Month: July 2017

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ADOBE CAPTIVATE 2017: Workaround for the Spelling Bug

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

Did you know that Captivate has a spell check feature? Yes? No? Feel free to admit it if you didn't know… you're among friends here. You'll find the spell check feature  easily enough by choosing Project > Check Spelling.
 
I'm not saying that the Check Spelling feature is anything to get overly excited about but I strong recommend using the utility prior to publishing. I'm betting you'll be glad you did when a double word or two is flagged (double words are one of the hardest things to catch in a project that you've been starring at for weeks, if not months).
 
When running the Check Spelling feature, you'll see the dialog box shown below that flags for double words and spelling errors.
 
 
Of course, if you run the Check Spelling feature in Adobe Captivate 2017, you're in for a bit of a nasty surprise. Check out the mess that appears in the Check Spelling dialog box.
 
 
 
 
Fellow Captivate developer Sarah Joyce sent me an email a few weeks ago. She said she was seeing "background HTML" when running spell check. I opened a few of my projects so see if I could find anything out of whack. At first, nothing. But then, much to my horror, I saw the same thing as Sarah.
 
I heard from some of the good folks over at Adobe that it's a documented bug that will soon be fixed. If your project includes Slide Notes, you'll see the code shown in the image above. If you don't have Slide Notes, the spell check feature works as expected.
 
While we wait for Adobe to release a patch for Captivate that will fix the spell check bug, I've got three workarounds for you (warning, you're not going to like the first two).
  1. Ignore bad behavior. You can ignore the HTML code while spell checking. However, there could be a lot of code and it's likely going to take a lot of time to spell check.
  2. Delete. Go slide by slide and delete all of the Slide Notes in the project. This option works but now the Slide Notes are gone. Noooo! Don't do it… you'll likely need the Slide Notes down the road.
  3. Round Trip It! Export the project text to Microsoft Word, run a spell check there (along with a grammar check), and then import the edited Word text back into Captivate.

What's that you say, you didn't know Word and Captivate have an awesome working relationship? Check this out:

Choose File > Export > Project Captions and Closed Captions. Select a "Save As" destination for the document and then click the Save button. You'll get the alert dialog box below. Click yes and the Captivate project text will open in a Microsoft Word table.

 

 

Highlight the Updated Text Caption Data column and run Word's spell-check (from the Ribbon, Review > Selling and Grammar). When finished, save and close the Word document.

 

 

Back in Captivate, choose File > Import > Project Captions and Closed Captions. Find and open the Word document you were just editing and all of the text you edited in Word will update in Adobe Captivate. How's that for the ultimate bug zapper?

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If you're looking to learn Adobe Captivate, check out these live, online, and 100% interactive Captivate classes.

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

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ADOBE CAPTIVATE 2017: Wrapping Fluid Boxes

by Kevin Siegel, COTP, CTT

Fluid Boxes, introduced with Adobe Captivate 2017, make the process of creating a responsive eLearning project faster than ever.

I introduced you to Fluid Boxes a few weeks ago.  If you've spent any time playing them I think you'll agree that they're pretty, well for lack of a better word, fluid.

However, if the amount of email I've received recently is any indication, I'm betting you're struggling a bit with how to control the way content flows (wraps) in a Fluid Box when learners either resize their browser windows or access your content on different screen sizes. Let's see if I can make sense of the Wrap features you'll find when working with Fluid Boxes.

To begin, create a new Responsive project (it has to be Responsive because standard projects do not support Fluid Boxes).

Insert a new, blank slide into the project. Then, insert a two row Fluid Box with two rows (click the Fluid Box tool and choose Vertical > 2).

 

Select the second Fluid Box and draw four shapes. Do the same thing in the third Fluid Box. Then, beginning with the number 1, type a number into each box. In the end, you should have 8 shapes (from 1-8, similar to the image below).


Use the Preview tool to preview from your current slide. At first, you'll see that the shapes appear in the web browser exactly as you created them within each Fluid Box.


However, as you drag the size slider (at the top of the page) to simulate a smaller and smaller window, the shapes might not wrap within each Fluid Box as you'd like. For example, in the image below, I'm not happy with how two of my shapes ended up on a line all by themselves.


Back on the slide, use the Fluid Box Selector to select the Fluid Box containing the first four shapes. (Selecting a child Fluid Box can be a challenge. If you don't see the Fluid Box Selector on the Properties Inspector, on the slide click in a corner of any Fluid Box and see if that makes the Fluid Box Selector visible.)


From the Wrap area of the Properties Inspector, choose Squeeze in a column. Do the same thing to the second child Fluid Box.


If you preview now and resize the browser window, the Fluid Box shapes will get squeezed together within each box (none of the shapes will wrap to the next line).


It's certainly possible that you do want the shapes to wrap to the next line, but you’d like to ensure that no single shape is on a line by itself. No problem. From the Wrap area of the Properties Inspector, choose Symmetrical. Do the same thing to the other Fluid Boxes.


Preview again or drag the Preview Slider (shown in the upper right of the image below) to change the onscreen size and notice this time that the shapes wrap, but in even groups.

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If you're looking to learn Adobe Captivate, we've got you covered. Check out these live, online, and 100% interactive Captivate classes.

***

Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.