Category: Uncategorized

Question About Creating Hyperlinks in Adobe Captivate

I have created some CBT training using Adobe Captivate 1. Some of the modules contain references to other modules because they contain related information. Some of the users have asked if hyperlinks can be embedded within a module that will take them to the referenced module (or in another case, to a referenced website).  I have checked the Help and training materials, but don’t see anything on hyperlinks. What do you say on the subject, Kevin?

Answer:

Any interactive object (Click Box, Button, or Text Entry Box) in Captivate can result in a hyperlink to a Web site, e-mail address, another Captivate slide in the same project or another Captivate project all together.

For instance, here’s how to create a link to a Web site via a Click Box in Captivate versions 1-3:

1. Choose Insert > Click Box
2. On the Click Box tab, select Open URL or file from the On success area
3. Type a Web address in the URL area



4. Click the black triangle to the right of the URL you just typed and choose New (this option will force the link into a new browser window instead of replacing your movie with the Web site)
5. Click OK

Question About Controlling Audio Quality in Adobe Captivate

We have an on-going need to change sections or individual slides and relevant voiceover’s in movies. This presents a challenge when trying to splice into an existing movie and maintaining the same sound quality.

Due to our environment, using a professional sound recording studio is not an option. In addition, we need to produce the movies in two or three languages. Completing a full voice over each time is unrealistic.

How can we maintain a "reasonable" level of sound quality without a professional studio or completely re-recording the voiceover. I believe the use of quality microphones and recording equipment may aid our cause–it’s also where I’m stuck since I haven’t a clue about this area (either hardware or software). Can you help?

Answer

I’m not an audio expert, although I do play one on TV. In all seriousness, I take audio quality so serious for my customer’s that I always employ professional audio talent when creating audio files for my Captivate projects. However, I understand from reading your email that hiring audio talent is not an option and that you must create the audio yourself. Therefore, I’m going to rely on your fellow Captivate developers reading this newsletter to respond appropriately. If you have suggestions on the best way to maintain audio quality for Captivate audio files that you record yourself, please let me know. I’ll be happy to publish your responses here.

Got a question? Click here.

Question About Adobe Captivate Movie Size & Playbars

I need a 679 height to cover the spread sheet I’ll be capturing in the movie.  Two things happen in View in Web Browser mode:

1. User needs to scroll down to the bottom of the screen to view the entire application.
2. The playback controls cover parts of the application that is being demonstrated.

Do you know how I can set the New movie options to capture the entire application without scrolling and having the controls block the application?

Answer

If you must capture a screen height of 679, and scrolling is an issue, you can select Full screen from the Output Options in the Publish dialog box (File > Publish). When publishing with this option, the browser’s title bar and toolbars will be hidden when the learner watches your simulation.

As for the playbar issue, use Skins (Project > Skin) instead of Bitmap playbars. Unlike Bitmap playbars, the playbars included with Skins do not cover any part of your simulation’s screen.

Question about Updating PDF Files in RoboInfo

In RoboInfo, if I want to replace an existing PDF with a new PDF, what is the best way to do that?  Do I need to first delete the old one before I import the new one?  What about if I have hyperlinks to the old PDF document and I want the same hyperlinks to the new PDF?  Do I need to go in and redo all the hyperlinks, or is there a way to avoid redoing them?

Answer

The simplest thing to do is keep the PDF file names the same. Open the RoboInfo project folder, copy the new PDF into the project folder where the old PDF resides. Replace the old file with the new one when prompted. If you keep the names and locations the same, you will NOT have to redo your project links.

Question about Punctuation in eLearning

What is the proper use of quotation marks in eLearning?  Can quotation marks be used to make a phrase or button stand out?

Answer

I tend to use quotation marks as little as possible. For instance, if you instruct a user to type "67" into a Captivate Text Entry Box, they are likely to take you literally and type "67" instead of 67. Instead, I would make the instruction appear bold: type 67.

Question about Displaying Proper Names in eLearning

How would you handle the name of books and /or the names of chapters in a book (would you use italics, quotation marks or bold)?

Answer

I use bold for all titles, names and important steps. I do not use underline (people will mistake the title for a link), italics (hard to read) or quotation marks. But keep in mind that as long as you are consistent in what you do, you can quite literally do anything you want when it comes to either of the two questions above. When in doubt, you could refer to the The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual—that’s the one we use at IconLogic as our grammar bible.

If you have your own resources when it comes to either of these two questions, please send them along. I’ll be sure to post your comments here.

Got a question? Click here.

In September, I’ll be teaching two Captivate classes at ThinkB!G: "Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3" (a 2-day course on Captivate 3) and then "Adobe Captivate Plus" (a 1-day script writing class).

Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3 (2-day class)

September 17-18, 2007

First, learn the essential skills necessary to create killer CBTs in Adobe Captivate 3 including: recording projects in all of Captivate’s recording modes, working with Text Captions and the Timeline, working with images, adding animation, changing the pointer path, adding highlight boxes, making projects interactive, publishing, adding audio, adding sound effects, creating Question Slides and posting projects to a live LMS.

Here’s a special offer just for readers of this newsletter:

Register now and you’ll receive $100 off the price of the class (use coupon code IL100 to receive your discount). Click here to register.

Prerequisites: Experience with the PC and the Windows operating system.

Note: The discount offer above expires September 1, 2007.

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Adobe Captivate PLUS! (1-day class)

September 19, 2007 

Creating effective CBTs takes more than Captivate skills–you need an effective script. I’ll work with you to create an efficient, step-by-step script/storyboard for your very own CBT.

As you move through the writing process, you’ll share your script with your peers. Once your script is finished, you will use Adobe Captivate to record a totally interactive software simulation. Finally, after producing and testing your project, you will enable its e-Learning features, publish it and then upload it to a live LMS for the entire world to see.

Here’s a sampling of what you will learn:

• How to write concise scripts and step-by-step instructions that are presented in the active voice, without "deadwood"
• How to develop your very own style guide that will serve as your Captivate "bible" for years to come
• Real-world production tips and tricks that will save you hours of labor during the "cleanup" phase

Register now and you’ll receive $50 off the price of the class (use coupon code IL50 to receive your discount).

Space is limited to 10 students. Ready to register? Click here.

Prerequisites: You should have already taken the Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3 class or have a strong working knowledge of Adobe Captivate 3.

Note: The discount offer above expires September 1, 2007.

Question About Links to PDFs in RoboHelp

"I have created links to several PDFs in my RoboHelp project. Those PDFs (not the links) need to be updated. How do I do that?"

Answer

That’s a simple process of creating the new PDFs using the same names as the old. Then copy the new PDFs into the RoboHelp project folder and replace the old ones when prompted. The next time you generate and publish the project, you will be all set.

Question on Adobe Captivate 2 Question Slides

"I’m using question slides and the numbering is wrong which is affecting the scoring.  My project has 4 slides, then it branches off into either an Order Entry piece which is 27 slides long or a Quiz portion that is six slides long.  When you are editing the question slides, the numbering is correct, i.e. Question slide 1 out of 1.  When you preview the project, it says 1 out of 21.  When you publish and view, same thing occurs.  So when you do complete a quiz, and you get all five slides correct, it says you failed because you only got five out of 25 correct.  Twenty mystery quiz slides are being added."

Answer

I’ve seen this problem before. You have objects in the project that are reporting user interaction and the scores are inadvertently being included in your quiz (any Button, Click Box or Text Entry Box can be reported and treated as part of a quiz). You can turn off the reporting by showing the Properties of the objects, selecting the Reporting tab and deselecting Include in Quiz. After repeating this step for all of the interactive objects not part of the quiz, you will be good to go.

Question About Upgrading to Adobe Captivate 3

In your opinion, is it worth upgrading to Adobe Captivate 3 from version 2? I feel that Captivate 2 had several bugs. Has Adobe fixed the problems with Captivate 2 or has Adobe provided new features without fixing existing problems?

Answer

Adobe Captivate 3 has several wonderful new features (question pools, random question slides, the ability to duplicate questions slides, search/replace, recording multiple modes at one time, Vista support, improved PowerPoint import support) and I would strongly recommend upgrading. However, Captivate 3 is too new to pinpoint the possible bugs. As with all upgrades, much has been fixed from the previous version; some new bugs may be lurking.

An astute reader of last week’s column on commas with adjectives may have noticed that in the example Brian’s comfortable big old brown soft Italian leather driving jacket sleeve was lurking a hyphenation question. Shouldn’t Italian leather be hyphenated?

The answer is it depends. Was it an Italian jacket made of leather? Or was it a jacket made of Italian leather?

Wait. Wait. That is breaking my brain. At least that is what my neighbor’s son says when I try to discuss these matters with him when going over his school work.

Let’s start from the beginning. How do you tell if you need a hyphen with adjectives? You ask whether each adjective can be used by itself to describe your noun. If yes, no hyphens. If no, you probably need a hyphen. "Wait. What do you mean by probably?" I can hear my neighbor say.  Let’s look at some examples.

Two small green lizards. Can you use the word two by itself to describe the lizards? Yes. There were two lizards. Can you say they were small lizards? Yes. Can you say they were green lizards. Yes. Each of these words can describe the lizards. You don’t need any hyphens.

Five-mile hike. Can you call it a five hike? No. The word five cannot, by itself, describe the hike. You have to combine it with the word mile before you can have a complete unit that can modify the hike. Editor’s call this a unit modifier. The hyphen combines the two words into one unit.

So far so good. But now comes the probably part. Two things might mean you still do not use a hyphen. One is if the two words are already perceived as a unit by your readers: high school dance. The compound word high school is already a well-known unit. It is even in the dictionary under h for high. Real estate license. Home run hitter.

The other thing you don’t hyphenate is an adverb.  If the first word modifies the second, often specifying the degree or intensity of the adjective, then that first word is an adverb. Don’t hyphenate after an adverb.

• The very small lizard.
• The completely green lizard.
• The extremely low discount.
• The previously described report.
• The highly motivated employee.
• The completely correct grammar.

So what about the Italian leather jacket? Without the hyphen, I am saying the word Italian is just one of a list of adjectives describing the jacket. If I had meant that it was a jacket made of Italian leather, I would have needed a hyphen.

Next time: Quiz!

by Jennie Ruby

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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as Essentials of Access 2000; and Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7 to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing. You can reach Jennie at Jenruby@aol.com

I recently received an email attachment that contained a DOCX extension. Hmmmm? I’d never seen that type of extension before. The person who sent the email was a trusted source and I was assured the file was a Word document. Hmmmm? DOCX? What happened to my friend DOC (which has been the extension for Word documents since the beginning of time)?

Here’s what happened: Word 2007! It turns out that Word 2007 documents use the DOCX extenion. Undaunted, I attempted to open the file using Word 2003. Pow!!!!! Instead of the file opening, I was greeted with a bunch of gibberish. Ouch!

Again, I had to ask myself, "What happened?" It seems that Microsoft has added the new Office Open XML Formats to the following 2007 Microsoft Office programs:

• Microsoft Office Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
• Microsoft Office Word 2007

What’s that you say, "So what! I’m sticking with older version of Word." Nice. But you’ll quickly take one on the chin because older versions of Word cannot open Word 2007 files. Sooner or later, someone is going to send you a DOCX file and you’re going to be stuck.

Don’t panic. Read on…

A compatibility pack is now available from Microsoft that will enable you to open and save Office Open XML Formats in earlier versions of Microsoft Office. You can install the compatibility pack on a computer that is running Microsoft Office 2003 programs, Microsoft Office XP programs, or Microsoft Office 2000 programs. Once you install the compatibility pack, you can open, edit, save, and create files in the robust Office Open XML Formats.

Question on Adobe Captivate 2

In addition to my skin, there is a playbar on the right side of the slide. I can’t figure out where it comes from.  I’ve attached a picture of it at the right.  Any hints or help would be greatly appreciated.

Question:

I’m trying to bring Captivate SWF files into Flash so that we have a Flash container to hold the Captivate SWFs.

When the Captivate SWF file is first brought into Flash, its coordinates are 0, 0 on the container, and the Captivate SWF works fine.  If I move the location of the Captivate SWF, to say 100, 100, I generate a Failure Caption when clicking on the Playback Control.  This problem only occurs once I have shifted the location of the Captivate SWF inside the Flash container.

Do you know of any fix for this problem?

Answer:

Great question. I haven’t experienced the problem you describe. If anyone out there has experiened this problem, please send your solutions and I’ll publish them here.

Question:

Do you know how to adjust the bookmark settings for a Captivate lesson? We essentially would like to have the user always start at the beginning of the course, no matter where they left off last time they were in the course.  We are having a lot of issues with our published Captivate movies automatically bookmarking pages when they are taken through our LMS.  For example, I take the course and everything works fine.  The next user opens the course and it jumps to the last page of the course.  The user then has to drag the black caret in the skin to the beginning of the course.  As you can imagine, it is causing all sorts of frustration.

Answer:

What you’re asking is possible, but you’ll need to edit some HTML. You’ll find more information on the Captivate forums at this link.

Question:

Captivate 2 becomes unstable when I import an animation. By unstable I mean I can’t access menus, they drop down (open) but immediately close. Is this a common problem? Are there software updates that address this? Suggestions? References?

Answer:

I experience it myself just about every time I import animation. I have no idea why Captivate behaves this way, but the problem is not lethal. To stop the wacky behavior, you can show the Library and click the Library instance of the animation you just imported.

Question:

Most of the applications that I teach require a user-specific sign-on.  I created a training project for one such application [Groupwise e-mail].  When I recorded it, it looked fine. When I preview it, the password field is messed up. The cursor is blinking 2 spaces to the right of where it needs to be and I can’t move the cursor to the right place. If I enter the password where the cursor is, I get an "incorrect" message. I can’t get past this slide. Any thoughts about what I’m doing wrong or how to correct/avoid this?

Answer:

You’ve just discovered that the slide you’re working on and the slide you preview won’t always match–especially with Text Entry fields. It will take a bit of trial and error until you get things in the perfect spot. While you’re in Edit mode, can easily select the Text Entry field and drag it until it is in the correct position on your slide. You will not be able to move the Text Entry field while previewing.

If you’re trying to let a user type anything in the field and allow the entry to be correct, remove the check mark from Infinite Attempts and ensure the Failure caption is disabled.

Question Follow-up From Last Week:

I’ve created a page with two rollovers. I added audio to the rollovers. When you go away from the first rollover the sound continues to play. If you rollover the second rollover while the first one is playing both rollovers play until completed. The answer I found on Adobe was that this has been fixed in Captivate 2. Any suggestions on what I can do in my Captivate 1 version?

Answer:

Fellow subscriber Christine M. Dandaraw offers the following: "I created a branch where the first rollover goes to a second audio free slide–but you can only play 1 audio at a time!"

Got a Question? Email it to us. We’ll publish the answer here for all the world to see.

Question:

I’ve created a page with two rollovers. I added audio to the rollovers. When you go away from the first rollover the sound continues to play. If you rollover the second rollover while the first one is playing both rollovers play until completed. The answer I found on Adobe was that this has been fixed in Captivate 2. Any suggestions on what I can do in my Captivate 1 version?

Answer:

Sorry to say but I no longer have Macromedia Captivate on my system so I cannot even go back to that old version and try to provide a workaround. If anyone still using Macromedia Captivate, and can offer a solution, please email it to me. The issue was resolved in Adobe Captivate 2. And since Captivate 2 was a marked improvement over Macromedia Captivate, I’d strongly encourage upgrading.

Question:

I have been working with importing slides from PowerPoint into Adobe Captivate 2 and am having trouble with the quality of the graphics.  It is much easier to lay out my slide in PowerPoint; however, the graphics appear fuzzy after they are imported into Captivate.  Have you ever seen this before or do you know how I can prevent it from happening?

Answer:

There are some steps you can take within PowerPoint to maximize the quality of the slides when they end up in Captivate.

The trick is to get the PowerPoint presentation resized to the same size as your Captivate project before you import it into Captivate. I wrote an article last month in this newsletter that details the process. Click here to review that article.

Got a Question? Email it to us. We’ll publish the answer here for all the world to see.