January 2016 – The Logical Blog

January 26, 2016

Adobe RoboHelp: Submit Sitemaps to Google

by Willam van Weelden

I have already showed you how to create a sitemap for Responsive HTML5. After you create a sitemap, you need to tell search engines where they can find your sitemap so that they can use it to index your site. Here is how to submit your sitemap to Google:

Go to the Google Webmaster Tools page and log in using your Google account.

Click Add a site and, in the URL field, add the URL of the site that contains your Help system. (Target the root of the site. For example: http://www.example.com/help/.)

After clicking Continue, follow the steps to verify that you are the owner of the site.

Next, go to your dashboard and click Sitemaps. Then click Add/Test Sitemap.

Add the text sitemap.xml in the field and then click Submit Sitemap.

Click the link Refresh the page to refresh the status of the page and see whether your sitemap was successfully submitted.

The sitemap is submitted to Google and the search engine will index your help system.

***

Looking to learn RoboHelp? Come join me for my live, two-day online RoboHelp class (held once each month). And if you'd like to learn more about Dynamic Filters, check out my 3-hour mini course: Adobe RoboHelp: Advanced Content Reuse.

January 22, 2016

Hands-On Workshop: Come Compare Adobe Captivate to Articulate Storyline to TechSmith Camtasia Studio

When: Sunday, May 15
Where: Anaheim, CA

I'm proud to announce that I'll be facilitating/refereeing an awesome hands-on pre-conference session at the STC Technical Communication Summit in Anaheim, CA later this year. The session will give attendees a chance to use some of the top eLearning development tools available today.

Here's why this session is going to be a real slug-fest: In this corner: Adobe Captivate. Over there? It's Articulate Storyline? And because this isn't a two-tool fight, look over there and you'll see TechSmith Camtasia Studio.

Bring your own laptop to this session loaded with the trial versions of Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and/or TechSmith Camtasia Studio. Sound the bell and create and publish an eLearning project in each of the tools (or just one… it's up to you). By the time you leave class, you'll have a functioning eLearning lesson you can take back and show your team/boss. Along the way, you'll be armed with information about each tool's pricing, strengths, and weaknesses.

Let the tools pound on each other and find out, first-hand, which tool is right for you!

Learn more

January 21, 2016

Adobe Captivate 9: Awesome “Hidden” Find and Replace Feature

by Kevin Siegel

While you can use Captivate's Find and Replace feature (located in the Edit menu) to find all kinds of things in a project (including images, animation, and Flash video), I find this feature most useful for quickly replacing words or phrases throughout a project.

In the image below, I intend to change the phrase "Watch as" with the word "Select." I have no idea how many changes are going to be made throughout the project, let alone which slides are going to be affected. At this point, I can click Find Next, then Replace, then Find Next again and again until the process is complete.

Wouldn't it be great to know, upfront, how many changes are going to be made? (Heck, I might be adventuresome and click the Replace All button… I'd hate to find out afterwards that I didn't want half of the changes. Yikes!)

This is a perfect use-case for the Find All button (shown being clicked above). However, after clicking the Find All button, nothing will appear to change on the Captivate screen. At first glance it seems that the Find All feature doesn't work.

But here is where a little investigation does wonders. After clicking the Find All button, stretch the Find and Replace dialog box taller. And BAM! A complete list of the intended changes becomes visible.

Now you'll be able to see (in advance), what's going to change and where. Sure it would be nice if the dialog box expanded on its own, but now that you know what to do, it's a small matter.

If you'd like to see the Find All feature in action, check out the Video Demo I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

***

Looking for training or help with Adobe Captivate? Check out these awesome live, online Captivate classes.

January 20, 2016

Adobe RoboHelp: Sitemaps

by Willam van Weelden

RoboHelp 2015 patch 2 introduces a great feature for Responsive HTML5: sitemaps. A sitemap is a file with a list of all topics in your output. Search engines such as Google and Bing use the sitemap to determine which topics are available in your output, boosting findability of your content. If you want to make 1st place on Google, having a sitemap is essential. Without a sitemap, Google may not be able to index your entire output, skipping useful topics it can't find.

Create a Sitemap

Open your RoboHelp project
Open the Outputs(SSL) pod. (Project > Pods > Outputs(SSL)).
Double-click your Responsive HTML5 SSL to open the properties.
From the options at the left, select Search.
At the right of the dialog box, select Generate XML Sitemap.
In the Base URL of the Help System field, add the URL where your content will be hosted.
(For example, if your help will be hosted on http://example.com/help/<project name>, type the path without the project name, such as: http://example.com/help. RoboHelp will add the Output Folder name of your output.)
Choose how often your content changes with the Content Change Frequency drop-down menu.
Click Save and Generate to create your output.

Once you generate, RoboHelp will create the file sitemap.xml in your output. This file is the sitemap used by search engines. Provide this file to your webmaster (or submit the sitemap to search engines to allow them to index your site).

***

Looking to learn RoboHelp? Come join me for my live, two-day online RoboHelp class (held once each month). And if you'd like to learn more about Dynamic Filters, check out my new 3-hour mini course: Adobe RoboHelp: Advanced Content Reuse.

January 19, 2016

Adobe Captivate 9: Fixing the INI Error

by Kevin Siegel

Over the past few weeks I've gotten several emails from Captivate developers using Windows 10 and Captivate 9 who get the following error when attempting to record software simulations:

A quick Google search found the following forum article. According to the post, you need to edit the AdobeCaptivate.ini file found within Captivate's application folder.

While I'm using Windows 10 and have not run across this issue, I'm teaching Adobe Captivate at ATD's TechKnowledge this week and wouldn't you know it, one of my students (Brian O'Neill) got hit with the error message above. Unfortunately, my student wasn't able to edit his INI file.

Brian didn't give up. He was able to fix the problem and shares his steps below.

When I attempted to modify the AdobeCaptivate.ini file I received an "access denied" message. It appears that Captivate sets some restricted permissions in the /Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Captivate 9 x64 folder.

My workaround was to right-click that folder in File Explorer and choose Properties > Security > Users. On the Security tab, I enabled "Full Control" for Users and clicked OK.

I was then able to open and edit the AdobeCaptivate.ini file in Notepad and change the listing for DpiAwareness from 0 to 1. Captivate now appears to operate normally.