2010 – Page 12 – The Logical Blog

July 7, 2010

eLearning & mLearning: Using Color in Learning, Part IV

by AJ George

Over the last few weeks we've delved deep into color. We've covered how color affects mood, enforces learning, and how to use color to design for special needs like colorblindness, dyslexia, the elderly and other cultures. This week I'm going to wrap up the color series with a few free, useful (and fun!) color resources to aid in your design process.

Color Resources

http://kuler.adobe.com/ I am in love with this site. Beyond use in design, sometimes I check it out just for the eye-candy of color. For serious color fanatics, Kuler by Adobe offers the ability to peruse top rated, beautifully designed and named color combinations made by fellow color fanatics. Feeling creative? You can also make your own color combinations and add them to the community for rating and discussion. This is an easy way to get boatloads of inspiration or to see how color combinations are received by other color lovers before you implement them in to your eLearning design.

http://www.goffgrafix.com/pantone-rgb-100.php Know of a Pantone spot color you'd like to use but not sure of the RGB or Hexadecimal color value? Use this resource from GoGraffix.com for a massive selection of Pantone colors and their RGB and Hexadecimal color values. Beyond Pantone conversion, this is an excellent way to see a very large spectrum of colors laid out all in one place.

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html Maybe you know one color for sure that you'd like to use but have no idea where to start before selecting the other colors. Try entering the RGB or Hexadecimal value into the online color schemer where a set of 16 coordinating colors are automatically produced based on the color you have entered. You can also lighten or darken your color scheme with the click of a button. If you don't have an initial color in mind you could instead choose from the pre-populated color palette to help get you started.

http://www.colourlovers.com/photocopa You'll need to create a COLOURlovers account to play with this tool, but it's free and definitely worth it! Import any photo from the web or your flickr account and this tool will design a color palette inspired by the photo. If you don't have a photo already in mind you could also peruse the PHOTOCOPA gallery for inspiration.

http://www.colourlovers.com/copaso/ColorPaletteSoftware If you're looking for a more advanced solution for creating color palettes, try COPASO which is like a combination of PHOTOCOPA and the ColorSchemer. This tool is also offered by COLOURlovers and like the previous tool you'll need to create a free account to use it.

http://www.purveslab.net/seeforyourself/ Want to see for yourself how certain color combinations can play tricks on the eyes? You can waste some time learn a lot by exploring the color examples from Purves Lab and reading up on the empirical explanations for various color tricks.

Do you have any color resources or experiences you'd like to share with your fellow designers? I would love to hear from you! Feel free to add to this list in the Comments area below.

Click here for Part 1 of this series, How Color Affects Mood.

Click here for Part 2 of this series, How Color Affects Learning.

Click here for Part 3 of this series, Using Colors for Special Circumstances.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

July 7, 2010

Adobe RoboHelp 8: The Pros Have It, The Others Don’t

by Kevin Siegel

During my RoboHelp class, students are introduced to the concept of generating a layout via the Single Source Layouts pod (View > Pods > Single Source Layouts) pretty early.

The pod, which appears below, contains a handful of layouts (output files) that can be generated one at a time or in a batch.

RoboHelp layouts

The type of layout you choose depends on your audience. For instance, you would choose Adobe AIR to generate Help as an Adobe AIR application, browser-based Help (with the theme and skin of an Adobe AIR application), or as a packaged data file that can be viewed in an AIR Help viewer. Adobe AIR is a cross-platform format for building and deploying applications that connect the desktop to the web.

You would go with WebHelp if you wanted a web-based or desktop Help on any browser and platform. WebHelp supports standard Help features and provides customizing capabilities.

And you would generate FlashHelp if you were worried about DHTML limitations for browsers and platforms and high-security firewall issues. Although FlashHelp is arguably the slickest-looking of the outputs, your customers would need to have the Flash Player 8 or later and a web browser to view the Help system. In addition, FlashHelp isn't as easily customized as WebHelp.

So there you have it… I've given you the basic information you need to understand the layouts on the Single Source Layouts pod. See ya…

What's that you say? I forgot the Pro layouts? Oh, sorry about that. As I teach my RoboHelp students about the big three layouts on the Single Source Layouts pod (WebHelp, FlashHelp and Adobe AIR), the two Pro layouts almost always get the short end of the stick. It's not that the Pro layouts aren't cool, they are. It's just that many RoboHelp developers don't have the one, key component required to take advantage of either Pro layout.

But I digress. First let me explain what the two Pro layouts are. WebHelp Pro and FlashHelp Pro deliver server-based output. The advantage of server-based output?

Increased speed: The Contents, Index, and Search tabs appear more quickly.
Usage information: Collect feedback painlessly from readers by analyzing their traffic patterns and search behavior.
Runtime project merging: As a Help author, you can easily merge multiple projects at runtime. This is the perfect workflow if you are working with multiple authors, each working on a different part of the Help system and you want to combine everything as one larger project.
Better Search: Provides a powerful search engine to produce better results.

So the Pro layouts sound great, better than either FlashHelp or WebHelp for sure (I'll discuss the merits of Adobe AIR in a future article). So what's the catch to using the Pro layouts? Just one, but it's a biggie. You will need to own, install and manage Adobe RoboHelp Server before you will be able to publish either Pro layout to a server.

RoboHelp Server? Simply put, RoboHelp Server is an option–purchased independently of RoboHelp–that adds the capabilities mentioned above to your Help system.

In the image below you will see the workflow that incorporates RoboHelp Server.

RoboServer Workflow

Image Source: Adobe

Basically you take your RoboHelp projects, publish them to the server and BAM, you'll get the database and feedback reports that make the Pro layouts stand apart.

In today's search-centric world, I think you would be well-served to consider adding the Pro layouts and RoboHelp Server to your Help arsenal.

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Looking for learn RoboHelp quickly? I've got a two-day RoboHelp class coming up online. Click here to learn more. And if you'd like to learn how to install and use RoboHelp Server, we've got a 3-hour online class you'll be interested in. Click here for more details.

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Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

July 1, 2010

Writing & Grammar: Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers

by Jennie Ruby

Here are two modifier problems I have encountered recently. The first is a caption from a chiropractor's ad:

"Natural approach to chronic pain and injuries located in Silver Spring."

The second is a sentence from an e-newsletter about guitars:

"Yes, Hendrix's 1965 Fender Strat that he burned at a show recently
fetched over half a million bucks at an auction."

If you giggled, or at least smiled a little, when reading these, you have discovered the inadvertent humor of these ever-popular writing errors. In the first example, it sounds like the pain and injuries are located in Silver Spring. In the second one, especially because of the line break, it sounds like the late Jimmy Hendrix gave a show recently.

Modifiers can be single adjectives or adverbs, such as recently, or they can be phrases such as located in Silver Spring. They are considered dangling when the item they are modifying is not even in the sentence. They are considered misplaced when they are not placed obviously enough near the item they are modifying. In either case, problem modifiers can be read as modifying the wrong thing in the sentence-hence the humor.

The solution to a dangling modifier is to insert the item being modified. Here is a revised caption:

Chiropractor's office located in Silver Spring offers a natural approach to chronic pain and injuries.

The solution to a misplaced modifier is to move either the modifier or the item truly being modified to lead the reader to connect the two. Here is a revised sentence:

"Yes, Hendrix's 1965 Fender Strat that he burned at a show fetched over half a million bucks at a recent auction."

The humor from dangling and misplaced modifiers is similar to the humor of a bad pun: they are groaners, not side-splitters. But that is not even the worst thing about them. The worst part is that they distract the reader from the real content of your writing, and for that reason, they are worth correcting.

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Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending my Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. Click here to learn more. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class. You can learn about that here.

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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. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

July 1, 2010

Acrobat: Summarizing Comments

by David R. Mankin

Acrobat files are extremely handy in a review cycle. If I have created a document in Adobe InDesign and I want you to review the file, I have three basic choices:

Print the document and hand it to you.
Send you the InDesign file–and hope you have InDesign (as well as the same version) and all the fonts that I used installed on your computer.
Create a PDF of the document so you open and see exactly how the document is supposed to look on any computer.

It's a no-brainer. Acrobat will also allow you to utilize the Comment & Markup tool so you can place electronic post-it notes, pencil marks, boxes, circles, text edit marks, rubber stamps, etc.

For a short document, these highly graphical markup tools are fantastic. One might become overwhelmed by the large number of comments in any given PDF file (or find that in a very long document, it is difficult to get a handle of the comments).

Savvy Acrobat users know to open the Comments Panel to help manipulate and navigate through a PDF's various comments. This is very useful, but only while working with the document on screen.

Proofing and reviewing documents can be done on screen, or on paper. As much as we all want to be 'paperless,' there's no getting around it in my shop–I proof on paper. Once the PDF document is printed, I would be still be strapped to my workstation chair (to view the Comments Panel).

Here's where Acrobat's Summarize Comments command comes in to play. Choose Comments > Summarize Comments. You are presented with many options, such as physical layout, graphical vs. textual (or both), sorting criteria, etc.

Summary Options

I usually choose Comments Only to end up with a simple list of the document's comments. This summary is presented as a stand-alone PDF file and can be printed, attached, distributed, etc.

Summary results

Now I have the original document on paper, and a list of all comments on paper too. I am now free to grab a red pencil and head to a comfy spot, and start proofing on good-old paper.

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Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

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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.

July 1, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker 9: Adding Tabs to a Table of Contents, Part II

by Barbara Binder

Last week I talked about how to use the TOC Reference page to add the missing tab between a table of contents text entry and the page number that follows it. Here are a few more TOC tips:

As a general rule, don't edit the text on a generated page. All of your edits will be lost should you update the book and the file is regenerated.
If you want to have a title that will actually stay after you update your book, you have to ensure that the title is the first thing in the flow (titles usually are, so that's easy) and it is using a paragraph format that does not end in the suffix for the generated file. For example, TOC is the standard table of contents suffix, so you could call your contents title ContentsTitle, but not ContentsTitleTOC.
If you want to remove the page numbers from a top level TOC entry:
1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
3. Delete the building block <$pagenum> from the line with the same paragraph format as your top level TOC entry.
4. Choose View > Body Pages.
5. Update your book (or file).

If you'd like to add the chapter numbers in front of the chapter titles in your table of contents (assuming the chapter titles are numbered with the <$chapnum> variable):
1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
3. Type <$chapnum> and a space in front of the chapter title building block.
4. Choose View > Body Pages.
5. Update your book (or file).

When Create Hyperlinks is turned on, you can press Ctrl + Alt on your keyboard as you click on a table of contents entry to follow the hyperlink into the file. If it isn't turned on, you'll need to right-click your TOC in your book window and choose Set up Table of Contents. Then select Create Hypertext Links.

Turn on Create Hyperlinks for the TOC.

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If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker class. Hope to "see" you there.

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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 world-wide.

June 30, 2010

eLearning & mLearning: Using Color in Learning, Part III

by AJ George

Over the last couple weeks I've discussed the impact that thoughtful use of color can have on your learner's mood and ability to learn material. This week I'm going to focus on the use of color when designing eLearning for audiences with special needs.

Your eLearning color scheme might look amazing to you, and it might tie-in perfectly with the learning you are trying to deliver. But is it possible the eLearning course could be seen internationally and convey something completely different to someone in another culture? Could your eLearning lesson be hard for someone who is colorblind to see? What about the elderly or people who are dyslexic? Read on for some color design tips for these special circumstances.

Cross-Cultural Color Design

Some color meanings are relatively universal. If you want to convey passion, red would be a good choice no matter where your design is viewed. If you want to convey evil, black is pretty universally accepted. But what about something like marriage? In Western cultures you'd probably use white, but if your design was viewed in Hindu or Chinese culture your color choice may be lost, as they associate red with marriage. To convey death? In the West, eLearning lessons targeted for the Japanese and Native American cultures should use black; in Hindu and Chinese cultures you'd be better off with white.

Keeping track of a full spectrum of colors and how they relate to an even wider array of emotions and sentiments can get overwhelming. Use this infographic to simplify the process (you can click the graphic for a larger view).

(Image Source: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net)

Design for the Color Blind, Dyslexic and Elderly

I find that rather than designing eLearning courses with every possible sight deficiency in mind, it is easier to design the course so that it looks nice and will be effective. Once I have my design in place, I analyze it to see what colors need to be altered a bit to satisfy a more diverse sight spectrum.

When I want to know if a color will have enough contrast to be visible to someone who is colorblind I often reference the illustration below. The large image is how people with normal vision see the colors and the image at the bottom left is how people with most forms of color blindness would see those same colors. (You can click the graphic for a larger view.)

(Image Source: http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/)

Another good resource when designing for someone who is colorblind is to either post your learning content online or find a website with a similar color scheme. Copy the lesson's URL into this Colorblind Web Page Filter. Depending on which color filter you select, the page filter will show you the view seen by people with different forms of colorblindness.

Based upon her previous research showing that dyslexia is actually a "slow moving transient system that depends largely upon visual contrast," Mary C. Williams of the University of New Orleans, ran a study with 38 dyslexic and 32 non-dyslexic children to see if their reading comprehension varied based on which color background black text was presented. The test revealed a significant elevation in reading comprehension among dyslexics when the text appeared on a blue or light gray background.

Lighthouse International, a nonprofit organization that deals with vision preservation, wrote an informative brochure on vision and old age in which they state that the loss of vision is not a guarantee with old age. There are some changes in vision that we can all expect like declining sensitivity, which is a yellowing of the eyes that can make it difficult to distinguish blue from black. If you are presenting your learning to a more mature audience, that may be a color combination to avoid.

Another color choice to avoid when designing for an older audience is pastels (particularly in cool tones) as they can appear more gray than their intended color.

Lighthouse International also produced a brochure on Designing for People with Partial Sight and Color Deficiencies that has some good color examples and thoughts on combining different hues and saturations of colors for people with sight deficiencies to reference when you are designing.

Generally speaking, it isn't always convenient to follow these specific color guidelines. Many color combinations will suffice for all audiences. However, it's important to always ask the question: "what is the value of bringing in a few more readers or increasing understanding from a generally underserved audience?" Here's hoping your editor or manager agrees.

Click here for Part 1 of this series, How Color Affects Mood.

Click here for Part 2 of this series, How Color Affects Learning.

Click here for Part 4 of this series, Easy & Free Color Resources.

***

June 29, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4 Audio Editing: Shhhhhh! I Mean Speak Up!

by Kevin Siegel

When working with audio in Adobe Captivate, one issue you are likely to face is audio levels that are all over the map. Unless you created your audio in a studio or received your audio from an audio professional, you'll likely come across sections of your audio that are either too loud, too low or both. Luckily, you can fix some of the issues without leaving Captivate.

Right-click any audio file on the Library, choose Edit with Adobe Captivate and you'll open the Edit Audio dialog box.

In the image below, parts of the waveform are taller than others. Generally speaking, the taller the wave, the louder the audio. You wouldn't even need to preview the audio shown below to know that the audio suddenly gets louder, softer and then louder again.

Audio that is too loud.

Without leaving the Edit Audio dialog box, click the Adjust Volume button to display the Adjust Volume controls. At this point, you'll need to experiment a bit to come up with a volume that sounds the best to you.

If your audio file has multiple sections that are too loud, select Dynamics from the Audio Processing area (as shown below). You can typically leave the Ratio and Threshold settings alone and click the OK button.

Audio Volume Controls

In the image below, you can see that the waveform is now pretty smooth (I didn't have to tinker around any further). If your audio still has sections that are too loud, go back and experiment with the Ratio and Threshold sliders to see if you can calm things down a bit.

Adjusted Audio

If there is just a little bit of audio in the waveform that is too loud, and the Dynamics option isn't helping, select the problematic part of the waveform, click the Adjust Volume button and drag the Volume slider down a bit or as necessary to equalize the volume.

Finally, if your audio has sections that are alternating between too loud, perfect and then too soft, try selecting the Normalize option you'll find just above Dynamics. I find that this is the option of last resort and that Dynamics or manual Volume adjustments work better.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that the features you will find in dedicated audio-editing programs like Adobe Soundbooth or Audacity are light-years better than the options you will find in Captivate, but it's nice to know what you can accomplish without leaving Captivate.

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Looking to learn Captivate? We have a couple of options… we offer two online classes (Beginner and Advanced). Click here for details on the Beginner class. Click here for details on the Advanced class. We also have a 3-hour class devoted to Advanced Actions. Click here to learn more about that class.

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Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

June 24, 2010

Acrobat: Metadata!

by David R. Mankin

Metadata is information about a document and its contents (including the author's name, keywords and copyright information). These bits of information are used by search utilities.

PDF Metadata

Do all PDF files have metadata? No. If you don't specify that you want metadata in your PDF files while creating them, will there be metadata? Probably.

I am frequently asked in the Acrobat classes if I know what program was used to create the source document of an exercise file. A quick tap of Ctrl-D (Cmd-D on the Mac) on the keyboard displays the Document Properties dialog box.

By clicking the Description tab, I can often state, with authority, that this document was created in Illustrator or InDesign (the Metadata tells me so). The document title, author, subject and keywords are all listed here, as well as the document's creation date, time, and the application that was used to create the source file.

From the Description tab of the Document Properties dialog box, metadata can be read, added or deleted. Additionally, there is an Additional Metadata button which allows for deeper exploration of the underlying Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) information. This XMP information can be handed back and forth from one Adobe application to another, allowing accurate metadata to be carried through the document's workflow stages, as it is passed from one application to another. In this way, the document information present in an InDesign file is passed along to the PDF that is created from it. Exploring the options in various PDF conversion tools will often have a toggle to enable or disable certain PDF metadata conversion.

Want to remove a PDF file's metadata? Easy. Open the PDF file in Acrobat. Choose Document > Examine Document. The Examine Document Panel opens. A thorough scan of the document is initiated and metadata is one of the features that is inspected. If your document has metadata, it will be listed. At the bottom of this panel is a Remove button. With Metadata checked, click the Remove button and the metadata will be removed. Check it out by visiting the Document Properties dialog box again (the Description tab). Need to perform this on a group of files? This process can be batched by using Acrobat's Batch Processing located by choosing Advanced > Document Processing.

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Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

***

June 23, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker 9: Adding Tabs to a Table of Contents

by Barbara Binder

"Discoverable." That's a new Adobe buzzword for features that users can discover on their own. I'd say that adding a tab character between the entries and page numbers in a table of contents does not fall into that category. One of my most memorable consulting moments was watching a student update her FrameMaker book and TOC and then manually add all the tabs after FrameMaker stripped them out. I can only imagine what she was thinking with each tap of the Tab key: "I hate FrameMaker, I hate FrameMaker."

Don't hate FrameMaker! It's such a simple fix:

Open your Table of Contents file.
Choose View > Text Symbols to turn on the non-printing characters (if they aren't on already).
Choose View > Reference Pages.
Tap PgDn on your keyboard until you reach the TOC Reference Page, which looks something like this:
Take a close look at the text. What do you see between each <$paratext> and <$pagenum> building block? It's a space!
Delete the space after each <$paratext> and replace it with a tab character. In this image below, I've already set a right-aligned tab stop with leader dots, so adding the tabs scoots them over immediately. You will have to add the tab stop before your page numbers move to the right:
Choose View > Body Pages.
Reference Page changes to generated documents don't take effect until you update your book. Once updated, you'll be happy to discover that you will never need to add those tabs manually again.

Say it with me: "I love FrameMaker, I love FrameMaker!"

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If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker class. Hope to "see" you there.

***

June 22, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: Quickest Quizzes Ever!

by Kevin Siegel

Adding Question Slides has always been a necessary evil in Captivate. I'm not saying that including a quiz in your eLearning isn't a good thing… certainly quizzes are an integral measuring stick for the effectiveness of your course. However, adding question slides to a Captivate eLearning course was, at best, tedious.

Prior to Captivate 4, you couldn't duplicate a Question Slide or import them from one project to another. With the introduction of Captivate 4, both of those problems were a thing of the past. But anyone who created a quiz using Captivate 4 knows how much work the process was. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, it goes a bit like this: you'll choose Quiz > Question Slide. Select the Question type and click OK. Type the question, type the answers, select the correct answer(s) and click OK. Format the Question Slide to taste. Then repeat. Not difficult, but very, very click-intensive.

Quiz Object Styles

With the new Captivate 5, the mundane chore of creating a quiz gets a whole lot easier. Prior to adding any Question Slides, you'll choose Edit > Object Style Manager. At the upper left of the Object Style Manager dialog box, there is an entire Quizzing Objects group. There are several Quizzing Objects, and you can set the styles to suit your needs.

Default quiz object styles

Improved Quiz Default Labels

Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences. From the Quiz category, select Default Labels. When your Question Slides are created, there will be buttons added automatically along the bottom of the slide allowing learners to submit their answers, clear selections, skip a question and go back and answer skipped questions. Learners will also see feedback captions as they get the answers correct or incorrect. For the first time in Captivate history, you can elect to use the default values for your captions or create custom caption styles you can use on the Question Slides. The concept of Object Styles is new in Captivate 5 and will save you a significant amount of formatting time.

Quiz default labels

Add Multiple Question Slides

The best new feature Quiz feature you'll see in Captivate 5 will present itself when you insert the first Question Slides (via Quiz > Question Slide). Gone are the bad-old-days when you had to select a single Question Type and click OK. Then, when you wanted another Question Slide, you'd have to repeat the process. And again and again.

Take a look at the image below:

Add multiple question slides

All of the Question Types available in Captivate 4 are still there. However, a wonderful enhancement is the ability to specify multiple copies of each Question Type will be added to the project with a single click of the OK button (in the image above, I'm only showing the first two Question Types but I've asked Captivate to create 11 of each).

Improved Question Editing

And finally, while it's not as awe-inspiring as the ability to add a billion Question Slides to your project at one time, in Captivate 5 you can now edit the questions and answers directly on the slide (goodbye unnecessary dialog boxes). Double-clicking the text on the slide will now take you directly into text-editing mode where you can make your changes without losing focus on the slide itself.

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Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel