The Logical Blog by IconLogic

Adobe FrameMaker: Symbols, Superscripts, and Character Formats

I recently mentored someone on Adobe FrameMaker. As a follow-up, I received the following request for help regarding working with symbols and baseline shifts.

I hope this email finds you well. I’m still improving upon my FrameMaker skills, thanks to you! I’ve been searching for a way to change the baseline of a character. In the legal copyright and trademark statement, I want a symbol such as a copyright but have it large enough for the general public to read. I can set my character designer at a larger font; however, it is too high. Does Framemaker have the ability to change the baseline of a character?

Here is one quick solution:

Choose Format > Character > Designer and set the window to As-Is. (The As-Is option will let you select which specific attributes get included with the new style.)

From the lower left of the dialog box, select Superscript.

Create a new style called something like Copyright symbol.

Type some text in the FrameMaker document and then go to the Insert menu and choose Symbols > Copyright.

For the moment, the symbol is aligned with the text. But not for long.

Choose Format > Character > Catalog.

Select the symbol and then, from the Character Catalog, click your new Copyright symbol character style.

The selected symbol is now raised above the baseline.

Adobe RoboHelp: Searching Made Even Better

When I teach RoboHelp, I tell my students and the three main areas users will rely on to get help in a help system are the table of contents (TOC), Index, and Search. Of the three, Search wins the award for being the most used feature.

One thing to avoid in a TOC is bloat--a TOC that has so much content that it's difficult, if not impossible, to find anything quickly. Because users will first rely on Search, keeping the content on the TOC streamlined is a great idea. However, if a topic is not on the TOC or referenced by a link or cross reference by something on the TOC, the topic won't be searchable. This presents a conundrum. If you want to keep your TOC streamlined, but the TOC is tied to Search, what's a RoboHelp developer to do?

The solution is to create an extra section on the TOC. Put anything you want to be searchable in that section. (You can add all of your topics if you'd like.)

On the Content Properties panel, select Hide in output.

Generate the output. The "hidden" TOC content will not appear on the TOC, but will be searchable.

Check out this video demonstration of the process.

DEVELOPMENT TIP OF THE WEEK: Quickly Hide Desktop Icons

When creating software simulations or video demos using Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, or TechSmith Camtasia, you might find yourself needing to capture an event that includes your desktop. Of course, that begs the question: how clean... or messy is your desktop? Does the image below remind you of a desktop near and dear to your heart?

Look, your desktop is your desktop so clutter away. However, it's not a good idea to include those icons in your eLearning project. Besides being a security risk, nobody really wants to see your icons.   Fortunately, you don't have to clean up your desktop prior to recording your screen. All you need to do is right-click your desktop and choose View > Show desktop icons.

If the icons were there, they are gone. If they were hidden, they're back.   Remember this little gem the next time you're getting ready to click the Record option on your eLearning tool of choice and you'll save yourself a bunch of work de-cluttering.

Adobe Captivate: Learning Interactions with Self-Hiding Instructions

by Jennie Ruby 

Scenario: Your SME wants to put a ton of text on a slide. "It's all important!" she insists. 

"Okay," you say. "But let's give the learner some control over the experience. Let's use a Learning Interaction." 

The Learning Interactions in Adobe Captivate are very useful for presenting a lot of text by topic or subheading. In this article, I'll show you how to address both the needs of the project and your SME's concerns. For this project, we'll choose the Tab interaction. 

Go to the Interactions drop-down and choose Learning Interactions. Then choose the Tabs learning interaction. On the resulting dialog box, double-click Title, and type your title. (Don't worry if your first double-click does not enable editing. These placeholders are notoriously difficult to double-click. Just keep clicking until the word Title goes into editing mode. Then type your title.)

 

Enter all of your text by double-clicking a tab, giving it a tab name, and then double-clicking the Button Content placeholder for each tab to enter your text.

When all of your content is in, click the OK button to create your interaction. Now preview it. It should work great. 

However, let's go back to our scenario: 

The SME is now unhappy because when you first arrive at this slide, the Tab area is completely blank. The learning interaction does not display any of its tab contents until you click a tab. 

 

"How does the viewer know to click a tab?" the SME asks.

 

"Good question," you reply. "We could give instructions in the voiceover narrative."

 

"I'd rather see printed instructions on the slide," your SME says. 

 

Now we have this challenge: how to create instructions and something to fill the blank tab area when the viewer first arrives on this slide, but without covering up the tab's text when the interaction is in use.

Captivate offers "actions" that can show and hide objects on the slide. We can create a text caption that will give the viewers some instructions. But how are we going to hide the text caption so the viewers can see the Tab text? We'll create a button along with the caption that will hide the text caption and also hide itself!

Start by creating a text caption containing the instructions: "Click each tab to read its contents." Format the caption and place it in the middle of the blank space on the Tab interaction. 

Then from the Interactions drop-down, choose Button. In the Properties inspector, Style subtab, caption the button with the word Start. 

After positioning the text caption and the button nicely on the slide, Select both the text caption and the Start button (shift-click should do it), and from the Edit menu, choose Group.

 

Select just the button, and on the Properties inspector, Actions subtab, set On Success to Hide, and in the Hide drop-down list, choose the group. While you are there, also deselect the checkbox for Continue Playing the Project. That way, once the button is hidden, the project will not proceed to the next slide before the viewer can click a tab! (Note: this assumes the project has a play bar that the viewer can use to advance the slide after viewing the Tab interaction.)

So far, you have a Start button that will hide the instructions and hide itself. But how can we make sure that these will always be visible on the slide to start with? After all, the viewer might visit the slide, hide the caption and start button, leave the slide, and then return. The solution is to add an On Entry action for the slide.

Click the slide in the Filmstrip, open the Properties inspector, Actions tab, and assign the On Enter action Show, and choose your group.

Preview your project, and each time you enter the slide containing your Tab interaction, you see the instructions, click the Start button, and then use the Tab learning interaction to view the text. 

Result: The SME is happy, you are a success, and the viewers know exactly what to do when they reach this slide.

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Looking for Adobe Captivate training? Check out these live, online Captivate classes.

Adobe RoboHelp 2015: First Look

by Willam van Weelden

Adobe released RoboHelp 2015 last week, a major upgrade sporting several enhancements. This week we take a first look at some of the big changes.

Ribbon Based Interface

The menu has been redesigned to make RoboHelp easier to use. Options are sensibly arranged and menu inconsistencies have been cleaned up. Lesser known features like search synonyms are much easier to find and use.

Small improvements, such as working with tables, make editing content much easier.

One of my favorites is the Locate Item tool. Open a topic and select an image or a Captivate movie. Click the Locate Item tool and the item will be highlighted in the Project Manager.

Skins and Layouts

RoboHelp 2015 includes new WebHelp skins and Responsive HTML5 layouts. The WebHelp skins are clean and modern. Both WebHelp and Responsive HTML5 support Right-to-Left languages. Though for WebHelp you will have to use one of the six new skins.



The Responsive HTML5 Layouts have more customization options. It is now possible to choose which panes to include in the output, just as with WebHelp. The layouts have Facebook share and Twitter buttons included as well.

Important Enhancements:

• Named Conditions: Sensible names for Conditional Build Expressions.
• Dynamic filters: Conditional Build Tags on steroids. Dynamically switch Conditional Build Expressions in your output for fine grained control.
• Improved search results: Control the topic preview text in search results.
• Mobile App output: Create a mobile app without any coding.
• Right-to-Left: Output for right-to-left languages.
• Find and Replace: The Find and Replace pod has new powerful features.
• Scalable video: Adobe Captivate videos scale in Responsive HTML5 output.

I've mentioned what I consider to be the most important enhancements in RoboHelp 2015. Stay tuned for articles on each of these enhancements in the weeks to come.

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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.

Adobe Captivate & Articulate Storyline: Round-Tripping With Microsoft Word

by Kevin Siegel   

How do you collaborate with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who aren't Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline developers? Specifically I'm talking about text content. How many times have you gone back and forth (and back and forth again) with your SMEs, changing a word on a slide here, removing a comma there. Maddening, right?

Wouldn't it be great if you could export the text from your eLearning projects into Word, get your SMEs to make their changes in the document (using Word), and then import those changes back into your project? That kind of workflow is a dream, right? Nope. The workflow exists today in both Captivate and Storyline and the process is simple.

Adobe Captivate

Open or create a Captivate project and choose File > Import/Export > Export project captions and closed captions.

In the Open dialog box, name the resulting document, specify a save destination, and click the Save button. (You will be notified when the captions have been exported.)

Click Yes to open the document in Word.

The captions will appear in a Word table. There will be five columns: Slide ID, Item ID, Original Text Caption Data, Updated Text Caption Data, and Slide. You can make any changes you want to the Updated Text Caption Data, but you should not change any of the other information. The Slide ID identifies which slide your edited captions go to. The Item ID identifies which caption goes with which caption data.

 

Make your editorial changes; then save and close the Word document.

The final step is to to import the edited text back into Captivate. Choose File > Import/Export > Import project captions and closed captions. Find and open the document you edited in Word. A dialog box will appear confirming the number of captions that were imported. Not only will the edited content be imported, but formatting changes made to the Word document, such as making text bold or italic, are also retained.

 

Articulate Storyline

 

The process of round-tripping between Articulate Storyline and Microsoft Word is just about the same as it is in Adobe Captivate.

Open or create a Storyline project and then choose File > Translation > Export. In the Open dialog box, name the resulting document, specify a save destination, and click the Save button.

 

In the resulting Word document, SMEs can make any needed content changes in the Translate this column area of the document and then return the edited document to you.

 

The final step is to simply choose File > Translation > Import and open the edited Word document.

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you. 

Adobe RoboHelp: Merging WebHelp

by Willam van Weelden  

I've previously taught you how to create links between Merged HTML Help projects. This time, let's tackle merged WebHelp. Merging WebHelp differs from merging HTML Help in that you select the RoboHelp project to merge instead of the output.

Prepare a Master Project

1. Open the master project's table of contents and click New Merged Project.
     
2. On the FlashHelp/WebHelp/Multiscreen/Adobe AIR tab, click the Browse button and open the RoboHelp project you want to merge.
     
3. Click the OK button to merge the project. (The child project will appear in the master project's TOC.)
     
4. Save your project and generate your master project.

Generate Merged Projects

Once you've created the master project, you need to generate the merged projects to the correct folder in the master project's output folder.

When you generated the master project, RoboHelp created the following folder structure:

   

For every child project, place the WebHelp output into the mergedProjects\<project name> folder. (Meaning that the child project called Child 1 has to be placed in the folder WebHelp\mergedProjects\Child 1.)

Once you generate all child projects to the correct location, open the master project output to see the results:

 

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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.

eLearning and TechComm: Click, Select, Choose, or Press?

by Jennie Ruby

Right at a time when flat design has become the rage, removing the three-dimensional look that for 30 years (happy anniversary to Windows this November!) has informed us that "this thing looks like you can poke it in! It must be a button!" people are starting to worry and become uncertain about the clear vocabulary that has helped us to write about software and computers for just as long.

In a recent class I had one participant tell me her office has forbidden the word "click" in favor of "select." Another told me that her office had done just the opposite!

The two concerns in question are whether the word "click" loses its meaning on mobile devices, and whether the word "click" is exclusionary toward individuals with disabilities or different abilities.

The good news is that using the word "click" is not ableist, nor is it declaring the hegemony of mouse users over mobile device users. It is just the standard word in technical communications to indicate "execute," on certain kinds of interactive items on screens. In other words, "click" means "hey you, button, do that thing you do."

The button, as with so many things in the computer realm, is an analogy to real-world little pokable nubbins that make things happen on electric devices from vacuum-cleaners to doorbells. Even real-world buttons have undergone some changes in the ways people use them. The buttons on my microwave and stove are now flat to the surface and covered with a plastic sheet so that spaghetti sauce and porkchop grease can't get in and ruin the mechanism. But you still actuate them by pressing them--and most of them still emit a satisfying "click" sound (or a beep) when you do so.

By analogy, "click" is whatever action you do to an on-screen button to make it do its thing. It is executed on various devices and by various computer users in various ways. Many of us already made the leap from "press and release the left button on a mouse device" to "press and release the left side of your mouse even though it no longer has a button" to "press and release the entire touchpad on your Mac laptop so that emits a click sound" to "tap ever-so-gently on the hair-trigger touchpad of your new Windows laptop" to "tap once on the screen of your iPad or phone" to "tap once on the screen of your touch-screen laptop" to "tab to the button and press the Enter key on your keyboard." And with Windows Speech Recognition, to actuate a button, you actually speak the word "click," as in, "Click OK;Click File; Click Bold; Click Save; Click Close," and so on.

To back away from the word "click" right now is as unnecessary, and even nonsensical, as deciding that the Save icon has to be changed because no-one has used an actual mini floppy disk since 2005. The Save icon has become a symbol that will retain its meaning like other permanent glyphs, such as the Arabic numerals or the smiley face. And the word "click" is the way you indicate "actuate" for certain screen items.

But that is not to say that the word "click" should be used for every screen action. By now I hope I have made clear that a "click" is a characteristic of certain screen items-buttons, icons, tools-not of the physical method by which you actuate them. So even though you may also click your mouse to execute the following actions, the word "click" is not the clearest vocabulary word for them.

You "choose" something from a menu, because you are "choosing" from a list of "choices," and once you "choose" the one you want, the chosen command is immediately executed.

choose File > Close

You "select" something that, once you select it, stays selected. You select a cell in Excel. You select part of the text in a document. You select an option from a list and the option stays selected-as in a drop-down list or a list-box. You select a radio button, and you select a checkbox. And they stay selected. Until you "deselect" them.

select the Portrait Orientation radio button

select the Kerning checkbox

from the Font drop-down list, select Verdana

select the first paragraph in your document

deselect the Enable Live Preview checkbox

You "press" a key on a keyboard or a real button on an actual piece of hardware. (The word "press" definitely cannot be used to describe what you do to an on-screen button, because it may create ambiguity: Does "Press Home" mean on the screen or on the keyboard?)

press the Enter key

press the F6 key

press the Power button (on the microwave)

And finally, you "click" an on-screen button, an icon, or a tool.

click the OK button

click the Bold tool

click the Wifi icon

As this vocabulary discussion continues, I would love to hear your take. Is your office using "select" for everything? Are you using "press" for mobile devices? Or tap? Are you combining commands, as in "click or tap the link"? Email me.

References

Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications: "Do not use choose as an alternative to click or double-click. Choose does not convey any additional information to those who do not use a mouse, and such users normally understand the equivalent action that they must take when a procedure step says to click."

Web page: Use Speech Recognition to operate windows and programs

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Do you need to learn how to write eLearning scripts? Come check out my live, online mini course.

eLearning: Become a Pedagogical Agent

by Jennie Ruby 

If you've taken any of our Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline classes, you are probably aware that these programs provide a selection of screen characters--cut-out pictures of professional actors in business, medical, or business-casual clothing posed as if they are talking to you. They are intended for use as a kind of avatar of the trainer.

There is research that shows that using a screen character as a pedagogical agent or learning coach, who speaks informally and appears to be giving the lesson, increases learning. (My reference for this is Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer, eLearning and the Science of Instruction.)

Over the past few weeks, I've had multiple students ask how hard it would be to use themselves as the learning coach. Believe it or not, becoming a pedagogical agent is easier than you think.

 

Put Your Picture into the Lesson. Place a professional head shot of yourself, your trainer, or expert on the introductory slide (including job title, credentials, etc.), and then have that individual record the audio narration for the project.

 

Create your own screen characters. Photograph your expert on a green screen background for a full set of screen characters in various poses. The IconLogic Blog has a whole series of articles on how to do this:

 

Green Screen Part I

Green Screen Part II

Green Screen Part III

Green Screen Part IV

 

Create cartoons of yourself or your in-house experts. You can use the images over and over in on-going training videos. Here is one article to get you started: Using Bitstrips Characters.

If you don't have specific, known individuals in your company to act as your learning coaches, you are not stuck with the same four or five actors that come with your software. You can purchase additional screen characters from The eLearning Brothers. Or you can just make good use of some inexpensive clip art. By trimming out the background in ordinary office photographs, you can get some nice effects.

 

Whether you use generic actors or your own home-grown experts, screen characters are an excellent way to add the personalization, engagement, and local feel that will bring your eLearning to the next level.

 

Once you have your screen characters, how do you know what to make them say? Join me for an afternoon mini course on writing voiceovers to find out.

Adobe Captivate: Text Hyperlinks

by Kevin Siegel   

Over the years I've had more than a few eLearning development clients ask us to create links to web resources on a slide. There's more than one way to accomplish the task. Over the next couple of weeks I'll discuss some of my favorite techniques. Up first, text hyperlinks.

To create a text hyperlink, select some text (the text can be contained within a text caption or a smart shape). Then, on the Properties Inspector, select the Style tab. From the Character area, click the Insert Hyperlink tool. 

 

 

From the Link To drop-down menu, choose Web Page. Next, type a web address into the field.

 

Prior to clicking the OK button, visit the drop-down menu to the right of the web address. I think it's a good idea to select New from the list of options. (This will ensure that the page that appears after the learner clicks is a new page or tab, rather than a page that replaces the current lesson.)

 

 

 

When previewed in a web browser, the text hyperlink will look similar to the image below. If clicked, the learner will be taken to the web address you specified in the Link To area.

 

  

 

Should you change your mind about the text hyperlink, removing the link is as simple as selecting the text and, back on the Properties Inspector, clicking the Remove Hyperlink tool.

 

 

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

See also: Object Hyperlinks