User Assistance – Page 9 – The Logical Blog

February 12, 2014

Adobe Captivate: Confirmation Messages

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe Captivate likes to confirm your actions… a lot. Attempting to delete a slide object? Captivate will prompt you to confirm the action. Deleting audio? Confirm it. Removing something from the Timeline? Confirm it.

Confirm it! Confirm it!!

I can confirm that the frequent confirmation requests can make me a little nuts. In the image below, I'm attempting to delete an unwanted slide from my Filmstrip. And… confirm… confirm.

While it's simple enough to click the silly OK button to confirm an action, I'd had enough, selected Don't ask me this again and then clicked the OK button.

From that point forward, I wasn't prompted to confirm my action whenever I deleted a slide. Awesome!

At some point I dropped a pen on my keyboard. The pen hit the [delete] key. I didn't think anything of it until a few days later when I realized a slide had been deleted from the project. What? I hadn't deleted it… I swear. But then I remembered the dropped pen. Since I told Captivate not to bother me, Captivate hadn't. The slide was good and gone… awesome! If only Captivate argued with me when I disabled that not-so-annoying confirmation message. Oh to be annoyed!

While I'm not a fan of the Confirmation Messages, I think you'll agree that turning them off can be a mistake. If you've already disabled them (via the Don't ask me this again check box), here is how you get all of the Confirmation Messages back.

Display Captivate's Preferences (Edit menu if you're using Windows; Adobe Captivate menu if you're using a Mac). From the General Settings category, click the Confirmation Messages button.

The Confirmation Messages dialog box opens. Anything without a check mark has been deactivated. All you need to do is select the confirmation message you want back and click the OK button.

If you would like to see a video demonstration of restoring Captivate's confirmation messages, check out the video I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

Note: You can reset all of the confirmation messages at once (and reset all of Captivate's Preferences in the bargain), you can use the Reset Preferences utility that I've written about previously.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? We offer multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate. Need the training in-person? We can also bring the same great training onsite to your facility. Interested? Contact us for details.

February 4, 2014

Adobe RoboHelp 11: Responsive HTML5

by Kevin Siegel

When I teach my two-day Adobe RoboHelp class, students quickly learn that they need to generate a Layout (via the Single Source Layouts pod) before they can deliver usable Help content to their users.

During the class, attendees learn the strengths and weaknesses of each type of layout. For instance, they learn that WebHelp is excellent if users will be accessing the Help content over the internet and they're using computers running Windows or the Mac OS.

WebHelp, while offering excellent cross-platform and cross-browser support, does not support users who are using mobile devices such as the iPad or iPhone.

When Adobe released RoboHelp 10, one of the biggest innovations was Multiscreen HTML5. Since content generated using the Multiscreen HTML5 layout displays across mobile devices, Help authors can support all sorts of display sizes. The problem with Multiscreen HTML5 is that prior to generating the content, RoboHelp developers need to take the size of the user's display into account. In addition, customizing the look and feel of the Multiscreen HTML5 layouts isn't easy since you don't have access to an area like the WebHelp Skin Editor (which makes customizing a WebHelp skin a snap).

Adobe RoboHelp 11, which was just released a few weeks ago, added a new, very exciting layout to the Single Source Layouts pod: Responsive HTML5. With this layout, you don't have to take the variety of screen sizes users might use into account. If the user is viewing your content on a desktop, they will automatically see an appropriate arrangement of the screen components; if they view your content on an iPhone or Android phone, they will see the components resized and rearranged in a layout to best suit the smaller display size.

Here's how Responsive HTML5 works. First, visit the Single Source Layouts pod and double-click the Responsive HTML5 layout. The layout appears by default within new RoboHelp projects. In legacy projects that have been upgraded to RoboHelp 11, click the Create Layout tool (shown below). Select Responsive HTML5 from the Output type drop-down menu and click the OK button.

Similar to WebHelp, you can specify an initial look and feel for your Responsive HTML5 layout by clicking the Gallery button.

There are two designs in the Gallery area and you can download more via the link at the right of the dialog box. In addition, as you'll see in a moment, you can easily customize the layout.

After selecting a layout from the Gallery, you will be presented with a series of screens that allow you to easily customize many components that make up the original design. What I really like about this area is that the Adobe engineers have labelled everything so you know what each area controls.

Generate the layout and it will open in your default web browser like WebHelp, FlashHelp, or Multiscreen HTML5. In the image below, I'm viewing the Responsive HTML5 output on a desktop computer and the display is pretty large. With a larger workspace, notice that there is a navigation area at the left of the browser window.

In the image below, I've resized my browser window to a size more appropriate for a tablet (such as the iPad, Kindle Fire or Microsoft Surface). Notice that the navigation icons have bounced to the right, responding automatically to the size of my display.

And in the image below, I've resized my Help window again. This time the navigation icons have dropped to the bottom of my display.

As I continued to resize the browser to simulate various screen displays, the icons got smaller and were positioned appropriately for the size of the display.

Adobe RoboHelp 11: Responsive HTML5 on a small display.

Of all the layouts I've used in RoboHelp over the years, I firmly believe that Responsive HTML5 is the absolute top of the mark. While WebHelp is currently the industry standard when it comes to generating Single Source Layouts, I expect Responsive HTML5 to vault into the top spot very quickly.

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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 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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November 19, 2013

Adobe RoboHelp: Using Images in Variables

by Willam Van Weelden

Variable sets, which I've written about previously, allow you to define groups of definitions for a variable which allows you to easily support differently branded products from a single RoboHelp project. This week I want to show you another cool variables feature: images.

You can easily reuse images in multiple RoboHelp topics. Since the images that appear in the topics are linked externally to the original image, when you edit the original image, all of the RoboHelp topics are updated automatically. One drawback to this global update is that it only works if you use the same image in all of the generated layouts.

You can make your life even easier by adding images to variables. Take a logo for example. Many customers require that their software is personalized. For example, the application must use the client's brand colors and logo. By adding a logo to a variable and using variable sets, you can easily change the branding used in your Help content.

Add an Image to a Variable

Open the User Defined Variables pod. (View > Pods > User Defined Variables).
Select a variable (in the image below, I've selected a variable that I created called Logo).
Choose Insert > Image.
Select an image and then click OK.

The image is added to the variable. At this point, you can use the variable within any topic, just like a typical variable.

Adobe RoboHelp: Image added to a variable

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

November 6, 2013

Adobe FrameMaker: Nested Lists

by Barb Binder

A recent FrameMaker student contacted me with a numbering dilemma:

I am working with a two-level list. The first level uses numbers and the second list uses letters. The numbers start out correctly, as do the letters; but when I go back to numbers, things get wacky. What is going on? Here's what my list looks like:

The obvious problem is that the numbers are increasing incorrectly, but why? The numbered list is picking up from where the lettered list left off. The letter "e" is the fifth letter of the alphabet. When FrameMaker sees the <n+> in the next paragraph, it adds one to the counter value and displays a 6.

The trick is to look at the numbers as columns. I'll sketch them out on paper. This one is fairly straightforward and just needs two columns of building blocks along with the series label. Here's how numbering properties should look for each of these paragraph formats:

Adobe FrameMaker: Sketch out your lists.

Series Label. The series label tells FrameMaker that these two paragraph formats are part of the same numbering series. While I used S for a series of steps, any uppercase letter will work as a Series Label.

List 123. The <n+>. building block in the first column will add one to the current counter and display the result as a number followed by a period. The < =0> building block resets the second column counter back to 0 for each new sub-list, but the space says not to show the 0.

Adobe FrameMaker: List 123

List abc. The < > holds the counter value in the first column (it won't increment), but the space says not to display the value. The <a+>. in the second column adds one to the current counter value (which was reset to 0 in the previous paragraph) and displays the result as a letter.

Adobe FrameMaker: List ABC

The result?

Adobe FrameMaker: Nest list working correctly.

Note: Setting up just these two tags assumes you are using another paragraph to restart the numeric counter. For more information on restarting lists, see "Adobe FrameMaker: How to Restart a Numbered List."

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Looking to learn FrameMaker? We offer both beginner and advanced FrameMaker training.