Month: April 2011

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PowerPoint: Playing Audio Sequentially… and Automatically

by AJ George Follow us on Twitter

 

Last week I covered how to play multiple audio tracks at the same time. That wasn't so hard, but what can get a bit complicated is playing multiple audio tracks sequentially. There are two ways to do this.

If you know that the first audio file ends after 1:35 and you'll be on your third slide then, then you would put the second audio file on the third slide and set it to play after 1:35. 

  1. Insert the audio file on the slide on which you would like the audio to begin (Insert > Audio).
  2. Select the Audio Tools Playback tab. 
  3. In the Audio Options group, choose Play across slides from the drop-down menu.
  4. Insert the second audio file on the slide where you will be when the first audio file ends. 
  5. Select Audio Tools Playback > Play across slides.

     Play across slides

  6. Choose Animations > Animation Pane to view the Animation Pane.  
  7. On the Animation Pane, click the down arrow next to the sound file and choose Timing (remember, we are working on the slide with the second sound file) 
  8. From the Timing tab, change the Delay to whatever the length of the first audio clip was, minus however long you will spend on the slides you have run through so far. 

Delay 

For example: If the first audio clip is 1:35 long and will end 20 seconds after you bring up your third slide, at which point you would like the second audio file to start, then you would put the second audio file on the third slide and set it to a 20 second Delay. 

Keep in mind that the time is in seconds (it can be confusing because the audio clip is measured in minutes), so if you wanted a minute long delay, you would enter 60 instead of 1. 

While the process is not particularly hard, it can get a bit confusing. The second option for playing audio tracks one right after the other would be to import the files into another program like Windows Movie Maker. If you are using a PC with PowerPoint, there is a good chance your system came pre-loaded with the WMM software. All you would need to do in this case is drop the audio files onto the timeline, one right after the other, and save it as one audio file. Then just insert the audio into the PowerPoint presentation as one file. 

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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."

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Editing with Acrobat: Get the Comment Pane’s Numbers to Match Acrobat’s Page Numbers

by Jennie Ruby

This week a past student of my Editing with Acrobat class contacted me with this problem: The page numbers used in the Comments pane at the bottom of her screen did not match the page numbers displayed in the page number field at the top of the screen. Endless confusion resulted when she tried to discuss editorial changes with authors–Is that on page 2? or page 21?

Page Navigation toolbar:

Page Navigation toolbar

Comments Pane:

Comments Pane

Where did these different numbers come from? The number 21 corresponds with the actual printed number on that page as it will appear in the printed publication. Acrobat picked this number up from the desktop publishing software used to create the document. It is called the "logical" page number. The number 2 corresponds with the second page in the Acrobat PDF. I will be calling this number the "Acrobat" page number.

One quick fix to make these two numbers match is to set Acrobat to use the Acrobat page numbers (starting with 1 as the first page of the PDF) instead of the "logical" numbers. To do this, choose Edit > Preferences. In the Preferences dialog box, select the Page Display category, deselect Use logical page numbers and click OK. 

Use logical page numbers

Now, within your screen, the numbers are consistent. But how do you discuss your comments with an author who is looking at a printout that has the "logical" page numbers on it? You may need to create a summary of the comments using the logical page numbers.

To create a summary numbered to match the author's printout, return to the Preferences dialog box (Edit > Preferences > Page Display) and select Use logical page numbers. Then choose Comments > Summarize Comments.

Choose a layout and formatting for your summary, then click Create PDF Comment Summary. You will get a new PDF showing the original text and the comments, and any page numbers referred to in the comments will match the "logical" printed page numbers. 

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Need help with Acrobat's many editing tools? Or do you need a reliable way to get feedback from several people on a document or PowerPoint deck? My Editing with Acrobat class is a great place to start.

Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending Jennie's Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. Jennie also teaches the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts and the Complete Review of Grammar class.  

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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.

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Adobe Captivate: Best Practices for Working with User Defined Variables

by Lori Smith

Have you ever inserted a User variable into a Captivate text caption so that the lesson was personalized for your learner? Perhaps you added something like Ah, nice to meet you $$learner_name$$ and expected the variable ($$learner_name$$) to be replaced by text typed by the learner.

Upon previewing the project, there is a good chance that the resulting text caption will look something like the image below.

Learner name missing.

Ah, nice to meet you no name? As you can see, the learner's name did not appear in the text caption. Why? In truth, plenty of things can prevent variable text from appearing. Here are some things to watch for:

You will need to insert a Text Entry Box (TEB) somewhere in the project prior to the text caption. What many Captivate developers don't realize is that it's the TEB that allows the learner to type the information that the variable will collect. No TEB means no data.

After creating the TEB, you will need to remember to associate the TEB with a User variable. (You can do that via the Properties panel, General group).

Associate a variable with a Text Entry Box.

If you typed the variable name in the text caption, triple-check for typos. It's easy to type the name wrong, and no alert dialog box will appear telling you about your error. In the end, the learner's name will simply fail to appear. Your best bet when inserting variables is to use the Insert Variable command on the Format group in the Properties panel. By inserting the variable, you eliminate any chance for a typographic error.

Adding right-click funtionality

When you create a variable (Project > Variables), remember to include a Value. By including a Value, something will always appear in the Text Caption, even if the learner does not type the requested text into the TEB.

Adding a Value to a Variable.

When you insert the variable, check the Maximum length value and ensure that it's NOT 0. If it is, nothing will appear in the caption, even if the learner does everything you ask.

Variable Length

Note: If you insert the same variable in multiple places, the length of the last one you insert will dictate how all instances of that variable will display. If that last variable had a Maximum length of 0 by mistake (as shown in the image above), all of the variables will now have a length of 0. In that case, none of information typed by your learner will appear in the text captions. Ouch! The problem is easy to fix. Simply insert the variable once more, this time using a proper Maximum length… no harm, no foul.

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About the Author: Lori Smith is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Captivate developer. Lori teaches our Adobe Captivate 5 Advanced Actions class.

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

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Writing & Grammar: Do I Italicize the Comma After an Italic Word?

by Jennie Ruby

"And do not underline the colon at the end of a heading…" I found myself saying to a classroom full of document preparation specialists at a large government agency. Most of them nodded in agreement. They already knew that rule. Their very detailed in-house style guide specified the spacing, underlining, capitalization and alignment of the required headings in their technical documents, including this nicety of typography. But not everyone has a style guide that covers such fine detail about type.

 

You may be on your own when faced with questions about typography: Should you italicize the punctuation after an italic word? How about a word set in bold? Should commas and parentheses and brackets follow the same rules? Here some examples illustrating the problem:

 

TO:

FROM:

SUBJECT:

 

How to Set Tracking Options: You can adjust the space between words by setting your tracking options.

 

Now type the word Maryland: the software will automatically abbreviate the state name.

 

In the first example, check out the appearance of the first two underlined headings compared with the last one: When the colon is not underlined, it has a cleaner, less crowded appearance. 

 

In the second example, however, the non-bold colon fades from view, whereas in my opinion it is logically part of the run-in heading. I think it would look better with the colon bold. Nevertheless, many styles state that a colon should never be made bold after a boldface word. 

 

The third example strikes me as one where the colon should not be bold. The colon is part of the sentence, and does not logically "belong" to the word Maryland.

 

When italic words are followed by punctuation marks, the issues are even more subtle:

 

Use one of these transition words: however, moreover, thus, hence.

 

Should the commas be italicized?  Some styles say that if the commas are not logically part of the italicized material, they should not be italicized. They act as separators between the italic words. In fact, keeping the commas roman (not italic) creates more space around them, making it clearer that they are separators between these italic words. Here is an example where the commas are part of the italic material:

 

We rented the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

 

The comma is part of the title, and thus logically should be italicized. If you look closely, you can see that the italic comma is closer to the word before it than the roman commas are in the previous example. But should I use italic for the period at the end?

 

Italics can cause kerning (spacing) problems that are visually distracting and that must be corrected manually in your design software.

 

The difference is statistically significant (p < .05).

 

Here, logic calls for roman parentheses interrupting the roman sentence, but the italic p very nearly touches the parenthesis on the left. The problem is aesthetic, and you have to decide whether it is worth the time to fix this typographic nicety through manual kerning (if your software can even do that).

 

I worked for years with a style guide that called for always matching the formatting of the punctuation mark to the formatting of the word before. Now I prefer to make the decision on a case-by-case basis. It is a lot more work to make the case-by-case decisions, so the arbitrary style is probably more practical. Which do you do? Please tell us about it. 

 

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Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending Jennie's Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. Jennie also teaches the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts and the Complete Review of Grammar class.  


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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.