Month: April 2014

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Adobe Captivate: Bookmarking Without an LMS

by Kevin Siegel Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn View our videos on YouTube

Bookmarking a lesson provides the learner an opportunity to continue viewing a lesson from the exact spot where they left off. If you've uploaded your eLearning lesson into a Learning Management System, bookmarking is enabled by default in every lesson that you publish. 

If you're not working with an LMS and you still want to enable bookmarking, you're out of luck, right? Not exactly. With a few simple clicks, you can enable bookmarking within any Captivate project. Once enabled, learners will see the following message should they close their web browser while your eLearning lesson and then return at a later time.
 
Adobe Captivate: Bookmarking message
 
Enable Bookmarking (Self-Paced Learning)

  1. Open or create a Captivate project and choose Project > Table of Contents. (The Skin Editor Window opens.)
  2. From the left of the Skin Editor Window, select Show TOC.
    Adobe Captivate: Show TOC  
  3. From the bottom of the window, click the Settingsbutton. (The TOC Settings dialog box opens.)
    Adobe Captivate: TOC Settings  
  4. From the Runtime Options area, select Self-Paced Learning.
    Adobe Captivate: Self-Paced Learning   
  5. Click the OK button.

By enabling Self-Paced Learning, you have basically activated Captivate's bookmarking feature. You can test the bookmarking by publishing the project and then opening the HTML file with any web browser.

Move through a few slides in the lesson and then close the browser window. Reopen the HTML file and instead of the lesson simply starting over from the beginning, you (and your learners) will see the "Continue from where you stopped last time?" message shown below. How cool is that?

Adobe Captivate: Bookmarking message

If you'd like to see the Self-Paced Learning option in action, check out the video I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for instructor-led training on the top eLearning tools? We offer live, online training on Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, Adobe Presenter, and TechSmith Camtasia Studio.We can also bring the same great training onsite to your facility. Interested? Contact us for details.
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Adobe eLearning Community Formed Supporting Maryland, DC, and Virginia

IconLogic's Kevin Siegel has been named the manager of Adobe's eLearning Community supporting eLearning developers living in or around DC, Virginia, and Maryland.

Kevin and the IconLogic team will be hosting regular meetings featuring tips and tricks on creating effective eLearning using such tools as Adobe Captivate and Adobe Presenter.

Join the group on LinkedIn to keep up to date on meetings and share your experiences with other developers.

More information.

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Writing & Grammar: Further discussion of Comma after And

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn
 
During one of my challenges a few weeks ago, I asked if there should be a semicolon, comma, or nothing before however. Many respondents added a comma after the word and in one of the examples. Here is the problem sentence, punctuated as recommended:

The roadside was sprinkled with breadcrumbs, and however you look at it, that bird's luck had finally turned.

As you all determined, the comma after breadcrumbs is required. Placing another comma after and is optional, but according to the late William Sabin, of the Gregg Reference Manual, the preferred usage is to omit that extra comma. His reasoning is that a comma after and makes the following introductory element appear as though it is nonessential, when actually it is essential.

If you read the sentence aloud, you will find that your voice does not drop on the clause however you look at it, as it would if this were a truly nonessential interruption in the sentence.

Read this aloud: The roadside was sprinkled with breadcrumbs, and, however you look at it, that bird's luck had finally turned.  

Compare it with this truly nonessential interruption:

Read this aloud: The bird, by the way, was a chickadee.

I'm guessing you found that your voice definitely dropped in pitch and loudness on "by the way" but did not drop on "however you look at it." Having commas both before and after the clause indicates that your voice should drop because the part surrounded by commas is parenthetical, or nonessential. Here, we have just experienced that the clause is not parenthetical.

"But I want a pause there!" I can hear you thinking. Well, I sympathize. I have previously discussed the tendency in training videos for the speaker to pause gratuitously but meaningfully after the word and, like this:

Spoken: "Select the text you wish to format, and [pause] choose 14 from the Font Size drop-down menu."

The pause in speaking draws the learner's attention to the next instruction, "choose." However, putting a comma after and to indicate that pause is ungrammatical. What to do? What to do? Perhaps it is time to make the leap to "literary" punctuation, where the commas indicate pauses rather than grammatical structures. If I accept literary punctuation, with that extra comma, I need to add the following names to the list of winners: Alicia Grimes, Michelle Duran, Alisha Sauer, Gail Kelleher, Joanne Chantelau, and Vera Sytch.

Correct answers to the Puppies challenge on Apostrophes are brought to you by Kay Honaker.

  1. The black and tan puppy ran right into the children's room.
  2. All three puppies' noses were white from the milk in the cereal bowl.
  3. The kids' faces brightened as soon as they saw the puppies.
  4. The cat guarded the kittens from the rambunctious dogs.
  5. The biggest dog's paws were up on the table.
  6. The children pulled the puppies' and the momma dog's ears.
  7. There was little doubt about the puppies' affection.
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Adobe RoboHelp: Master Pages for Word Headers and Footers

by Willam Van Weelden Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn
 
When importing or generating Microsoft Word documents with RoboHelp, one of the chief weaknesses has always been the lack of support for Word's headers and footers. When importing, the Word headers and footers were ignored. When generating Printed Documentation, there was no support for controlling the resulting headers and footers from within RoboHelp. Instead, you had to edit them in the Word document.

With the new Adobe RoboHelp 11, you can now control the headers and footers for Printed documentation with Master Pages. This allows you to control the information displayed in the headers and footers of Word and PDF documents generated by RoboHelp.

A master page is a template for your topics. You can assign a style sheet to a master page, and set up headers and footers. If you apply a master page to a topic, the topic will use the style sheet and display the header and footer. When you create printed documentation, the printed documentation can use the header and footer you set up on the master page.

Setting up headers and footers in a Master Page

To change the header and footer of a master page, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Project Set-up pod. (View > Pods > Project Set-up)
  2. Open a master page (or create a new one)
  3. Choose View > Header to open the header pane
  4. Add content to the header just as you would add content to a topic
  5. Choose View > Footer to open the footer pane
  6. Add content to the footer, just as you would add content to a topic 
Using the Master Page for Printed Documentation

Once you have set up the master page, you can use the master page when generating printed documentation.

  1. Open the Single Source Layouts pod (View > Pods > Single Source Layouts). 
  2. Double-click a Printed Documentation layout to open the Print Document options.
  3. From the Header/Footer area, select the master page you set up earlier. 
  4. Click Save and Generate to create the printed documentation.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.
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eLearning: Determining the Best Size for Today’s Lessons

by Kevin Siegel Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn View our videos on YouTube

When developing eLearning lessons using any of the top development tools (Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, or TechSmith Camtasia Studio), you need to take the size of your learner's device into account. If you make your eLearning lesson too large (I'm talking width and height, not how many megabytes the lesson might be), learners with small displays may have to scroll to see your content. If your published lesson has the ability to scale to fit the learners display, your content could scale down so small that your content will become unusable.

While you can create a project at one size and resize it smaller later, it's not an ideal workflow. Resizing a project once you've started will likely result in shifting of screen objects that require additional editing on your end. For that reason, it's best to pick a width and height that will work for the widest possible range of devices right from the start.

Several years ago, the typical desktop computer display resolution was 800×600 pixels. If you developed eLearning content for a screen resolution that low, a project size of 640×480 was recommended. A few years later, 1024×768 was the standard screen resolution, resulting in typical eLearning lessons sized to 800×600. According to w3schools.com, the standard desktop screen resolution today is 1366×768 and it's trending higher. (You'll find that available resolutions vary from system to system. For instance, I use an HP 22 inch display that doesn't support 1366×768. Instead, my closest options are 1360×768 and 1376×812.)

Because screen resolutions are higher than ever, developers are seeking an optimal viewing experience for learners. But what's the ideal size for an eLearning lesson? Unfortunately, there isn't a cookie-cutter answer. The size of the lesson you create depends largely on your customer. What is the typical device you expect your learner to be using? How big is its screen? Is the device typically used vertically (portrait) or horizontally (landscape)? What is its typical resolution?

If you are creating content for learners using standard desktop computers (Windows or Mac), a project size of 800×600 still works well. However, if you plan to post your content to YouTube, stay away from 800×600. At that size, your lesson won't look quite right when viewed on YouTube (you will likely see black bars on one or both sides of the video, and the video might look distorted during playback).

What's the Relationship Between Project Size and Screen Resolution?

Let's say that you create a project that is sized to 800×600. I view your lesson on a 17-inch monitor with a resolution of 1024×768. In this scenario, your lesson is going to look fine on my monitor. But what if I have a large screen (a 27-inch monitor for instance), and I'm using a high resolution? Your lesson is going to have a lot of white space to the left and right. Will that white space make the lesson look silly? Who's to say?

It's a delicate balancing act between the size of the capture area and an ideal screen resolution. When I create YouTube videos, I set my eLearning tool's capture size to 1024×568 and my screen resolution to 1440×900. While I could go higher with my screen resolution and capture more of the screen, the captured screen text at a higher screen resolution is small and hard to read. When I upload videos to YouTube, the already small text gets worse because YouTube makes my videos smaller.

More information on sizing eLearning projects:  

I'd love to hear from you. What is the best project size you've come up with? (Please post your comments below. Let me know who your target end-user is and the eLearning development tool you use.)

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Looking for instructor-led training on the top eLearning tools? We offer live, online training on Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, Adobe Presenter, and TechSmith Camtasia Studio. We can also bring the same great training onsite to your facility. Interested? Contact us for details.