Month: April 2009

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Adobe Captivate 4: Get Rid of the Button Push “Illusion”

by Kevin A. Siegel

Maybe the following scenario will sound maddening familiar to you:

You record a Captivate lesson that includes mouse clicks. On one of those slides, let's call it slide X, the mouse clearly moves to the button (nice) and the mouse clicks on a button (that's nice too). Everything works as expected, in fact, after the mouse appears to click the button it looks like it's being clicked (there's an actual effect of the button changing ever so slightly as it was clicked–something Captivate does right out of the box… cool!). Of course after the button press the presentation moves to the next slide.

At some point you decide not to show the mouse on slide X (maybe you've decided that you want the lesson to be a simulation instead of a demonstration). You right-click the slide and choose Mouse > Show Mouse (to turn the command off).

And that's where things get a bit strange. You preview a few slides, including slide X. During the preview, you confirm that the mouse is, in fact, gone. But wait a minute, just before the slide moved to the next slide in the preview, the once cool button push effect is still there. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. But a button push without a mouse to initiate it is simply going to look strange to your users.

Here's the problem: the button push (which is sort of like an animation) does not manifest itself anywhere in the project… not on the Timeline, not in the Library… it doesn't seem to exist. Are your eyes are playing tricks on you?

Before you go to the expense of getting your eyes checked, take heart in the fact that I have seen this button push "illusion" more times than I can count. Follow these steps to get rid of it.

  1. Hide slide X by right-clicking the slide and selecting Hide Slide (remember, that in this example, slide X is the slide with the button push illusion)

  2. Insert a blank slide before or after the hidden slide (you can insert a blank slide by choosing Insert > Blank Slide)

  3. Right-click the troublesome/hidden slide (slide X) and copy the background

  4. Right-click the new slide and choose Paste as background

  5. Go back to the hidden slide (slide X) and copy any slide objects to the clipboard (Edit > Select All, Edit > Copy)

  6. Finally, back on the new slide, paste the objects onto the slide (this will save you the trouble of recreating any objects on the new slide)

  7. Preview five slides–the button push illusion will be gone (at this point, you can delete slide X from your project)
 
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Need to learn Adobe Captivate 4 fast? Attend a live, 2-day online training class. Click here for more information.
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New Online Class: Upgrading from Adobe Captivate 3 to Adobe Captivate 4

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

 
Join me 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 learn more about the class, click here.
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Adobe Acrobat 9: A Little Acrobat Forms Magic

 
In the earlier days of Acrobat, converting a PDF file into an interactive form involved calling up the Forms Toolbar and then hand-crafting each and every text box, radio button, drop down list, etc.

In the new Acrobat 9, the Forms Toolbar isn't just hidden, it's GONE! Many Acrobat features received tweaks and gentle improvements in the upgrade from 8 to 9, but the way PDF forms are handled in Acrobat 9 is a complete rewrite. In fact, forms are now handled in a new interface–the Form Editing Mode. In this new interface, you can manually add or edit form fields in roughly the same way you could in earlier Acrobat releases.

The real magic surfaces when you call up the Form Wizard. With a potential PDF form already open (any PDF you've created that actually looks like a form will do), choose Forms > Start Form Wizard.

Start Form Wizard

The wizard asks you a few questions about your form, such as which file to process, and then takes you into the new Form Editing Mode.

Form Editing Mode

The wizard also performs a rather impressive operation which analyzes your file in order to try to identify, create and name form fields for you. Although rarely a perfect form at this point, Acrobat's Form Wizard takes on much of the preliminary work you would be doing painstakingly by hand, and leaves you with an editable, and often very reasonable starting point. I have been pleasantly surprised at the Wizard's ability to detect radio button groups appropriately, and it cleverly names each field with the text it assumes describes the input.

There will be those files on which the Wizard simply can't perform its magic. For these jobs, you can choose (in Acrobat 9's main interface) Forms > Add or Edit Fields to jump to the Form Editing Mode without the Wizard's help. From there, you can click the Add New Field button and work much like you did in previous versions of Acrobat.

Anyone find the Walk the Dog or Take Out the Trash Wizard yet?

 
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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.
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Adobe FrameMaker 9: The Application Bar

 
FrameMaker has had the same look and feel for a hundred years, or at least it seems that way. As I make the transition to FrameMaker 9, most of my attention has been focused on the new interface. I just think it's weird. I mean, it's the same old FrameMaker, with the same menus and functions, and funky Esc key shortcuts, but now it has the look and feel of Adobe's InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Will the new interface pave the way for new productivity features? I hope so, but meanwhile, let's spend some time looking at what we have today, beginning with the brand new Application Bar, which is now found in the new CS4 Suite, and in FrameMaker 9.

The Application Bar appears at the top right of the FrameMaker 9 window, right after the Help menu. It consists of four options:

  1. UI Visibility. This toggle simply hides and shows the various toolbars, panels and pods, removing the workspace clutter. I use it when I want to show my work to a client on my computer, without all the distractions.

  2. Arrange Documents. This button greatly simplifies the display of multiple open documents. I'm personally thrilled to think that I may never have to stop a class again to explain the difference between Tile Vertically and Tile Horizontally. A picture really is worth a thousand words!

  3. Screen Mode. You now have three views of your document: Standard Screen Mode, Full Screen with Menu Bar and then the very dangerous, Full Screen Mode. Try it. At first, Full Screen Mode seems great. Talk about removing the clutter! Now, restore the menus, toolbars, pods and panels.

    How's that going for you?

    I found three ways out of Full Screen Mode, none of which appeared anywhere in the FrameMaker 9 Help files: close the program and restart, press ESC + SM + s, or right-click the gray area to the right of your page and choose Toggle Screen Mode. Hey Adobe, did you forget something?

  4. Workspace Switcher. Choosing the best workspace for my specific workflow is a feature I've long relied on in InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Now you can all pick the best panel/pod arrangements for your FrameMaker workflows from this drop-down menu.

With the exception of an easy, intuitive way out of the Full Screen Mode view, it's all good stuff. Join me next week as I continue the tour through the new FrameMaker 9 interface.

 
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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.
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Grammar Workshop: Interrupting a Sentence With No Punctuation Needed

by Jennie Ruby

In this series on interruptions in sentences, we have looked at interruptions in parentheses, interruptions with dashes, and interruptions with commas. But it is also possible to interrupt a sentence with no punctuation around the interruption. You do this when the interruption is actually a crucial part of the sentence. In grammar terms, this is called "essential." These interruptions are "essential" because they help define or identify the exact thing you are talking about. They restrict the discussion to the exact item you mean. Here is an example:

  • The small arrow on the Styles group title bar opens the Styles pane.

The phrase on the Styles group title bar interrupts between the subject arrow and the verb opens. There is no punctuation surrounding this interruption because it is essential to help the reader find the exact arrow you are talking about out of all the arrows that might exist on a typical computer screen.

  • The poet Robert Frost wrote "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Here there are no commas around Frost's name because his name is essential to the sentence. It identifies which poet you are talking about. Without his name, the reader would have to ask, "Which poet, out of all the poets in the world and throughout history, are you talking about?"

Notice that if you put his name first, there would be no question of who you were talking about, because his name clearly identifies him. In that case any further description, such as the words a 20th-century American poet, would be a nonessential interruption and require commas:

Robert Frost, a 20th-century American poet, wrote "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Here are some additional examples of interruptions:

  1. The book that is in the center of the coffee table is very important to me.

  2. World Art: The Essential Illustrated History, which is on the coffee table, is my favorite art book.

In sentence 1, the interruption is essential to identifying the book out of all the books in the world. The essential information cannot be surrounded by commas.

In sentence 2 the book has already been fully identified before the interruption. The interruption merely adds additional description that is not needed for identifying the item. Commas are needed.

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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.

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Join Jennie in our online classes (she'll be teaching two upcoming classes for IconLogic): Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts and Editing with Microsoft Word 2007.

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Questions of the Week

Adobe Captivate 3 Question: Where Did My File Go?
 
I spent quite some time on a project (and I saved every few minutes along the way) and then closed it. Captivate crashed and erased the project completely, including what had been saved since I had opened Captivate that morning! I had to return to what had been saved the night before (when I had last closed Captivate) and implement my changes again).  The same thing happened several months ago. If this had happened only once, I would have been willing to accept it as an unlucky fluke. But now that it's happened again, I'm inclined to think there is an underlying problem. Any advice?

 

Answer

 
It sounds like you got bit by a documented bug in version 3 (that was fixed in version 4). The bug suddenly makes perfectly good files disappear. There is a way to find the missing file. Here is an article I wrote on the subject a few weeks ago.

 
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Adobe Captivate Question: Links Don't Work. Why?
 
I'm trying to use the URL feature in Captivate for buttons and click boxes. The URL is good. But when I preview the topic, the links don't appear to work. I can click on them all day long and they don't take me anywhere. What am I doing wrong. FYI: The links don't work on my local machine; and they don't work on the server versions.
 
Answer:
 
What are you doing wrong? Probably nothing. My guess is that the server where you are publishing (and your machine) needs to have the security settings cleared up. Refer to this article on my BLOG for step-by-step instructions for getting the problem resolved–it will only take a few minutes.
 
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Adobe Captivate Question: Why Don't Right-Clicks Work?
 
The main reason that I upgraded from Captivate 3 to version 4 was to gain the much trumpeted right-click feature. Well I have to say I'm disgusted. I have tried and tried and it simply doesn't work. Can you restore my faith in Adobe and tell me what I'm doing wrong?
 
Answer:
 
I find it interesting that your right-clicks don't work. With the exception of forgetting to deselect Accessibility, I cannot get the right-click feature to fail. However, from what I'm seeing on the Adobe Captivate forums, other people are as frustrated by the right-click feature as you are. Check out these two forum posts (perhaps they will give some things to try that you haven't already).

Forum article 1.

Forum article 2.

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Got a question you'd like answered? Email me.
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Adobe RoboHelp 8: When It Comes to Working With Word… This is Not Your Father’s Olds

by Kevin A. Siegel

Veteran RoboHelp users saw a welcome improvement to the way Microsoft Word documents are imported into the new RoboHelp 8. If you're new to RoboHelp, of course you have nothing to compare the import process with. Let me just say that the import process reminds me of the Oldsmobile car commercials that ran some years ago… the series where "young" hipsters were always speeding along somewhere.
 
In the commercial, the passenger always says to the driver, "What kind of car is this?" The driver says, "It's an Oldsmobile!" "Oldsmobile?" asks the stunned passenger." To which the driver responds, "I know, it's not your father's Oldsmobile!"
 
The new RoboHelp is just like the new Oldsmobile's in those commercials. You might start RoboHelp expecting the same-old features and user experience. And then you start the "car," and the sound of the engine is enough to get the heart pumping.
 
Ever since Adobe revamped the interface, RoboHelp has had a sleeker, more modern look. And now, with RoboHelp 8, there's some real sizzle to that steak. Over the next few weeks, I'll cover some of the main features of the Word import process. This week, I'd like to begin with a bang. For the first time in RoboHelp history, you have a choice when you import your Word content. You can elect to import your Word documents as you have always done (via a standard import), or you can elect to import via a link.
 
When you import your document into RoboHelp via the traditional method (File > Import > Word Document), you are presented with the Content Settings dialog box shown below.
 
First import screen for Word documents
 
If you click Next, you'll see the Import dialog box shown below. At this point you would "map" your Word styles to RoboHelp styles and control how your Word document is split into new topics (via Pagination).
 
Second import screen for Word documents
 
I'll be covering that process in the coming weeks. For now, suffice it to say that clicking the Finish button would import the Word content into your RoboHelp project. Since the content will be copied into RoboHelp, the original Word content is essentially valueless. If there are changes needed in the imported content, you would make those changes from within RoboHelp. If a colleague informs you that they have made significant changes to the Word document since you imported the content into RoboHelp, you would have to make those changes manually within the RoboHelp topics. Of course, at that point, any changes that you made would be lost. Ouch!
 
Which brings me to the alternative import process: linking the Word documents into the RoboHelp project instead of copying. Instead of choosing File > Import > Word document, you would choose File > Add > Word Document (or right-click the Project Files folder on the Project Manager pod and choose Link  > Word document).
 
This time, instead of seeing either of the two dialog boxes above, the Word document appears as a single item in the Project Files folder on the Project Manager pod. At this point, you would right-click the Word document icon and choose Properties to display the Word Document Settings dialog box (shown below).
 
Imported Word file on the Project Manger pod
 
As I mentioned above, I'll be going over these specific dialog boxes over the coming weeks… there's a lot to consider which, while daunting, is a wonderful improvement over any of the frail import options back in your father's day.
 
Unlike the standard import method, the content you linked into RoboHelp will always look back to the source Word document for changes. If changes occur (maybe a team member deleted or edited some important information), you'll see an alert on the Word icon in RoboHelp. All you'd need to do is right-click the icon and choose Update to get those changes in RoboHelp. Nice!
 
Linked Word options
 
I know I've left you with a bit of a cliffhanger by not covering the options in any of the dialog boxes above. Would it make you feel better to know that it was intentional (I do try to keep the articles in this newsletter short)? So as they used to say at the end of your father's favorite show, "See you next week, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel."

 
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Need to learn Adobe RoboHelp 8 fast? Attend our 2-day online training class from the comfort of your home or office. All you'll need is Adobe RoboHelp 8 installed, a headset and a reliable Internet connection. Click here to learn more.