Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite – Page 10

August 29, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Pre-Test Before You Test

by Kevin Siegel

During one of my recent beginner Adobe Captivate classes, a student asked if it was possible to maintain two quizzes within a single Captivate project. She wanted to be able to give her learners a pretest made up of questions that would run independently of the regular quiz. While it is not possible to have two independent quizzes within a project, she was happy to learn that you can include a Pretest.

Choose Quiz > Pretest Question Slide and you'll be presented with pretty much the same Insert Questions dialog box that you will see when you insert standard Question Slides.

Adobe Captivate: Inserting Pretest Questions

Select the type of question you like, and the number of slides you want. In the image below, I've selected Multiple Choice and True/False and then set the number of each to one.

Adobe Captivate: Insert Questions dialog box.

Once the Pretest Question slides have been inserted within the project, they will behave just like standard Question Slides, with a few notable differences.

First, there will not be a Question Slide progress indicator on any of the Pretest Question slides. In the image below, you can see the progress indicator that's on the first standard Question Slide in my project. (I have two Question Slides and two Pretest Question Slides.)

When the learner takes the Pretest, the answers they submit will not be counted in the final quiz score. However, if you want to ensure a learner understands a concept before allowing them to take the quiz, you can set it up so that the score a learner gets on the Pretest triggers an Action (such as taking the learner back to the beginning of the lesson for more study).

On the Quiz Properties panel, you'll also notice that there is an Edit Pretest Action button for any selected Pretest Question slide. Clicking that button will open the Advanced Actions dialog box. If you're comfortable with Advanced Actions, you could create an Action that would kick in should the learner not perform well on the Pretest.

Adobe Captivate: Edit Pretest Question Action

Adobe Captivate: Pretest Questions Advanced Actions dialog box.

If you would like to see a demonstration of the Pretest feature, check out the video I posted to the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 26, 2013

Adobe RoboHelp: Embed Captivate HTML5 Output

by Willam Van Weelden

Adobe Captivate 6 introduced HTML5 output, allowing eLearning content to be interactive on mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad. By combining Captivate's and RoboHelp's HTML5 outputs, you can easily support interactivity for iPhones and iPad in your help system. Currently only RoboHelp's Multiscreen HTML5 output supports Captivate's HTML5 output. Other outputs, such as WebHelp, only support Captivate's Flash output.

Embed Captivate HTML5 Content Within RoboHelp

Publish your Captivate demo as both Flash and HTML5.
Create or open a RoboHelp project.
Open the topic where you want to add the demo.
Choose Insert > Adobe Captivate Demo.
In the Multimedia Name field, open the swf you published from Captivate.
In the HTML5 output field, select the index.html you published from Captivate.
Click the OK button.

By default, RoboHelp uses the Captivate Flash output when you generate the layout. To allow RoboHelp to use Captivate's HTML5 output, you need to make a small change to the Multiscreen HTML5 Single Source Layout.

Open the Multiscreen HTML5 Layout in the Single Source Layouts Pod. (View > Pods > Single Source Layouts).
Open the Optimization settings of your desired Screen Profile(s).
Select Use Adobe Captivate HTML5 output.
Click the Save button.

When you generate the Multiscreen HTML5 layout, the layout will now use Captivate's HTML5 output whenever it is available.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once each month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

August 22, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Drag and Drop Interactions

by Kevin Siegel

If you have always wanted to add drag and drop interactions within a Captivate project, but felt the technique was beyond your ability, think again. Adobe Captivate 7 not only allows you to add this kind of behavior, it's remarkably fast and easy (no programming required… I promise).

In the image below, I've created a Captivate slide with four Smart Shapes. My goal is to allow learners to drag the similar shapes on top of one another. If they succeed, they'll "pass." If not, they'll get a failure message. The darker shapes on the slide will each be a source; the lighter shapes will be targets. If you'd like to follow along, go ahead and create a similar slide (it shouldn't take more than a minute or so).

Adobe Captivate: Slide with Smart Shapes

To add the drag and drop interaction, choose Insert > Launch Drag and Drop Interaction Wizard.

Select each source object on the slide (one at a time) and click the plus sign to the right of the Add To Type drop-down menu. Give each source object a name and then click the OK button. When you are done naming the source objects, click the Next button to move to Step 2.

Adobe Captivate: Creating Sources to be dragged.

Step 2 of the wizard will require you to select and name the target objects. I created two targets (the lighter shapes shown in the first image above). After that, click the Next button to move to the last step.

Adobe Captivate: Creating drag targets.

The final step is to drag the source objects to the target objects (you can see me doing just that in the image below).

Adobe Captivate: Dragging one object over another

After clicking the Finish button, you're… well, finished. Preview the project and you'll be able to drag the source objects to the target objects. As I promised above, you didn't have to create a single line of code to get this to work… how cool is that?

If you would like to see a demonstration of Captivate's Drag and Drop feature, check out the video I posted to the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 13, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Grids ‘n Guides

by Kevin Siegel

When it comes to positioning items on a slide, you can always visit the Transform group on the Properties panel and control such object attributes as the location of a slide object, its size, and rotation.

However, if you prefer to control an object's slide placement without using the Transform panel, Adobe Captivate comes with a few other handy features that are often overlooked: Grids and Guides.

If you select the View menu you'll see four options of note: Show Grid, Snap to Grid, Snap to Object, and Show Drawing/Smart Guides.

Adobe Captivate: View menu

If you select Show Grid, little dots will appear on every slide. The dots, which are visual reference points for you to use on the slide, will not display in a published lesson. Using the grid, you can ensure objects are a specific distance from the top, bottom, left, or right of a slide. If you select Snap to Grid, an object will automatically snap to the little dots as you drag the object around the slide.

Adobe Captivate: Grids

By choosing Show Drawing/Smart Guides, you will see Smart Guides (green dashed lines) when you reposition, resize, or rotate an object. By using Smart Guides, which are enabled by default, you will be able to align objects with other nearby objects.

Adobe Captivate: Smart Guides

Note: Smart Guides do not appear when you try to reposition or resize objects using keyboard nudge controls. If you don't see the Smart Guides as you drag objects around the slide, try zooming closer to the slide (I've found that this often makes it easier to see and use the Smart Guides).

If you would like to see a demonstration of Grids and Smart Guides, check out this video on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 9, 2013

Adobe RoboHelp: Using SharePoint for Version Control

by Willam Van Weelden

In a previous article I showed you how you can use SharePoint to host a shared review. You'll be happy to learn that with RoboHelp 10, you can also use SharePoint for version control. Version control is a method by which you store all project files on a server. You work with a local copy and synchronize all changes with the server. The benefits of using version control include:

Version history: the server makes a new version of topics for every change. This allows you to retrieve old versions right from your RoboHelp Project.
Multiple authors: multiple authors can work with the same project simultaneously.
No more backups: the server does that for you.

Prepare SharePoint for Version Control

On the SharePoint site, add a new library. Enable version control for the library and require files to be checked out before editing. You can choose to use either minor or major versions. All reviewers must have edit permissions for the library. Your SharePoint administrator can help you with this.

Add a RoboHelp Project to Version Control

Open or create a RoboHelp project.
Choose File > Version Control > Add to version control.
In the Select Version Control Provider dialog box, select RoboHelp SharePoint Connector and click the OK button.
In the Connection Details dialog box, add the URL of the SharePoint site in the SharePoint Site field (and then click the OK button).
Choose a library to use for the version control.
Select a folder in the library (or create a new folder) and click the OK button.
Click the Yes button to add all of your RoboHelp project files to the SharePoint library.

Adding files to the SharePoint library could take time initially. However, once the files are added, you should not see any performance issues. To enable the version control toolbar for easy check-in and check-out, choose View > Toolbars > Version Control.

Want to know more about working with version control? Click here.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once each month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

August 6, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Fastest Cleaned Prefs in the West

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe Captivate, like most computer programs, can behave poorly. I've found that when Captivate gets sluggish on my computer or crashes, it's because I've got too many applications running and not enough resources. In that instance, closing all non-essential applications solves the problem.

However, there are times when nothing I do seems to help improve Captivate's performance (not even a system reboot). In those rare instances, I've found that resetting all of Captivate's Preferences cures what ails Captivate. One way to reset the Preferences would be to find Captivate's Preferences file on your computer, throw it away, and then restart Captivate (which creates a new Preferences file). The problem is that the Preferences file is buried within your user credentials folder and is often hard to find.

If you need to reset Captivate's Preferences, you'll appreciate an obscure utility that ships with Captivate that will reset all of the Preferences for you.

Navigate to the folder where Captivate is installed on your computer and open the utils folder.

Adobe Captivate: Clean Preferences

You'll find two files of particular interest: CleanPreferencesMac and CleanPreferencesWin. Simply double-click the file appropriate for your operating system and BAM!… all of Captivate's application Preferences will be reset to the way they were the first day Captivate was installed on your computer.

For instance, in the image below I "accidentally" disabled all of my Confirmation Messages in Captivate.

Adobe Captivate: Confirmation Messages disabled.

Don't be jealous, but it's a well-established fact that I am the fastest clicker in the West (or the East for that matter). I could have enabled all of the Confirmation Messages in, what, 3.2 seconds. But by double-clicking CleanPreferencesWin, all of the dialog boxes were instantly reset. I'm fast, but I'm not that fast.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 2, 2013

Adobe RoboHelp: Using Multiple Twisty Styles

by Willam Van Weelden

In a previous article, I showed you how to use Twisties (images) with RoboHelp drop-down menus. The Twisties indicate to a user if a drop-down menu is open or closed.

Adobe RoboHelp: Example of Twisties

By default, all drop-downs will use the Twisties you defined for the style Drop-down hotspot. With Adobe RoboHelp 10, you can use multiple styles for your drop-downs and thus use different Twisties for different drop-downs.

To use multiple Twisties, you must create a new style in your style sheet and apply the new style to the drop-downs.

Setting up Multiple Twisties

Open a RoboHelp project.
Go to the Project Manager pod (View > Pods > Project Manager).
Double-click your project's style sheet to open it for editing.
In the Styles dialog box, click the New button and choose Hyperlink Style.
Give the new style a name. In this example I named the new style Twisty.
Click the Set Twisties button to define the look of the Twisty.

In the Select Twisties Images dialog box, select the images you want to use as the Twisty.

Adobe RoboHelp: Define Images for the Twisty

Click OK to close each of the open dialog boxes.

Your alternative twisties are now set. You can now proceed to applying the twisty to a drop-down menu within a topic.

Applying Twisties to a Drop-down

Open the topic containing a drop-down menu.
Click within the drop-down text.
Go to the Styles and Formatting pod (View > Pods > Styles and Formatting).
Find the alternative hyperlink style you created.
Right click the style and choose Apply.

Adobe RoboHelp: Styles and Formatting pod.

Save your project.

The alternative twisty style is now applied to the drop-down. Repeat these steps for every drop down menu where you want to set an alternative Twisty.

Adobe RoboHelp: Alternate Twisty Applied.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once each month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

July 31, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Removing Words from the Custom Dictionary

by Kevin Siegel

Using Captivate's Spell Check feature is as simple as choosing Project > Check Spelling. It's a good bet that if you've spent any amount of time developing projects within Captivate, you've used the Check Spelling command at least once. I'm betting that you found using the Check Spelling feature just like the Check Spelling command in common word processors such as Microsoft Word.

If you work in the healthcare or legal industries, spell checking a project can be a laborious task. For instance, in the healthcare industry, hundreds of words in a given project could be medical terms. While correctly spelled, the medical terms are not included within Captivate's main dictionary and are flagged as potential errors. Those errors need to be corrected… over and over and over again.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that you've already found and used the Add to Dictionary button within the Check Spelling dialog box. When you click the Add to Dictionary button, the selected words are added to Captivate's personal dictionary and flagged as properly spelled.

It's another good bet that you have "accidentally" clicked the Add to Dictionary and inadvertently added a word or two to the custom dictionary. Given the fact that there is no "unlearn" button or "Remove from Dictionary" button in the Spell Check dialog box, I'd wager one final bet that you would like to learn how to remove erroneous words from the personal dictionary. If so, read on…

Remove a Word from Captivate's Dictionary

Search your computer for a file called added.txt (the file might have a simplistic name, but it is actually the custom dictionary). I've listed the default location for users running Windows 7… of course the location will be different for every version of Windows and the Mac. (That's why it's probably best to simply search your computer for the file by name.)
Default location of the added.txt file on Windows 7: C:\Users\UserAccount\AppData\LocalLow\Adobe\
Linguistics\UserDictionaries\
Adobe Custom Dictionary

Once you've found added.txt, open it with a word processor such as Notepad (Windows) or TextEdt (Mac).
Select and delete any words in the added.txt file that you want Captivate to flag as misspelled. (Conversely, you can add any words you want to be ignored during future spell checks.)
Save and close the added.txt file.
Restart Captivate and run spell check again. The word(s) you removed from the custom dictionary will once again be flagged as misspelled.

If you would like to see a demonstration of editing the custom dictionary, check out the video I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

July 25, 2013

Adobe Captivate: A Great GIFT

by Kevin Siegel

When it comes to adding question slides to a Captivate project, you can always visit the Quiz menu and choose Question Slide. You'll be presented with the Insert Questions dialog box giving you access to several types of questions you can add including Multiple Choice, True/False and Matching. Once the questions have been added to your project, the next step is to edit the questions and answers.

If you need to add a large number of question slides to a project, creating the quiz is going to take a significant amount of time. There is a better way to go, especially if a Subject Matter Expert who does not own Adobe Captivate is going to create the quiz: GIFT files.

GIFT stands for General Import Format Technology. You can create a GIFT file in plain text using a simple word processor (like Notepad or TextEdit), and then import the file into Adobe Captivate.

In the image below, I've created a GIFT file in NotePad that will result in one multiple choice question.

Adobe Captivate: An example of a GIFT file.

The syntax is simple. The Question Title goes between the colons (::Multiple Choice::). Next comes the question itself. The answers are contained within the {}. The correct answer is preceded by an equal sign (=); the incorrect answers are preceded by a tilde (~).

Once the GIFT file has been created, importing it into Captivate is beyond simple. Choose Quiz > Import GIFT Format File and open the GIFT file. In the image below, you can see the imported Multiple Choice question based on the GIFT file above.

Adobe Captivate: A question that was imported from a GIFT file.

All that would be left to do would be to format the question as you would any slide or apply a Theme.

If you would like to see how the GIFT feature works, check out the video I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

July 17, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Anchors Away?

by Kevin Siegel

You've seen them… and you've ignored them. But what, exactly, are they? I'm referring to those pesky red arrows you often see to the right of objects on the Timeline.

The red arrows indicate that the Timeline object is anchored to the end of the slide's play time. In the image below, all three of the Timeline objects are anchored to the END of the slide.

Adobe Captivate: The red arrow indicates that the object is anchored to the end of the slide's playtime.

The red arrow (anchor) will automatically appear any time you stretch the right edge of an object on the Timeline right and bump up against the word END. The word END indicates the moment in time when all of the action on the slide has concluded. Unless something has been added to the slide to override the default behavior, once END has been reached, the next slide on the Filmstrip will appear.

So now that you know what the red arrows mean, I bet you're wondering if anchoring an object to the END of a slide is good or bad.

Personally, I don't like the anchors. Why? Try this experiment: Go to any slide in your project and create an anchor. Next, extend the play time for the slide by four or five seconds (on the Timeline, drag the right edge of the slide's object to the right). As you drag, notice that the anchored objects move to the right and end at the slide's new end time.

Adobe Captivate: Extending a slide's playtime also alters the appear time for the objects.

But look at the left edge of those objects (the left edge is when the objects will appear on the slide). You'll notice that the Appear After timing has changed–something that most Captivate developers don't want to happen every time the timing for a slide is adjusted.

What's a Captivate developer to do? Since the anchors will appear every time an object touches the END of a slide's timing and you can't disable the anchors, you'll need to perform a quick workaround. (Okay, so maybe the term workaround is a bit harsh. Anchors aren't a bug in Captivate; they're a feature.). Simply select all of the slide's objects, right-click and choose Show for the rest of the slide. If you extend the play time for a slide now, the slide's objects will extend as if they were anchored but their start times will not change. Nice!

If you would like to see object anchors in action, check out the video I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.