The Logical Blog by IconLogic

Adobe Captivate 9: Effects Made Easy

by Kevin Siegel   

You can also apply special effects to Captivate slide objects without ever leaving Captivate. All you have to do is right-click an object and choose Apply Effect. From there, you can use the Effects area on the Timing Inspector to add, remove, and control the timing of several effects that come with Captivate.

I needed to add an effect to a text cation. I selected the caption and, on the Timing Inspector, Effects area, I chose Entrance from the third drop-down menu. From the bottom of the Entrance Effects, I clicked the move right icon (>) and chose Fly in From Right.

 

 

On the Timing Inspector, the Effect was been added to the Applied Effects List. If I needed to delete the Effect, I could easily do so by clicking the Trash icon to the right of the Applied Effects List drop-down menu.

 

 

On the slide, I noticed that an FX had been added in the upper right of the selected Text Caption. In addition, there was a red line starting on the Pasteboard and ending up on the caption.

 

 

I went on to add a second effect to the object. Upon previewing the effect (via Preview > Play Slide), I noticed that both effects occurred at the same time (I wanted one to occur and then, after a brief delay, the other). That was easy to fix via the Timeline. 

 

I clicked the arrow to the left of the caption containing both effects...

 

... then I dragged one of the effects right on the Timeline, and  then changed its timing.

 

What I love about this is that if you know how to use Captivate's Timeline, adjusting the timing of an Effect is no different than changing the timing for any slide object.

 

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Looking for training or help with Adobe Captivate? Check out these awesome live, online Captivate classes.

Adobe RoboHelp 2015: Embedding Multimedia from Camtasia Studio

by Willam van Weelden  

 

Integration between RoboHelp and Adobe Captivate has always worked well. Kevin taught you this integration some time ago. Using multimedia from other applications such as Camtasia used to be much harder. A recent patch for RoboHelp 2015 makes using media from Camtasia and other applications easy.

To be able to follow these steps, ensure you have the latest RoboHelp 2015 patch installed. You can check this by clicking the help icon in the right top of RoboHelp and choosing Updates.

1. Use Camtasia to create an MP4 file.
2. Open your RoboHelp project.
3. Open the topic where you want to include the MP4 file.
4. On the Insert tab, Media group, click Multimedia.
   
5. Click the yellow folder to the right of Source and open the MP4 file you created with Camtasia.
     
6. Click the OK button.
7. Save and generate your project.

The multimedia is embedded in the output.

 

 

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? Come join me for my live, two-day online RoboHelp class (held once each month). And if you'd like to learn more about Dynamic Filters, check out my new 3-hour mini course: Adobe RoboHelp: Advanced Content Reuse.

Writing & Grammar: To Be or Not to Be?

by Jennie Ruby 

I received a really interesting question from a reader this week (I've made it anonymous):

Question:

I work for a company with multiple locations across the country. I have noticed that team members in western PA consistently omit "to be" in certain sentences. Here's an example: "Do you think Manufacturing people need included?" Isn't this grammatically incorrect?

Answer:

You are absolutely right! This construction, using the verb needs without an infinitive to be is considered incorrect in mainstream English, but it is a widely used regionalism.

Yale Grammatical Diversity Project gives us the boundaries: Murray and Simon (2002) describe the rough boundaries as Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, Northern West Virginia, and Central Indiana. Pockets of speakers may exist in places as far-spread as Kentucky and Illinois. This construction is also attested in Scots English, which might be its historical source.

I've read elsewhere that it centers on Pittsburgh.

Got a grammar question? Send it in! It's possible that your question will end up in a future "Skills & Drills" issue.

***

Answers to my last challenge are brought to you by Christine Pass. Other correct answers came in from Lorna McLellan,Debbie Farmer, Denise Miller, and Anne Goldenberger. Others correctly solved the stated problem, but I counted off for comma splices and missing hyphens.

1. The lessons will be short and easy, with answers provided at the end.
2. The software provides a login, credential checking, and built-in encryption.
3. Our program provides a website, quizzes, and Excel report writing.
4. One course contains scenarios, interactions, and remediation.

eBooks with Adobe RoboHelp: Fix the "Remove DOC Type" Error

by Kevin Siegel   

I write and produce all of the print versions of my "skills & drills" workbooks in Adobe FrameMaker. When it comes to creating digital versions of my books, I take the FrameMaker content into Adobe RoboHelp and then generate both ePubs and MOBI outputs. The whole process of going from FrameMaker to RoboHelp to eBook takes just a few moments. I've written about the workflow previously.

 

Normally my eBooks generate without issue. However, using the new Adobe RoboHelp 2015, I started receiving the following error message when generating my eBooks:

 

Validating against EPUB version 3.0

(http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/)

September 2, 2015 1:05:34 PM EDT

----------

ERROR: RoboHelp2105.epub/OEBPS/__toc.ncx: External DTD entities are not allowed. Remove the DOCTYPE.

Check finished with warnings or errors!

 

I researched the error and it turns out the ePub 3 specifications do not accept references to DTD entities. RoboHelp was adding the reference automatically every time I generated. Because RoboHelp does not have an option to remove the DOCTYPE code from the eBook output, I was stuck. Thankfully, a quick email to my contacts at Adobe led to an easy fix that resolved the issue. Special thanks to Adobe's Amit Jha for the following:

1. Using Windows Explorer, open the folder where RoboHelp has been installed on your computer. (For me, this was C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp 2015\RoboHTML.)
2. Open EBooksExt\EPUB3\OEBPS\
3. Open the file named _toc.ncx. (It will open automatically in Notepad.)
4. Remove the following line of code from the file:
   <!DOCTYPE ncx PUBLIC "-//NISO//DTD ncx 2005-1//EN" "http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx-2005-1.dtd">
    
5. Save and close the _toc.ncx file.
6. Back in RoboHelp, generate the eBook layout.

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Looking for training or help with Adobe RoboHelp? Check out these awesome live, online RoboHelp classes taught by our very own Willam Van Weelden.

Adobe Captivate: Recording Narration to Multiple Slides

by Jennie Ruby 

 

The best practice when recording a voiceover script to narrate a series of slides is to create a separate audio recording for each slide. But when you are recording directly into your Captivate project, it can be quite tedious to open the Audio menu, choose Record to > Slide, record the slide, save the recording, close the Slide Audio dialog box, and start the process over for the next slide.

Instead of closing the Slide Audio dialog box between every recording, you can record to multiple slides in one session.

Before you start, make sure you have typed or pasted the voiceover script for each slide into the Slide Notes pane.

To start the multiple slide recording process, choose Audio > Record to > Slides (notice the plural word slides).

The Record from Slide dialog box opens. Choose the range of slides you want to record and click the OK button.

 

 

The Slides Audio dialog box opens. Notice that on the waveform area, a marker for each slide has already been set.

 

 

To display your slides as you record, select the Preview check-box below the audio waveform. Use the blue arrows to navigate to the first slide you want to record to. (When you are on the first slide, the Previous slide arrow is grayed out.)

 

 

To display your slide notes, which contain your voiceover script, click the Captions & Slide Notes button at the bottom left of the Slides Audio dialog box.

 

 

Your slide notes for the active slide are displayed. Use the A tool at the upper right to adjust the font size for ease of reading.

 

 

After calibrating your microphone (refer to my Calibration article to learn how), ensure that the Continuous Play check-box is NOT selected.

 

 

 

The Continuous Play option advances the slides automatically as you record--whether you have completed the specific narration for a particular slide or not. By deselecting it, you retain control over when you move on to the next slide.

Click the Record button to start recording. After the countdown, record your narration by reading it from the Captions & Slide Notes window. When you finish the narration for your first slide, click the Stop Recording button.

To advance to the next slide, click the Advance Slide blue arrow below the waveform area.

The slide advances. The Captions & Slide Notes display window disappears, presumably to allow you to see the Preview of the next slide. Once you click the Record button, the Captions & Slide Notes window reopens automatically, displaying the notes for the next slide.

Click the Record button and record the next slide, then click Stop recording.

Continue in this way through all of your slides. The timing for each slide is automatically extended to accommodate the amount of time your narration requires.

After you have recorded the narration for the final slide, click the Save button at the lower right of the Slides Audio dialog box.

On the Filmstrip, each slide you recorded to now shows a speaker icon, indicating that your slide audio has been saved.

 

 

Once the narration has been recorded, you can preview the audio for each slide by clicking that speaker icon and choosing Play.

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Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online Captivate classes.

Adobe RoboHelp 2015: New Book Now Shipping

Adobe RoboHelp 2015: The Essentials

 

We are proud to announce that our "Adobe RoboHelp 2015: The Essentials" workbook is now shipping.

 

"Adobe RoboHelp 2015: The Essentials" is a self-paced, step-by-step workbook that will teach you the essential skills needed to create and deliver user assistance (Help systems, policies and procedures, and knowledgebases). By following step-by-step instructions, you will learn to create RoboHelp projects from scratch and how to add content via importing from Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker, PDFs, and HTML.

 

You will learn to enhance your content with graphics, dynamic effects (DHTML), and multimedia (eLearning content created using Adobe Captivate). Enhance the navigation of your Help content by adding hyperlinks, indexes and glossaries. Improve your production efficiency by learning about cascading style sheets, variables, snippets, and master pages. Learn how to control the look of the final WebHelp output via Skins.

 

The output files you learn to generate (Single Source Layouts) will allow you to deliver content to the iPad and other tablets, smartphones, and desktops using output formats such as Responsive HTML5, WebHelp, Microsoft HTML Help, Adobe AIR Help, PDF and eBooks.

 

More information.