Category: Uncategorized

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.

There’s a new line of certifications in town. Adobe has announced the new Adobe Certified Associate suite of exams that will help validate your ability to create, manage, integrate and communicate information using Adobe’s multimedia, video, graphic and Web software.

For more information, click here.

Adobe Captivate is arguably the nation’s top application for creating e-learning simulations.

Adobe RoboHelp is arguably the nation’s top Help authoring tool.

And John Daigle is one of the top RoboHelp and Captivate experts in the country.

If only you could put the three together… maybe you’d have something…

Actually, John has written five easy-to-read tutorials that will have you integrating your Captivate projects with your RoboHelp projects like a pro. Anyone who uses both RoboHelp and Captivate should check out John’s tutorials… it’ll be time well-spent.

Question:

How do I add a registered trademark inside a QuarkXPress layout using QuarkXPress for Windows?

Answer:

If you are using QuarkXPress version 6.5 or older, press ALT on your keyboard and then press 0174 on the calculator keypad on your keyboard. If you are using QuarkXPress 7 or newer, choose Windows > Glyphs. You’ll find every symbol you’ll ever need there.

Question:

Is there an easy way to add page numbering (such as Page x of y) to each Captivate slide?

Answer:

The ability to add a slide count is not native in Captivate. However, there is a wonderful Captivate hints and tips web site available where you can find "widgets" that extend Captivate’s functunality. I encourage everyone to check it out.

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

How do I add a registered trademark inside a QuarkXPress layout using QuarkXPress for Windows?