Technology – Page 7 – The Logical Blog

January 28, 2014

eLearning: What Happened to Microsoft’s Free Image Gallery?

by AJ Walther

In my Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations class I like to sing the praises of Microsoft's free online image gallery. But then, a few weeks ago, the unthinkable happened. I went to pull an image from said image gallery, and was met instead with this:

Microsoft's new images page.

Do you know what this is? I'll tell you what this is. Useless. It looks like maybe you can search here, but believe you me-you cannot. Where once I found easily searchable free images, I am now met with a screen telling me how to use the newest Office to search for Images (which doesn't work for me as I have Office 2010), how to use Office Web Apps to find images (does anyone use that?), or how to use Bing to find these images (which I tried with zero success). The bottom of the page gives me links to images for Office 2010 or 2007, which I thought would be just the ticket. But no. Those links instead navigate to a page outlining how to insert clip art. Thanks for nothing.

I guess I shouldn't have been upset that a free service had disappeared. But, ya know what, I was upset. (Spoiler alert: I was upset enough that I kept digging until I found a solution. Read on for more!)

If you've used the free image gallery you probably know how great it is. But if you haven't, here's why it's such a valuable tool for eLearning designers:

You Can search by Style numbers

Let's say you found this image:

Woman with hammar

If you found the image in Microsoft's free image gallery, then it came complete with a linked style number.

Linked style number

Clicking the style number pulls up other images from the same style that can all be used together for a cohesive design. That's awesome.

Other images from the same style

Unless you already know the Style number, you cannot search by style number from the Office Clip Art pane. Nor does the clip art mention anywhere in its keywords what the style number is.

Search by General Style

Maybe a particular style doesn't have quite enough images for you. That's okay, the image gallery has a feature allowing you to search by general style–pulling up other images that look similar, even if they aren't technically part of the same style group.

Other images from the same style group

Other images 2

The Search feature within Office's Clip Art pane does not have this feature.

Note: This feature did not work for me in Chrome or Internet Explorer without first downloading Microsoft's Silverlight. I'm running Parallels, however, so I used Safari on the mac side without having to do any additional downloading.

More Selections

When I search within PowerPoint's Clip Art pane using the keyword "construction" for illustrations, including content from office.com, I get back 106 images to choose from. The same search online in the MS Image gallery brings back 156 images.

When I found I could no longer access my beloved Images section of MS Office's site I spent two hours being bounced around between Microsoft's live online chat and multiple tech support hotlines. I tried explaining what was missing every way I knew how and no one seemed to know what I was talking about. If I couldn't access the site anymore I was hopeful that someone could at least tell me how to identify a clip art image's style number from within MS Office for easy searching. This was not the case.

Luckily (and I know it is cruel to make you wait this long for the solution, but at least you weren't on the phone for two hours), I found the solution on my own. By bypassing the image search page of the Microsoft Office page and instead searching the Office site as a whole, I was able to find the hidden images! For your convenience, here is a direct link.

You're welcome.

(Note: When you click the direct link above, the resulting page will say "found no results” because you haven't searched for anything yet. Go ahead and type your search keyword into the search bar above the text to look for images. After you search you can adjust the Media Types at the left to filter your results.)

January 22, 2014

Adobe RoboHelp 11: Sharing Resources via Dropbox

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe released Adobe RoboHelp 11 last week. Over the next few weeks, I'll be covering some of hottest new features. This week: sharing resources via the Cloud (specifically, with Dropbox).

Sharing resources isn't a new concept in RoboHelp. In fact, the Resource Manager pod has been around for the past few versions of RoboHelp. What's new in RoboHelp 11 is the ability to specify a Dropbox as a folder on the Resource Manager.

To begin, visited Dropbox.com and created an account. I also created a folder in Dropbox and set it up as a share object (both tasks, creating and sharing the folder, were simple and took mere seconds).

Once my Dropbox account had been set up, I started RoboHelp 11 and chose View > Pods > Resource Manager. From the top of the Resource Manager pod, I clicked the Add Shared Location tool.

In the Add Shared Location dialog box, I clicked theLocation type drop-down menu and selected Dropbox. (Each time I've performed this step over the past few weeks, RoboHelp has consistently loaded my Dropbox folder and Path for me. Alternatively, you can click the Browse button and manually locate your Dropbox folder.)

The next step was to add content to my shared Dropbox folder on the RoboHelp Resource Manager. My shared Dropbox folder is called SharedRoboHelpTopics. When I dragged a topic (Alcohol_Policy) to the shared folder, I was delighted to see that in addition to the topic, the Cascading Style Sheet being used by the topic (policies.css) was also added to the shared folder.

One of my team members (Biff Bifferson), who is located in another state, was working on a RoboHelp project and needed to use some of my content. While we don't share a network connection, we both have Dropbox accounts. I accessed my Dropbox account and sent Biff an invite to my SharedRoboHelpTopics folder.

Biff checked his email and added the SharedRoboHelpTopics folder to his Dropbox. Biff then used RoboHelp's Resource Manager pod to add his Dropbox as a Shared Location.

Since his Dropbox included my shared folder, Biff's Resource Manager immediately displayed my shared resources.

To add my shared content to his RoboHelp project, Biff right-clicked the Alcohol_Policy topic on the Resource Manager pod and chose Add to Project.

Like magic, my content was now being used in two projects in two different locations. What do you think? Cool?

But then… then… I edited the topic on my computer. (I know, crazy right?)

My Resource Manager alerted me that my shared assets weren't synchronized (via the red icon shown in the image below). When content isn't synchronized, it's likely that team members aren't using the same content.

Because I wanted to ensure that both Biff and I were working with the same assets, I right-clicked the topic on my Resources Manager and selected Sync.

Green check marks indicated that all was well between the content in my RoboHelp project and the assets in my Dropbox. But I was curious to learn if Biff actually got the updated content in his project. And if so, what was his experience? Was it painful?

It turns out that Biff's experience was almost, well, routine. He told me that when he opened his project with RoboHelp 11 later that day, he was greeted with the Linked Resource Notification dialog box shown below. All he had to do was click the Update button and his content was automatically synchronized with mine. In a word… that's awesome!

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Looking for training on Adobe RoboHelp? IconLogic offers live, online Adobe RoboHelp classes each month for both RoboHelp 10 and the new RoboHelp 11. We can also bring the same great training onsite to your facility. Interested? Contact us for details.

January 21, 2014

Adobe Captivate 7: Publishing Video Demos

by Kevin Siegel

Over the past few weeks I've shown you how to trim portions of a Captivate Video Demo and how to Pan & Zoom. This week, I'm focusing on the Publishing process for Video Demos.

Publishing a Video Demo (cpvc) might seem like a no-brainer if you have past exerience working with standard Captivate project (cptx). I'd be surprised if any Captivate developers reading this article haven't published at least once via File > Publish.

Here's what the standard Publish dialog box looks like:

When publishing a cptx project, you can elect to publish as SWF, HTML, PDF, or all of the above. You can also select Media from the options at the left and publish as a video file. The bottom line is that you have choices… lots of choices.

Publishing a Video Demo is, to put it mildly, different. As with a cptx project, you still choose File > Publish. However, the Publish dialog box that appears couldn't be more spartan:

SWF? Gone. HTML5, PDF? Gone and gone! If you're working with a Video Demo and go to publish, the assumption is that you want to publish, well, a video. And that's exactly what you get should you click the Publish button–an MP4 file that will play nicely on YouTube and just about any computer or hand-held device that supports video playback.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when customizing the settings in the Publish dialog box.

Profiles: There are three choices (Baseline, Main, and High). Use Baseline for mobile and video conferencing applications.Main is for standard-definition digital TV broadcasts. High is for high definition devices. While the High Profile leads to a longer publish time and more complex video, I've found that this option yields the best results for me.

Encoding: You've got two choices, Constant (CBR) and Variable (VBR). Constant is the default (and it's what I use 99.99% of the time). A Constant bit rate typically results in a smaller published video. Should you elect to specify a variable bit rate, Captivate decides when to use more bits to maintain quality. The file size increases when more bits are used.

FPS stands for Frames Per Second. The higher the value, the smoother your video will play, and the larger the published video will be. The standard FPS is 15.

Key Frame Interval: All videos contain key frames (milestones that represent every second of playtime for the video). The longer you set the Key Frame Interval, the smaller the published video file will be. However, if the video supports Search, the search time increases. If you set the interval short (less than 5 seconds), the size of the file increases but the search function works faster. The standard for videos intended for eLearning is 5 seconds.

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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. We can also bring the same great training onsite to your facility. Interested? Contact us for details.

January 15, 2014

Adobe Captivate 7: Pan & Zoom Video Demos

by Kevin Siegel

Last week, I showed you how to trim portions of a Captivate Video Demo. This week, I'm focusing on the Pan & Zoom feature.

Captivate's Pan & Zoom feature, which is only available in Video Demos, is really two cool tools in one. Zooming gives you the ability to automatically get the learner closer to the action. Panning lets you automatically change the area of the screen that the learner sees. You can control exactly when the Pan & Zoom occurs, its Scale, Speed, Size, and Position.

To add a Pan & Zoom in a Video Demo, first position the Playhead on the Timeline where you'd like the Pan & Zoom.

On the Pan & Zoom panel, click the Add Pan & Zoom button (if the Pan & Zoom panel is not on your screen, choose Window > Pan & Zoom).

On the Timeline, a Pan & Zoom point is added (in the image below, it's the orange circle with a magnifying glass in the middle).

To control the Pan & Zoom, drag and resize the Pan & Zoom window on the Pan & Zoom panel. (The smaller you make the Pan & Zoom window, the larger the zoom.)

You can control how fast the zoom occurs by adjusting the Speed via the Pan & Zoom panel.

The fastest way to zoom the learner back out (so they can see the entire video) is to click the Zoom Out button on the Pan & Zoom panel.

If you'd like to see a demonstration of the Pan & Zoom feature, 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.

January 7, 2014

Adobe Captivate 7: Trim Video Demos

by Kevin Siegel

The more I work with Captivate's Video Demo mode, the more I like it. If you have a need to demonstrate a quick concept, using Video Mode is the absolute fastest way to create eLearning.

To record a video using Video Demo mode, select Video Demo from the Create New area of Captivate's Welcome Screen. When the Recording Area appears, you record your screen actions just as you would if you recorded screen actions using the Software Simulation mode.

Unlike a typical Software Simulation (where there are multiple slides and Timelines), a Video Demo consists of a single video and just one Timeline.

While there are limits to how much editing you can do to a video project, you can insert images, Text Captions, Characters, and Smart Shapes. You can edit the mouse pointer shown in the video, add Pan & Zooms, and Trim the video. This week, I'm going to show you how to Trim a video.

Trim a Video

Open or record a Video Demo.
On the Timeline, click where you want to begin the Trim process. (The red bar you will see is known as the Playhead.)
From beneath the Timeline, click the Trim button. (Two markers will appear. Upon completion, the area between the markers will be deleted.)
Drag the two markers left or right as necessary to highlight the part of the video you want to delete.
Click the word Trim on the Timeline to trim the selection.

The selected part of the video will immediately be removed from the video.

Note: I've found plenty of ways to take advantage of Video Demos, keep in mind that Video Demos are, well, videos. Published videos will play on any computer (Mac, Windows), upload to YouTube, and play on most mobile devices (including the iPad). However, Video Demos cannot contain interactivity. You cannot add quizzes, buttons, click boxes, Advanced Actions, or Text Entry Boxes. Do keep that limitation in mind if you plan to produce mainly demos for your eLearning content.

If you'd like to see a demonstration of video trimming, check out this video on the IconLogic YouTube channel. And if you'd like to see some of my Video Demos, stay on our YouTube channel. Every video you see was created using Captivate's Video Demo feature.

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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.

December 18, 2013

Adobe Captivate 7: Quiz Not Scoring Correctly? Think Advanced… Check Your Interaction!

by Kevin Siegel

Here's an interesting scenario: You create a Captivate project that contains 12 slides: 10 question slides, each worth 10 points, and two "transitional" slides containing simple navigation buttons.

During the testing phase, a beta-tester who answers all of the questions correctly should be awarded 100 points. Simple. Interestingly, every beta-tester who answers the questions correctly receives a score of 96 from the LMS. Huh?

How about this one? You have a five-question Captivate project. As with the first example, this project also has a couple of "transitional" slides containing navigation buttons.

During the testing phase, the progress indicator on each of the question slides indicates that you are on slide 2 of 6, when you are actually on the first question slide. What's up with that? Keep in mind, the project only contains five questions so the first question slide should have indicated that you were on slide 1 of 5.

I've seen these problems before. The issues aren't with the question slides, and they're not a problem with your beta tester. The problem is typically found with the buttons on the "transitional" slides.

If you were to select a button and visit the Reporting group on the Properties panel, you'd see that many objects (click boxes, buttons, text entry boxes) can report user interactivity. In short, the object can be treated like it's part of a quiz.

If you select Include in Quiz, your question number counts will be thrown off. If you select Report answers and Add to total, your quiz score will likely be thrown off.

Here's the real challenge: Imagine you have 100 slides. Some of the slides are question slides; the majority are simply interactive or contain buttons. It's going to be a real pain to open each of your slides, show the properties of objects, and ensure the Reporting options are set correctly. What's a developer to do? Read on…

Choose Project > Advanced Interaction to open the Advanced Interaction window.

You can use this handy window to control all of the reporting objects in your project. For instance, if you wanted to stop a button from being added to the quiz total, all you need to do is select the object in the Advanced Interaction window and, on the Properties panel, Reporting group, deselect the Add to total check box.

If you'd like to see a demonstration of how to Report a score without using Question Slides and how to use the Advanced Interactions feature, 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.

December 11, 2013

Adobe Captivate 7.01: Color Swatches

by Kevin Siegel

Over the past few weeks, I've written about the enhancements you'll find in the recently-released service patch for Captivate 7 (an enhanced lock feature and a new Star Smart Shape). This week I'm going to show you how to use the new Swatches panel.

In the image below, I've added a logo onto a Captivate slide. I'd like to use the green contained in the logo on the Highlight Box you see to the left of the logo. I'd also like to be able to use that same color in other Captivate projects.

Adobe Captivate: Highlight Box and Logo.

To begin, I opened the Swatches panel (Window menu). Then I selected the Pick Color tool (the eye dropper shown in the image below).

Using the Pick Color tool, I clicked on the green color on the logo. In the image below, you can see that the color is added to the Swatches panel (#90B000).

The Enter swatch name dialog box opens. In the image below, I named my new Swatch LogoGreen and then clicked the OK button.

The LogoGreen swatch appears on the Swatches panel (it's the last swatch you see in the image below). I can now use the swatch and apply the color to any slide object.

Keep in mind that Swatches are shared by all Captivate projects so you won't have to recreate the Swatch every time you create a new project. In addition, you can import existing swatches from either Adobe Photoshop or Kuler by clicking the Load tool on the Swatches panel.

Adobe Captivate: Load swatches

If you'd like to see a demonstration of the new Swatches panel in action, 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.

December 5, 2013

Adobe RoboHelp: Favicons

by Kevin Siegel

During my online RoboHelp classes, students frequently ask for ways to brand a generated WebHelp layout. There are multiple ways to add a corporate identity to a layout including customizing a WebHelp skin and adding a copyright notice within the footer of a master page.

While working with skins and master pages is easy enough, one of the fastest ways to brand WebHelp is also the easiest: add a Favicon. A Favicon is an icon that appears in a browser's address bar or next to the site name in a bookmark list. In the image below, you can see the title of a generated layout (Technical Communications) as it appears in a Firefox tab. Just to the left of the title is a generic Favicon.

To add your logo as a Favicon, show the Properties of a RoboHelp WebHelp layout (on the Single Source Layouts pod, right-click a WebHelp layout and choose Properties).

Select the General category and you'll find the Favicon field just below the Title Bar field.

Adobe RoboHelp: Favicon field

Click the Browse button and open the Favicon image you'd like to use. In the image below, I've loaded a Favicon I created called IcoFile.ico. You can use png, ico, or gif images as Favicons.

Adobe RoboHelp: ICO file loaded as a Favicon.

Generate the layout and view the results. You'll see your corporate Favicon in the tab or title bar of the web page in place of the default image.

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Looking for training on Adobe RoboHelp? IconLogic offers live, online Adobe RoboHelp classes each month.

December 4, 2013

Adobe Announces a New Solution for Smarter Procedures

Adobe recently announced that they have been working on how to reduce human performance issues, specifically when people are "working through procedures and tasks related to maintenance, operations, servicing, etc."

According to Kapil Verma,Sr. Product Manager, Adobe Technical Communication Products, "Currently, organizations are executing various kinds of step-by-step procedures for doing maintenance, repair or to simply operate equipment. There organizations may be in different kinds of industries e.g. manufacturing, nuclear, telecomm, electronics, just to name a few. However, the execution is done mainly in a paper-based environment and hence, is prone to errors. Sometimes, these errors can be quite costly to the organization."

Verma said that there is a need for a "smarter" procedure execution in many of these organizations and Adobe is taking the lead.

More information.

November 26, 2013

Adobe Captivate 7.01: Twice the Locking Power

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe recently announced a patch for Adobe Captivate 7. The patch offers support for the new Macintosh and Windows operating systems and fixes several bugs. As patches go, bug fixes and expanded support for operating systems is typical fare. However, if you've spent the few minutes that it takes to install the free upgrade, you might have missed some enhancements that are a pleasant surprise (and above and beyond what one might expect to find in a simple patch).

For instance, the ability to lock slide objects has been around for years. All you needed to do was select a slide object and, on the Timeline, click the white dot in the lock column. In the image below, I've added a Text Caption to a slide. The white dot indicates that the object is not locked. I can drag the unlocked object around the slide, resize it, and use any of the groups on the Properties panel.

Adobe Captivate: Object Lock Tool

Prior to the patch for Captivate 7, clicking the white dot simply locked the object and the white dot changed into a lock icon (shown in the image below). While locked, you couldn't move or resize the object nor change any of the object's Properties without first unlocking the object.

Adobe Captivate: Object locked

After installing the Captivate 7.01 patch, there are now two lock modes: fully locked and semi-locked. After an initial click on the white dot, the lock icon is noticeably different from what was seen in older versions of Captivate. In the image below, notice that instead of the standard lock icon that was shown in the image above, the lock icon now includes arrows.

Adobe Captivate: Object semi locked.

The arrows not only appear on the lock icon on the Timeline; the locked object on the slide also displays the semi-locked icon (shown below).

When an object is semi-locked, you cannot change its size or slide position. However, you can make other changes to the object. For instance, in the image below, notice that while the Transform group options aren't available, the options in the General group (Caption and Callout) are both available. In addition to the General group, all of the remaining groups remain available with a semi-locked object.

Adobe Captivate: Properties panel showing semi-locked options.

If you'd like to fully lock an object (just like in the old days), it's a simple matter of clicking the white dot on the Timeline a second time (the first click semi-locks the object; a second click fully locks the object).

If you'd like to see a demonstration of how the new lock feature works in Adobe Captivate 7.01, 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.