Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite – Page 34

July 16, 2010

Acrobat 9: Clipboard Capers

by David R. Mankin

The computer is part of just about every business work day. It's interesting to consider how the computer has given new meaning to common things. Let's take the mouse and the clipboard as two examples. In the old days, it wasn't such a nice thing to have a mouse on your desk, let along touch one. A clipboard was something a supervisor carried around when he checked up on you (or something a drill instructor shook in your face if you were in boot camp).

Today, the mouse is the most common way for you to communicate with your comptuer with clicks, drags, right-clicks and double-clicks. And you use the clipboard to copy and paste blocks of text and images frequently. However, it's important to understand that when you copy and paste, you copy to your operating system's clipboard, and you paste from it as well. Knowing this won't change the way you do this every day routine, but it will allow you to utilize your clipboard's data in a new and useful way.

In Acrobat, clicking the Create button reveals numerous ways to create a new PDF file. Familiar options are to create a PDF from a file, from a scanner or from a Web Page. The fourth option, PDF from Clipboard, is often overlooked. Now that I've reminded you what the clipboard is, you can divert the clipboard's contents directly into a new PDF file using the PDF from Clipboard command.

Acrobat is a very clever application and it knows what type of information is held in your clipboard. Copy an image, or part of an image, click the PDF from Clipboard command and you will end up with an image-based PDF file. Select and copy a block of text from a browser window or a text-based document, and Acrobat will build a text-based PDF file for you containing that block of text.

Adobe has even given you another way to use the clipboard's content: Document > Insert Pages > From Clipboard. Like that one? Good. It's time to feed your mouse some cheese and sign up for one of my Acrobat classes. There are tons of neat and useful commands and capabilities hidden in Acrobat. After two quick days of Acrobat training, your personal clipboard will be bursting with useful information.

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About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.

July 8, 2010

Acrobat 9: Extract Pages

by David R. Mankin

You have a 330 page PDF file in your possession. Your current project deals only with pages 8, 9 & 10 of that document. The remaining 327 pages simply are not needed for this job.

There's no need to carry along the non-relevant pages for this project, so you might want to work smartly and utilize Acrobat's Extract Pages command to isolate your needed pages from the rest.

To use this powerful command, you can access it from the document menu (Document > Extract Pages) or directly from the Pages Panel.

In this example, I have highlighted pages 8-10 in a PDF. I then right-clicked on one of the highlighted pages and selected Extract Pages from the context menu.

Extract PDF pages

The next dialog box asks for specific page extraction options. I can specify a different page range, designate whether the extracted page(s) should remain in the original, or deleted after the process, and even whether multiple pages should be each extracted as individual files or not.

Once the extraction is performed, the end result is a new PDF file, consisting of only the pages to which the Extract Pages command were applied. This new file will be titled "Pages from {original file}.pdf". Handy, convenient, and a feature that's been in Acrobat as far back as I can remember.

Hungry for more handy gems like this? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

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July 7, 2010

Adobe RoboHelp 8: The Pros Have It, The Others Don’t

by Kevin Siegel

During my RoboHelp class, students are introduced to the concept of generating a layout via the Single Source Layouts pod (View > Pods > Single Source Layouts) pretty early.

The pod, which appears below, contains a handful of layouts (output files) that can be generated one at a time or in a batch.

RoboHelp layouts

The type of layout you choose depends on your audience. For instance, you would choose Adobe AIR to generate Help as an Adobe AIR application, browser-based Help (with the theme and skin of an Adobe AIR application), or as a packaged data file that can be viewed in an AIR Help viewer. Adobe AIR is a cross-platform format for building and deploying applications that connect the desktop to the web.

You would go with WebHelp if you wanted a web-based or desktop Help on any browser and platform. WebHelp supports standard Help features and provides customizing capabilities.

And you would generate FlashHelp if you were worried about DHTML limitations for browsers and platforms and high-security firewall issues. Although FlashHelp is arguably the slickest-looking of the outputs, your customers would need to have the Flash Player 8 or later and a web browser to view the Help system. In addition, FlashHelp isn't as easily customized as WebHelp.

So there you have it… I've given you the basic information you need to understand the layouts on the Single Source Layouts pod. See ya…

What's that you say? I forgot the Pro layouts? Oh, sorry about that. As I teach my RoboHelp students about the big three layouts on the Single Source Layouts pod (WebHelp, FlashHelp and Adobe AIR), the two Pro layouts almost always get the short end of the stick. It's not that the Pro layouts aren't cool, they are. It's just that many RoboHelp developers don't have the one, key component required to take advantage of either Pro layout.

But I digress. First let me explain what the two Pro layouts are. WebHelp Pro and FlashHelp Pro deliver server-based output. The advantage of server-based output?

Increased speed: The Contents, Index, and Search tabs appear more quickly.
Usage information: Collect feedback painlessly from readers by analyzing their traffic patterns and search behavior.
Runtime project merging: As a Help author, you can easily merge multiple projects at runtime. This is the perfect workflow if you are working with multiple authors, each working on a different part of the Help system and you want to combine everything as one larger project.
Better Search: Provides a powerful search engine to produce better results.

So the Pro layouts sound great, better than either FlashHelp or WebHelp for sure (I'll discuss the merits of Adobe AIR in a future article). So what's the catch to using the Pro layouts? Just one, but it's a biggie. You will need to own, install and manage Adobe RoboHelp Server before you will be able to publish either Pro layout to a server.

RoboHelp Server? Simply put, RoboHelp Server is an option–purchased independently of RoboHelp–that adds the capabilities mentioned above to your Help system.

In the image below you will see the workflow that incorporates RoboHelp Server.

RoboServer Workflow

Image Source: Adobe

Basically you take your RoboHelp projects, publish them to the server and BAM, you'll get the database and feedback reports that make the Pro layouts stand apart.

In today's search-centric world, I think you would be well-served to consider adding the Pro layouts and RoboHelp Server to your Help arsenal.

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Looking for learn RoboHelp quickly? I've got a two-day RoboHelp class coming up online. Click here to learn more. And if you'd like to learn how to install and use RoboHelp Server, we've got a 3-hour online class you'll be interested in. Click here for more details.

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Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

July 1, 2010

Acrobat: Summarizing Comments

by David R. Mankin

Acrobat files are extremely handy in a review cycle. If I have created a document in Adobe InDesign and I want you to review the file, I have three basic choices:

Print the document and hand it to you.
Send you the InDesign file–and hope you have InDesign (as well as the same version) and all the fonts that I used installed on your computer.
Create a PDF of the document so you open and see exactly how the document is supposed to look on any computer.

It's a no-brainer. Acrobat will also allow you to utilize the Comment & Markup tool so you can place electronic post-it notes, pencil marks, boxes, circles, text edit marks, rubber stamps, etc.

For a short document, these highly graphical markup tools are fantastic. One might become overwhelmed by the large number of comments in any given PDF file (or find that in a very long document, it is difficult to get a handle of the comments).

Savvy Acrobat users know to open the Comments Panel to help manipulate and navigate through a PDF's various comments. This is very useful, but only while working with the document on screen.

Proofing and reviewing documents can be done on screen, or on paper. As much as we all want to be 'paperless,' there's no getting around it in my shop–I proof on paper. Once the PDF document is printed, I would be still be strapped to my workstation chair (to view the Comments Panel).

Here's where Acrobat's Summarize Comments command comes in to play. Choose Comments > Summarize Comments. You are presented with many options, such as physical layout, graphical vs. textual (or both), sorting criteria, etc.

Summary Options

I usually choose Comments Only to end up with a simple list of the document's comments. This summary is presented as a stand-alone PDF file and can be printed, attached, distributed, etc.

Summary results

Now I have the original document on paper, and a list of all comments on paper too. I am now free to grab a red pencil and head to a comfy spot, and start proofing on good-old paper.

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Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

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July 1, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker 9: Adding Tabs to a Table of Contents, Part II

by Barbara Binder

Last week I talked about how to use the TOC Reference page to add the missing tab between a table of contents text entry and the page number that follows it. Here are a few more TOC tips:

As a general rule, don't edit the text on a generated page. All of your edits will be lost should you update the book and the file is regenerated.
If you want to have a title that will actually stay after you update your book, you have to ensure that the title is the first thing in the flow (titles usually are, so that's easy) and it is using a paragraph format that does not end in the suffix for the generated file. For example, TOC is the standard table of contents suffix, so you could call your contents title ContentsTitle, but not ContentsTitleTOC.
If you want to remove the page numbers from a top level TOC entry:
1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
3. Delete the building block <$pagenum> from the line with the same paragraph format as your top level TOC entry.
4. Choose View > Body Pages.
5. Update your book (or file).

If you'd like to add the chapter numbers in front of the chapter titles in your table of contents (assuming the chapter titles are numbered with the <$chapnum> variable):
1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
3. Type <$chapnum> and a space in front of the chapter title building block.
4. Choose View > Body Pages.
5. Update your book (or file).

When Create Hyperlinks is turned on, you can press Ctrl + Alt on your keyboard as you click on a table of contents entry to follow the hyperlink into the file. If it isn't turned on, you'll need to right-click your TOC in your book window and choose Set up Table of Contents. Then select Create Hypertext Links.

Turn on Create Hyperlinks for the TOC.

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If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker class. Hope to "see" you there.

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About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

June 29, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4 Audio Editing: Shhhhhh! I Mean Speak Up!

by Kevin Siegel

When working with audio in Adobe Captivate, one issue you are likely to face is audio levels that are all over the map. Unless you created your audio in a studio or received your audio from an audio professional, you'll likely come across sections of your audio that are either too loud, too low or both. Luckily, you can fix some of the issues without leaving Captivate.

Right-click any audio file on the Library, choose Edit with Adobe Captivate and you'll open the Edit Audio dialog box.

In the image below, parts of the waveform are taller than others. Generally speaking, the taller the wave, the louder the audio. You wouldn't even need to preview the audio shown below to know that the audio suddenly gets louder, softer and then louder again.

Audio that is too loud.

Without leaving the Edit Audio dialog box, click the Adjust Volume button to display the Adjust Volume controls. At this point, you'll need to experiment a bit to come up with a volume that sounds the best to you.

If your audio file has multiple sections that are too loud, select Dynamics from the Audio Processing area (as shown below). You can typically leave the Ratio and Threshold settings alone and click the OK button.

Audio Volume Controls

In the image below, you can see that the waveform is now pretty smooth (I didn't have to tinker around any further). If your audio still has sections that are too loud, go back and experiment with the Ratio and Threshold sliders to see if you can calm things down a bit.

Adjusted Audio

If there is just a little bit of audio in the waveform that is too loud, and the Dynamics option isn't helping, select the problematic part of the waveform, click the Adjust Volume button and drag the Volume slider down a bit or as necessary to equalize the volume.

Finally, if your audio has sections that are alternating between too loud, perfect and then too soft, try selecting the Normalize option you'll find just above Dynamics. I find that this is the option of last resort and that Dynamics or manual Volume adjustments work better.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that the features you will find in dedicated audio-editing programs like Adobe Soundbooth or Audacity are light-years better than the options you will find in Captivate, but it's nice to know what you can accomplish without leaving Captivate.

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Looking to learn Captivate? We have a couple of options… we offer two online classes (Beginner and Advanced). Click here for details on the Beginner class. Click here for details on the Advanced class. We also have a 3-hour class devoted to Advanced Actions. Click here to learn more about that class.

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Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

June 24, 2010

Acrobat: Metadata!

by David R. Mankin

Metadata is information about a document and its contents (including the author's name, keywords and copyright information). These bits of information are used by search utilities.

PDF Metadata

Do all PDF files have metadata? No. If you don't specify that you want metadata in your PDF files while creating them, will there be metadata? Probably.

I am frequently asked in the Acrobat classes if I know what program was used to create the source document of an exercise file. A quick tap of Ctrl-D (Cmd-D on the Mac) on the keyboard displays the Document Properties dialog box.

By clicking the Description tab, I can often state, with authority, that this document was created in Illustrator or InDesign (the Metadata tells me so). The document title, author, subject and keywords are all listed here, as well as the document's creation date, time, and the application that was used to create the source file.

From the Description tab of the Document Properties dialog box, metadata can be read, added or deleted. Additionally, there is an Additional Metadata button which allows for deeper exploration of the underlying Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) information. This XMP information can be handed back and forth from one Adobe application to another, allowing accurate metadata to be carried through the document's workflow stages, as it is passed from one application to another. In this way, the document information present in an InDesign file is passed along to the PDF that is created from it. Exploring the options in various PDF conversion tools will often have a toggle to enable or disable certain PDF metadata conversion.

Want to remove a PDF file's metadata? Easy. Open the PDF file in Acrobat. Choose Document > Examine Document. The Examine Document Panel opens. A thorough scan of the document is initiated and metadata is one of the features that is inspected. If your document has metadata, it will be listed. At the bottom of this panel is a Remove button. With Metadata checked, click the Remove button and the metadata will be removed. Check it out by visiting the Document Properties dialog box again (the Description tab). Need to perform this on a group of files? This process can be batched by using Acrobat's Batch Processing located by choosing Advanced > Document Processing.

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Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

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June 23, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker 9: Adding Tabs to a Table of Contents

by Barbara Binder

"Discoverable." That's a new Adobe buzzword for features that users can discover on their own. I'd say that adding a tab character between the entries and page numbers in a table of contents does not fall into that category. One of my most memorable consulting moments was watching a student update her FrameMaker book and TOC and then manually add all the tabs after FrameMaker stripped them out. I can only imagine what she was thinking with each tap of the Tab key: "I hate FrameMaker, I hate FrameMaker."

Don't hate FrameMaker! It's such a simple fix:

Open your Table of Contents file.
Choose View > Text Symbols to turn on the non-printing characters (if they aren't on already).
Choose View > Reference Pages.
Tap PgDn on your keyboard until you reach the TOC Reference Page, which looks something like this:
Take a close look at the text. What do you see between each <$paratext> and <$pagenum> building block? It's a space!
Delete the space after each <$paratext> and replace it with a tab character. In this image below, I've already set a right-aligned tab stop with leader dots, so adding the tabs scoots them over immediately. You will have to add the tab stop before your page numbers move to the right:
Choose View > Body Pages.
Reference Page changes to generated documents don't take effect until you update your book. Once updated, you'll be happy to discover that you will never need to add those tabs manually again.

Say it with me: "I love FrameMaker, I love FrameMaker!"

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If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker class. Hope to "see" you there.

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June 22, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: Quickest Quizzes Ever!

by Kevin Siegel

Adding Question Slides has always been a necessary evil in Captivate. I'm not saying that including a quiz in your eLearning isn't a good thing… certainly quizzes are an integral measuring stick for the effectiveness of your course. However, adding question slides to a Captivate eLearning course was, at best, tedious.

Prior to Captivate 4, you couldn't duplicate a Question Slide or import them from one project to another. With the introduction of Captivate 4, both of those problems were a thing of the past. But anyone who created a quiz using Captivate 4 knows how much work the process was. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, it goes a bit like this: you'll choose Quiz > Question Slide. Select the Question type and click OK. Type the question, type the answers, select the correct answer(s) and click OK. Format the Question Slide to taste. Then repeat. Not difficult, but very, very click-intensive.

Quiz Object Styles

With the new Captivate 5, the mundane chore of creating a quiz gets a whole lot easier. Prior to adding any Question Slides, you'll choose Edit > Object Style Manager. At the upper left of the Object Style Manager dialog box, there is an entire Quizzing Objects group. There are several Quizzing Objects, and you can set the styles to suit your needs.

Default quiz object styles

Improved Quiz Default Labels

Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences. From the Quiz category, select Default Labels. When your Question Slides are created, there will be buttons added automatically along the bottom of the slide allowing learners to submit their answers, clear selections, skip a question and go back and answer skipped questions. Learners will also see feedback captions as they get the answers correct or incorrect. For the first time in Captivate history, you can elect to use the default values for your captions or create custom caption styles you can use on the Question Slides. The concept of Object Styles is new in Captivate 5 and will save you a significant amount of formatting time.

Quiz default labels

Add Multiple Question Slides

The best new feature Quiz feature you'll see in Captivate 5 will present itself when you insert the first Question Slides (via Quiz > Question Slide). Gone are the bad-old-days when you had to select a single Question Type and click OK. Then, when you wanted another Question Slide, you'd have to repeat the process. And again and again.

Take a look at the image below:

Add multiple question slides

All of the Question Types available in Captivate 4 are still there. However, a wonderful enhancement is the ability to specify multiple copies of each Question Type will be added to the project with a single click of the OK button (in the image above, I'm only showing the first two Question Types but I've asked Captivate to create 11 of each).

Improved Question Editing

And finally, while it's not as awe-inspiring as the ability to add a billion Question Slides to your project at one time, in Captivate 5 you can now edit the questions and answers directly on the slide (goodbye unnecessary dialog boxes). Double-clicking the text on the slide will now take you directly into text-editing mode where you can make your changes without losing focus on the slide itself.

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Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

June 21, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker 9: Table Rules

by Barbara Binder

Ever wondered how to edit the rules listed in FrameMaker's Table Designer? When you are designing a new table format, or refining an existing one, you need to make decisions about how the ruling lines should look in your tables. When you go to the Ruling properties of the Table Designer, you are presented with 10 lists of available ruling styles:

Table Designer

In a new, default document, each list looks like this:

Default ruling styles

But what if you have other plans for your table rules? Let's say you'd like a thicker line than Thick, or perhaps want to use any color other than the default black?

Did you know that you can add/edit ruling styles through Custom Ruling & Shading? I didn't think so. This is one of my regular polling questions in my FrameMaker classes, and most students simply stare blankly at me when I ask the question. Based on my many years in front of FrameMaker students, this particular feature is not one I'd label as "discoverable" (Adobe-speak for a feature you'll easily find and figure out on your own).

Here's how to modify the ruling line lists:

Choose Table > Custom Ruling & Shading.
Click on one of the ruling styles in the list (I picked "Thick") and then click the Edit Ruling Style button.
Now, what you do on the Name line will impact how the styles lists are modified:
- If you leave a default name you will update the existing style;
- If you type a new name, you will leave the default styles alone, and will be adding a new style to the list.
In my example, I'm adding a new style called "Thickest". Pick the color, pattern, width (which means height), and whether you want a single or double line. I'm going with a 6 pt Forest Green rule.
Click Set to add/modify the ruling style, but don't click Apply! That would assign your new rule to whatever is selected in the table. Instead, just close or collapse the panel.
Return to Ruling properties in the Table Designer and drop down any of the lists, and presto! Your new (or improved) ruling style is ready to go!

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If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker class. Hope to "see" you there.

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