Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite – Page 35

June 15, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: Styling with Object Styles

by Kevin Siegel

How many times have you had to update the appearance of objects in Captivate and the pesky Apply to All feature simply didn't work? If you've tried to update Captivate's text captions across an entire project, then you know how truly hit or miss the process can be.

Over the past couple of weeks I've touched on some of the wonderful new features you'll find in the upcoming Captivate 5. This one ranks in the top two or three: Object Styles. For the first time in Captivate history, you'll be able to create, edit and use styles for many of Captivate's standard slide objects. This feature effectively replaces Design Templates introduced in Captivate 4.

Using Caption styles, you can alter the way text captions will appear in a project. Once you set up the appearance of the default Caption Style, new captions will take on the attributes of the style and save you a ton of manual formatting. Want to update the appearance of your project's text captions months from now? Simple. Update the style and BAM! Every text caption will follow the lead of its style.

To edit the Default Caption Style, choose Edit > Object Style Manager. From the top of the Object Style Manager dialog box, select Default Caption Style (there are also defaults for Success, Failure and Hint Captions).

You can use the Caption area at the right to specify a Caption type. From the Character area, you can select a font Family, Style and Size (such as Verdana, Regular, 16). From the Format area, you can specify the alignment both horizontally and vertically. And there are other formatting options available.

Default caption style

When you insert new text captions (via Insert > Standard Objects > Text Caption), each new caption will follow the formatting specified in the style. Cool!

Of course, here's where things get interesting. I added several captions to a slide. Each used the Default Caption Style. Next I did the unthinkable–I manually changed the appearance of each caption. What a mess!

What a mess!

You might want to stand back a bit… this next step just might leave a mark. I selected all of the captions that I fouled up. Then, from the top of the Properties panel, I clicked the Reset Style button.

Reset styles

And Bam, Bam, Bam! All of the text captions once again followed the formatting I specified in the object style!

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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 Kevin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

June 10, 2010

Acrobat: Signatures in the Clouds

by David R. Mankin

First there was Buzzword, an online word processor that Adobe created for all of us to use for FREE. Then there was Presentations (think PowerPoint… only online and free). Next came Tables, an online spreadsheet.

Adobe seems to be assembling a cloud-based suite of useful programs. The anchor to all these 'modules' is the free acrobat.com service. The only things required to use all of these services are a user name and a password. Simply visit www.acrobat.com to sign up.

Adobe has continually improved and added to this online suite of tools. The latest addition (still in beta, but is available to all, and it's really cool) is Adobe eSignatures.

Adobe eSignatures

eSignatures is an incredibly easy way to get your documents digitally signed. No more printing, faxing or overnighting documents. Just upload your documents to this service and get them signed quickly.
You can use your existing Adobe ID (that you use for Acrobat.com), or create one when you visit https://esign.adobe.com/.

Once logged in, you will get to upload the PDF file you wish to have signed. You can add a description of the document if you wish. You will then have the opportunity to input the email addresses of the people to receive the doc(s). You will then designate a date by which all recipients must have signed the document. You can write a custom note that will be the body of the email that the service will send out for you. This email will have a link to the document, which is housed online for you.

Your recipients will have to log into the service, and if they don't yet have an Adobe ID, they can create one by following the prompts. Recipients log in and can preview or download the file. The magic happens when the recipient presses the Sign button. A digital signature is applied to the document (yes, you can customize its appearance, believe it or not!), and the initiator is notified via email that the doc has been signed. Once all recipients of the file have signed, the doc can be downloaded. It will have an additional page added to the end, containing all the signatures, and the PDF will no longer be editable. Nice.

Signature page

Did I mention the cost of all this stuff? FREE!! I have tried to get clients and coworkers to use digital signatures for years, and am sometimes successful. This is a tool that I will use constantly. It makes digital signature technology readily available and a snap to setup and use. Stay tuned–the cloud is getting better and better.

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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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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.

June 8, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker 9: Deleting Empty Pages

by Barbara Binder

For those of you transitioning to FrameMaker from Microsoft Word, the empty pages left at the end of a document can be bothersome.
The first rule to learn is that the single fastest way to delete empty pages is to save your document. When you save, empty pages are deleted. Of course, this assumes a few things.

Choose Format > Page Layout > Pagination. Ensure "Before Saving & Printing" is set to Delete Empty Pages.

FrameMaker pagination

If you confirm the settings shown above, but the empty pages refuse to go away when you save or print, read on…

If the page in question is using a custom master page, choose Format > Page Layout > Master Page Usage and reassign the default Right/Left masters.

Master Page Usage

Save your work and the empty page should be gone.

If not, read on…

Another reason that empty pages stick around is if the master pages are using overrides. View the master pages via View > Master Pages and switch back the Body Pages (View > Body Pages). Select Remove Overrides.

Remove overrides

Save your work and the empty page should be gone. But… if not, read on…

Yet another reason a page won't go away is if the page contains the start of a new flow (i.e., Flow B) or a disconnected page. Choose Special > Delete Pages and remove the page manually.

Delete pages

If the page disappears, but returns after you update your book, it's likely the book pagination is set to add blank pages to force a new chapter to begin on a specific page side. In the book window, you can choose Format > Page Layout > Pagination and you'll find the same options you saw for single documents. Book commands override the document commands, so I just ignore document pagination and always set it at the book level.

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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 7, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: One Masterful Slide

by Kevin Siegel

Ever needed to display an object across several or all of your Captivate project slides? Me too! The good news is that there is more than one way to accomplish the task. The bad news is that neither process works very well.

One way to show an object (such as your logo) across multiple slides is to use Captivate's Show for rest of project command via the Options tab. This technique works well enough until you come across one of the slides where you don't want the image. Since the Show for rest of project command is an all-or-nothing affair, you are sunk (unless you cover the object or know how to Hide an object).

The other way to show an object across multiple slides (hold onto your hat) is to copy and paste the object onto said slides. While antiquated, this is a simple-enough process until, sometime later, you want to move, alter or remove the object from all or some of those slides. The only foolproof way to make changes to those objects is to go from slide to slide and manually make the change(s). I know that there's an Apply to All feature, but it is often inappropriate to use or worse, simply doesn't work consistently. Ouch!

So hello to Captivate 5 where you will find a wonderfully welcome addition: Master Slides. Once you create a Master Slide, anything you add to a Master Slide can quickly be applied to any project slide(s). If you modify, move or delete Master Slide objects, the slides assigned to the Master Slide will instantly be affected. Nice!

To create a Master Slide, choose Window > Master Slide.

The Master Slide panel appears alongside the Timeline. If you click on a Master Slide, you'll enter Master Slide view. Any changes you make to the slide will affect the selected Master Slide.

Master Slide Panel

Add, format or position object(s) on the Master Slide just as you would a project slide. In the picture below, I added a logo to the lower right of the master slide.

Master Slide

The final step is to apply the Master Slide to project slide(s).

On the Film Strip, select any or all of the slides.

From the General group on the Properties panel, select the Master Slide you would like to apply from the Master Slide drop-down menu.

Apply a Master Slide

You can have multiple Master Slides in a project (choose Insert > Master Slide while the Master Slide panel is open to add a new Master Slide). And you can name a Master Slide via the Properties panel of any selected Master Slide.

If you don't want to use a Master Slide on a specific slide(s), select the slide(s) and, from the General group on the Properties panel, select None from the Master Slide drop-down menu.

No Master Page

As mentioned earlier, once you have applied a Master Slide to a project slide, any changes you make to the objects on a Master Slide will have an instant affect on any slides that are assigned to the Master Slide.

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

June 4, 2010

Acrobat: Portable Indeed!

by David R. Mankin

In my last article I wrote about how my Blackberry was able to open and show a PDF file–much to my delight! And now Adobe has released a version of Adobe Reader for Android-based devices. Keep in mind that Reader can be installed only if your phone runs Android 2.1 or later and it has at least 256 MB of RAM and a 550 MHz processor.

Two trends seem to have led to this exciting bit of news: Apple's turning of their back regarding Flash on the iPhone/iPad devices; and Adobe's welcoming embrace toward Google's Android mobile operating system. (Google has also enthusiastically invited Flash technology into their OS. If you use an Android, you may want to keep your eyes open for Adobe AIR on your device now that the Developer Prerelease program is underway).

Adobe states that Reader for the Android features "Multi-touch gestures, like pinch-and-zoom, as well as double-tap-zoom, flick-scrolling and panning. It also includes a "reflow" mode which will take text-heavy documents with wide margins and automatically wrap the content for easy viewing on smaller screens."

Reflow with a tap of the finger? Awesome. To see Reader on the Android, click here to view a video on Adobe TV.

Darn! A few weeks ago I loved my Blackberry. Technology can make us fickle. See you later… I'm off to see if I can figure out how to install Photoshop on my kid's Nintendo DS.

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 4, 2010

Adobe FrameMaker 9: That Flippin’ Toolbox

by Barbara Binder

FrameMaker tools Most of us don't do a lot of drawing in FrameMaker these days, but sometimes we just need to add a quick line or rectangular element to the page. The toolbox gives you access to these drawing tools, along with various formatting commands.

To access the toolbox, just choose Graphics > Tools. It will appear at its default position, docked to the left of the page.

Getting rid of the toolbox is another matter. Resetting the workspace will do it, but if that's too drastic an action (because it also resets the toolbars, pods and panels, and then you will need to undock the toolbox.

Grab the top of the toolbox and drag it onto the page. Once it is undocked, you can simply click the X to close it.

Undocked toolbar

Before you close the toolbox, take a minute to click the double white arrows to the left of the X. Did you know you can flip the toolbox to a horizontal position?

That's cool. Plus, now that it is horizontal, it fits nicely into the Toolbars. Just drag it up to dock it.

Docked, horizontal toolbar.

Truthfully, you don't need to flip it to dock it in the toolbars. Simply drag the vertical version up to the toolbar and it will flip itself.

It's good to know how to flip the toolbar though because if you ever get this far and you want to restore the floating vertical Toolbox, you won't need me to tell you to drag it out of the dock and click the double white arrows (located below the X on the rotated toolbox) to restore the vertical orientation.

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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 1, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: Affected by Effects

by Kevin Siegel

How many times have you wanted to make Captivate slide objects animate like you can do in PowerPoint (you know, make an image fly in, flip, rotate, follow a path… the standard stuff you've been able to do since the dawn of time in PowerPoint)? And how many times have you been stymied when it comes to adding effects because well, Captivate simply did not offer the feature. Did you notice I said did not? That's right, the new Adobe Captivate 5 offers effects… and not just a few vanilla effects. Captivate 5 features so many effects, we just might have to offer a dedicated class just to cover them all.

Add an Effect

During the steps that follow, I'll show you how to add a few simple Effects to an image (but keep in mind that you can add an Effect to just about any slide object and you can combine Effects).

Right-click the image and choose Apply Effect.
On the Effects tab, which is new to Adobe Captivate 5 and is grouped by default with the Timeline, click the Add Effect button (the button is very small and is located in the lower-left of the Effects panel).

Shown below is the full Effects menu available to you in Adobe Captivate 5. Each menu has several effects.
In the screen capture below, notice that I've added an image and positioned it at the far left of the slide. Then I selected Entrance > Fly In > Fly In From Right.
The slide position of the image is important. As the image performs the Effect, the image will fly in from the far right of the slide and stop at the designated slide position.
When you add Effects, the effect appears on the Effects panel (as mentioned above, the Effects panel is new in Adobe Captivate 5 and grouped with the Timeline). In the screen capture below, notice that I have also added a Glow effect.

You can easily control which effect occurs first (in the screen capture above, the Fly In From Right effect will occur first, followed by the Glow effect). All you will need to do to reverse the effect is drag the objects left or right on the Effects panel (just like controlling the timing of objects on the Captivate Timeline).

Two final things, but I think they are both kind of cool. First, many of the Effects will have Properties you can edit. In the screen capture above, the Glow Effects include Blur and Strength properties. Second, there is a Save icon (the little disk) on the Effects panel that will allow you to save your Effects for future use.

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May 25, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: The Mother of All Upgrades!

by Kevin Siegel

I've been using, writing about and teaching Captivate since, well… before the program was known as Captivate. I've seen all of the upgrades. I've been underwhelmed (Captivate 1 to 2 didn't do much for me) and amazed (Captivate 3 to 4 was a major step forward for the program). With the upgrade from Captivate 4 to 5, I'm awestruck. Adobe didn't just upgrade the program, they tore it down and rebuilt it.

If you're on Twitter or follow the eLearning BLOGS, then you probably already know that the new version of Captivate is expected to be released in June of this year (as in next month). The new version will run on a Macintosh, which would be reason enough to do a jig except that that is not even the coolest of all the enhancements. Over the coming weeks, I'll touch on some of the hottest features that will surely bring a smile to your face (and have you reaching for your credit card in a rush to buy the upgrade).

Goodbye windowshades, hello panels!

The new Captivate has a shiny new interface that more closely matches the other popular Adobe programs. Gone are the dreaded windowshade buttons that were made popular by the late, great Macromedia. (Those of you who don't know the history might be surprised to learn that Captivate was once owned by Macromedia before Macromedia got swallowed up by Adobe.)

I can't tell you how many new developers (and even some vets) clicked the windowshade button for the Timeline to collapse the panel, only to find themselves in a fight with Captivate trying to get the pesky panel to come back. In Captivate 5, so long windowshades, hello panels.

You won't find very many dialog boxes in Captivate 5. The new version relies on panels for just about everything. For instance, in the current version of Captivate, if you right-click an object and choose Properties, you are met with the Properties dialog box. Make your changes there and then click OK. In the new Captivate, you double-click an object to display the Properties panel. Once on the panel, you make your changes and… and… there's no OK button to click. Simply continue working because your settings took. Not having to click an OK button after every change is going to take some getting used to, but just think of all the clicks you are going to save over the coming years!

The Properties Panel, CP5

Workspaces

So there's all these new panels and you are going to love them. I mean hate them. I mean love them. To be honest, you're going to have to get used to the new panels. You'll probably hate them at first but grow to love them. Believe me, the panels are worlds better than the clunky old dialog boxes.

To help you get used to the new panels, Captivate 5 sports a Workspaces feature. Here's how it works… drag your panels anywhere you want within the Captivate window. Group your favorite panels together, collapse them, resize them or close them.

When you've got Captivate window looking the way you want, why take the chance that some rogue colleague of yours is going to start Captivate after you've left for the day and move everything around? Instead, go to the Workspace menu and choose New Workspace.

Name your new workspace and click the OK button (yes, I said click OK… most of the dialog boxes are gone, but not all of them).

Once saved, you can access your new workspace via the Workspace menu where you will find a half dozen default Workspaces including Classic, Widget and Skin Editor. It is worth noting that you can delete or rename a workspace by choosing Manage Workspace via the Workspace menu.

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May 24, 2010

Adobe RoboHelp: Links to PDFs in the Baggage Files Folder

by Kevin Siegel

If you want to include PDFs in your RoboHelp Help System there are basically two ways to proceed. First, you can store the PDFs on your Web server and then create a standard link to the PDF from within any topic in your Help system. However, if you go that route, the PDFs won't be searchable from within the Help System.

If you instead add the PDF to your Baggage Files folder, and then create links, the PDFs will be part of the generated Help System and the PDFs will be searchable via the Search tab. Sweet! The problem is that creating the link to the PDFs isn't an obvious series of steps. Read on to learn how.

Add the PDF to the Baggage Files folder

Right-click the Baggage Files folder (the folder is located on the Project Manager pod, but you'll need to change the view to Details view instead of Global view) and choose New > Baggage File.

Add a Link to the PDF Link the TOC

If you would like to add the PDF to your TOC, create a new TOC Page. On the General tab, give the page a title. Select Baggage File from the Link to drop-down menu. Finally, select the PDF you just added to the Baggage Files folder.

Create a PDF Link within a Topic

If you'd like to make a link in a topic to the PDF in the Baggage file, press [shift] on your keyboard and drag the PDF from the Baggage File into a topic. Nice!

If you would like to watch a video of this process, click here.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp quickly. Join me at the end of this week for a live, 2-day RoboHelp class (class starts Thursday). Click here to register or learn more about this and upcoming classes.

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

May 21, 2010

Adobe Photoshop CS5: A Few of My Favorite Things, Part I

by Barbara Binder

Photoshop CS5 is out and has lots of really cool new features. I'm going to cover a few of my favorites over the next few weeks, starting with mind-boggling Content Aware Fill.

Content Aware Fill is a new technique that seamlessly fills a selection with similar image content nearby. For the best results, create a selection that extends slightly into the area you want to replicate. (A quick lasso or marquee selection is often sufficient.)

Here's how it works:

Open an image and make a rough selection. Notice that this selection includes some of the background.
Choose Edit > Fill and from the Use drop-down menu, select Content-Aware.
Click the OK button.
After a few moments of processing Photoshop succeeds in removing the selection and builds a wall in its place! For a long-time Photoshop user like me, this is nothing short of magical.

Not impressed? How about some more examples…

Here's a second example, this time, removing the lines of paint from the parking lot:

Hey, what happened to the lines?

Now, let's be realistic. This feature is not going to work on every image, every time. Here's a third example:

One file example of content aware.

Curiously, tree stumps appear as our cyclist is removed. Truthfully, I'm still impressed. Removing the stumps is a quick task for an experienced Photoshop user. I'm thrilled I don't have to build the railing, the sidewalk or the ground in the background!

Note: All images used in this training post are courtesy of Adobe Systems, Inc.

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If you are new to Photoshop and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe Photoshop class. Too elementary for your skill level? How about the Advanced Photoshop class? Hope to "see" you there.

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