Technical Communications – Page 17

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 7, 2013

eLearning & Design: Want to be a Better Designer? Play this Color Game

by AJ Walther

We've talked about gamification. We've talked about color. Why not participate in a little bit of gamification that could strengthen your color knowledge–and maybe even make you a better designer?

Blendoku is a mobile puzzle game that is free for Android and iOS.

Blendoku is a mobile puzzle game that is free for Android and iOS.

The object is to organize colors by saturation, shade and hue. While it sounds simple, things get tricky pretty quick; and next thing you know you're immersed in a Sudoku-crossword rainbow puzzle. Not sure you're grasping the concept? Check out this brief demo video.

If you've got some free time (or perhaps a lot of free time), give it a go and let me know what you think. Already feel like you're becoming a color master? Or was this just a (visually stimulating) waste of time?

Note: This game isn't color blind friendly (yet), but according to this Mashable article, creators Rod Green and Yeong-Hao Han say they're working on a way to shift the colors so that everyone can play.

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.

July 12, 2013

“Adobe Captivate 7: The Essentials” Workbook Now Available

I'm happy to report that my newest book, "Adobe Captivate 7: The Essentials" is now available for purchase. A hard copy of the book can be purchased directly from IconLogic's website.

"Adobe Captivate 7: The Essentials" is a self-paced training manual that teaches the core Adobe Captivate skills needed to create interactive eLearning and mLearning content. By following step-by-step instructions, you will learn how to record and produce software demonstrations, interactive training simulations, and soft skills training. You’ll learn how to control the mouse pointer and add such standard objects as text captions, images, and highlight boxes. You’ll learn to record, import and edit audio, and further enhance the learner experience by adding interactivity via click boxes, buttons and text entry boxes. You’ll learn to leverage and enrich existing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations by importing and linking into new or existing Captivate projects. Finally, you’ll learn to publish your project in SWF and HTML5 formats so that your content can be uploaded to a web server for consumption on virtually any device, including the iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices.

If you prefer a digital version of the book that you can download immediately, you have three options:

July 10, 2013

Localization & eLearning: The Translation Process

by Jen Weaver

You are ready to move forward with your translation project, but despite your preparation you still feel a bit in the dark about what steps will be involved in creating your translation. The 'unknowns' can make you feel a bit fearful about moving forward. So let's bring some light to the situation, and uncover those foggy areas of the translation process. We have broken out the steps to a typical e-learning project below to help you better understand what will occur with your project.

Project Scope: Translation of an e-learning module from US English into Chinese

Evaluation

Analysis of material from the technical and cultural viewpoint to determine objectives, target audience and culture-specific content.
Evaluation of source material, layout, as well as the quantity and type of graphics used.
Project assessment to determine frequently used vocabulary, register, file format, etc.
Selection of team components, tools and software to be used.
Overall project assessment including identification of Professional Voice Talents comparable to project goals.
Research and provision of Voice Talent demo recordings from voice bank.
Casting of Voice Talents based on client approval.

Preparation

Extracting of the text from its original file format in (InDesign, PPT, etc). This includes preparation of graphics, graphs, and charts.
Transcribing (if it is not already done) the audio script for recording to include time stamp.

Translation, Editing, & Proofreading

Translation of the text from the source file.
Editing and Proofreading by professional target language (native speaker) editors.

Client Review

Delivery of proofs to Client for internal review.
Review and one round of input of client changes.

Voice Over Recording

Approved voice talent will record in a studio and will be directed by a studio director who is also a native in the language.
Use of fully digital, industrial strength Pro Tools recording system.
SP capabilities, time coded DAT, Neumann microphones, Industrial Acoustics sound booth.

Audio Client Review

Implementation of one round of client changes pre-delivery of completed files (edits can be pronunciation preference, slower speed, faster speed, error in script, etc).

Voice Over Recording of requested changes

Requested changes will be implemented and finalized, following the same process as Voice Over Recording.

Localization Engineering/Desktop publishing

Localization engineers/desktop publishers will ensure all components of the project have been fully localized.
All graphics/visuals will be formatted into the target language.
Localization engineers will sync audio files to the animations, ensuring all files are running properly.
Language tester will do a final QA of the end product, checking that all audio clips are clear and running to match the animation on screen.

Delivery

Delivery of final file (Java, XML, HTML, other formats), tested to ensure all localized components are in working order (audio is synced with animation, etc).

Reliable translation providers will use a translation process that adheres to basic industry quality best practices. Don't be afraid to ask your vendor about their internal translation and quality management processes. A reputable vendor will be proud to share this information with you.

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If you would like to learn best practices for managing translation projects, contact Jen at Carmazzi Global Solutions.