Category: Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite

• Acrobat 3D
• FrameMaker 8
• RoboHelp 7
• Captivate 3

1. Create a new RoboHelp project or open an existing project (projects intended to be integrated with FrameMaker must have at least one topic)
2. Attach the fmstyles.css to at least one topic in the RoboHelp project

   The fmstyles.css file comes with RoboHelp and is part of all new RoboHelp projects. Attaching fmstyles.css is key to successfully importing FrameMaker content into the RoboHelp project. Why? When you import the FrameMaker content, it’s the fmstyles.css file that controls how the FrameMaker content will appear in the RoboHelp project.

   When you attach the fmstyles.css file to the topic, you will likely be unhappy with the appearance of the topic text. No worries, you can edit the CSS file easily from within RoboHelp (which is one reason I said above that you will need to know how to use RoboHelp).

3. Import FrameMaker documents or book files by right-clicking the HTML Files (topics) folder on the Project Manager pod and choosing Add FrameMaker File > Add by Reference
   
   If you do not see Add FrameMaker File > Add by Reference, it is likely that you do not have the Adobe Technical Communication Suite. Keep in mind that the suite adds unique integration features to the applications that make up the suite.
4. You will have access to two important dialog boxes during the import process: Content Settings and Style Settings.

   

   

   While fmstyles.css controls how the text will look in RoboHelp, the Content Settings and Style Settings control such things as the TOC, Index, Glossary, how the numbering formats from FrameMaker appear in RoboHelp, how the cross references are formatted and how the FrameMaker content is paginated in RoboHelp.

5. When you click the Finish button, the FrameMaker content will be imported into your RoboHelp project.

   And the imported content will need some adjustments made to the content settings. But that… is a story for another day…

Want to learn more about integrating the Technical Communication Suite? Click here.

Updated: At Long Last… Adobe Unveils Version 4

Need training on Adobe Captivate 3?

Last month I posted an article in my newsletter with my personal "wish list" for Adobe Captivate 4 (keep in mind that I have no idea when Captivate 4 will make an apperance, only that it will be here sooner or later). You can see that article by clicking here.

During that article I encouraged fellow readers to submit their "wish lists," and I'd foward them to Adobe. I've received some interesting responses. Here are a few of them:

From Rod Ward:

• How about having an extra tab on the Record Audio dialog for Closed Captions so that you could type your audio script into that tab or just cut and paste it from the Slide Notes tab. I write my audio script straight into the slide Notes and record. But then I have no easy way to get those exact words into Closed Captioning. It should all be doable from the same place.
• I desperately want to see a true Drag and Drop question type. Currently we only have drag and drop questions that involve text. I want to use images. For example, I'm currently working on a project about office-based waste management. I want to be able to have questions where the learner has an object (e.g. a paper cup) appear on the screen, and they have to drag it into the correct disposal bin. Captivate can't do it. Frustrating. Dreamweaver's addin Coursebuilder used to do this about 5 years ago!
• I'd like to see an option to apply styles to slides of differing types, sort of a template approach where attaching the 'stylesheet' slide to a given slide would automatically format the heading, background, and any elements of a given type.
• I'd like to be able to assign an ID to a slide element such as a caption box, so that if the stylesheet said that caption was blue, all captions with that ID were blue. Then I could change those captions by changing just the stylesheet. Just like I can in HTML with CSS.
• With everything that vector-based Flash can do, why do Captivate captions have to be based on bitmaps, and bitmaps broken up into five bits at that!
• I'd like to have some text animations that were actually sensible, like the basic ones in PowerPoint. We have all these weird and wonderful text animations that morph into strange shapes, or where fish dive in and eat the letters… but nothing for where you just want the text to fly in from the sides of the screen, or just wipe right to reveal. Why would these be so hard to achieve?
• I'd like just a little more power in the audio editor. How about some preset effects to make my voice sound a bit more compressed or de-essed?
• I'd like to be able to assign keystroke shortcuts to common actions like adding silence to a selected area of audio. I'd use this a lot for cutting out noise between words.
• I want to see Captivate over time allow you to do some more sophisticated animations of individual objects, like you can do in Flash. Currently all I can do is fade things in and out. I want to be able to tween a picture. Zoom it in or out. Move something from one spot to another etc. And I'd like to be able to select these options from the drop-down, just like I currently do for fades.

From Tim Lucas

• Ability to base styles on CSS files
• Option to either embed or store externally any FMV Files (I don't mind it being outside–better for option use and bandwidth utilisation.)
• Question slides that allow the user to drag an image to a text equivalent (or vice versa)
• Not sure how it would work, but an ability to 'Go Back to Last Slide' (without coding it in Flash), especially in heavily branched applications
• Make it easier for Non LMS Client to get data into an Excel/Access Database

From Jean Church:

• One of my main concerns is file size.  There is a bug in Captivate 2 that has not been satisfactorily addressed in Captivate 3.  I have had no success with the workarounds.  This problem just needs to be fixed.
• There is little info on the 508 compliance topic.  More info needs to be included in their Help files.

From Steve Rigdon:

• I have some animations and interactions that were written in Flash ActionScript 3.0, that work fine when published in a SWF file and run with FlashPlayer 9. However, they don't work at all when I import them into Captivate 3.0. In Captivate, they seem to run when they appear via the Insert > Animation dialog box, but then once they are placed in Captivate, they don't show up at all when I Preview > Project (or press F4). What was on the stage shows up, but none of the ActionScript 3.0 code works.
• I found out that there is no direct communication between AVM1 sandboxed SWF files, and AVM2 sandboxed SWF files. Captivate publishes to ActionScript 2, which only runs in the Adobe Virtual Machine 1. Sadly, it appears that my ActionScript 3.0 code won't work in Captivate.
• It would be nice if Captivate 4 accepted ActionScript 3.0 Animations.

From Jay Herman:

• Get rid of all the modal dialog boxes–edit-in-place combined with floating properties boxes is a much better approach.
• Allow embedding of audio on a slide with a playbar (not the project playbar).
• A version that runs on Mac OS X!

What's your wish for Captivate 4? Send it to me and I'll post your wish here.

Got a Captivate production problem that's making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.