Month: March 2010

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Adobe RoboHelp 8: Custom To Do Lists

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe RoboHelp is a wonderful help authoring tool. But it will never be confused with a high-powered project management application like Microsoft Project. However, you might be pleasantly surprised to learn that you can add some project-management type information to your project topics. Once added to the topics, Status information can be viewed in a handy report via Tools > Reports > Project Status.

Show the Properties of any RoboHelp topic. On the Status tab, you'll find a fair amount of information you can add to any topic such as Status, Priority code, number of hours spent working on the topic and even a handy To Do List.

But check out the To Do List (shown below).

RoboHelp 8 Status tab

You'll notice that the standard items are represented on the To Do List (First Draft, Tested, etc). Nice. But it's a good bet that the list doesn't have an item or two that you need. I'd tell you to go ahead and click the Customize button and add your own items to the list, but there isn't a Customize button anywhere to be seen. Bummer! Thankfully, it's easy to customize the To Do List. The only problem is that the location of the feature isn't obvious.

Choose File > Project Settings. On the General tab, click the Manage button to the right of the To Do List area. Click the Add button, type the name of the Item you'd like to add and press [Enter].

Manage the To Do list

The next time you access the Status tab, you'll see your new items in the To Do List. It really doesn't get any easier than that. And, as mentioned earlier, when you create a Project Status report, information you add to the Status tab will appear.

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Need to learn the basics of Adobe RoboHelp fast? Attend a live, instructor-led, project-based, online training class. Click here for more information.

Worried about your class canceling? You'll be happy to hear that IconLogic never, ever cancels classes (even if there's just one student registered).

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Follow Kevin on Twitter: http://twitter.com/iconlogic

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mLearning: Access Virtual Classrooms Anywhere with Cell Service

As of last week, the Adobe Connect Pro Mobile app for iPhone
and iPod Touch is available for free download
from the Apple app store, making it the second well known web conferencing
platform in the iTunes store. And here I thought Adobe and Apple were refusing
to play nice these days…

"But how is that possible without Flash?" The new app was
built using a currently unreleased to the public version of Adobe Flash
Professional CS5 that includes "Packager for iPhone," a feature that allows Flash designers to use
Flash ActionScript 3 to put the application together and then bundles it up to
create a native iPhone app.

It's still early to get a very good feel of user
reaction as feedback has been mixed, but the use of Flash via the Packager for
iPhone for the first time is exciting in and of itself, and means that there
should be a pretty seamless transition to move the app to other smartphones in
the future.

~AJ George

Click here
to learn more about the app's features.

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Google Buzz for eLearning

Since its release in February, Google Buzz has
been making headlines, not only for its debatable innovation in bringing
together such social networking sites as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr (to name
a few) but also for its privacy flaws, its efforts to rectify said flaws, and
for whether or not the name is a rip off of Yahoo's similar feature. Headlines
aside, click here
to learn how Google Buzz could effectively be used in the realm of eLearning.

~AJ George

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Acrobat 9: ClearScan Rocks!

by David R. Mankin



PDF files start their lives as many different file types
before their conversion to PDF. Using the print command will allow you to
convert any document to PDF from any application.

There are powerful utilities
that skillfully guide the conversion process to include advanced features, as
is the case with PDF Maker–the
Microsoft Office to PDF utility that come with Acrobat 9.

Acrobat itself will
do conversions to PDF. Take a look at the very first task button: it's called Create. Clicking this button reveals
various sources from which Acrobat will create a PDF file. One of these
options, PDF from Scanner allows you to grab an image of a document and convert it to PDF.

An image-based PDF file can pose a few challenges. A
pixel-based document is generally a large file. Not only that, it doesn't
contain any text at all, even though we can read it with our eyes and brains.
Using Acrobat's Find command is
guaranteed to yield no results. This PDF file is a picture of words, not
actually searchable characters. Acrobat has a terrific OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine built in, allowing us to
take an image-based PDF file and convert the shapes of letters and words into
actual text.

A
brand new feature in Acrobat 9 Professional is an OCR option called ClearScan. ClearScan analyzes the pages
of your image-based PDF and determines which regions contain text and which
contain foreground and background images. The shapes of individual text
characters are analyzed, and Acrobat actually assembles a unique scalable font
within the document. This makes a markedly smaller PDF file that is searchable,
looks amazing, and will print faster thanks to the custom fonts being utilized.

ClearScan

To use ClearScan, open an image-based PDF and
choose Document > OCR Text
Recognition > Recognize Text Using OCR. Click the Edit button to set your OCR options. Be sure to select ClearScan as your PDF Output Style.

OCR Text Settings

Once
complete, zoom way in to the text to see that the original escalator-like
pixels have been smoothed by using the custom font. Do a Find or Search. Also
check out the document's size by visiting the Document Properties Description
tab. Amazing!

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Looking for Acrobat training? Join David for a live, 2-day online class. Click here for more information.

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About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher,
computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't
enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.
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eLearning: Do You Need Both Screen Captions and Voiceover Narration?

by Jennie Ruby

While I was working on a web page recently, I needed more information about CSS. I accessed a training site and played an eLearning demo that explained how to redefine an HTML tag. During the video, I found myself both listening to the voiceover and reading the captions. I quickly realized the captions were identical to the voiceover. At about the same time, I realized that I had not absorbed the content of the last two screens, because I had been trying to figure out whether the voiceover really was the same as the caption. I also noticed that I could read the captions way faster than the voiceover was reading them, so I turned off the audio and just read the rest of the tutorial.

I had just experienced firsthand what I have heard from fellow eLearning developers over the years: a screen caption identical to the voiceover narration can be a distraction rather than an added value to the learning process. In fact, the best scenario is to have graphics, animation, or video accompanied by voiceover only–with no screen captions at all. Because learners are trying to pay attention to the visuals, the need to move their eyes to focus on the accompanying caption is a distraction. Having a voiceover explain the visual enables the learner to absorb the audio and visual information at the same time.

So my decision to turn off the audio was a mistake. I would have had a better learning experience if I had listened to the audio while focusing on the videos and ignoring the printed captions at the bottom of the screen.

So does that mean eLearning should never include screen captions? Of course not. Sometimes screen captions are required simply because there is no voiceover or the learner may not have access to the voiceover.

Other times when captions should appear on screen are

  • when there is no visual graphic and the caption text is the only information being presented
  • when the captions are closely integrated with the graphics–as labels rather than separate descriptions
  • when the information being covered is complex and benefits from both audio and visual presentation, as with math equations or chemical formulas
  • when the information may be needed over time, as in instructions for a learning exercise where the learner may need to repeatedly refer back to the instructions

Ultimately, the use of captions and voiceovers must be coordinated to enhance, not distract from, the learning experience.

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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. Jennie teaches two classes popular online classes: Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts.

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Need to learn develop eLearning courses in Adobe Captivate or Camtasia? You can attend a live, instructor-led online training class and learn the basics of Adobe Captivate. Click here for more information. Looking for more Advanced Captivate 4 training? We've got you covered. Click here for more information. And if you need to learn Camtasia, click here.

Worried about your class canceling? You'll be happy to hear that IconLogic never, ever cancels classes (even if there's just one student registered).