Author: IconLogic

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ADOBE CAPTIVATE: Hide & Show the Playbar at Will

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

I recently received an email from a fellow Captivate developer. She was hoping there was an elegant way to hide the playbar on specific slides.

Certainly you can use the Skin Editor to remove the playbar completely from a project. Alternatively, if you don't want the playbar to be available during a quiz, there are Quiz Preferences for that.

This particular project did not contain a quiz and while the developer wanted the playbar to be available in most instances, there were a few slides where she simply didn't want the playbar.

The process for hiding the playbar on select slides is very simple. First, keep in mind that the playbar is visible by default unless you tell it to go away. But how? To hide the playbar on the fly, select a slide on the Filmstrip. Then, on the Properties Inspector, Actions tab, On Enter drop-down menu, choose Assign. From the Assign drop-down menu, choose the variable named cpCmndShowPlaybar. (The variable comes with Captivate and will always be available in the Assign drop-down men.) Lastly, type 0 into the With field. (The zero is the same as telling Captivate not to do something… or false… or no… in this instance, it's telling Captivate that you don't want the playbar.)


If you preview the project, you will see that the playbar is missing from the selected slide… and all of the subsequent slides. Assigning a value of 0 to the selected slide told Captivate to hide the playbar from that point forward.
 
…and it's never coming back… EVER!
 
Okay, so let's not be so dramatic. Do you want the playbar back? The process of bringing the playbar back is just as easy as hiding it. Select another slide on the Filmstrip (at the point where you'd like the playbar to reappear). Back on the Properties Inspector, On Enter drop-down menu, choose Assign. From the Assign drop-down menu, choose cpCmndShowPlaybar. Type 1 in the With field. (The number 1 tells Captivate that you want the playbar to appear from that slide onward.)
 
 
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Looking for Captivate training? We've got you covered.
 
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the US 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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ARTICULATE STORYLINE 3 & 360: New Tables Feature Added

by Kal Hadi, COTP

I frequently get questions from Storyline training students about the possibility of inserting tables into a project (actual tables with cells, columns, and rows instead of screen shots of tables).

Up until yesterday, my answer about tables has always been “I wish.” However, if you're using Storyline 3 or 360 you'll be happy to find an awesome addition to the Text group on the Ribbon: Table (shown in the image below). 
 
If you're not familiar with tables, they are very useful for structuring data, organizing content, and providing great accessibility and context. Articulate’s implementation of this new feature looks pretty awesome. (The only thing that I was hoping to find but didn’t was the ability to sort columns or rows alphabetically or numerically.)

Once you insert a table and have it selected, you are given a Table Tools tab with Design and Format tabs. Using the Design tab, you can control style fills and borders or choose from a slew of preformatted table styles that include alternate “banded” rows and more. You are also able to designate rows as headers.
 

When it comes to formatting the table, you've got a ton of options. For instance, you can add/delete rows and columns, merge cells, change cell content alignment, and my favorite feature: Distribute Rows and Distribute Columns where you can easily make row heights and columns widths evenly.

Spend some time with the new Tables feature and let me know what you think. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that you're going to be impressed.
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Kal Hadi is a Certified Technical Trainer (CTT) and Certified Online Training Professional (COTP) with more than 20 years of experience in computer graphics, imaging, and electronic publishing. Kal is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology Electronic Publishing graduate program. He is also the author of many books and papers in graphics and web publishing including multiple books on Articulate Storyline.
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MADCAP FLARE: Hyperlinks vs. Cross-References

by Neil Perlin

If you look on Flare’s Insert ribbon, you’ll see one icon for Hyperlinks and another icon for a less familiar feature, the Cross-Reference. Both are flagged on the Insert ribbon and the Topic Editor toolbar in the image below.

Also in the image below, notice that the topic has both a hyperlink and a cross-reference that seem to do the same thing: link users from one topic to another. However, they’re created differently and work differently.

 
 

Hyperlinks have been the link mainstay for years but they have two problems:

  • A hyperlink is linked to a target but doesn’t “know” what its target actually is. For example, the hyperlink in the image above points to the “Frappe” target topic. If I change that topic’s title to “Milkshake,” the hyperlink still works but the wording is wrong. To fix this, I need to change the word “frappe” in the link to “Milkshake.” This is easy to do with search and replace, but it’s just one more thing to worry about.
  • A hyperlink works fine in online outputs and even for print outputs like a PDF. But what happens if users print a PDF? The link obviously doesn’t work; users have to find the target via the table of contents or the index, if you created one. Otherwise, users have to flip through the pages to find the right content. The only solution is for you to change each hyperlink to a page reference by hand, which doesn’t even bear thinking about.

Cross-references, also known as “xrefs,” solve both these problems nicely and add several other benefits.

An xref “knows” what it’s linked to because it links to the target topic’s title. This means that you don’t have to type the text of the link, as you do with a hyperlink. Instead, the xref grabs the title of the target topic and automatically uses it as the link text. And if the target topic’s title changes, the link text changes automatically. For example, if I change the name of the target topic in the example above from “Frappe” to “Milkshake,” Flare changes the wording of the xref to match, as shown in the image below (where the wording of the hyperlink is now wrong). This makes link maintenance more efficient.
 
  • Flare automatically updates the wording when you generate a target that contains the topic. If you want to update the xref during development, without having to generate the target, choose Tools > Update Cross-References to update the xrefs for the topic.
  • When you create a print target like a PDF, Flare automatically converts the xref’s format from a link style to a page reference. For example, “cross-reference to Milkshake” in the example above changes to “See Milkshake on page XX” or similar wording (which you can control) by modifying the settings of the mc-format property for the MadCap|xref style for the Default and Print mediums. If you have to create online and print targets, this automatic style adjustment may be enough to make you a big fan of xrefs.
  • Xrefs can adjust their wording based on the proximity of the starting topic to the target topic. If the two topics wind up being two or more pages apart in your print output, Flare automatically changes the xref wording to “See XX on page YY.” However, if the starting and target topics wind up one page apart, Flare automatically changes the xref wording to “See XX on the next/previous page.” And if the starting and target topics wind up on the same page, Flare automatically changes the xref wording to “See XX above/below.” This puts the wording of the link into a realistic context.

Xrefs aren’t perfect. They can only link between topics in a given output target. They can’t link to topics in different output targets, or to external files such as external URLs or PDFs. For those, you still have to use traditional hyperlinks. 

Even with that limitation, I consider xrefs to be one of the most useful features in Flare and one with no equivalent in competing tools (that I’m aware of). I’d been using hyperlinks since 1986 by the time I got involved with Flare in 2004 and didn’t quite understand what an xref was at first. But when I saw what they could do, particularly the automatic style adjustment feature, that made me a stalwart fan of xrefs. Give them a try. I think you’ll be pleased.
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Neil Perlin is MadCap-Certified for Flare and is a long-time consultant, troubleshooter, and trainer for the tool, going back to MadCap’s founding in 2004. He also has years of experience with older tools like RoboHelp and Doc-To-Help and now defunct tools like ForeHelp. He is also a certified app developer, trainer, and consultant for the ViziApps app development platform. You can reach him at nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net and at NeilEric on Twitter.
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ADOBE CAPTIVATE: Free Matching Images and Videos

by Kevin Siegel, COTP, CTT

During the first day of my Adobe Captivate Beginner class, attendees learn how to import and work with both images and videos.

During the video portion of the class, we import a Flash Video (flv) which students love because without the background color in the video, it's possible to include an animated guide throughout a lesson.

The problem with Flash Videos is that they can be difficult to create on your own and, worse, there isn’t a surplus of Flash Videos available on the web (free or otherwise). Even if you managed to find a video, it's unlikely that it matches the other images you've already used in your project.

Fortunately, the eLearning Brothers have come to the rescue. You’ll find matching cutout people and videos. Best of all, the assets are free if you’ve got Adobe Captivate 9 or 2017.

To access the assets, from within a Captivate project, click Assets on the toolbar and then click Get Free eLearning Assets. If this is your first time accessing the assets, you’ll need to either login with your free eLearning Brothers account credentials or create an account.

 

 
Once you’re on the Assets page, click Cutout People. If you scroll down to the bottom of the available assets, you’ll see a category that you’ve likely overlooked on previous trips to the Assets area: Videos.
 
Here is where things get pretty awesome: I searched the assets for a character that I've used before: Melanie.
 
Not only did I find my character posed in both business and casual attire, but there were videos as well. While at first glance the videos looked similar to the images, this was surely wishful thinking on my part.
 
 
After downloading the image I needed, I focused my attention on the videos. I quickly discovered, much to my delight, that Flash Video (flv) is one of the available download formats.
 
In the picture below you can see the image asset that I downloaded on the left; the downloaded Flash Video on the right. (Because Flash Videos do not have a background color, they works perfectly just about anywhere.) And how awesome is it that the image and video are of the same image and.. and… wearing the same clothes?
 
I swear it's as if I spent a lot of money and/or invested a ton of time on this. (I mean, how much would it cost to hire the actor, get the pictures, create the video, and remove the backgrounds?) However, nothing could be farther from reality. Honestly I spent maybe five minutes grabbing both assets and adding them to my Captivate project. And I never even pulled out my credit card.
 
Thanks Adobe… and thanks eBros!
***
 
Looking for Captivate training? We've got you covered.
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic and ICCOTP. Following a career in Public Affairs with the US 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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eLearning Development: Hide desktop icons while recording software simulations

When recording software simulations or video demos using Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, or TechSmith Camtasia, you might need to record something that includes your desktop. Of course, that begs the question: how cluttered is your desktop?

Does the image below remind you of a desktop of someone near and dear to your heart? 

Look, your desktop is your desktop, so clutter away. However, including the clutter–the icons–in your eLearning project is not a good idea. Besides being a security risk, nobody wants to see your desktop icons.
 
Fortunately, you don't have to clean up your desktop before recording your screen. All you need to do is right-click your desktop and choose View > Show desktop icons. 
 
 
If the icons were there, they are gone. If they were hidden, they're back.
 
Remember this little gem the next time you're getting ready to click the Record option on your eLearning tool of choice, and you'll save yourself a bunch of work de-cluttering.
 
Looking for live, instructor-led training? Check out our vIILT offerings.
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ARTICULATE STORYLINE 3 & 360: SRT Files Make Quick Work of Closed Captions

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

Closed captioning allows you to display a slide’s voiceover audio as text that is synchronized with the voiceover audio. Closed Captions, which are an expected component of a 508-compliant eLearning lesson, are easy to include in your project. All that you need to do is select an audio file on the Timeline and import either an SRT, VTT, SBV, or SUB file. You can learn more about each of these file formats and how to create them with a simple Web search. For instance, an SRT file (a file containing text and timing information) can be created for free on YouTube. You’ll find instructions covering how to create an SRT here.

To import an SRT, select an audio file on the Timeline. On the Options tab of the Ribbon, Accessibility area, click Add Captions.

 
Find and open your SRT file and that’s it. Closed captions from the SRT file are added and synchronized with the selected audio. If you preview the slide you'll see that a Closed Captions control has been automatically added to the Player. (You can disable the Closed Captions control via the Player Properties, Controls area shown in the second image below.) To see the Closed Captions in the Preview, click the Closed Captions control.

You can easily change the font used in the Closed Captions. On the Ribbon, click Player Properties and then click Colors & Effects.

From the Captions font drop-down menu, choose any font you like and click the OKbutton.
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Kal Hadi and I recently wrapped up our "Articulate Storyline 3 & 360: The Essentials" book. And our "Articulate Storyline 3 & 360: Beyond the Essentials" book is nearing completion and should begin shipping in a few, short weeks. You can add yourself to the notificaiton list on the IconLogic site and be alerted when the book is back from the printer and ready to ship.
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Looking for Articulate training? We've got you covered.
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the US 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 ROBOHELP 2017: Image Thumbnails

by Willam Van Weeldon

While Adobe's chief concern when releasing RoboHelp 2017 was improving the Responsive HTML5 output (with search suggestions and improved accessibility), there were other nice enhancements. This week I’d like to focus on Thumbnails (small images that expand when clicked).

Here are step-by-step instructions for adding Thumbnails to your RoboHelp project.

Image Styles

To begin using Thumbnails, you need to first have at least one image style in the project. 

1. Open a style sheet for editing.

2. Right-click Image and choose New.

3. Give style a name and press ENTER. (In my example, I created a style named thumbnail.)

 
 

4. Click OK to close the style sheet editor.


Apply the Image Style to Images in the Project

1. Open the Styles and Formatting pod (Project > Pods > Styles and Formatting).

2. Using the drop-down menu at the right top of the pod, choose Image Styles.
 

3. Select the image you want to turn into a thumbnail.

4. Double-click the thumbnail style in the Styles and Formatting pod to assign the style to the image.

5. Save the project.
 

Note: The image doesn’t turn into a thumbnail at this point. I have just set up the thumbnails.


Configuring Thumbnails

Once you have assigned the style to your images, you can set up your output to include thumbnails.

1. Open the settings of your Responsive HTML5 output.

2. In the Manage Thumbnails section, type the name of the image styles that need to be thumbnails.
 

3. Set the width and the height of the thumbnail for your output.

4. Click Save and Generate.

In the generated output, every image with the image style assigned via Manage Thumbnails is now interactive…
 
… and expands when clicked:
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If you'd like to learn how to use Adobe RoboHelp, check out our live, online, and very interactive RoboHelp classes.
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Willam van Weelden is a Certified Online Training Professional (COTP), veteran Help Author, RoboHelp consultant, and technical writer based in the Netherlands. He is an Adobe Community Professional, ranking him among the world's leading experts on RoboHelp. Willam’s specialties are HTML5 and RoboHelp automation. Apart from RoboHelp, Willam also has experience with other technical communications applications such as Adobe Captivate and Adobe FrameMaker.
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LIVE, ONLINE TRAINING: Brainstorming Techniques

by Jennie Ruby, COTP

Years ago, as a new classroom instructor, I used to wonder why some of my colleagues used brainstorming techniques in the classroom. After all, as the instructor, I knew the content I wanted to see brought forward, and the students were there to learn from me, right? So why would I ask the students to brainstorm? Why shouldn’t I just list the important items on the whiteboard or on a bulleted slide and be done?

The answer, of course, is engagement. Presenting participants with data is not the same as teaching. By asking participants to come up with ideas, answers, or examples, you encourage them to engage with the content. And engagement is a precursor of learning.

So, marker in hand, you stand before the classroom and start writing things down as the class participants call them out. No judging. You write all ideas down. You maybe even learn new ideas you hadn’t thought about before, by listening to your students. Adult learning, after all, is not a one-way street. Often, your learners are themselves experienced professionals, and they make important contributions to your course content.

What do you do if the student brainstorm does not produce some of the ideas or examples you think are important? Ask follow-up questions. What about this? What about that? These follow-ups help guide the participants to the additional items you think are important. Soon, the class has created a better list than your slide alone could have contained, and participants are focused and thinking about the content instead of struggling to absorb static data.

 
 

Now transfer this concept to online teaching. Many online platforms have a built-in “whiteboard”—a shared screen that you can draw on or type on. If your online platform does not have a whiteboard, you can open a word processor instead (such as Microsoft Word or, even simpler, Notepad for Windows users; TextEdit for Mac users). Although you cannot just allow people to shout out ideas as you would in a face-to-face class, you can ask your participants to type their ideas into a chat window. Then you can transfer the items to the shared whiteboard or word processor screen. On some platforms, you can even allow the participants themselves to type or draw on the shared whiteboard.

Just as with an in-person class, you can guide the discussion by asking follow-up questions, and at the end, you have a more complete list than you could have presented on a slide. And, bonus! Some platforms allow you to save the finished whiteboard list and email it to your participants.

Learning to be an effective instructor is not easy, and knowing how to transfer classroom techniques, such as brainstorming, to the online space is not a given. You can improve your online teaching, and get a formal certification credential, at ICCOTP. Check the website for upcoming sessions of the online training certification program.
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Jennie Ruby, COTP, has more than 20 years of experience in training delivery, and is much loved for her enthusiasm and energy in the classroom setting, whether online or in person. She is a published author and co-author of numerous training books, including Essentials of Adobe Presenter, Editing with Microsoft Word, and Writing for Curriculum Development.

 

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ADOBE CAPTIVATE 2017: Setting the Capture Caption Style

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

If you create a software simulation using Adobe Captivate, you can elect to have Captivate automatically create text captions for you. This awesome feature isn’t new… in fact, it’s been around since the earliest incarnations of the tool.

All you need to do to ensure that the captions are created is enable Text Captions prior to recording a simulation. You can find this option by displaying the Preferencesdialog box (Edit menu for Windows users; Adobe Captivate menu for Mac users), and then select the Modes category.

 
 
When recording a software simulation, Captivate will use the Text Captions feature to create captions on each captured screen as appropriate. In addition, each of the captions will be formatted using an Object Style. 

By default, Captivate will use an Object Style named Default Capture Caption Style for each caption. If you’re unhappy with the appearance of the captions, you can modify the Object Style by choosing Edit > Object Style Manager at any time after the recording process is complete.
You can save yourself a little bit of work by editing the appearance of the Default Capture Caption Style before you record the simulation. Simply choose Edit > Object Style Manager with no projects open and then edit the style. Because no projects were open when you edited the style, you've set a global or application-wide Preference. From this point forward, all of the captions created in every new software simulation will follow your new formatting. (If you had made the same change with a project open, the change would only have affected the one open project.)

But what if you don't want to use the Default Capture Caption Style. Perhaps you want to use another style availalbe within Captivate as the default capture style. Or maybe you've made your own style and want to use that during the recording process.

Fortunately, you can easily instruct Captivate to use any style as the default recording style. With no projects open, open Captivate’s Preferences dialog box.

From the Recording category at the left, select Defaults. Then, from the Text Captions drop-down menu, select the style you’d like to use as the new recording default (or create a new style on the fly by clicking the Create New Style button).
 
From that point forward, each software simulation you create will use the style you set as the default capture style.
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 If you'd like to learn how to use Adobe Captivate, check out our live, online and very interactive beginner and advanced Captivate classes.

If you're an experienced Captivate developer who wants to learn about the hot new features in Captivate 2017, check out this limited enagement mini course.
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the US 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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TEACHING LIVE, ONLINE CLASSES: Pros & Cons

by Kevin Siegel, COTP, CTT

I started teaching online a dozen years ago and I owe it all to a case of the flu. I recall that I awoke in a nameless hotel, in a nameless city somewhere in parts unknown. I was supposed to teach something to someone but I couldn’t wrap my thoughts around the specifics. All that I did know was that I was sicker than I had ever been before or since. This wasn't just the flu… it was Mr. Flu.

I called home to consult Dr. Wife who was gracious to confirm my diagnosis (she’s that good) and was kind enough to remind me where I was, where I was supposed to go, and what I was supposed to be teaching. Because I was under contract, I went to the client site and taught the class as expected. (I did disclose my illness to the client and suggest we could reschedule; however, people had flown in from all over and there was no way to put the class off.)

The class went fine, thanks for asking. But travelling while sick is the worst (I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that if you have prior experience). I told Dr. Wife that I never wanted to travel again… EVER! Of course, the problem with that pronouncement is that I’m a trainer… avoiding travel is impossible. Or is it?

Back in my day, the technology available to teach online was limited to short, boring webinars. There simply wasn’t fast enough Internet, affordable software or hardware, or enough bandwidth to host anything but lecture-based webinars. Nevertheless, using an early version of GoToMeeting, I advertised a few online classes and quickly got enrollments.

Over the years, I’ve perfected my online teaching style and now teach others how to successfully teach online. And while training classes online has extended my career (I was truly headed for retirement before discovering how great teaching live, online classes can be), I must be honest and say teaching online is not always awesome. Just today, for instance, I was preparing to teach a custom TechSmith Camtasia class. I was greeting my students as always and then, two minutes before the official start time, my router decides to take the morning off. Luckily, I have backup Internet (backup plans are something we discuss in the trainer certification class) and started the class on time. However, the stress of the moment got me thinking about the main pros and cons of teaching online.

 
Pros

Online spaces are inexpensive: Prices range from free to a few hundred dollars per month depending on the size of your online room (our rooms can hold 200 people) and features (our vendor offers eCommerce and full back office support for the learner registration process).

No travel for anyone: Talk about a commute buster! With online classes, nobody needs to travel. Teach or attend classes from home… in your slippers. All that you need to teach or attend an online class is a computer (or perhaps a tablet), and good, reliable Internet access.

Global reach: We have students attend our class from all over the world. In one Adobe Captivate class I had a group of 15 attendees. Ten of the students were from across the U.S. and the others were from the UK, Australia, Belgium, Japan, and India.

Less intimidation = better Q&A: This one surprised me. Given that the students are not in the same physical space, I’ve found that I get more questions and more attendee engagement than in onsite classes. It’s rare when I ask my classes “are there any questions?” that I hear crickets. I’m thinking the main reason is that online students are more relaxed and don’t feel the glare from another student who either doesn’t like the question or thinks that it is silly.
 

Cons

Technology can let you down: Did I mention that my router went down just before my latest class start time? That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things that can, and will, go wrong. The best thing you can do when technology fails you is to have a backup plan. (Again, that’s something we cover in detail during the certification class.)

1 Ticket=1 Seat? How do you know if only the people who paid for the class are in the class? If you find that someone has invited all their friends and colleagues to attend the class for free, what is your game plan? Do you confront the student or let it go?

The unprepared participant: You can tell your attendees exactly what they need to do prior to class a million different ways. However, a small percentage of your students will arrive to class late, without the software, or without the support materials. You name it, I’ve seen it. Prepare to have your class schedule seriously hindered by an unprepared participant.

There’s my short list of online training pros and cons. I’d be curious if you have your own list of pros and cons to share. If so, please share them as comments below… but please keep Mr. Flu to yourself.
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If you'd like to become a certified online trainer, there's still time to sign up for the next International Council for Online Training Professionals (ICCOTP) certification course.
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the US 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.