Category: Uncategorized

Two Questions: How Can I Lower My Captivate Published EXE Size and Can I Include the F-Keys in a Simulation?

We have a client that has some unique needs (including the need to have an active F11 key in the simulation, but wanting the learner to use their keyboard only for all entries).

We published the simulation as an EXE. This resolved the key stroke (F11) issue, but has created another issue. This same client as a maximum 500KB file size requirement due to bandwidth issues.  We typically meet this by breaking our simulations up and linking them together (this keeps the individual file size down enough to meet the requirement).

However, when we publish EXEs, our files grow incredibly large. Our developer tested publishing a simulation with just a few slides–the final file size was just over 1MB–which exceeds the size requirements. Any ideas? 

Answer

When you publish an EXE file, the Flash Player (required for your users to view the SWFs you publish) is included in the EXE. The player occupies around 800KB, which is why your EXEs are large, even if you only have one slide in the project. As far as I know, there is no way to prevent the Flash Player from being bundled when you publish an EXE, and therefore no way to reduce the size of an EXE to 500KB or less.

Given your size limation 500KB (which I feel is unreasonably low… even users with slow, 56K modems can work with a download smaller than a few megabytes), you’ll end up having to publish SWFs instead of EXEs. Understanding the problems you are having with the F-keys, I can only say that the F-keys have long been a source of frustration for many Captivate developers. Since browsers (such as Internet Explorer) reserve the F-keys, you shouldn’t include them as object shortcuts in your Captivate projects if you can avoid it.

If you must include the F-keys, it is possible to create a JavaScript in the HTML files that accompany your published SWFs. The JavaScript would, in theory, override the browser’s use of the F-keys (I have not tested the results so cannot make any warranties).

Here are some links with discussions about the subject:

• Link 1
• Link 2
• Link 3

Question: What’s the Best Microphone for Audio Recordings?

What specific advice can you give about the kind of microphone to purchase for making good quality audio narrations to accompany my Captivate training sessions, minimizing echo and other audio problems? It needs to connect to my Dell laptop PC.

I would prefer the versatility of a standalone microphone on a stand that could sit on my desk, rather than a microphone built into a headset. I had in mind trying to limit the cost to around $100, but if that isn’t reasonable please tell me.

The two main questions that come to mind are:

1. Which connection to my PC is going to provide the best audio quality (or at least minimize any reduction in audio quality) — USB; the microphone jack; 802.11 wireless; Bluetooth?
2. Is there a specific microphone technology, or some common microphone buzzwords, I should look for? Or something specific I should avoid?

Answer

Excellent question! I prefer boom microphones build into the headset since I think the boom keeps your mouth a consistent distance from the microphone. However, audio and the related hardware and software is not my expertise. When it comes to audio, I rely on a team of professionals to create audio files that my clients will love.

I’m going to open your question up to your fellow readers. If anyone has some advice on microphones, please send me your comments. I’ll be happy to post any comments here in a future edition of the newsletter.

by Quinn McDonald

WordPress does it, and so does Yahoo. So I’ll have to adjust. It’s counterintuitive for me, though, and I think the people who live in this time-warp live in a non-time-based world.

Here’s what I’m talking about: When I’m moving through posts and emails, I think of "next" as those more recent than the page I am on, and "previous" as those earlier in time. So, for me, my next email will come soon, and my previous post was yesterday’s.

Not so with WordPress and Yahoo indexes.  If I have moved backwards into March’s posts, clicking on "next" moves me further back, into Februrary’s posts. Clicking on "previous" means the previous page, pushing me into the future, into April’s posts.

The reason, I suppose, is that "next" and "previous" don’t refer to the time the posts were written, but placement in a list–which page they are on. To me, this means that the coders or IT developers are not thinking of how their audience uses the software, but how they see it. A programmer sees information on pages, and the placement of the pages themselves are important. Most users, I would guess, see the date and time they wrote it as important, or perhaps the content, which doesn’t come up as an issue at all.

If you are looking for a post, or a check, or a file on your computer, and you can’t use content as a locater, you will use the date you wrote it, often in conjunction with other dates or events.

"Let’s see, I wrote that right after I saw the movie Atonement, but before we painted the kitchen," is a time statement. I can’t imagine someone saying, "I stored that on the third page back from the beginning," because that isn’t a set place. The more posts you add, the farther back the posts slip.

It’s an information design question, and the user-friendly ones will stay time-based. We can use the arrows to move to the last page seen, but "previous" should retain the meaning it’s always had–"before this moment in time."

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About the Author:Quinn McDonald is a writer and nationally-known speaker who has achieved the "Professional" designation from the National Speakers Association. Contact Quinn through her website, QuinnCreative.com.

Free Training Video Part 2: Getting Started with Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite

Last week I told you about the Technical Communication Suite training video created by RJ Jácquez, Adobe’s Senior Product Evangelist. That video introduced you to the power of Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite. If you had a chance to watch the video, I think you’ll agree that it was very informative.

The world loves a sequel… and RJ has created a second training video for the Technical Communication Suite. In Part 2, you will learn how to supplement your technical and instructional design documents with engaging Adobe Captivate demonstrations, simulations and quizzes in the Flash format using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

Note: The video includes all exercise files needed for you to follow along with RJ.

Click here to watch the video.

Question: Where Can I Find Good Library of FLVs?

I would like to open my Captivate movie with some women, men, teenagers, seniors…  all looking puzzled with "thought captions" over them stating the different decisions confronting them… What car to buy… what college to go to… which applicant to hire, etc.

I have searched Google, using maybe with the wrong keywords, trying to find libraries of stock characters in Flash animations. Other than the few available on Adobe’s site under resources, I can’t seem to find any others. Do you know of any sources for increasing my library of these kind of things?
 

Answer

Excellent question. While there are many sites selling royalty free and inexpensive stock photos (BigStockPhoto is one that I’ve used in the past), it does not appear that there are many sites offering stock Flash video. I managed to find some videos at istockphoto.com, but there wasn’t a great selection. Let’s see if any of your fellow readers know of some good sites. If anyone can recommend resources for stock FLVs, please email me and I’ll post your responses here.

Question: How Do I Open a Captivate Template?

I’m perplexed by Captivate templates. I’ve been using and sharing a template for some time at my institution, and we recently decided to change our default screen resolution from 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768.  Unfortunately, I’m finding that this means that our template’s screen capture now only grabs a small chunk of the screen.  I can’t find any way to resize the screen capture to accommodate our new resolution.  What the heck?  Do we need to build a new template every time we want to resize our screen capture window? (And if so, how can we do that?  I’ve seen well-designed templates in the Exchange, but I can’t reverse-engineer them because they’re saved as .cptl files.  Are they created in Flash and then exported somehow to Captivate?) Thanks for any light you can shed.

Answer

You can open a Captivate template (CPTL) via File > Open. Once the template is open, you can increase the capture area from 800×600 to 1024×768 by resizing the project (via the Project menu). Keep in mind however that if there are background images in the current template, increasing the size will likely result in a loss of resolution.

 

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Got a question you’d like answered? Email me.

Free Training Video: Getting Started with Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite

RJ Jácquez, Adobe’s Senior Product Evangelist, has created a fantastic training video that will introduce you to the power of Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite.

You will learn about leveraging live and interactive 3D models from virtually any CAD/CAM/CAE software in your technical and instructional documents using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

You will learn how to reuse a 3D CAD file in Adobe FrameMaker 8, and then how to generate an interactive PDF.

Click here to watch the video.

When adding audio to your Captivate project, you may be surprised to learn that you can actually attach audio to any of the following:

• The Project (Audio > Background Audio)
• The Slide (Audio > Import)
• Or Slide Objects (show the Properties of an object, and use the Audio tab)

If you are adding narration to your project, I recommend audio directly to the slide instead of an object on a slide. Once you do, the audio will appear on the Timeline as a waveform.

Why should you attach audio clips to the slide instead of slide objects? Simply put, if you keep the number of slide objects to a minimum (we try not to put more than one text caption and a click box or button on a slide), you’ll find that you will speed up the production process. In addition, adding the audio to the slide tends to be faster than having to show the properties of a slide object and then attaching the audio to the object.

Over the years, I’ve added hundreds, if not thousands, of audio clips to Captivate projects. When previewing the project, the audio typically played wonderfully. However, from time to time the first one-tenth of a second of audio would get cut off from the published version of the project.

Re-importing the audio would not fix the problem. Re-recording the audio would not fix the problem. Cursing didn’t seem to help.

We stumbled across a simple workaround that solved the problem:

1. Open a slide that contains audio attached to the slide (as mentioned above, you’ll see a waveform on the Timeline if you’ve attached audio to a slide)
2. On the Timeline, drag the audio waveform right so that the audio starts approximately 1/2 of a second after the slide starts

   

   And that’s it. When the slide appears in the published version of your project, the 1/2 second delay will not be noticeable to your users and will ensure that the first second of audio isn’t lost (cut off) as the slide is appearing onscreen.

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

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Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.

Question: What’s Up with the Click to Activate Message?

I am still using Macromedia Captivate. On my introduction screen, I have a Start button for my Captivate Demo.  However, the first click (on the Start) seems to "activate" the entire screen, which makes it "jump" and then the second click activates the Start button.  Any ideas on how I can alleviate this? 

Answer

A few years ago, Microsoft released updates to Internet Explorer that changed how the browser handles active content viewed in Adobe Flash Player, Authorware Player, Shockwave Player, and Adobe Reader and other ActiveX controls. Users were suddenly required to acknowledge a SWF by clicking to activate it.

Beginning with Adobe Captivate 2, the issue was addressed when Captivate developers published their projects with the creation of a JavaScript file called standard.js. All a developer needed to do was post the JavaScript with the other published files. (Standard.js is a JavaScript that acknowledges the Microsoft control. Without the script, users have to click an extra time on the control–which is exactly what you are describing.)

Of course, there is no elegant way to resolve the issue if you are using an older version of Captivate. As an alternative, you could create a first slide that contains the words "Click anywhere on this screen to begin the lesson (if the lesson does not start after your first click, please click a second time)." Then add a large click box to the slide. That’s what we did when the problem first cropped up (before Captivate 2 appeared).

Question: Where is My Browse Sequence?

I’m using Adobe RoboHelp 7 and creating Microsoft HTML Help. I’m trying to add a browse sequence. When I view the CHM file on my computer, the browse sequence is there. But when I view the CHM file on my home desktop computer (rather than my tablet PC where I created the project), the browse sequence is missing. Since the CHM file does not seem to be using a browser for viewing purposes, I don’t think it’s a browser setting and I use FireFox rather than IE anyway. Can you figure this one out?
 

Answer

HHACTIVEX.DLL must be installed and registered on any machines looking to use the browse sequence.

Here is a link with more information.

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Got a question you’d like answered? Email me.

Adobe Captivate Exchange

If you haven’t visited the Adobe Captivate Exchange lately, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by some of the new additions:

• Restart Captivate from Last Viewed Slide
  Prompt a user to start from the last viewed slide of a published Captivate file.
• Grouped Buttons
  Sick and tired of the way Captivate presents your button choices? Wish it could be different? Wish no more.
• Faster & Slower Buttons for Captivate
  Enable users to control speed of presentation.
• Speed Control Widget for Captivate
  This little flash widget allows the user to change speed of the Captivate presentation.

Click here to visit the Captivate Exchange.

by Quinn McDonald

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Rene Descartes walks into a bar.

The bartender recognizes him and says, "So, Rene, do you want a martini?"

"I think not," Descartes replies.

POOF! He disappears.

(Clarification needed?)

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The web is a funny place. For the last month the most popular website on WordPress has been I Can Has Cheezburger, a site to which people submit pictures of their pets, complete with funny captions. The captions are written in pet language. Yes, I said pet language. LOLCat, to be precise.

What amazes me is not that the site exists, or that thousands of people caption and send in pictures of their pets, which, according to the site’s rules, become the property of the site’s owners who can do anything they want with it (including advertising their site or making money without royalties to the owner.)

Nope, what amazes me is that the rules for the pet language, which are spelled out on the site–written in LOLCat–are being followed by everyone who submits a picture. I am amazed. I haven’t seen so much strict rule following since I arrived at the airport in what was then East Berlin.

The same people who won’t move out of their lane when a blaring fire engine is behind them, know "kitteh" in the subjunctive.  My clients don’t want to follow simple grammar rules, all the while telling me they can’t learn them now.

Yet all these people on a funny picture website know the ins and outs of Caturday and the walrus’s bukkit. Cheezburger has ’em lined up speaking fluent ‘lolcat’ fluently. Amazing. Must be an immersion language.

About the Author: Quinn McDonald is a writer and nationally-known speaker who has achieved the "Professional" designation from the National Speakers Association. Contact Quinn through her website, QuinnCreative.com.

What’s the difference between a Captivate simulation and demonstration? Typically speaking, a simulation is interactive; a demonstration isn’t. Between the two, I urge you to create simulations because simulations will encourage users to actively participate in your lessons. (Unless budget is not a concern, in which case by all means create both a simulation and demonstration for each and every lesson.)

While markedly different, simulations and demonstrations can both include Question Slides that can validate your lessons. But should you include the Question Slides in your project, or should you keep the Question Slides separate? Personally, I tend to keep the Questions Slides in a separate project and make the quiz available via a link on my LMS. Because you will have to worry about the Reporting options of the non-quiz slides, keeping the projects segregated is the cleanest/easiest way to go.

If you do decide to include Question Slides in a simulation, be warned–you could be throwing off your scoring results unless you take the appropriate evasive action. How so? I’ve had several customer’s who have included interactive slides (slides with Buttons, Click Boxes and/or Text Entry Boxes) and sprinkled Question Slides throughout the project. Upon playback, the scoring was off (the user failed even if they answered the questions correctly) or the Question Slide numbers were off (the first Question Slide would say it was number 2 of 5 when it was the first Question Slide).

When you add Question Slides in the middle of interactive slides, Captivate treats everything like a quiz, even though the interactive slides may not be an actual part of the quiz. What’s a developer to do? Well, as they say, "If you can’t beat them…" At IconLogic, if we include a quiz in a lesson, we treat the Interactive objects as part of the quiz without having the interactive elements actually count as points in the quiz.

Controlling How Objects Report Scores

1. Open an interactive slide and double-click the interactive object
2. Select the Reporting tab
3. Select Include in Quiz
4. Select Report Answers
5. Change the Points to 0
6. Select Add to total
   
   
7. Click OK

One important step to remember here:

1. Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences
2. On the Settings category, ensure Allow backward movement and Allow user to review quiz are both selected in the Settings area (this will allow users to go back to the interactive slides–without this setting enabled, users would be able to click the Button or Click Box, to move to the next slide, but would not be able to go back and take the lesson again)

   

3. Click OK

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

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Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.