The Logical Blog by IconLogic

Adobe Captivate 3: User's Can't Replace Background Text, Can They? No, But Then Again...

I recently had a student ask me how he could allow users to delete text on a screen in a Captivate simulation. Since there is no feature in Captivate that will allow this kind of user interaction, the solution seems impossible. Think about the problem for a second. The simulation with which your user is interacting is really just a bunch of screen captures. If you captured text on a screen, such as an address in a Web browser's address bar, there is no way in Captivate to allow a user to delete the text in the address bar and replace it with a different Web address. It's impossible! Give it up!!!! Ummm, just kidding. Read on...

It is true that Captivate does not have a magic tool that will take a static screen capture and allow a user to delete something on the background. During the following lesson, I will teach you a few tweaks that will allow you to achieve the same effect.

Before continuing, it might be helpful if you watch a finished sample project so you can see the effect in action. It's a very short simulation. After you are finished watching the sample, minimize the window and return to this lesson so you can learn, slide by slide, how the effect was achieved.

So, if you watched the sample, you know it was a simple lesson allowing a user to jump to a Web site. The movie was recorded in Custom mode (Edit > Preferences > Recording Modes > Custom).

Slide 1 of the Sample Project

If you watched the sample movie via the link above, you should have noticed that slide 1 showed the address bar with the address not yet selected. There was a standard Text Caption, a Click Box over the Address Bar and a Failure Caption. The Click Box was set to Go To Next Slide on Success (its settings are shown in the screen capture below).

Slide 2 of the Sample Project

This is the most important slide in the sample. Remember, you're trying to to make it seem like the user is actually going to delete the selected text. This slide in the sample showed the address bar again, but this time the address was selected. 

First the obvious: there's a Text Caption on the slide slide. But I also inserted a Click Box with a Failure Caption. I'll bet you're wondering where the Click Box was hiding. Actually, it's tiny and located in the extreme upper left of the window. Why bother inserting a Click Box and make it so small? It may seem like a waste, but I attached a keyboard shortcut to the Click Box (the [BACKSPACE] key). It's not very likely that a user will accidentally click the little Click Box. If the user clicks anywhere on the screen, they'll likely miss the tiny Click Box and instead see the Failure Caption. If the user presses [BACKSPACE], as instructed, they will jump to the next slide.

The settings for the Click Box are shown in the screen capture below.

Slide 3 of the Sample Project

Slide 3 shows the address bar empty. How did I get this screen capture? In reality, when I recorded the movie, pressing [BACKSPACE] didn't result in a screen capture-and it won't for you either, especially if you turn off the Record keystrokes feature. Since I wanted to show the address bar empty, I simply pressed [Print Screen] on my keyboard and pulled the screen capture manually.

During production, I edited the background in MS Paint to remove the insertion point.

Then I added a Text Entry Box. You can see my Text Entry Box settings in the picture below.

On the Options tab for the Text Entry Box, I selected Show button. I positioned the resulting button over the Browser's Go button.

Then I showed the Properties of the button and used the settings shown below. (Remember, I did not insert a standard button, I elected to Show button as part of the Text Entry Box.)

And that's how you allow users to delete text as part of your simulation. If you'd like to download the Captivate production file used to create the simulation you watched earlier, click here. (You will need Adobe Captivate 3 installed on your computer to open the file.)

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Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

Got a production problem that's making you pull your hair out. Email your problem and maybe the solution will get published here

Link of the Week

Adding Flash animations to an Adobe Captivate project

Adobe Captivate enables you to incorporate external Adobe Flash animations into your project easily, as well as efficiently maintain your project over time by using the project library.

Mark Alan Chrisman has written an article that discusses:

• Why you would want to incorporate external animation
• Basic tips on preparing your Flash file
• How to import an external animation
• How to update an animation in your project

Click here to read the article.

Found an interesting site? Share it with your fellow readers.

Question of the Week...

Question: Captivate Print Button... Is it Possible?

Can I insert a button on a Captivate slide that will print that slide? If so, how please?

Answer

While this feature is not built into Captivate, a Captivate developer has created a widget that will get the job done for you. Click here to learn more.

Writing and Grammar: Less is More, But is Fewer Very Much?

This week, let's discuss less and fewer as in "less than ten years' experience"? What a confluence of issues is represented by this tiny phrase: spoken versus written English; rules of grammar flouted so often that most people had forgotten them just when grocery stores finally conceded; and the age-old battle between count and noncount nouns. How fabulous! Let's dig in.

First, the rule: less is for noncount nouns, fewer is for count; much is for noncount nouns, many is for count. Count nouns are nouns representing items you can count, such as knives and spoons, and noncount nouns describe things that come in mass quantities that you cannot count, such as water, time, food, and-get this-money.

A good test for whether a noun is count or noncount is to ask "How many _____ do you have?" If the question makes sense, and you can answer it with a number, you have a count noun. "How many knives do you have? Ten." Knives is a count noun. "How many money do you have? Seven." Um, no. That does not make sense. Money is actually a noncount noun, even though people count their money all the time! What they are really counting is dollars, and dollars is a count noun.

Now let's put "fewer" and "less" in there. "I have fewer knives than spoons," but "I have less time than money." Fewer pennies = less money. Many mouths = less food.

"Less than ten years' experience" is a difficult phrase because it contains both a count noun, "years," and a noncount noun, "experience." How many years? Ten. But how much experience? Well, ten years' worth of experience. This phrase is describing an amount of a noncount noun, experience, so less is the correct word.

So what is the deal with the grocery stores? They used to have signs over one lane that said "Ten items or less." Grammatically astute shoppers over the years wrote in so many complaints that many, if not all, grocery stores have changed the signs to read "Ten items or fewer." Meanwhile, in the spoken language, we routinely say things like "Describe your qualifications for the job in 50 words or less," and "You may enter the amusement park ride in groups of five or less." The Gregg Reference Manual, which I must thank for those last two examples, even goes so far as to say that even though fewer would be correct in these situations, less is more often used, and that in casual writing or speech-such as in grocery stores!-less sounds better.

The upshot of this conflicting information is that the formal rules disagree with colloquial, spoken English, but in formal writing you must still follow the rules. Fewer and fewer people will notice, however, if you get less wrong.

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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.

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Want help with a grammar issue? Email us your troubles and we'll turn Jennie loose!

Adobe Captivate 3: Recorded Keystrokes Got You Re-Recording? Not Anymore!

When you record movies in Captivate, you can elect to capture your keystrokes at the same time that you're capturing your screen. The ability to capture your keystrokes isn't a new feature in Captivate. In fact, the feature has been around since Captivate was known as RoboDemo.

If you've read any of my Captivate books, you know that I've always recommended that you turn the Record keystrokes option off. Why? In the bad old days, typing you recorded couldn't be edited in either RoboDemo or Captivate. If you typed a typo, the typo and your attempts to fix it, appeared in the movie. If you wanted to replace the recorded keystrokes, you had to re-record the movie.

In Captivate 3, there is now a way to edit recorded keystrokes (kind of), as you will see next. Please keep in mind, however, that while these techniques will work, and aren't difficult, replacing the keystrokes will impact your bottom line because fixing each instance of the keystroke takes time and involves multiple steps. For this reason, I still recommend using the Record keystrokes feature sparingly.

Turn on Record Keystrokes

1. With Captivate 3 running, choose Edit > Preferences
2. Select Settings from the Recording category
3. Select Record keystrokes and, optionally, Hear keyboard tap sounds
   
   
   
4. Click OK
5. Record a movie and during the recording process, type some text (when finished, Save and Open the new movie)

Replace Recorded Keystrokes

1. Ensure the movie you just recorded is open, or open an existing movie containing recorded keystrokes
2. Go to the slide containing the recorded keystrokes
3. View the Timeline (View > Timeline)
   
   The typing you recorded will be listed on the Timeline with the name Typing
   
   
   
4. Right-click the Typing object on the Timeline and choose Replace with Text Animation



5. In the New Text Animation dialog box that appears, notice that the Typing Text Effect is already selected in the Effect drop down menu
6. Type your corrected text into the Text field





7. Click the Change font button and select the font and font size that match the typing you recorded originally
8. Click OK twice to close both dialog boxes
9. On the slide, position the Text Animation over the background image

Now Things Get Interesting

You've replaced the recorded keystrokes with a Text Animation. Sweet! But you'll notice that there's text in the background behind the Text Animation. If you preview the slide, you'll see that the text in the background makes it nearly impossible to enjoy your next Text Animation. You'll need to remove the background. But how? Read on...

1. Right-click the Slide Background and choose Copy Background
2. Start MS Paint (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint)
3. Once Paint is running, choose Edit > Paste to paste the Captivate background into the Paint window
4. On the Paint toolbar, select the Erase/Color Eraser tool
5. Use the Erase/Color Eraser tool to erase the text on the background that you do not want
   
   
6. When finished, choose Edit > Select All
   
   
7. Choose Edit > Copy
8. Switch back to Captivate and open the slide with the Text Animation
9. Right-click the slide background and choose Paste as Background
   
   Cool! The background has been updated without affecting the timing of other slide objects.

Repeat this process on any slide where there are recorded keystrokes and problematic backgrounds that require editing. You might even find yourself using Paint's Text tool to replace slide background text with updated text.

Like I said earlier, none of the steps above are difficult. But depending on how much recorded text you have to replace with Text Animation, and how many slide backgrounds you need to clean, the process could take a significant amount of time.

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

Adobe Captivate 3: Reclaiming Clickable Audio on Imported PowerPoint Slides

I recently received an interesting email from a Captivate user who wanted to keep an audio sound effect used in an imported PowerPoint presentation. Specifically, this person had a little bell icon on a slide that was supposed to make a sound if clicked. After importing the slide into Captivate, you could still click on the bell icon but all you could hear was a mouse-click sound. Strange! What happened to the bell sound effect?

I wrote an article a few weeks ago about the improved PowerPoint import features in Adobe Captivate 3. I wrote that you can now import the PowerPoint animations used on the slides. However, you do not get to keep your audio effects. In fact, Captivate treats the imported slides as animations and inserts a Click Box over the entire slide that controls navigation. The sound the user reported above is actually the default mouse click sound you'll get with any Click Box.

Here's what I would do to reclaim the audio effect on the bell image mentioned above.

1. First, open the slide in question in Captivate 3
   
   You'll notice that there is, in fact, a large Click Box covering the entire slide, including the bell image (which is really just part of the animation at this point).
2. Resize the Click Box so it is no longer covering the bell
3. Insert a new Click Box that just covers the bell
4. Set the options of the new Click Box so that the On Success is set to No Action. On the Options tab, add a Success Caption (you won't need a Failure or Hint Caption)







5. Show the Properties of the Success Caption and remove the text. Then set the Caption type to [transparent]





6. Still on the Properties of the Success Caption, go to the Audio tab and import the sound effect you want to use and click OK



If you preview the project now, you'll be able to click the bell image on the slide (you'll really be clicking the Click Box) and the the sound you attached to the Success Caption should play. The cool thing about this trick is that the Success Caption that appears is invisible to the user thanks to the options you set in steps 4 and 5 above.

One final thing, but it's a biggie. You'll probably notice that the sound will only play one time when you click the Click Box.  Here's how you get around this Click Box limitation:

1. Insert a Blank Slide before the slide containing the image and the Click Box
2. Set the timing of the new slide to something very fast (.1 second--a tenth of a second--will work wonderfully)
3. Back on the slide with the Click Box and bell image, show the Properties of the Click Box you created over the bell image and change the On Success to Go to previous slide (in the picture below, the previous slide happened to be Slide 1). Then click OK.



Now when you preview the project and click the bell image, you'll jump to the previous slide, which will only play for a nano-second and then continue to the slide with the Click Box over the bell image (which you can click over and over again--and enjoy the sound).

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

Writing and Grammar: Comma Inside or Comma Outside the Quotation Mark?

Does the comma go inside or outside of a closing quotation mark? The difference is less than a millimeter, but there is an ocean of difference to an editor. The Atlantic Ocean, to be specific. This is one of those things, like whether to put a "u" in color or spell gray with an "e," that distinguishes British from American English usage.

First, let's answer the question. In the United States, the comma goes inside the quotation mark. The period goes inside the quotation mark too. No logic or thinking is involved. You just put it on the inside, like both of these examples:

• She said, "Don't even think about it," then slammed the door.
• He gave one good reason: "Because I said so."

In business and editorial offices, the issue of comma placement often leads to a fight. Why? Because it is an arbitrary-seeming style rule. However, comma placement is important for consistency, which is the mark of a high-quality publication or a well-constructed business document.  And the tradition in American publishing is to punctuate quotations this way.

The popular book "Eats Shoots and Leaves"  did not help matters much. Because it is a British publication, Americans reading the book to learn about punctuation rules arrive at the wrong conclusion.

Here are the U.S. rules for other punctuation with quotation marks:

• Colons and semicolons always go outside a closing quotation mark.
• Question marks and exclamation points go either on the outside or the inside of the quotation mark, depending on whether the punctuation is part of the quote or not.

Consider these examples:

• He asked, "How do you punctuate a question?" (The quote is actually a question, so the question mark is part of the quote.)
• She shouted, "No way!" (The exclamation point is part of the quote.)
• Did he say, "I don't know"? (The quote is not a question, so the question mark does not go inside the quotation mark. The overall sentence is a question, so the question mark goes at the very end, after the closing quotation mark.)
• Did she ask, "Where is the library?" (When both the quote and the overall sentence are questions, you arbitrarily opt for inside.)

Now that we have looked at the rules, it is time to look at the exception. In text that is specifying exactly what to type in something like a computer programming language or a URL, you do not put the comma or period inside the quote: Type "http://www.iconlogic.com", which is the web address of our company. 

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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.

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Want help with a grammar issue? Email us your troubles and we'll turn Jennie loose!

Link of the Week

An Authorware User and eLearning Developer takes a Second look at Adobe Captivate

Steve Howard of Magnolia Multimedia has been developing eLearning with Authorware for almost 10 years. He has written an interesting article that compares Authorware to Adobe Captivate versions 2 and 3.

Questions of the Week...

Question About Using JavaScript in Captivate

I recently got a copy of your book Essentials of Adobe Captivate 2 and would like to explore JavaScripting (i.e., Button--execute JavaScript).  Basically we would like to script the "back" button to go back to the exact page last viewed, not the page before the page viewed.  Any help you could provide would be great appreciated.  Thank you.  - MSJ, Raytheon Company.

Answer:

You can certainly attach a JavaScript to a button (show the Properties of the button, select Execute JavaScript from the On Success drop down menu, click the three dots you see to the right and type your JavaScript in the window that appears. The JavaScript you create can force the browser playing your Captivate movie to perform some wonderful tricks. However, jumping back to a "marked" slide won't work without taking your Captivate project into Flash and adding some ActionScript. You can easily take your Captivate project into Flash (that only takes a few seconds assuming you have Flash 8 or newer on your PC). However, it's the ActionScript part that won't be easy unless you have a working knowledge of ActionScript.

Follow-Up to a Question from Last Week 

Here was the Question: We have an on-going need to change sections or individual slides and relevant voiceovers 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?

Follow-Up

Juan R. Gomez, Quality & Continuous Improvement Manager of Infotech Aerospace Services provides the following:

"You can always have a high quality text to speech software application do the trick for you.  They are relatively inexpensive and voice quality in terms of pronunciation and realistic sound has gotten very good and affordable.  I suggest the following web-sites to start looking."

• www.nextup.com
• www.naturalreaders.com
• www.neospeech.com
• www.cepstral.com

If you have additional 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 in this newsletter next week.

Got a question? Click here.

Adobe RoboHelp 6 HTML: Don't Stress Broken Links--Resolve Them

A broken link can occur in RoboHelp if the topic you are linking to has been deleted, renamed or removed outside of RoboHelp. You are most likely to experience broken links when you import documents that were linked to other documents that no longer exist or have been moved.

Show Broken Links

You can run across a broken link by chance simply by right-clicking a topic and choosing Show Topic Links.

In the picture below, a topic named Leave Policy displays a red line. This topic is looking for another topic named Vac_Policy.htm when it should be pointing to Policy.htm.  Ooops.

In the picture above, the problem is that the link was created manually by another developer who did not use RoboHelp's Link tool. The name of the file is incorrect and RoboHelp has no idea what to do about the problem, only that there is a problem.

View the contents of the Broken Links folder

1. On the Project pane, open the Broken Links folder
   
   In this instance, the Broken Links folder indicates that Vac_Policy.htm, which is needed in a link in the Leave_and_Vacation topic, does not exist.

Resolve Broken Links

1. Choose Tools > Resolve Broken Links
   
   The Resolve Broken Links dialog box appears. As indicated in the Broken Links folder, the Leave Policy contains a "Jump" (or link) that is looking for a missing topic ("Vac_Policy.htm").
   
   



You can either Edit the topic and redirect the wayward link, or click the Restore button. If you choose to click the Restore button, a new topic would be created using the name of the missing topic. And BAM! The broken link would be resolved. But hold that BAM. The broken link would be resolved, but you've got this new topic. It would be empty so you would now have to populate it with whatever data was missing. Yikes! What data was that anyway?

For my money, the best first step is to try and redirect the link to the missing topic. What you're hoping is that the topic hasn't been deleted. Rather, you're hoping the missing topic has simply been renamed outside of RoboHelp.

2. Click the Edit button
   
   The topic with the broken link will open.
3. Find and double-click the broken link in the topic to display the Hyperlink dialog box
4. Select the correct topic from the Select destination (file or URL) list
5. Click OK
6. Save your work.
   
   Once the project has been saved, the link shown in the Broken Links folder will go away.

Want to learn more about RoboHelp? Click here.