The Logical Blog by IconLogic

Adobe Captivate 5.5: YouTube Anyone?

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe announced the immediate availability of Adobe Captivate 5.5 late last week. Over the next few weeks, I'll be spotlighting some of the new features here.

If you are a veteran Captivate 5 developer, you'll appreciate that the 5.5 version looks almost identical to version 5. However, since the two versions look the same and act the same, it'll take a bit of poking around to find the new stuff. For instance, if you take a look at the main toolbar at the top of the Captivate window, you'll see a new Publish To YouTube command button.



Also, if you look in the File menu, you'll see a Publish To YouTube menu item.



Once you select the Publish to YouTube command, you'll be prompted to log in to your YouTube account.



Next, the Video Publisher screen opens where you'll need to add the lesson's Title and Description. You can also add tags to make it easier for users to search YouTube and find your video. And you can select a Category and make your video Public or Private.



Once published, a results screen will appear providing a link to the published content that can be shared with your learners.



And that's it. Your video is magically available on YouTube. It couldn't get much easier than that.

***

Looking to learn Adobe Captivate? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

Adobe Acrobat X: Filling in Online Forms

by Barb Binder 

In a perfect world, everyone would not only own, but also know how to use, Adobe Acrobat X Professional. And if they did, they would only post online forms with fields that were enabled for typing. Sadly, that's not currently our world. Or at least it's not mine. When I'm directed to an online form, I typically find that I'm expected to print, fill in the form by hand, and then fax it back.

As a long-time Adobe Acrobat instructor, I know that with a few short clicks, a form can be enabled for online data entry. But if a PDF isn't set up to add data, what can be done? Since I'm both printing-adverse (I love trees), and Acrobat-knowledgeable, here's what I do:  

1. Locate the form I need to fill out on a website.
   
    
2. Right-click it to open it in Acrobat X Professional or Acrobat X Standard. (If you are using Adobe Reader X to access the form, be sure to read the note below.)
   
    
3. Always hopeful, I will start by trying to type into a field. When I see the Hand tool show up, and not the insertion point cursor, I know I need to move on to step 4.
   
   
   
    
4. Choose View > Tools > Content > Add or Edit Text Box to open the Typewriter Toolbar.
   
   
   
    
5. Now I can select the Typewriter tool, pick my formatting and just click to start typing.
   
    
6. When I'm done, I can e-mail it back to the distributor and no trees were harmed in the process!

That's the good news. However, if you are using a copy of Adobe Reader X to access the form, you will not be able to choose View > Tools > Content > Add or Edit Text Box unless the person posting the form enabled the command when they saved the file.

If you are the one posting forms online, and don't have the time or inclination to learn how to create fillable form fields, please at least save a copy of the form using File > Save as > Reader Extended PDF > Enable Adding Text in Documents (that are not fillable forms). As long as you are saving a copy, it's OK to accept the alert box shown below.

 

***

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

Writing & Grammar: Diamonds and Grammar Rules... Which One is Forever?

by Jennie Ruby

The rules of grammar are not forever. But which ones should we allow to change? In my classes I still meet the occasional editor who still does not allow use of the word impact as a verb. But that battle was lost in the early 1990s. Dictionaries now list the verb form as a legitimate word. I still meet editors who treat the word none as a singular word, as in "none of the books is returnable," whereas most grammar guides started listing none as being plural or singular depending on its referent as long ago as 1983.

As popular usage changes, the rules of grammar, the definitions of words, and the guidelines for punctuation also change. But some kinds of changes come easier than others. For example, the new definitions of tweet, both as a noun and as a verb, to refer to posting on Twitter, have already made it into Webster's.

On the other hand, use of their as a singular possessive pronoun has not been adopted by many grammar guides. This example from spam I received is still considered wrong:

*Where will your loved one spend their golden years?*

 

The problem with the possessive pronoun is that the category of personal pronoun is a "closed" category; in other words, you can't make up a new pronoun and have it stick. Verb and noun are open categories, meaning that you can make up new verbs (to Google or to Photoshop), and you can make up new nouns (smart phone, iPad), and people readily start using them. But efforts to make up a new, singular generic possessive pronoun (s/his, herm) fail because they simply are not adopted. We are stuck with "his or her" or "his/her" in the singular. And the grammar rule that says their cannot be used to refer back to a singular word ("your loved one," in the example above) just will not die.

 

A punctuation rule that is under contention is the comma after the year in a three-part date, and similarly, the comma after the state when a city is named: 

On June 10, 2010, an event occurred that changed his life.

In Springfield, IL, the convention center was spilling over with editors. 

 

"I simply will not tolerate a trailing comma," said my lawyer, as we were reviewing a legal document. When I questioned him as to what he meant by a trailing comma, he listed the two above, as well as the serial comma. I also know of a government agency where the use of the comma after the year or state has been eliminated. Yet formal style guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style still call for use of these commas.

 

And don't get me started on who versus whom. English speakers in the United States have long since abandoned most proper uses of whom. But just enough common usage remains that we cannot declare the word whom archaic like thy or thou. In every grammar class my students struggle with sentences like "Whom did you give the book to," and "Whom do you think they will elect?" while correctly navigating "To whom shall I address the letter?" (My first example here also illustrates the issue of ending a sentence with a preposition.) Can we just give up on the word whom and allow who to be used as both an object and a subject?

 

What are your thoughts on these conundrums? One recent commenter on our blog stated, "Rules were meant to be broken." To what extent can we break them on these issues? Are there other grammar rules that seem outdated or irrelevant?

 

***

 

About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

Adobe FrameMaker 10: Managing Alert Boxes

by Barb Binder 

FrameMaker has a long history of alerting us to various problems in our documents. We have alert boxes that pop up when we:

Open a document with unavailable fonts:

 

Open a document that was saved using an earlier version of FrameMaker:

 

 

Open a document that contains one or more unresolved cross-references:

 

 

During my live, online FrameMaker class, we perform an activity that will clear the history, effectively removing access to Edit > Undo and Edit > Redo (i.e., changing the margins or columns).

 

New in FrameMaker 10 is the addition of a checkbox in all four alert boxes to turn them off forever. Sounds tempting, doesn't it? Who wants to continually be reminded of something we already know? Well, I think that's the key. I will gladly disable the Clear History message and not look back, because I know which actions clear history. I'm also unconcerned about the alert for converting an older file to the current version of FrameMaker. (Once I upgrade to a new version, I usually don't go back.)

The other two, though? I'd leave them on. There's no way I want to get to the printing stage and then suddenly realize that I have unavailable fonts and/or unresolved cross-references. Sure I can fix them both, but I might miss my deadline doing it.

What? You already turned them all off? No worries. Just choose File > Preferences > Alert Strings and you can restore any of the alert boxes to their original states.

 

 

***

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

 

***

Looking to learn Adobe FrameMaker We offer Beginner and Advanced classes.

Camtasia Studio 7.1 TOC Changes From 7.0

Camtasia Studio recently updated from 7.0 to 7.1. There are significant changes between the two versions, especially when it comes to adding a TOC. I have created a PDF that details the changes.

Adobe Captivate 5: Keep Master Slide Backgrounds at Bay

by Kevin Siegel

One of the best new features in Adobe Captivate 5 is Master Slides. I originally covered master slides back in June of 2010. However, there is one pesky feature of Master Slides that I didn't cover back then... and it's worth a look now.

I recently received an email from a concerned Captivate developer who had created a master slide similar to the one shown below. Notice that the Master Slide has been set up to include a company logo in the lower right of the slide.

One of the slides that was expected to use the new Master Slide is shown below. Notice that there isn't a logo on the slide.

Applying the Master Slide is a simple process... you just need to select it from the Master Slide drop-down menu on the Properties panel (General group).

And here is the same slide shown above, but this time it's using the Master Slide. Notice the problem? That poor developer sure did. While the logo from the Master Slide is showing up on the slide as expected, the original background (the blue title bar, menus and toolbars) used by the slide has been replaced by the Master Slide background (which was simply a white background).

The fix is simple enough. All you need to do to keep the slide background intact (and ignore the Master Slide background) is deselect Use Master Slide Background from the General group.

Here's the same slide, but this time the slide's background is being used, along with the logo from the Master Slide.

***

Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

Adobe RoboHelp 9 Update Now Available

Adobe recently announced the immediate availability of an update for RoboHelp 9. The update, version 9.0.1, fixes several bugs and is available by choosing Help > Update from within RoboHelp. Click here to learn about the specific fixes. You can also download the update directly from the RoboHelp Support Center.

EXE Files Published With Captivate Won't Open? The Fix is In

If you've published EXE files using Adobe Captivate 5, the EXEs might not open on machines that do not have Adobe Captivate 5. Instead, learners might see the following message: "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem."

Click here for the fix.

Writing & Grammar: Location or Name: Which is Best?

by Jennie Ruby

You are writing step-by-step instructions for an on-screen process. You need to get your learner to each tool quickly, but you also want the learner to remember that tool and where it is. Do you start with the name of the specific tool, and then tell where to find it? Or do you lead the learner to the tool by starting with the location, then the tool? Or do you mix it up to sound more conversational?

1. Name first: Select Formatting from the Toolbars list in the View menu.   
    
2. Location first: From the View menu, point to Toolbars, and select Formatting.    
    
3. Mixed: From the View menu select Formatting from the Toolbars list.

There is something to be said for each option, and I've seen all three methods used in well-respected learning materials. It may be that each method is good for a certain situation.

 

If you are walking learners through a step-by-step eLearning activity, Method B works very smoothly. As the voiceover or screen text states each part, the learner does each step in turn, first clicking the menu, then pointing to Toolbars, then selecting Formatting. If you used Method A in that context, the student would sit waiting while the voiceover said "Formatting...toolbars..." and then click the menu when the voiceover said View. By then, the learner may have forgotten what to look for within the menu.

 

On the other hand, if your main goal is for the student to learn about a tool and remember the name of that tool, you may want to name the specific tool or command first. Then you may put in a description of what it does and why the learner might use it, and only afterwards state where the tool can be found:

 

The Formatting toolbar gives you the basic tools you need for formatting text.  Tools for formatting individual words or letters, for aligning text, and for styling entire paragraphs are all accessible from this one toolbar. To display the Formatting toolbar, go to the View menu, point to Toolbars, and choose Formatting.

 

The conversational method of mixing it up, Method C, may work well for learners already familiar with the tools, the interface, and the concepts. The name of the tool alone is probably enough to get that learner to the correct tool. The information about the location of the tool is just a reminder. Mixing up the order gives your text more variety and may make your text sound more casual and conversational--making it more fun for the learner to read. I would not recommend this for step-by-step instructions, but this writing style may well have its place.

 

Which method do you prefer in your writing? Let us know in the comments section below!

***

 

About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

Adobe Captivate 5: One Quick Way to a Project Template

by Kevin Siegel

During my Advanced Captivate class, we spend quite a bit of time creating a project template from scratch. Templates are simple enough to create via File > New Project > Project Template. Once you have created the blank template, you would go through the process of adding placeholders, master slides, object styles, actions and anything else you think you'll need in projects that would use the template.

One of the most frustrating things about creating a project template is the inability to take an existing project and simply save the project as a project template. Go ahead and check it out... if you choose File > Save As, you won't see template in the Save as type drop-down menu.

There is still hope, however, if you'd like to use an existing project as a project template... and it's a simple workaround. Find the project file on your computer (it will have a cptx file extension which is typical for a Captivate 5 project). Simply change the cptx extension to cptl, which is the extension used when you create a new project template from within Captivate.

When the time comes to use your new template, return to Captivate and choose File > New Project > Project from Template. Navigate to the location of the file name you changed and you'll be able to create a new project based on your new template. You'll notice that the resulting project will be untitled and contain a cptx extension, just like you would see if you had created a project using a template created from scratch.

Note: The one downside that I've seen using this workaround is that you won't be able to add placeholder objects or placeholder slides to the cptl file that you created by renaming the file outside of Captivate. Other than that, the template seems to behave just fine.

 

***

Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.