalled it, but this did not work.
 
Answer
 
Choose Edit > Find and Replace. Select Click Box from the Search In drop-down menu and ensure you have, in fact, deleted all of the click boxes. It's possible that you've hidden some of the click boxes on some slides (hiding the click boxes doesn't get rid of them, and they still publish).
 
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Adobe Captivate Question: Can EXEs Be Decompiled?

 
I cannot find my original Captivate production file (the CP). I do, however, have one of the EXEs published with the project file. I need to make some changes to the project. Do I need to create the project all over again, or there is a way that I can use the EXE in Captivate?
 
Answer:
 
Sorry, no. The only way to edit the Captivate project is with the CP file. There is no way to decompile an EXE back to a CP.
 
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Adobe Captivate Question: Why Won't Captivate Score Properly on my LMS?
 
We have come across an issue that I'm not quite sure how to fix. We have created a Captivate assessment and loaded it into our LMS. The eLearning lesson is functioning properly, but when the participants finish the assessment with a score of 100%, our LMS is only showing that they have a 91%. Is there some little trick to get the LMS to read the 100% scores? We have the passing score set at 90%. Does that have something to do with it? Honestly, this is baffling. If you have any suggestions, they will be greatly appreciated. Right now the only thing we can do is manually change the scores in the LMS for every person that shows a score of 91%.
 
Answer:
 
Check your advanced interaction (Project menu). I'm betting that something else is scoring in your project that has raised the total score for all objects above 100.
 
Follow-up to this Question
 
Kevin, I had checked everything I could think of and had not used this function (Advanced Interaction). I found three buttons that were adding points to the assessment! Thanks. I have literally been pulling my hair out trying to figure this out!!!
 
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Adobe Captivate Question: Best Way to Get the Projects Off of the Server?

 

We discussed in the Captivate class last week the importance of authoring Captivate projects from your C: drive to prevent corrupt files, etc. We have never operated like that, we author on the network. Would you say that it's a best practice to move or "save as" our original CP files to the C drive, or re-create them?  Any advice is appreciated.

Answer:

 
There is no need to recreate the projects. Copy the project files from the network drive (via Windows Explorer) and paste them into a working folder on the hard drive (maybe make a folder called YourName_CaptivateProjects).
 
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Adobe Technical Communication Suite Question: Can I Create CSH from FrameMaker to RoboHelp?

I enjoyed the online class on working with Adobe's Technical Communication suite. I just remembered one question I forgot to ask. Is there a way to make the user guide content we bring into RoboHelp from FrameMaker context sensitive?
Answer:

Yes. And this article explains how.

 
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Adobe RoboHelp Question: Why Won't My WebHelp Pro Project Publish
 
I publish on server… WebHelp Pro.  I have Adobe RoboHelp 6. Usually when I publish I get a screen saying that WebHelp Pro built successfully and then get LOG ON Screen. Suddenly, nothing. Any idea what's going on?
 
Answer:
 
This sounds like your IT dept. has changed your server credentials. Have they updated their servers?
 
Follow-up to This Question:
 
Yes Kevin, that was the problem. At first they did not think it was them, but it was. Thanks for your help!
 
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Adobe RoboHelp Question: How Do I Merge Projects?
 
I am trying to get my hands around merging projects. Would you happen to have any demonstrations of this process?
 
Answer:
 
Actually, yes. Click here for an eLearning lesson. The price is right… free.
 
*** 

Got a question you'd like answered? Email me.
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Upgrading from Adobe Captivate 3 to Adobe Captivate 4

Adobe Captivate 4 was recently released by Adobe Systems and we feel that this is the greatest version of Captivate ever. It's so great and jammed full of new goodies, you may not be able to find them all without a little help.

Join us for a 3-hour, live training event and learn how to use the new Captivate features–and where the Captivate 3 features you've grown to know and love have gone.

To attend the class, click any of the class links below and register. On the day of the class, log in to the online training space and work through the lessons with your instructor (or, if you prefer, sit back and just watch and listen). Either way, you'll be able to ask all the questions you want.

What hardware and software will you need? All you need on your computer to attend the class is a high-speed internet connection, a head-set and microphone (so you can communicate with your instructor). If you want to work through the lessons as the instructor demonstrates, you will also need Adobe Captivate 4 installed on your computer.

Note: Space is limited to 25 participants per class.

Price: $120 per person

Schedule of Classes:

April 22, 2009

April 29, 2009

May 14, 2009

May 21, 2009

Lessons Covered During this 3-Hour Class:

  • Upgrading Captivate 3 projects (strategies for reducing file size)
  • The enhanced Captivate 4 recording process
  • Panning (Automatic and Manual)
  • Drawing Objects
  • Adding right-click functionality
  • TOCs
  • Text to Speech
  • PowerPoint Linking
  • Adding Widgets
  • Creating Variables
  • What's new in publishing
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Adobe Captivate: CP Files… Now You See Them, Now You Don’t

 
If you're still using Captivate 3, you might come across a strange phenomenon where your production files (the CP files) disappear.
 
Here's the unhappy scenario: you'll be happily working away, and of course you save your work frequently. You close the project. You take a break, or you go home for the night. Foolish mortal… upon your return, you attempt to reopen the project and continue your work. However, the project is… gone. Did you delete it? Nahh. It's just gone.
 
Admittedly, I've never had this happen to any of my projects… ever! (And I've worked with and created thousands of CP files.)  Nor have any of my developers ever informed me that they've had it happen. However, that's little consolation if it's happened to you.
 
I'm happy to report that, according to Adobe, this bizarre behavior has been resolved in Adobe Captivate 4.
 
What's that you say, you're not planning to upgrade to Captivate 4, and version 3 is still in your arsenal? Oh. Well then, take a deep breath… the following steps will help you retrieve the missing file if the aforementioned bizarre behavior makes itself known in your neighborhood.
  1. Upon finding that your CP file is missing, close Captivate right away
  2. Look for a .tmp file in the same folder where you expected to find the CP file
  3. Rename the TMP file giving it a CP extension

    According to Adobe, you will then be able to open the project in Captivate and continue working away. If the project size is noticeably larger than it was before, there isn't cause for alarm. Adobe says that once you save the project, the file size will return to its normal state.

***
 
Need to learn Adobe Captivate 4? Click here.
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Grammar Workshop: Ways to Interrupt a Sentence, Part 1… Parentheses

by Jennie Ruby 

 
People do not talk in a straight line. We do not always place one idea after another like footprints on the shore. We interrupt ourselves. We start one idea and then realize that our reader needs additional information before we can complete that idea. So we interrupt ourselves. In print, we have several ways to mark an interruption in a sentence. We use parentheses, dashes, commas, or no punctuation at all to mark different kinds of interruptions.
 
One way to mark an interruption is to use parentheses. The quintessential parenthetical interruption is a reference to material outside the text, like this:
  • see Table 2)
or this:
  • (Smith and Jones, 2009, p. 67).
 
The parentheses signal to the reader that this information can be skipped over when reading the sentence, but referred to if needed for additional information. The Chicago Manual of Style says "Parentheses usually set off material that is less closely related to the rest of the sentence than that enclosed in em dashes or commas."
 
Here are some examples of how to punctuate parenthetical interruptions.
 
Parenthetical element inside a sentence and followed by a comma:
 
  • Smith and Jones (2009), who began their research in the 1960s, found…
  • Smith and Jones researched the use of aspirin to treat heart attacks (Smith and Jones, 2009).
 
Parenthetical element outside a sentence:
  • The results show that Method A works significantly better. (See Table 2.) Other studies….
Parenthetical interruption followed by a dash interruption:
  • These processes were discovered in 2006 (Utz, 2006)-before most researchers even understood their importance–but they have yet to be used in practical applications.
You can use parentheses for text, but be aware that you are implying the text is more extraneous than it would be if you used commas. Here is an example:
  • Make sure the aspect ratio checkbox is selected (if it is not, press spacebar to select it).
  • Determine whether the aspect ratio checkbox is selected, and if it is not, press the spacebar to select it.
 
In the first example, you expect the reader not to need the parenthetical information. In the second example, you are pretty sure they will need to press the spacebar.
 
Next time, we will look at interruptions with em dashes.
 
*** 

 

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.
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Adobe FrameMaker: When Chapter Titles are Too Long for a Running Head

 
One of FrameMaker's strengths is its ability to pull the contents of a paragraph directly from the flow and insert the text in a header or footer. If the original paragraph text updates, the header or footer updates automatically (this is known as a running header or footer).
 
In an ideal world, authors would always write short, concise headings. In real life, some heads are so long they look like bold, multi-line paragraphs.
 
When I need to pull lengthy chapter titles and section heads into a running header, the trouble begins. My solution? A Header/Footer Marker $1 marker.
 
There are two of these lurking in the Marker dialog box, just waiting for you to find them. Here's how I use one of them to solve the too-long title issue:
  1. Select the chapter title
  2. Choose Special > Marker (or you can press [Esc] [s] [m] on your keyboard
  3. Edit the marker text to the short, concise title you wish it had been given originally
  4. Click the New Marker button
Now you've got a customized running head that fits, yet manages to alert the reader to the current chapter. How about that for a quick and easy solution to the problem?
 
***
 
Want to learn more about Adobe FrameMaker? Click here.
 
***
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.
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Questions of the Week

Adobe Captivate 4 Question: Why Isn't My Right-Click Working?
 
I'm using the new right-click feature in Captivate 4. When I tested this in my Web browser, the right-click only worked with a left click. What's up with that?
 
Answer
 
Choose Edit > Preferences. Under Publish Settings, deselect Enable Accessibility. Also, the right-click feature only works with Flash Player 8 or newer, so make sure that it's selected when you publish.
 
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Adobe Technical Communication Suite: Why Can't I Import a FrameMaker Document into RoboHelp by Reference?

 
I am trying to import a FrameMaker file into RoboHelp via Import by Reference (I saw this demoed at a trade show and I have both RoboHelp and FrameMaker). When I right-click the Project Files folder in RoboHelp, I can import, but not Import by Reference. What am I missing.
Answer
 
It sounds like you certainly have RoboHelp and FrameMaker installed on your system, but not the Adobe Technical Communication Suite. When you purchase the suite, the installer "hooks" the applications together so that you can import FrameMaker documents into RoboHelp by reference. If that option is not available, you'll need to install those applications through the suite's installer.
 
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Adobe Captivate 4 Question: Why is My Audio Mono?
 
I've just upgraded to the eLearning suite and Captivate 4 and I'm having a problem that I just can't figure out why. I've been recording podcasts in Captivate 3 successfully for the last few months. I have a single slide with the audio attached. I use Captivate to record the audio. I've just tried to use Captivate 4 for this purpose and for some reason it only records the audio in mono (1 channel) so that it only comes out of one speaker on playback.  Is this a bug in Captivate or is there some new setting I have to do? I still had 3 loaded so I used that and it worked fine. I really need to get an answer before I get into a lot of recording with the new version.  Any help you can provide is much appreciated?
 
Answer:
 
Looks like an issue being reported by others. This link should prove interesting.
 
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Adobe Captivate Question: How Do I Slow Those Things Down?
 
I developed eLearning that was put on our intranet. I created it in PowerPoint with animation and imported it into Captivate. In Captivate I have each slide fading in and out. When I view the training it works and the transitions are fine. I tested it in QA, Staging and Production.  In each environment it worked. I had it on a shared drive and my boss checked it and it worked for her. We rolled it out the other day and now some people seem to be having a problem with the slides fading out too quickly. The audio still plays, but the text and graphics are no longer on the slide. Any clue why some are seeing it properly and others aren't?
 
Answer:
 
When you imported the PowerPoint slides, you had the option to set the advance slide to Manual or Automatic. I'm betting you chose Automatic and now the slides are set to advance too quickly. I would recommend that you add a button on each slide set to go to the next slide. Users will be able to click each button at their own pace to navigate the lesson.

Adobe Captivate Question: Do I Need to Use JavaScript Here?

Is there a way in Captivate to use a click box to open/close a text caption on the same slide – similar to a Show/Hide layer in Dreamweaver?  This would be different than a mouse rollover to show the caption.  I'm wondering if it involves some type of JavaScript (I'm not a JS expert).

Answer:

No, you won't need a JavaScript. Experiment with the "Stick" navigation option of a Rollover Slidelet. I believe this will do what you're trying to do.

Adobe Captivate Question: Can I Prevent Navigation?

I have a tutorial I created that is basically imported PowerPoint slides with audio. When I publish, I want to be able to prevent people from hitting the forward button (so they are forced to listen to all the audio on the slide).  I don't have any quizzes associated with it, but even when I enabled quizzes, it still allows me to select the forward button for each slide. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Answer:

If you want to remove any and all chance of a user skipping ahead, you could remove the Playbar from the skin (Project > Skin). However,  I would not recommend that you do so since a lack of navigation has shown to lower the user experience (IMHO).

 

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Got a question you'd like answered? Email me.
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eLearning DevCon 2009

Join me June 15-16, 2009 at the eLearning DevCon in Salt Lake City, Utah as I teach two pre-conference sessions on Adobe Captivate 4: Introduction to Adobe Captivate (1 day) and Advanced Adobe Captivate (1 day). Click here to learn more about the sessions (the descriptions may refer to Captivate 3, but with Adobe's recent release of Captivate 4, I'll of course be teaching the newer version). Click here to learn more about eLearning DevCon 2009.