I Came, I Saw, I Learned...

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Setting a Default Object Style

by Kevin Siegel  

I enjoy creating eLearning lessons using Adobe Captivate. Nevertheless, it's work and I make every attempt to produce and publish my projects as quickly and efficiently as I can. In fact, I am always looking for ways to save steps, and I'm all about getting something done with fewer and fewer clicks.

With fewer clicks in mind, I'm going to show you a quick Captivate setting that could save you at least one click every time you insert an object onto a slide. (Just one click you say? Don't discount even minor savings. One click saved here, another there... and you're golfing!)

I'd like to insert a standard text caption onto a slide. The task is simple enough. Choose Insert > Standard Objects > Text Caption.

I'd also like to assign a specific Object Style to the new text caption. This process is also simple. Select the text caption and use the Style drop-down menu on the Propertiespanel.

As I said, the steps are simple, but allow me to simplify things even further... and save you a few clicks in the bargain.

Open the Object Style Manager via the Edit menu. From the center of the dialog box, select a style. Lastly, from the right of the dialog box select Set As Default. 

 

The next time you insert a text caption, the caption will already be using the style you set as default. Think of all of the clicks you'll save!

If you're not an Object Style Manager fan, I have another way of setting a default object style. Go ahead and insert the object as you normally would. Then, on the Propertiespanel, select a style from the Style drop-down menu. Lastly, select Set as the default style.  From that point forward, the selected style will automatically be applied to newly inserted objects. 

 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Troubleshooting Cranky Software

by Kevin Siegel  

By this point I've created hundreds upon hundreds of eLearning projects using Captivate. In all that time, Captivate has remained very stable for me (very few crashes and zero corrupt projects). Nevertheless, I've received some emails over the last few weeks from Captivate developers who were having issues with Captivate crashing, running slowly or otherwise behaving erratically. In the vast majority of the cases, the following resolved the issues.

Editing over a network drive: Captivate projects simply cannot be edited over a network drive. Backing up your projects to a network drive is a great idea. But if you open a project and then proceed to edit it over a network drive, the project will behave erratically, work slowly and, sooner or later, become corrupt. Take my advice (and the advice of any developer who has lost a project), stay clear of your network drive. If your project is currently on a network drive, first copy the project to your local drive and then edit it.

Run as administrator. If you are using Windows Vista or 7, and you are working locally but Captivate is still behaving badly, try running the software as an Administrator. You can Captivate as an Administrator by right-clicking the Captivate application icon and choosing Run as administrator.

Virus Scanners: Many virus scanners scan your hard drive 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The scanners are well-meaning but can rob your computer of performance and block all kinds of processes... even Captivate processes. I'd suggest stopping your virus scanner while you're working within Captivate. Instead, schedule the virus scan during hours when you aren't asking your computer to perform intense processes (like producing a Captivate project).

Clear Captivate's Preferences: If Captivate is performing strangely, you can delete the Preferences folder and see if that shakes things up. Close Captivate, find the Preferences folder on your computer (see below) and then restart Captivate. The Preferences folder will be recreated when Captivate starts. If you are nervous about deleting the Preferences folder, make a backup of the folder first and copy it to a trusted location. Then delete the original.

Note: The Preferences folder won't be actually be called "Preferences." Instead, it will have the same name as your version of Captivate. For instance, since I have both Captivate 5 and 5.5 on my computer, I have two Preferences folders, one called "Captivate 5," the other called "Captivate 5.5."

Here is where your Preferences folder can be found (it's a bit different dependent upon your operating system and version):

Windows 7: C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Adobe Captivate   

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Captivate

Mac:  /Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Captivate 

See also: Captivate's Cache Feature 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Writing & Grammar: Quick/Quickly

by Jennie Ruby  

Can I use quick as an adverb without the -ly, just like I can use slow as an adverb? They are very similar words, after all, and are related because they are opposites. Even so, the guidelines for quick/quickly are a little different. We have less free range to use quick as an adverb without sounding ungrammatical. Look at the following examples: 

• "Kids! Come quick! A kitten is being born!"
• The kids ran quickly out to the garage.

In both cases, quick/ly is an adverb. But the expressioncome quick is a "set phrase"--such a common way of saying something that it would sound odd to change it, even for the sake of grammar. Other examples of set phrases are transition phrases such as "on the other hand" and clichés such as "set in stone."

As with slow, quick is also often an adjective, not an adverb. Here is an example where quick is modifying a noun, not a verb:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Nevertheless, I am tempted to use quick instead of quickly as an adverb in some situtations. Let me know what you think of these examples.

Can I use quick instead of quickly in these sentences?

1. The chicken ran (quick/quickly) to the other side of the road.
2. The storm started so (quick/quickly) that I could not avoid getting wet.
3. The bird flew so (quick/quickly) that I could not identify it.
4. The web page loaded (quick/quickly).
5. Click (quick/quickly) on the message box before it disappears.
6. Spring arrived (quick/quickly) this year.

Just like last week, additional examples are welcome. Send your responses to me when ready.

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If you like Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

PowerPoint: Instant Font Usage

by AJ George 

I was recently editing a PowerPoint presentation that someone else had created. Master slides were not used and the formatting was a bit inconsistent. I thought to myself that it would be helpful to see a list of fonts used in the presentation. Then I remembered that there is such a list! It's a bit of a hidden feature so I had completely forgotten it existed. Here's how to see a list of fonts used in a presentation.

1. In PowerPoint, choose File > Info.
2. At the far right of the screen you will see a small preview image of the presentation. Directly below the preview, click the arrow next to Properties to view a drop-down menu. (What a sneaky little hidden menu!)
3. Choose Advanced Properties to open the Properties dialog box.
     
4. Click the Contents tab to view all the fonts used in the presentation.
    

See also:

• How to Save a Presentation with Embedded Fonts
• How to Find and Delete Embedded Fonts

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AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. 

Writing & Grammar: Slow/Slowly

by Jennie Ruby  

Consider these two sentences, both containing the adverb slow/slowly:

The river ran slow that summer.

The runner jogged slowly past the window.

Wait, you might be thinking, shouldn't the first one say slowly? The answer is no, it doesn't have to--the word slowcan be used as an adverb without the -ly! So how do you decide? Bryan Garner, in the Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, tells us, "let rhythm and euphony be your guide."

Of course the word slow is also an adjective, when it is used to modify a noun:

The slow train seemed to take forever to cross the bridge.

Here is this week's challenge. Tell me which way you would go with each of the following examples. Each sentence usesslow/slowly as an adverb, not as an adjective. When should I add -ly, and when should I not? I am trying to come up with concrete ways to explain when to use slow over slowly or vice versa. Can you explain your choices?

1. We drove (slow/slowly) because some children were playing nearby.
2. He walked really (slow/slowly) when he passed the field where his friends were playing.
3. Drag the mouse (slow/slowly) to select just the yellow portion of the image.
4. The space shuttle riding on the back of the airliner appeared to fly very (slow/slowly).
5. The band played (slow/slowly) when the conductor was distracted.
6. The water ran (slow/slowly) because of the water main break.
7. She poured water (slow/slowly) over the cooling noodles.
8. They biked too (slow/slowly) to get to the park before the moon rose.
9. The image (slow/slowly) transitions to gray.
10. The transition (slow/slowly) takes place as you watch.

Additional examples are welcome. Send your responses to me when ready.

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Switch TTS Agents in a Snap

by Kevin Siegel  

During every Captivate beginner class, time is spent on the second day teaching everyone how to use Captivate's Text-to-Speech feature to convert slide notes into speech.

Recently, one of the students asked an excellent question: "Is there an easy way to change my mind? I'd love it if there was a pain-free way to quickly change the agent from Kate, to Paul and then maybe back to Kate."

You can switch between one agent to another. The solution, while easy, isn't obvious. Here's how:

First, go through your project and convert the slide notes to speech. If you're not sure how, review this article.

After you've committed to an agent, changing your mind is just as easy as selecting the original agent. Choose Audio > Speech Management to open the Speech Management dialog box.

In the image below, notice that different agents have been used between the two slides. 

 

Select all of the notes for a slide and then, from the Speech Agent drop-down menu, select an agent. In the image below, all three notes are selected for Slide 1 and that Paul is being selected from the Speech Agent drop-down menu. (Note: you can only select the notes for more than one slide at a time; you'll need to repeat the process for each slide.)

 

The final step is to simply click the Generate Audio button and you're all set.

 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Adobe Captivate: Reuse Text to Speech

The Adobe Captivate BLOG features a video that goes into Captivate's Text to Speech feature and how to reuse audio files in multiple projects.

Read more

PowerPoint: Chart Templates

by AJ George 

I was perusing the Microsoft Office Forums and came across an unanswered question from someone about chart formatting. This PowerPoint user wanted to be able to create multiple charts with the same formatting (ie bars on a graph with a gradient effect) without having to individually format each separate piece of every new chart. An attempt at copying and pasting the slide using the Keep Source Fformatting option did not keep the chart's formatting. The person struggling with this issue also mentioned that there were more than 300 charts that needed formatting and dreaded the prospect of having to individually format each one. Are you in the same situation? No worries! Here is how to create a chart template to be used with new charts or to be applied to existing charts.

How to Create a Chart Template

1. In PowerPoint (2007 or 2010), choose Insert > Illustrations > Chart (to open the Insert Chart dialog box.)
2. Select your desired chart and click OK.
3. On the PowerPoint slide, right-click each individual element of the slide that you would like to format and choose Format Data Series. (The Format Data Series dialog box will open.)
4. Format to your liking and click the Close button.

Note: Don't bother editing the excel spread sheet at this point, your data will not be saved with the template.


5. Ensure the chart is selected on the slide and chooseChart Tools > Design > Type > Save As Template(to open the Save Chart Template dialog box).

    
6. Give your chart template a name and click the Save button.

How to Use a Chart Template

1. In PowerPoint, choose Insert > Illustrations > Chart (to open the Insert Chart dialog box).
2. Click the Templates folder at the top left.  


 
3. Select your chart template from the gallery and click the OK button.

Note: If you would like your chart template to be the default chart style, click the Set as Default Chart button (as seen above) on the Insert Chart dialog box. To edit the template, click the Manage Templates button.

From there your data sheet will open and you will be able to enter your data. But what if you're in the same situation as the person in the MS Office forums and you already have charts that you'd like to reflect this formatting?

Apply a Chart Template to an Existing Chart

Please note that applying a chart template to an existing chart may cause your system to crash. Ensure you save frequently.

1. In PowerPoint, select your chart on the slide.
2. Choose Chart Tools > Design > Type > Change Chart Type (to open the Chart Type dialog box).




3. Click the Templates folder at the top left, select your chart template from the gallery, and click the OKbutton.

Your chart will now reflect the formatting of the template.

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AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations.

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: It's Alive... Preview

by Kevin Siegel  

Last week I wrote about how you can save and share effects you've added to the Effects panel (so the effects can be used in other projects or by other developers). I'd like to stick with the Effects theme for another week. If you've used the Effects panel, there's a good chance that you've missed a useful feature--it's often overlooked by even veteran developers.

The most common way to preview an effect or a slide animation is to either Preview the project, the next 5 slides or from the current slide (these options are all found via File > Preview).

If all that I really need to see is a quick preview of a slide containing effects or animations, it seems reasonable that choosing File > Preview > Play this Slide would be the perfect preview option (the others are simply overkill). If you use the Play this Slide option, you will see slide objects such as captions and the mouse pointer transition and appear on the screen based on the Timing you set up. However, you won't see any effects, videos or slide animations, which kind of renders Play this slide useless.

There is a wonderful alternative to prevewing a single slide, but it's not obvious. Take a look at the Effects panel and you'll see a button unique to the Effects panel: Live Preview. 

Click the Live Preview button and you will see an honest-to-goodness preview of any and all slide effects. Nice! But even better... Live Preview accurately previews slide animations and videos. Give it a shot and let me know how Live Preview works for you. I'm betting you'll kick Play this Slide to the curb like I did.

Note: You will need to add at least one effect to a slide object to use Live Preview. Without at least one effect, the Live Preview button is disabled.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Adobe RoboHelp: Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Help System

Neil Perlin has written a well-rounded white paper covering the top mistakes Help authors make when creating a Help System.

Among the mistakes:

• Not developing mechanisms to support content consistency
• Not developing mechanisms to support format consistency
• Not revisiting project design in light of 'environmental' changes
• Not planning to test QA (Quality Assurance) and usability
• Not planning to create an index  

Read more

PowerPoint: Find and Delete Embedded Fonts

by AJ George 

Last week I covered how to embed fonts in a PowerPoint presentation. On the flip side, what if you receive a presentation and have issues opening it because of an embedded font? This seems to be a relatively rare issue, and may not affect you (or the person receiving your presentation) if you used a fancy script font. The problem seems to be more related to the inclusion of certain fonts in the system, like Asian fonts that read the opposite direction. Sometimes, when sending these presentations off (particularly over-seas) there can be issues.

This issue was brought to my attention, so I began to explore and document how to find and delete embedded fonts. However, I found that the folks over at PPTools already have a pretty in-depth write up on this, including multiple solutions. Check out this link for what to do if your presentation contains Asian texts and formats that PowerPoint can't display.

Several great solutions are provided, but I would like to throw one more in the mix that might also work for you. If you know there is a font throwing a kink in the works but can't find where it is used within the presentation, try the following:

1. With your presentation opened in PowerPoint 2010, choose File > Save & Send > Create Handouts.
2. Click the Create Handouts button.  

This will send your presentation to MS Word. Since we are not actually interested in the handouts, you can choose anything from the Send to Microsoft Word dialog box and click OK. MS Word will open.


3. In Word 2010, press [Ctrl] [F] on your keyboard to bring up the Navigation pane.
4. Click the more arrow to the right of the Search Document field.




5. Select Advanced Find from the drop-down menu.

The Find and Replace dialog box will open.


6. At the bottom of the dialog box, click the Formatbutton and choose Font.
7. In the Font field, type the name of the offending font and click OK.

This will return you to the Find and Replace dialog box.


8. Leave the Find What field blank and click the Find Next button.

Word will find where the font was used so you can delete whatever is causing the hiccup back in your PowerPoint presentation.

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AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. 

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Save and Share Effects

by Kevin Siegel  

I've written about Captivate's Effects feature in the past. If used appropriately, effects can greatly enhance your eLearning lesson.

During one of my recent Captivate 5/5.5 Essentials online classes, a participant asked if it was possible to share a group of effects with other members on her team. She had added several effects to an object that everyone on her team liked. They liked it so much they wanted her "recipe" to save them the trouble of finding all of the effects and setting the timing.

I told her that it was possible to export and then import effects from one project to another, and the process is surprisingly easy.

After applying two or more effects to an object, click theSave command at the bottom of the Effects panel. 

The effects will be saved as an XML file. You can save the file to any drive (if you're looking to share with your team, the network drive is likely your best bet).

Once you've saved the effects file, tell your team members that they can easily import the effect by right-clicking a slide object and choosing Apply Effect. 

Have them click the Add Effect button and click the Browse button.

 

The final step will be to find and open the saved effects file. Once opened, the saved effects will be applied to the selected object (in the same order you specified on the Effects panel when you saved the effects file).

Note: While I love the Effects feature, gratuitous use of effects can actually detract from your lesson... so please, developers... let's take it easy out there.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: Save a Presentation with Embedded Fonts

by AJ George 

 

When creating PowerPoint presentations and moving them from one computer to another, one area of concern is fonts. If you've used specific fonts within a presentation, the same fonts need to be installed on any computers that will open the presentation. To prevent missing fonts from being an issue, there's a good chance you can embed the fonts you used to ensure your presentations look the way you designed them.

 

Good chance? I say "good chance" because not all fonts are embeddable. Fonts must be of the TrueType variety. Additionally, fonts must not have licensing restrictions that prevent embedding. If you are using standard fonts (Arial, Times, Verdana, etc), you probably won't need to worry about licensing restrictions. That being said, if you're worried about someone not having your font on their system, you probably aren't using the standard fonts. 

 

Determing if a Font Is Embeddable

 

If you're using a Mac, I've got bad news... the Mac versions of PowerPoint can't embed fonts, nor can they use fonts embedded in a PC-born presentation.

If you're using a PC, the fonts need to be TrueType for them to embed. In PowerPoint, you'll notice all fonts have either aTT (TrueType) or an O (OpenType) next to them in the font list. But here's the catch: some OpenType fonts have TrueType font data and can also be embedded.  If you'd like to know if your OpenType font contains TrueType font, view your computer's Fonts folder (Start > Control Panel > Fonts). Right-click within an empty space within the folder and choose View > Details. Fonts with file names ending in .ttf (whether TrueType or OpenType) contain TrueType font data and can be embedded.

But wait, there's more! All embedding licenses are not created equal. There are three different types of embedding licenses.

Installable: Fonts may be embedded in documents and permanently installed on the remote system.

Editable: Fonts may be embedded in documents, but must only be installed temporarily on the remote system.

Print & Preview: Fonts may be embedded in documents, but must only be installed temporarily on the remote system. Documents can only be opened as read-only.

Installable is great, but is pretty hard to come by. In most cases, you're going to be looking for an Editable font. Unless you just want your presentation to be viewed, and not modified or edited in any way, I would steer clear of Print & Preview fonts.

So, how do you know which type of license your font has? The easiest way is to download and install Microsoft's TrueType Font Properties Extension. Doing so allows you to right-click a font from the Fonts folder and chooseProperties to see the Embedding license (among many other properties).

Note: Navigate to your Fonts folder and right-click a font before downloading the properties extension. You may already have a Properties option there.

Whew, that was an awful lot like work! On a positive note, finding out whether or not your font is embeddable is the hardest part. Once you know that a font can be embedded, embedding it is a simple process.

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
2. If you are using PowerPoint 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button > Save As. If you are using PowerPoint 2010, choose File > Save As.
3. From the Save As dialog box, click the Tools button and select Save Options.
4. Select Embed fonts and then click OK.
5. At the bottom of the Save area, select Embed fonts in the file. From there you can choose whether to embed all the characters, or just those used in the presentation. If you are forwarding the presentation for further editing, you may want to include all characters.
6. Click OK.

Keep in mind that embedding fonts will increase the file size of your presentation, especially if you embed all of the font's characters.

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AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. 

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Template-Like Settings Without the Template

by Kevin Siegel  

During my advanced Captivate class, I spend a significant amount of time extolling the value of project templates. As a group, the class opens an existing project template, edits the template, uses the template to record a software simulation and then creates a project template from scratch.

I've written several articles about Captivate's project templates including how to convert a project into a project template and how to make the best use of template placeholders.

While templates are awesome and provide a great jump-start for a new Captivate project, you don't necessarily have to create a project template to ensure that many of the attributes within your projects are consistent.

Perhaps your biggest concern about new projects is ensuring that each new project has Text Captions that use specific fonts, font sizes and colors. Maybe you want to ensure that inserted objects (such as buttons) use a specific Object Style and play for a specific amount of time.

You can set several application attributes before you create a single project. Once set, each new project created on your computer will use those attributes. Setting these kinds of preferences in advance could save you a significant amount of time performing repetitive tasks.

To set application preferences, start Captivate. Ensure no projects are open and open the Preferences dialog box (Edit menu if you're using Windows; Adobe Captivate menu if you're using a Macintosh).

From the top left of the Preferences dialog box, choose Defaults.

On the Global Preferences screen, you'll find myriad options to explore. For instance, if you want most of your slides to play for 5 seconds, why not set it here (in the Slide Duration area) instead of changing the play time for each slide in an existing project?

 

When previewing a project, one of the options via File > Preview is Next 5 slides. Care to make it a lucky 7? No problem. Change the Preview Defaults to 7 slides and you'll be set in any new projects.

When inserting Text Captions into existing projects, each new caption will play for exactly 3 seconds. Want the captions all to play for 4.5 seconds in your next project? That's simple enough... select Text Caption from the Select drop-down menu and then change the Display For time to 4.5 seconds.

 

Finally, if you'd like to control the appearance of the Object Styles in each new project, simply choose Edit > Object Style Manager. As long as no projects are open when you work within the Object Style Manager, the changes you make and the attributes you set will affect every new project you create.

Alas, none of the pre-project settings I've discussed above will have any effect on existing projects. So if you're really against creating project tempates, I'd encourage you to spend some time setting up the Global Defaults and Object Styles sooner rather than later. 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

PowerPoint 2010: Use Video Bookmarks to Trigger Animations

by AJ George 

During a previous article on Perfecting Motion Paths, I made a short PowerPoint video illustrating the final motion path animation. Let's say I'm going to teach a class on how to use Motion Paths. In the class, I'm going to give a presentation that shows this video. In the video there are two uses of motion paths, and I want a little blurb to pop up when the second one starts, alerting my learners that this is a separate motion path.  Did you know that this can be accomplished in PowerPoint by using video bookmarks to trigger animations? Here's how:

Add a Bookmark to a Video

1. In PowerPoint, insert the video on the desired slide (Insert > Video).
2. Set the video to play automatically (Video Tools > Playback > Video Options > Start > Automatically).
3. Play the video. (Pause it when you reach the point where you would like to trigger an animation.)
4. Choose Video Tools > Playback > Bookmarks > Add Bookmark.



A yellow dot will appear on the video control panel, signaling there is a bookmark.

Add a Triggered Animation to a Bookmark

1. Add the text (Insert > Text Box), shape (Insert > Shape), or image (Insert > Picture) you would like to appear at this bookmarked spot of the video. You can put it anywhere on the slide.
2. With the inserted object selected (in this case I inserted a text box), add an entrance animation (Animation > Advanced Animation > Add Animation).
3. Click the Trigger button to the right of the Add Animation button you just clicked (Animation > Advanced Animation).
4. From the drop-down menu select On Bookmark and choose your desired bookmark (you can add more than one bookmark to a video, so there may be several).





5. With the inserted object selected, add an exit animation (Animation > Advanced Animation > Add Animation).
6. View the Animation Pane (Animation > Advanced Animation > Animation Pane­)

You will notice that the exit effect is set to happen prior to the bookmark trigger. We will fix that next.


7. On the Animation Pane, select the exit animation (it will be the one with a red star in front of it).
8. At the bottom of the Animation Pane, click the Re-Order button pointing down until your exit animation appears on the pane below the entrance animation.
9. Click the more arrow for the exit animation and choose Timing from the drop-down menu.



The Disappear dialog box will open. 


10. From the Timing tab, ensure After Previous is selected from the Start area. Adjust the number in the delay field to anything you like. In this case, my video is short, so I have set my delay to just .5seconds.




11. Press [Shift] [F5] on your keyboard to preview the slide and ensure the triggered animation is working properly.

***

AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations.

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Wacky Shapes Rule

by Kevin Siegel  

Captivate ships with a set number of Caption types. If you're a graphic designer (or know someone who is), you can always create more Caption types. However, the process of creating a custom Caption type can be a bit tedious.

As an alternative, you'll be happy to learn that you can get as wacky as you want when it comes to Text Captions, and you don't have to go to the trouble of creating a Caption type.

To begin, use the Object Toolbar to insert a Polygon, Circle or Rectangle on a slide. (To draw a Polygon, select the tool and click once each time you want to add a section. When finished, click at the beginning, or double-click, to close the shape.) 

 

Once you've drawn the shape, choose Edit > Add Text. You'll notice that there's an insertion point within the shape. At this point, you can add text just like you can within a Text Caption. And you can use the Properties panel to format the text as necessary.

If you've drawn a Polygon shape and you're unhappy with the shape, simply choose Edit > Edit Points. You'll then be able to reshape the Polygon in all sorts of wacky ways.

 

Note: The only shape that will not accept text is a Line.

***

Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

eLearning: A Bit of Inspiration

by AJ George 

It's been a little while since I've hit you with a dose of unsolicited inspiration, so here you go.

HTML5 Learner Integration

Fair warning: you may get this mediocre pop song stuck in your head. But pop song aside; check out Jasmine Villegas's Internet Explorer-sponsored music video to show how using HTML5 can produce some really interesting viewer interaction. What if we incorporated this into our eLearning? Imagine, instead of fashion forward teenagers lamenting high school antics, there was a scene from World War II where you were fully immersed in the learning module--pictures of yourself and all. Dispersed throughout could be content-relative games. Imagine how fun (and interactive) learning could be then. Also, if you're the technologically savvy type, click the "Behind the Tech" link below the video to learn how these effects were created.

http://www.justafriend.ie/

Snapguide

I've been playing around with this new iOS app for a little while now and I must say I really like the crisp design. The app is gorgeous. But looks aside, I see this being really useful as an on-the-go eLearning and mLearning tool. How's it work? Simply snap photos/videos from your smart phone and upload with the steps to complete the desired task. Large scale eLearning decks certainly have their place, but what if some workplace related tasks could be conveyed just as clearly this way? So easy!

SnapGuide is currently available for the iPhone only. You can search for it in the app marketplace, or visit this link and they will text a link to download directly to your phone for free.

Google's Project Glass

You have probably had your fill of news on Google's Project Glass. However, not only is this an exciting development for Augmented Reality in general, but the possibilities as they apply to eLearning and mLearning are pretty exciting. I've written about Google Goggles before, and how that technology could be applied to learning. This takes it a bit further. What if you didn't even have to point your phone at that building, landmark, statue, etc; instead, information automatically popped up, just by looking at it? Clearly, that is not the case today, but this latest Google project shows just how not-so-far-off that technology could be. 

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AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. 

Adobe Captivate 5/5.5: Join Objects in a Snap

by Kevin Siegel  

If you've ever tried to draw a line between two objects (so you could join them to show a relationship between one object and the next), you'll appreciate Captivate's Snap to Object feature.

In the image below, I've drawn two simple shapes on a Captivate slide. Next, I'd like to draw a diagonal line between the two boxes. 

 

In the image below, I've drawn the line using Captivate's Line tool. However, I wasn't quite perfect when I released my mouse and the line ended up being a bit too long. Certainly it would be easy enough resize the line at this point, but I'd like to be a bit more efficient and end up with a perfect object-to-object line the first time. That's where the Snap to Object option will come into play.

 

Since the Snap to Object feature will only work on new objects as they are being drawn, not on objects that are already on the slide, the first thing I did was delete the original line. Then I chose View > Snap to Object.

Using the Line tool, I drew a new line, starting at the first object and moving diagonally toward the upper left of the second object. This time, as I got close to the second object, a circle appeared over the corner of the second object. (This is a visual indicator telling me that Captivate was ready to snap to the second object.) 

 

All that I needed to do at this point was click my mouse and I had a perfect line between the two objects.

 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Writing & Grammar: One Word or Two?

by Jennie Ruby  

I came across this error in a heartfelt book review:

"It is a painful acceptance of the solitude and the loneliness of each and everyone of us."

The problem is that the writer needed two words rather than one: every one of us. The compound indefinite pronouns everyone, someone, and anyone sometimes need to be separated into two words. This usually occurs when a phrase  starting with the word of follows:

Any one of the rakes will do nicely for this light job.

However, that is not the only time these words need to be separated. Give the following examples a careful reading. Which of these pronouns should be two words, and which should be one word? (And no fair relying on the Microsoft Word grammar checker!)

1. I wanted to eat some grapes, but when I got to the kitchen, I found that everyone was gone.
2. Everyone likes a good joke.
3. I looked in the shed, but I could not find anyone of the rakes.
4. Everyone of my art books was soaked in the flood.
5. Do you need someone to help you lift that sofa?
6. Did you see anyone in the dark alley?
7. Have you seen anyone of the birds alight on the suet?
8. He asked someone of the guards to help him.

***

On last week's challenge, Precise Placement of Only, Nima Regev knocked it out of the park with 100 percent correct:

1. I expected only one of the tomatoes to ripen each week.
2. If you register early, you pay only $495 for the entire conference.
3. Only three participants in the rally were arrested (correct)
4. The three participants were only arrested, not indicted (correct)
5. The participant had contributed only one sample document before the class.
6. The ticket guarantees only entry into the theater, not the seat you will get.

Other correct answers came from Krista Allen, Gwen Zierdt, and Rebecca Fleisch Cordeiro. Michael Stein and Mary Saunders also get extra points for moving the word only to the end of the first clause in example 6, where it receives extra emphasis. Here is Saunders' take:

6. The ticket guarantees theatre entrance only, not the seat you will get.

I especially like this placement because the argumentative tone comes through: this sentence sounds like part of a confrontation with a theater patron. Also, don't think I did not notice the spelling of theatre with re! The er spelling is standard in the United States, but this French spelling is also listed as a variant in Webster's.

Those of you who did not move only in examples 2 and 6 were possibly going by ear--keeping only before the verb matches the pattern of spoken English. I sympathize with the fact that it sounds a little less smooth to place only after pay or afterguarantees, but the added precision might be worth considering a complete rewrite, like this:

The ticket guarantees only that you will get into the theater, not which seat you will get.

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If you like Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: How to Turn an Image Into An Animated Puzzle, Part II

by AJ George 

Last week I showed you how to animate a picture in PowerPoint so that it came in as a puzzle, piece by piece. That was cool. But if you followed along last week, read on to find some bonus tips for making the animation a little more realistic and adding some finishing touches.

How to Make an Animated Puzzle Look More Realistic

1. From the Selection and Visibility Pane, select all of the puzzle pieces.
2. On the slide, right-click one of the puzzle pieces and choose Format Object.
3. From the Line Color category, change the line color to black.
4. From the Line Style category, change the line Width to 1 pt.
5. From the 3-D Format category, in the Top Bevel area, change the Width to 5 pt and the Height to 2 pt.
6. Click the Close button.

The puzzle pieces will now appear 3-dimensional. 

 

Make the Puzzle Pieces Disappear

1. Select everything on the slide (press [Ctrl] [A]).
2. From the Animations pane, choose Advanced Animation > Add Animation.
3. From the Exit category, choose Disappear.

All of the items on the slide will appear selected on the Animation Pane with the Disappear animation applied to them.  


4. Click the more arrow on the last animation effect and choose Timing.
5. From the Timing tab, click the Start drop-down menu and select With Previous. Increase the Delay to whatever you would like. (I would suggest something like 2 seconds.)

Voila, you've done it! I see this effect being really nice in conjunction with a team photo to show how everyone is a part of the bigger picture, but I'm sure there are many other applicable uses for it. How will you use this animation? I'd love to hear from you. 

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AJ will be teaching a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. The class is later this month and there is still time to sign up.

Adobe RoboHelp: Edit Navigation Labels

by Kevin Siegel  

Creating a Section 508 Compliant version of a Help System is often a requirement for Help authors. The process involves such things as adding screen tips to images and links, and ensuringSection 508 Compliant Output is selected before you compile the layout. 

 

When opened in a web browser, the compliant output will look much like the image below: 

Notice that there is a TOC on the left. At the right, there's a link with the word "Hide." Clicking the word "Hide" simply hides the TOC at the left. (And the word "Hide" changes to "Show.")

If you'd like to make it a bit more obvious what the "Hide" and "Show" links will do, you can edit the text prior to compiling the layout.

On the Single Source Layouts pod, show the Properties of the compliant layout (you can right-click a layout and choose Properties).

Select the Navigation group from the list of WebHelp settings at the left.  From the In Topic Navigation area, click the Editbutton to open the In Topic Navigation Options dialog box.

Edit the text in the Show and Hide fields to suit your needs and then click the OK button. 

When you compile (Generate) the layout, your new labels will appear as links at the right of the page. 

 

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Looking to learn Adobe RoboHelp quickly? We offer a live, two-day online class once each month. Worried that your class will cancel? All it takes is a single registration and this class runs, guaranteed.

Writing & Grammar: Precise Placement of Only

by Jennie Ruby  

While reviewing the submissions from last week's challenge, I noticed that many respondents moved the word only to a position before the verb rather than keeping it where it was in my original. Placement of the word only is frequently tweaked by copyeditors for greater accuracy in writing-especially technical writing. Consider this conversation between police and a participant in a brawl:

How many people hit Joe?

Only I hit him.

Did you kick him, too?

No. I only hit him.

Did you hit other people as well?

No. I hit only him.

Are you sure?

Yes, I am sure. I hit him only.

Notice how the word only was placed in four different places in the sentence "I hit him," with a different meaning each time. The word only is a type of modifier called a limiter. It limits the word right after it in the sentence. Or if it is at the end of the sentence, it modifies the word right before it, with extra emphasis.

In the spoken language we tend to keep it in front of the verb and make its true target clear through verbal emphasis. In the written language, however, we need to move the word only to its rightful place directly before the word or phrase it is modifying.

This week's challenge: Precise placement of only. Some of these sentences have the word only misplaced. Others are correct and clear. Can you spot the difference? 

1. I only expected one of the tomatoes to ripen each week.
2. If you register early, you only pay $495 for the entire conference.
3. Only three participants in the rally were arrested.
4. The three participants were only arrested, not indicted.
5. The participant had only contributed one sample document before the class.
6. The ticket only guarantees entry into the theater, not the seat you will get.

***

Several respondents to last week's challenge entered into the spirit of deciding where to use passive voice based on what they wanted to emphasize in the sentence. I especially liked the treatment of damp earth and debris in this take by Jing Ping (JP) Fan:

Keep your new blower vac clean and use it only with dry leaves. When damp earth and debris are picked up (keep the passive since damp earth and debris are emphasized and they are the initiators of the chamber [being] clogged), the inside of the fan chamber may become clogged, which decreases the performance of the unit. Use a stick or other non-metalic scraper to clean out the unit when it is disconnected from the power source (keep the passive because the state of the unit being disconnected is emphasized). Do not store your blower vac adjacent to fertilizers or chemicals. Such storage can corrode the metal parts.

Michael Stein also explained why he kept some sentences passive. Notice that he used active for the first half of the sentence about damp earth by making the vac pick up the damp earth. But he keeps "may become clogged" passive(some might say become is a nonaction verb, but that is pretty close to passive):

Keep your new blower vac clean. Use it to pick up dry leaves only. If the vac picks up damp earth and debris, the inside of the fan chamber may become clogged (kept it passive because it is the vac doing the work and not the owner). This may cause the unit's performance to be decreased (kept it passive because it is the vac's performance in question and not the owner's). Disconnect the unit from the power source, and then clean this area out by using a stick or other non-metalic scraper. Do not store the blower vac adjacent to fertilizers or chemicals because the metal parts can become corroded by such storage (kept it passive because it is the vac corroding and not the owner).

Here is his overall logic:

I made the instructions for the owner active and kept passive the actions affecting the blower vac.

Kay Honaker also rewrote the passage with both active and passive voice, and gave this reasoning: "My passive sentences relate to the possibility that someone other than the owner may be doing the actions (such as disconnecting the power source)."

Despite my encouragement to choose passive for some sentences, a number of readers decided to make every sentence active. To do so, they had to make a thing do some of the actions, while a person (the owner or user of the vac) did most actions. Despite my defense of the passive, I think using active for everything really works in this paragraph submitted by Elisia Getts. Notice especially how "This" may decrease the vac's performance and "these" can corrode the metal parts.

It is important for you to keep your new blower vac clean. Use only with dry leaves. If you use the blower vac to pick up damp earth or debris, the inside of the fan chamber may become clogged. This may decrease the vac's performance. If this happens, clean out the fan chamber using a stick or other non-metalic scraper. Be sure to disconnect the blower vac from the power source before cleaning. Do not store the vac next to fertilizers or chemicals as these can corrode the metal parts of the vac.

I also appreciated Mary Jo Feeney's take on the paragraph, which was very similar and all active voice. Here is her final sentence, which also has the fertilizers or chemicals "which" may corrode....

Store the unit away from fertilizers or chemicals which may corrode the metal parts of the unit.

I count this entire challenge a success if I have you thinking about when to use active or passive, rather than writing without consciously choosing whether to use active or passive. Here is a big thanks to those not previously mentioned who also rose to last week's challenge: Jennifer Zapp, Sudha, Vera I. Sytch Brenda Sing, and Stacey Edwards. 

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: How to Turn an Image Into An Animated Puzzle

by AJ George 

A recent question in the Microsoft Office forums inquired about the process of animating a picture in PowerPoint so that it came onto the slide piece by piece--like a puzzle. The question was answered, but the answer was not exactly what the original poster had wanted. The answer explained how to make a picture look like a puzzle, but not how to have the separate pieces come in one-by-one. That is what I will cover today.

The original answer referenced this tutorial: Puzzle Pictures in PowerPoint. The tutorial includes a pre-made puzzle framework from PowerFrameworks, which I will also use.

Make an Image Look Like a Puzzle.

1. Download the puzzlepicture zip file at this link.
2. Unzip the file.
3. Start PowerPoint.
4. From within PowerPoint, navigate to the unzipped puzzlepicture folder and open sg002_1200_rectangle.pptx.

A presentation will open with an image of a whale overlaid with puzzle pieces.  

Note: If you are using an earlier version of PowerPoint that does not support .pptx files, follow the instructions here for using the .ppt file.


5. View the Selection and Visibility Pane by choosing Home > Drawing > Arrange > Selection Pane.
   
   You will see 12 puzzle pieces (these are the numbered Freeforms) and one rectangle.
   
       



6. Click the Hide All button at the bottom of the Selection and Visibility pane to hide everything on the slide.
7. Right-click the slide and select Format Background.

The Format Background dialog box will appear. Currently there is a picture of a whale set as the background so Picture or Texture fill is already selected.


8. From the Insert from area, click the File button.
9. Navigate to your own image, select it and click the Insert button.

Your image will now be the background of the slide.  

Note: If you notice sluggish response times in PowerPoint, consider inserting a lower resolution image.


10. Close the Format Background dialog box.
11. On the Selection and Visibility pane, click the Show All button to make all items visible again.  The puzzle pieces are already formatted with a background fill, so the pieces are comprised of the image you inserted. If you simply wanted your image to look like a puzzle, you would be done. Continue on if you would like your image to appear on the slide one piece at a time.

Animate the Puzzle Pieces

1. View the Animation Pane by choosing Animations > Advanced Animation > Animation Pane.
2. On the Selection and Visibility Pane, hold down the [Ctrl] key while clicking to select each of the 12 Freeform puzzle pieces.
3. From the Animations tab, select the Appear animation.

All of the puzzle pieces will appear selected in the Animation Pane.


4. Click the more arrow on the last animation effect and choose Timing.
   
   


The Appear dialog box will open.  


5. From the Timing tab, select After Previous from the Start drop-down menu and increase the Delay number to stagger the appearance of the puzzle piece. I went with .5 seconds, but you can choose whatever you like.
6. Click the OK button.
7. On the Selection and Visibility pane, click the Hide All button to hide all the puzzle pieces. Click the box next to Rectangle 16 to make it visible.

You will be left with a large blue rectangle. 


8. Right-click the rectangle on the slide and choose Format Shape.

The Format Shape dialog box will appear.


9. From the Fill category, change the fill color to whatever you would like. (For my project, I wanted it to appear as though initially the slide was blank, so I chose white.)
10. Click the Close button to close the Format Shape dialog box.
11. On the Selection and Visibility pane, click the Show All button to make all items visible again.
12. Press the [F5] key on your keyboard.

Your image will now come in as a puzzle, one piece at a time.

To use the slide in any other presentation, select the slide from the slide sorter pane (or in Slide Sorter view) and copy and paste it into your desired presentation.

Note: When pasting into another presentation, be sure to paste using the Keep Source Formatting option. Learn more about pasting options here.

Check back next week for tips to make your animated puzzle look more realistic!

Adobe Captivate: Apply Your Changes

by Kevin Siegel  

Over the past several months I've written myriad articles extolling the value of using styles on slide objects (including how to reset them, clone them and how to create styles on the fly).

Have you been a good developer? Are you using Object Styles? I'm going to give each and every one of you the benefit of the doubt... of course you are. But even if you are the most disciplined user of styles, there could be trouble ahead. Since several object properties are not contained within an Object Style, keeping things consistent can still prove challenging... even if you fully utilize styles. 

Let's take just one group on the Properties panel as an example. The Transform group (Captivate 5.5) or Position and Size group (Captivate 5) contains options that will not be found in the Object Style Manager when you create or edit a style.

What would happen if you manually used a non-style option on a selected slide object? Here's a scenario: let's say that you want to change the width of a single text caption. That's simple enough to accomplish via the Properties panel (using the Transform/Position and Size group). After changing the width of the caption, you then decide that you want all of the text captions in your project to use the new width. Since the width option isn't something that's part of an Object Style, you'll need to go from slide to slide and manually change the width of every caption. Not very efficient, eh?

Read on...

After manually changing the width of the text caption, ensure the caption is selected and then, go to the Properties panel and on the far right of the group, click the Apply to all button. 

You will see two choices in the drop-down menu: Apply to all items of this type and Apply to all items of same style. If you choose the former, all text captions in the project will get the new width. Nice! If you choose the latter, only the text captions using the same style as the selected text caption will update. This is a nice option if you only want to change the width of a specific group of captions. 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Writing & Grammar: The Power of Passive Voice

by Jennie Ruby  

As writers, we know we are not supposed to use the passive voice. Nearly every writers' guide tells us to prefer the active voice. This is a view I generally endorse. But, as a student in one of my grammar classes recently argued, knee-jerk conversion of every sentence to active may actually make the writing lose its point.

For example, if a paragraph is about Bob, Bob should be in the subject position in most of the sentences. Bob may do some things, but Bob may have some things done to him. To keep him in the subject role, you have to use passive for some sentences, like this:

Bob traveled [active] to Paris last fall. When he purchased [active] his plane tickets, he was offered [passive] a discount on some castle tours. When he arrived [active] in France, however, he discovered [active] that he had been scheduled [passive] for two tours at the same time. He complained [active] at the tour office, and demanded that the second tour be rescheduled [passive].

This week's challenge: Rewrite the following entirely passive paragraph using mostly active voice. If you chose to retain the passive on some sentences, indicate why. [Hint: decide whether this is the story of the blower vac or of "you" the owner of the new power tool.] I'm looking forward to reading your submissions.

Your new blower vac should be kept clean. It should be used only with dry leaves. When damp earth and debris are picked up, the inside of the fan chamber may become clogged. Then the performance of the unit may be decreased. This area should be cleaned out using a stick or other non-metalic scraper. Cleaning should only be done when the unit is disconnected from the power source. The blower vac should not be stored adjacent to fertilizers or chemicals. The metal parts can be corroded by such storage.

***

Many excellent sentences resulted from last week's challenge. Virtually every sentence readers sent in was an improvement over the original with the false subject. Here is the overall best take on the sentences, presented by Stacey Edwards, who also explains how she analyzed each sentence:

Original sentences are numbered. Revisions are beneath each numbered sentence. [Bold face indicates original subject and verb.] 

1. There are two places you can edit a resource calendar: the Working Time tab of the Resource Information dialog box and the Change Working Time dialog box.

You can edit a resource calendar in either the Working Time tab of the Resource Information dialog box or the Change Working Time dialog box.


2. There is a widespread misperception that search fields are case sensitive. (no clear subject or verb)  

Many new employees mistakenly believe that search fields are case sensitive.


3. It is difficult for voting rights advocates to prove in federal court that packing minority voters into majority-minority districts diminishes their ability to elect candidates of choice.

Voting rights advocates have difficulty proving in federal court that packing minority voters into majority-minority districts diminishes the voters' ability to elect their candidates of choice.


4. There is an average wait time for tables of more than 40 minutes. (missing subject)

Diners wait an average of over 40 minutes for tables.


5. It is sometimes desirable to convert user-defined missing values to nulls.

Sometimes, you should convert user-defined missing values to nulls.


6. There is one simple query that can be issued that allows you to select all records from a table but display only a specified column. 

You can issue a single simple query so that you can select all records from a table, but display only a specified column.

Edwards made sure to find a human subject for every sentence, and I do recommend that writers attempt to find that human actor whenever possible.  I especially love what she did with number 2: she figured out that there was no strong subject or verb, so she cast about for a good subject and put that in: "Many new employees" along with a strong verb, "believe."

On the other hand, sometimes it may be legitimate to speak of things doing things. If the concept or function or widget you are explaining is the most important thing in the sentence, you may want to place that in the subject slot. Here is an example where Barbara Wiedl did this:

The average wait for tables is more than 40 minutes.

The reader's principal concern may well be the wait time, and placing it first in the sentence is a good call.

Similarly, both Wiedl and Michael Stein revised number 5 this way:

Converting user-defined missing values to nulls is sometimes desirable.

Lisa Mileusnich gives another good take on number 5 (similar to Stacey's):

Sometimes you should convert user-defined missing values to nulls.

Number 5 also illustrates a common problem I find when I read training materials from which I am trying to learn: the what and how are included, but not the why. By using the words sometimes you at the front, Mileusnich's sentence leads one directly to the question of "When should I make this conversion, and when should I not?" The original, with its "it is sometimes desirable to..." takes the why as a given, as if the reader already knows that conversion is "desirable." Eliminating false subjects may sometimes show us that the sentence could actually contain a lot more information.

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Adobe Captivate: Custom Cursors Anyone?

by Kevin Siegel  

A student in a recent online Captivate class asked me if it was possible to create a custom mouse cursor for a Captivate eLearning lesson. Sadly, I had to tell the student that it wasn't possible. It's certainly simple enough to change the appearance of any selected mouse cursor (via the Properties panel), but Captivate is not an image-editing application so you cannot create custom cursor images (cur files).

While you cannot create cursor files (CUR's) within Captivate, you can easily create your own, and you can find a bunch of cursor images on the web. For instance, a quick Google Search took me to RealWord Graphics where I found a Gallery area containing an impressive array of free cursor images. The images can be downloaded and used within a Captivate project. If you aren't happy with the cursor images found in the RealWorld Gallery, they provide a Cursor Editor that allows you to quickly create your own cursor.

Download a Cursor Image From the RealWorld Gallery and Use It Within Captivate

Here's all you need to do if you want to download a CUR file from the RealWord Graphics site.

1. After accessing the RealWord Graphics site, click the Gallery tab.  
2. Click the cursor image group you'd like to download. (In the image below, I went with a collection of Aqua Green Cursors.)
   
    
3. Click the link below the image preview and save the file to your computer. (The Aqua Green Cursors group that I selected had several similar cursors. I went with Normal.cur.)
   
   

Note: Pay particular attention to where you saved the file. You'll be opening the location of the cur file next in Captivate.


4. From within Captivate, select a mouse pointer on any slide. 
5. On the Properties panel, click the Browse button and open the cur file that you downloaded earlier.
   
   
   
   In the image below, notice that the standard mouse pointer has been replaced with my downloaded custom cursor.
   
     

See Also: Change the Mouse Pointer Project-Wide.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Writing & Grammar: Avoid Using False Subjects

by Jennie Ruby  

The subject and the verb are two of the most important items in a sentence. The subject is typically the first unit of meaning in a sentence and the verb is the second. Together they form the core content of the sentence:

The angry chickadee chased the marauding squirrel from the feeder.

By starting with the unique subject and a specific action, you create a strong and interesting sentence. However, many of us don't write our training and business documents that way. Instead, we distance ourselves and our readers from the content of our sentences by using "false subjects." A false subject is the word there or it serving as a placeholder for the true subject. The nonaction verb to be follows, typically in the form of is, are, was, or were, acting as a placeholder for the true action of the sentence.

And where are the true subject and the true action hidden? The true subject might appear after the verb:

There was an angry chickadee chasing a marauding squirrel from the feeder.

But sometimes the subject might not be included in the sentence at all, as the action becomes passive:

There was a squirrel being chased from the feeder.

The cure for this distancing and uninteresting writing style is to (1) notice a false subject at the beginning of a sentence, (2) identify the true subject or actor (who may not even be mentioned in the sentence), and (3) identify the true verb. Once you have identified all of the important content, reconstruct the sentence with the true subject first, then the true verb. Thus,

There are two different ways that a mailbox can be installed.

First I notice the false subject and nonaction verb: "there are." Then I look for the true subject or actor. The true actor is not even in the sentence. To decide on a true actor, I have to think about who would install a mailbox. I could just say "a person," but a more specific person would be better. Maybe a mail carrier or a building contractor installs the mailbox. Or maybe I am talking directly to the reader "you."

Next I determine the action or true verb. In this case "installed."

Now I put the true actor and the action verb at the front of the sentence:

You can install a mailbox one of two ways.

Try that process on these sentences. Feel free to invent true actors if they are not present in the sentence. Add action verbs as needed. I can't wait to read your improvements. I expect your suggestions will make the text below far more interesting and stronger.

1. There are two places you can edit a resource calendar: the Working Time tab of the Resource Information dialog box and the Change Working Time dialog box.
2. There is a widespread misperception that search fields are case sensitive.
3. It is difficult for voting rights advocates to prove in federal court that packing minority voters into majority-minority districts diminishes their ability to elect candidates of choice.
4. There is an average wait time for tables of more than 40 minutes.
5. It is sometimes desirable to convert user-defined missing values to nulls.
6. There is one simple query that can be issued that allows you to select all records from a table but display only a specified column.

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Adobe RoboHelp: Synonyms Made Easy

by Kevin Siegel  

One of the most often used areas of any Help System is Search. And since Search is created automatically when you generate a layout, there's nothing the RoboHelp author has to do to make Search available for the user.

Search does have one main drawback for the user. If the word the user types in the Search box isn't found within any topics, the Search will fail and nothing will be displayed for the user. A failed Search is a missed opportunity for both you and the user.

Here is an example of how Search could fail. Your company Help System, a Policies guide, includes a topic concerned with contraband substances in the office. The word contraband is contained within the topic so the word will be found if users search for that specific term. However, a user who is curious about contraband substances might elect to search the Help System using another word, such as illicit. Because the wordillicit isn't in the Help System, the Search will fail.

There are a couple of ways to fix the problem. One way would be to add Search terms to the properties of individual topics. Another way, which I'll cover here, is to use RoboHelp's Advanced Settings for Localization to create a synonym (illicit) for contraband.

In RoboHelp, choose File > Project Settings. On the Generaltab, click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Settings for Localization dialog box.

On the Synonyms tab, click the New button. It's now a simple matter of adding the Word and its Synonym. In the image below, I've added illicit as a Synonym for contraband. And since many of my users type the mangers when they really mean managers, I've made a Synonym pairing for those two words. 

In the Generated WebHelp layout shown below, notice that I have searched for illicit. While illicit isn't a word in any of the topics in my Help system, the Drug Policy topic was still flagged in a successful search.

 

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Looking to learn Adobe RoboHelp? We offer a live, online class. In fact, there's a class coming up later this month.

PowerPoint 2010: Turn Off Picture Compression

by AJ George 

You may not realize it but PowerPoint is lowering the quality of the images in your presentations. How? By default, PowerPoint is set to compress the images in your files. In most cases compressing the images is a good idea because smaller images mean smaller overall presentations. In some cases however, you may wish to maximize the image quality. For example, if the focus of your presentation is a collection of photographs, the loss of quality due to the compression is problematic. 

Here is how to turn off picture compression:

1. In PowerPoint, choose File > Options to open the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
2. Select the Advanced category.
3. From the Image Size and Quality area, choose the presentation that you don't want PowerPoint to compress from the drop-down menu.
4. Select Do not compress images in file. 
   
5. Click the OK button. 

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Having a problem getting PowerPoint to behave? Email your issue. I may be able to help and then share the solution here.

Adobe Captivate: Force Re-Publish

by Kevin Siegel  

One of the wonderful hidden advantages of using Captivate 5 and 5.5 over older versions of the program is the overall speed of the publishing process.

In legacy versions of Captivate, it could easily take 3-5 minutes to publish a moderately-sized project as a SWF. Make a change to project (even a minor typo fix on a single slide) and you will need to once again wait the entire 3-5 minutes for the publish process to complete. With Captivate 5 (and 5.5), I've seen my publishing wait time lower by as much as 95%. It's a staggering improvement. Kudos to the Adobe engineers for working this out.

But...

I have come across an issue where some of my updated slides didn't show the updates in the published content. I'm not sure why this occurs, but I did find a way to ensure my published lessons always show my edits. When publishing the final version of your lesson, select Force re-publish all the slidesfrom the Advanced Options area in the lower right of the Publish dialog box. With this option selected, the publishing process will take much longer. Nevertheless, all of your edits will make it into the published lesson.

 

I've created thousands of eLearning projects using Captivate (hundred in Captivate 5). During all of that time, I've only had a few slides fail to to show my updates once published. With that in mind, it is not necessary for you to leave the Force re-publish all the slides option selected all the time. Remember, using this option will increase your wait time during the Publish process. However, to be safe, it's a good idea to Force re-publish at least the final version of each lesson.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Writing & Grammar: Should a Comma Go After Although?

by Jennie Ruby  

I rarely go out on a limb and say the word never in answer to a punctuation question, but I am going to chance it this time: Never put a comma after although--unless what follows it is a completely nonessential interruption. Okay, so it turns out I still can't say never. But let's examine why I want to say never. I have recently seen writers incorrectly do this:

Although, Betsy did not want to go swimming that day, Tommy convinced her to jump.

Although, when the water is warm, she loves to go swimming in the ocean, that day the water was cold.

In the first example, there is no reason for a comma afteralthough. The word although is not a transition word ( likehowever, therefore, or moreover). Instead, although is a "subordinating conjunction." It creates a subordinate clause and is actually part of the clause.

In the second example, the comma after although appears to form a pair with the comma after warm, making the introductory clause "when the water is warm" look as though it is parenthetical, or nonessential. However, it is not nonessential, because if you remove it from the sentence, the part about "that day the water was cold" becomes a non sequitur.

Let's look at an example where the word although is actually followed by an interruption, rather than by an introductory clause:

Although, as Pete said, the rain stopped by midnight, the stream was still flooded at 6 am.

The interrupter "as Pete said" is surrounded by commas, meaning you can leave it out and the sentence does not suffer a loss of meaning.

In speech people sometimes pause after the word althoughwith index finger raised, quizzical look on face, appearing to think of a new thought that contradicts what they just said and that might make them change their mind. In these cases, people tend to pronounce the word although in a long, drawn out manner with an emphasis in the middle: al-THOUGH-ohhh. Their words might be punctuated like this:

I intend to fire Jim--although--didn't he just win a new account? [I might be changing my mind.]

The dashes indicate interrupted thought and a complete departure from the gist of the sentence. A comma would not be a strong enough punctuation mark to indicate this kind of interruption. Contrast that with this:

I intend to fire Jim, although [or even though] he just won a new account. [I'm still going to fire him.]

I intend to purchase a new laptop, although my old one still works.

By far the majority of sentences with although in everyday business, training, or marketing are these ordinary uses, not the long, drawn out because-I-might-be-changing-my-mind types of sentences. So, I return to my original statement: don't use a comma after although.

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Adobe Captivate: Create Object Styles on the Fly

by Kevin Siegel  

Last week I talked about the importance of saving changes to existing object styles so that you can ensure a consistent appearance of slide objects, project-wide.

I'd like to take that concept one step further. In the image below, the Style being used on all of the text captions in my project is once again the [Default Caption Style].

Just like last week, I wasn't happy with the font or font size used in any of my project captions. I again selected a caption on one of my slides and made changes usingthe Character group on the Properties panel. 

As expected, a plus sign appeared to the left of the style name in the Style drop-down menu. As I mentioned last week, the plus sign means that there's a style override that has been applied to the selected slide object. 

Last week I showed you that you can simply click the Save changes to Existing Style command to instantly update all of the text captions in a project. From that point forward, the [Default Caption Style] will display the updated formatting.

 

But that was so last week. This week I'm not satisfied with simply saving my changes. Using that technique, I was able to update my objects to reflect my changes. While that was wonderful, I'm thinking that I won't always want to alter the look of my default styles. Instead, it would be better to create a new object style based on new formatting applied to a single object. And to take things one step further, I'd like to apply the new style to objects project-wide.

What I'm looking to do sounds complicated. But here's a solution that I think you'll agree is super simple.

Instead of clicking the Save changes to Existing Style command, click the Create New Style command (it's the command just to the left of Save changes to Existing Style command).

Give the style a name and then click the OK button. 

The new style will automatically be applied to the selected slide object. To use the new style on objects throughout the project, click the Apply to style to command.

Lastly, use the drop-down menu to select the style you'd like to replace with the new style. Click the OK button and the change will be just about instant... and project wide.

 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

PowerPoint & eLearning: PhotoPin, a New Stock Photo Resource

by AJ George 

I have previously written about my favorite stock photo resources.  I've also posted about how to find Google images you can actually use for commercial use.  In that same vein I'd like to present Photopin, a new resource that may be useful in your search for budget-friendly stock photos.

The photos are lifted from Flickr and are, by and large, Creative Commons licensed. This type of license allows free use but they'll need an attribution link. (If you'd like to pay for the photos instead of just linking to them, you have the option to do that through Fotolia instead.)

 

Having this many easily searchable Creative Commons images at your fingertips will be immensely useful if you are a blog writer. If, however, you would like to use the images in your eLearning, you will probably need images labeled for commercial use. No worries. After entering your search term and clicking Search, you can select Commercial from the License Type area in the upper left.

A word of caution: be sure to re-select the Commercial option for each search you do, as the choice does not stick between searches. Additionally, make sure that you follow the Flickr link for each image to check out the full License details, located in the lower right of the Flickr page.

Adobe Captivate: Saving Changes to Object Styles

by Kevin Siegel  

Object styles were introduced in Captivate 5. While they aren't necessarily the coolest features in Capitvate, Object styles provide one of the fastest ways to update the look and feel of slide objects project-wide.

As I've continued to teach Captivate to new eLearning developers, one of my challenges is ensuring that object styles are used efficiently. Changing the way a selected object looks is fast and easy via the Properties panel. However, using the Properties panel to change the appearance of a single object can be problematic. For instance, let's assume you are working with a project that contains upwards of 100 text captions. You can update the appearance of a selected text caption with a few clicks on the Properties panel. Unfortunately, you'll quickly discover that the remaining 99 captions have remained unchanged.

In the image below, the Style being used on all of the text captions in my project is the default style called [Default Caption Style]. 

I wasn't happy with the font or font size used in any of my project captions. I selected a caption on one of my slides and made changes using the Character group. 

The change took mere seconds. However, none of the other text captions took the change. In fact, it seemed that Captivate didn't appreciate the manual update on the Properties panel either. Check out the plus sign to the left of the style name in the Style drop-down menu.  

The plus sign isn't necessarily good or bad (I guess it depends on if you see the glass half-empty or half-full). The plus sign simply means that the selected object isn't using the original appearance (or intent) of the style. In other words, there's a style override that has been applied to the selected slide object. In this case, since I wanted all of my text captions to look like the one that I had manually formatted, the plus sign was bad.

Fortunately, it's not difficult to turn the chicken into some awesome chicken salad. With the updated text caption still selected, a quick click on the Save changes to Existing Style command instantly updated all of the text captions in my project. 

 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Writing & Grammar: Can a Sentence End With a Preposition?

by Jennie Ruby  

Can I end a sentence with a preposition? Well, yes and no. The old school rule that you cannot end a sentence with a preposition has some validity, but it has also been mocked by personages high and low. Allegedly, for example, Winston Churchill said, "That is something up with which I will not put."

The practical solution is to try removing the preposition from the end of the sentence. If it changes the meaning of the sentence, put it back. If you can move the preposition to another place in the sentence, try that. If it sounds really odd and convoluted, put it back at the end. Finally, if you have a preposition at the end, and you try moving it and are pleased with the result, leave it in its new position. 

Here are examples to try out (or to simply try). As always,feel free to send your examples to us.

1. Our office does not use these old-style floppy disks any more. I think we should throw them out.
2. What will the meeting be about?
3. Whom am I speaking to?
4. I informed the client where the meeting is at.
5. Which tunnel are we going through?
6. This is a reminder that the east building is the one we are going to.

***

After I read John M. Widen's entry for last week's challenge, I realized that no more need be said: 

1. black coffee cup
   • Please wash my black-coffee cup. Someone put cream in it.
2. cheap jug wine
   • If I decanted my wine into an inexpensive ceramic container, I might refer to it as my cheap-jug wine.
3. long range plan
   • My long range-plan for the rifle club was written on a roll of butcher paper.
4. orange sofa pillow
   • I chose lime green for the orange-sofa pillow. Of course I have no taste in colors or syntax.
5. free range chicken
   • Any poultry that escapes the rifle club might be called free range-chicken, or not.
6. broken CD tower
   • I should throw those old disks away instead of storing them in my broken-CD tower.
7. grape seed oil
   • It's easier to plant new vineyards if you lubricate the planter with grape seed-oil.
8. orange juice maker
   • While celebrating Holi in Mumbai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi) we bought drinks from the orange juice-maker.    
9. lower back pain
   • I have lower-back pain so I engaged a chiropractor who promised to lower back-pain.
10. red leaf lettuce
    • There is a head-forming red-leaf lettuce but I prefer the taste of red leaf-lettuce.

And here are the correct answers sent to me by Ginny Supranowitz:

1. black coffee cup
2. cheap jug wine
3. long-range plan
4. orange sofa pillow
5. free-range chicken
6. broken CD tower
7. grape-seed oil
8. orange-juice maker
9. lower back pain (I think lower-back could be hyphenated, but we all know what it means without the hyphen.)
10. red-leaf lettuce

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2007: Troubleshooting Pasted Slides

by AJ George 

Here's the scenario: You are an eLearning developer and receive a PowerPoint presentation from another party (a client, colleague, SME, etc). You've decided to paste some of the slides into another PowerPoint presentation following your own finely crafted master layouts. After you do this, you notice the formatting didn't quite take. Perhaps the bullets are positioned incorrectly. Maybe the title is incorrectly formatted. The whole thing is a big ol' mess. The cause is most likely that your presentation source did not use a master slide, or did not use standard content placeholders. Try this to clean up the mess.

1. Open the presentation into which you want to paste slides.
2. View the slides in Slide Sorter View by choosing View > Presentation Views > Slide Sorter.
3. Open the presentation from which you want to copy slides.
4. View the slides in Slide Sorter View by choosing View > Presentation Views > Slide Sorter.
5. From within that second presentation, copy the slide to be pasted by selecting the slide and pressing [Ctrl] [C] on your keyboard.

Note: If you are choosing more than one consecutive slide, hold down the [Shift] key while you select the first and last consecutive slides and then press the Copycommand. If you are choosing non-consecutive slides, hold down the [Ctrl] key and then press the Copycommand.


6. From View > Switch Windows select the presentation that is to receive the pasted slides.
7. In Slide Sorter view, click where you would like to paste the slides and press [Ctrl] [V]. By default, the pasted slides will follow the destination slide's layout. (However, if you're reading this, the layout is probably not looking quite right.)
8. With the pasted slides still selected, choose Home > Slides > Layout and then choose your desired layout. This should fix most of your issues.
9. If the content of your slides is still out of whack, it is probably because the original author used separate text boxes for text. To see what is on the slides outside the standard content placeholders, view the selection pane by choosing Home > Drawing > Arrange > Selection Pane. On the selection pane, locate the formatted Content Placeholder into which you would like your text to appear. Click the eye icon next to it to hide it. Any text that is still visible once you hide the Content Placeholder may be in one or several separate text boxes. You'll fix that next.
10. Select one of the individual text boxes on the slide and copy the content (highlight the text and press [Ctrl] [C]).
11. Delete the text box.
12. On the Selection Pane, click the eye icon next to the Content Placeholder to view it again.
13. Press [Ctrl] [V] on your keyboard to paste the deleted text box's content into the placeholder.
14. Repeat steps 10-12 for any remaining text boxes on the slide. 

Once you have placed all of the text into Content Placeholders, your slides will follow your master slides' layouts.

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Having a problem getting PowerPoint to behave? Email your issue. I may be able to help and then share the solution here.

Writing & Grammar: Hyphenating Adjectives (And Answers to Last Week's Challenge)

by Jennie Ruby  

Answers to last week's comma challenge, as presented byJing Ping Fan (Correct answers were also sent in by Susan Benson):

1. The tall and hollow trunk (or The tall, hollow trunk)
2. The upper right corner
3. A quick, easy lesson (or "and")
4. My blue suede shoes
5. The small down arrow
6. A loud and overcrowded stadium (or comma)
7. A small yellow icon
8. A large, cracked hubcap (or "and")
9. The large gray button
10. A wordy and uninteresting paragraph (or comma)

Are you surprised by some of these answers? For example, did you hyphenate upper right corner? Did you place a comma there? Did you want a comma between small and down for the small down arrow? Let's take a closer look at the items that were difficult.

The first thing to remember is that placing a comma between the adjectives means that you could have used the word andthere. When we try that on the expression upper right corner, we get "upper and right corner." When you read that out loud, it sounds a little odd. But more significantly, it implies almost a feeling that there are two different corners being discussed--an upper one and a right one. This is similar to the expression my blue suede shoes. If you say "my blue and suede shoes," it sounds as if you are talking about two different shoes. The word and truly does not work here, so a comma does not work, either.

Try that again on the expression "small down arrow." In describing such an arrow verbally, would you ever say "the small and down arrow"?  The word and does not work here, and for that reason, there should not be a comma betweensmall and down.

When I was a copyeditor on scientific journals, we used to talk about the "makes no difference" concept. The idea was that if it makes no difference in meaning whether you put a hyphen in versus leave it out, then leave it out. I think this concept works well on "upper right corner." Does it matter whether the reader perceives this as meaning the "upper rightcorner" (the upper one of the right corners) or the "upperright corner" (the upper right one of the corners)? No. Either way, the reader arrives at the upper corner on the right-hand side. Upper andright apply to the word corner equally. So there is no need to hyphenate upper and right to force the reader to join them together.

Contrast that with the expressions "blue laundry marker" and "high priced sedan." In both of these, the way you group the words does make a difference. Let's take out the spaces to show which two words are being read more closely together. If you read these aloud, you can hear that there is a big difference between a "bluelaundry marker" (you can use it only on blue clothes!) and a "blue laundrymarker" (it marks blue on any color clothes). Likewise, there is a difference between a "highpriced sedan" and a "high pricedsedan." The first makes sense, and the second is nonsensical.  What is a "pricedsedan"? In this last example, you do need to hyphenatehigh and priced to help the reader understand: a high-priced sedan.

Try this method on the following examples: If the first two words need to be read together, hyphenate. If the last two words need to be read together, leave it alone. And if it does not matter which two words are read together, also leave it alone.

1. black coffee cup
2. cheap jug wine
3. long range plan
4. orange sofa pillow
5. free range chicken
6. broken CD tower
7. grape seed oil
8. orange juice maker
9. lower back pain
10. red leaf lettuce

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Adobe Captivate: Troubleshooting LMS Woes

by Lori Smith

A Captivate developer created a nifty eLearning lesson complete with a quiz, advanced actions and some nice navigation features. All she needed to do to wrap up the project was get the finished lesson posted to her LMS and ensure it reported correctly. And that, unfortunately, is where she ran into trouble. The lesson simply would not work once posted to the LMS.

The developer contacted me. While I had never used her LMS, I have successfully posted and tested several Captivate lessons to myriad systems. One thing I have learned while working with all of those LMSs... you never know what you're going to run into. And her LMS was a challenge. Round and round we went with different options and ideas, but the pesky lesson would not report properly.

Stymied, I appealed to the Adobe Captivate forum in search of anyone who had successfully dealt with her specific LMS. No immediate luck and I continued to scour other forums while waiting for my post to be answered. During that time, I had my client try different approaches. In the end, we figured it out. Here's what worked: I had the developer take baby steps. First, I had her create a new project that only contained a few slides. Then I had her adjust the reporting settings until it worked with her LMS. Next I had her add a button, and then more interactive objects. And then a quiz. The good news? We got the stripped-down version of the project to work. We used the same settings on the original project and it also worked on her LMS. 

As luck would have it, I then received a couple of suggestions in the Adobe forums from Rod Ward. His tips were great--starting with "try a very small, extremely simple lesson and go from there," just as we had been doing. Below is a summary of the points from Rod as well as the things we learned:

1. Don't wait until the deadline to integrate with your LMS. Do it sooner rather than later. And use a very small project to nail down settings and hopefully minimize integration issues.
2. Even if your LMS claims to be SCORM 1.2 compliant, you may need to try the 2004 setting to make things work.
3. Once a simple lesson works, add the features you need, one by one and continue to retest.
4. Ask your LMS vendor if they have a test portal. This saved us a lot of time in the end instead of having to rely on our LMS contact to upload/install content.
5. Have a conversation with your LMS vendor to see if they know of any integration tricks with Captivate--ours required the Complete flag, the Pass/Fail status did no good.
6. If you can, simplify your quiz total by having zero points for each question, but one button at the end with 100 points assigned.
7. If you have invisible/hidden scoring objects, be aware that they still count in the total points of the lesson.
8. Even if you don't have a quiz in your lesson, you may need to add a button that reports 100 points to the LMS.
9. If using the Complete/Incomplete status instead of Pass/Fail, be aware of what "Complete" means. A slide is only considered "Complete" if it runs to its timed end. If a user jumps from a slide using the playbar or a button/clickbox, the slide may not be considered Complete. If you have branching, you may skip slides and thus not 'complete' the whole lesson. You can temporarily turn your TOC (and or regenerate it so it includes ALL slides in the lesson) and run your lesson viewing the fewest slides possible. Use the check marks to see what slides were actually completed and use this percentage (or a tad lower) in the % field.
10. Be a little wary of Resume Data bookmarking. LMSs support this feature differently. Sometimes utilizing this in the Captivate can cause issues for the LMS. Test it before telling your boss bookmarking can absolutely be done--even if your LMS vendor swears it can.
11. Captivate will only allow your users to retake a quiz if they still have one or more attempts left on the quiz during a session (and they have not tried to review the quiz or jump outside the quiz at any time).  If a user clicks the Review Quiz button or leaves the quiz, the LMS may freeze the current quiz and not allow retakes.
12. If you are having trouble getting an accurate LMS completion score from a branched course, you might want to try the TickTOC widget. You can read more about it here.
13. Read and post to the Adobe Captivate forum--it's a wealth of free information.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Adobe RoboHelp: iFrames

by Kevin Siegel  

If you have a need to include PDFs in your Help system, you have a few options. You can create a link to the PDF (which will open the PDF once the user clicks the link) or you can import the PDF into the project (which will create a topic out of the PDF).

There is another, less known technique for including content in your Help System, and this technique actually embeds the content within a topic: iFrames. You can use iFrames (inline frames) to insert PDF files or HTML files within an HTML topic. 

Inserting an iFrame is simple:

1. Choose Insert > HTML > IFrame to open the iFrame dialog box.
2. Give the iFrame a name.
3. Click the browse button and select a URL, HTML file, or PDF file to link.
     
4. (Optional) Click the Border tab to set the iFrame's border options.
5. Click the OK button.

The iFrame won't look like much when viewed in RoboHelp's Design window. However, the results are awesome when you preview the topic. In the image below, the PDF is displayed within the iFrame. Unlike an image, the PDF within the iFrame is scrollable, you can zoom in and out for a closer look, jump between pages, and (coolest of all) use the Show Acrobat toolbar button to display the PDF in Adobe Reader so it can be printed, etc. 

 

To edit an iFrame, double-click it to change the name, the linked item, or the border. While in the Design window, you can also drag the frame handles to resize the frame.

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Looking to learn Adobe RoboHelp? We offer a live, online class held once each month.

Microsoft PowerPoint: Hide a Master Slide Logo

by AJ George 

A PowerPoint user approached me recently with an issue. She was given a PowerPoint template with a company logo on it. She was asked to remove the logo but could not. My first thought was to tell her to remove it from the master slides. However, she had already tried this and the logo appeared to be part of the actual background, even on the master slide. My assumption is that someone created the background (with the logo included) in another program, or took a screen shot of the background in PowerPoint and inserted it as a background image. Whatever the case, that logo was not coming off. Her best option was to cover it up.

If the background had been solid, this would have been an easy fix. She would have simply needed to insert a shape with the same fill color as the background (and no line) to cover it up. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The background was instead a repeating pattern. In the end, I came up with a solution that works (and may help you out too!) for repeating patterns, but not for randomized patterns.

For clarity, this is what I mean by a randomized pattern:

 

And this is what I mean by a repeating pattern:

 

While I have no solution for the first scenario above, here is how to cover up the logo in the second:

1. Working within the Master Slide view (View > Master Views > Slide Master), select the master slide containing the logo.
2. Draw a rectangle (or any shape, really) large enough to cover the logo (Insert > Illustrations > Shapes).
      
3. Right-click the shape and choose Format Shape.
4. From the Fill category of the Format Shape dialog box, choose Slide background fill.
      
5. From the Line color category of the Format Shape dialog box, choose No line.
6. Click the Close button.
7. Using the arrow keys, move the shape to a section of the slide with the same part of the repeating pattern.
8. Using your mouse, pull the resizing handles of the shape to make it taller and wider. (This will give you some wiggle room in capturing the background pattern.)
9. Right-click the shape and choose Save as Picture.
10. Save the image wherever your presentation is saved.
11. Delete the shape from the slide.
12. Insert the saved image onto the slide (Insert > Images > Picture).
13. Using the arrow keys, move the image over the logo and adjust the position until it matches the background pattern.
    
    
    The logo will now be invisible on all slides following that master slide.

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Having a problem getting PowerPoint to behave? Email your issue. I may be able to help and then write about the solution here.

Writing & Grammar: Adjectives Versus Adverbs

by Jennie Ruby  

Last week's challenge was a tough one. Several readers correctly punctuated the sentences but did not correctly identify which commas were optional. Sadly, only a minority of respondents got everything right. Here are the answers as presented by Larena Jackson. The goals were to correctly punctuate (or refrain from punctuating) these introductory phrases and to indicate whether the comma was optional or required.

1. In the morning she will leave the house by 7:30.  
   (optional comma as refers to time-In the morning, she...)
2. Over the rainbow is where the pot of gold should be.
3. After the long and boring meeting, we finally broke for coffee. (required-prepositional phrase more than 4 words)
4. After all, the boss is my best friend. (required-prepositional phrase acts as transition)
5. In 2009 the software was completely revised. (optional comma as refers to time-In 2009, the software...)
6. On the other hand, Bill might be better suited for the job than Bob is. (required- prepositional phrase acts as transition)

Respondent Carrie Noxon brought up one thing I did not mention in my column last week: some organizations may have an in-house style that makes the optional comma after a short introductory phrase mandatory.   She writes, "Our standard calls for a comma with introductory prepositional phrases. For us, it is always required. We also like the Oxford comma."

These two rules mean Noxon's organization uses "close punctuation," meaning that all optional commas are mandatory. As soon as I read her comment, I guessed that she must work at a law firm, and indeed, that turned out to be true. Legal writing has a great need for consistency and precision, and using more commas tends to help in that goal.

Correct Answers were sent in by:

• Larena Jackson
• Vera I. Sytch
• Carrie Noxon
• Lorna McLellan
• Michael Stein

Adjectives versus Adverbs

Adjectives describe nouns. Blue, tall, funny, long--these are all clearly descriptions of things: The blue screen, the tall coffee, the funny face, a long drive. Sometimes one adjective in front of a noun is not enough to fully describe or identify the item. Then we use two or more: The big old truck, the upper left corner of the screen, a small gray mouse. As soon as you have multiple adjectives in front of the noun, you need to ask whether you need commas between the adjectives. Here's how you tell: if you cannot reverse the order of the adjectives you do not need a comma between them.

Read this out loud:

The small brown bird

It sounds natural and normal. Now try reversing the adjectives:

The brown small bird

It sounds wrong or at least "funny." You do not need a comma between these adjectives because they are in the proper order.

If you can reverse the order of the adjectives, you need to ask a second question: can you place the word and between the adjectives. Here is an example where you can reverse the adjectives:

the small furious rodent

the furious small rodent

You can place the word and between the adjectives, and it sounds natural:

The small and furious rodent

Now, you decide whether to keep the word and or replace it with a comma:

The small, furious rodent

Here is this week's challenge: Decide whether you should place a comma between these adjectives. 

1. The tall hollow trunk
2. The upper right corner
3. A quick easy lesson
4. My blue suede shoes
5. The small down arrow
6. A loud overcrowded stadium
7. A small yellow icon
8. A large cracked hubcap
9. The large gray button
10. A wordy uninteresting paragraph  

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

Adobe Captivate: A Clean Break from PowerPoint

by Kevin Siegel  

Many Captivate projects begin in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you've never tried to import a PowerPoint presentation, you'll find it an easy process. All you have to do is choose From Microsoft PowerPoint (located at the right of the Welcome screen).

After opening the PowerPoint presentation, you will be presented with a dialog that will allow you to control, among other things, the size of the presentation when it is converted to a Captivate project.

At the bottom of the dialog box, you will find an innocent-looking check box next to Linked. If you leave this option selected and then complete the import process, the new Captivate project will maintain a link to the source PowerPoint presentation. 

From this point forward, you can edit the source PowerPoint presentation from within Captivate. If the source PowerPoint presentation is edited outside of Captivate, you can synch the source with the Captivate project with a simple click of your mouse.

The ability to create a link between the Captivate project and the PowerPoint presentation is great. However, you might want to set it up so that there isn't a link between the two applications. Changing your mind about linking is simple. On the Library (Window > Show Library), right-click the PowerPoint presentation and choose Change to "Embedded." 

Once embedded, you will no longer be able to initiate editing sessions of the presentation from within PowerPoint. In addition, you will no longer be alerted if somebody on your network makes changes to the presentation.

Should you change your mind about embedding the presentation within Captivate, the embedding process can easily be reversed. Still working on the Library, right-click the presentation and choose Change to "Linked." You'll be prompted to find and open the source document. Once opened, the link between the presentation will instantly be reestablished.

See also: Changing PowerPoint Slide Sizes for Importing into Captivate

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

 

Adobe Acrobat X: Adding Description Fields to Document Properties

by Barb Binder  

It's easy to ignore the Description tab of the Document Properties dialog box in Adobe Acrobat. You may never even think about it as you create, enhance and review your PDFs. But if you start amassing a large collection of PDFs, ignoring the Description tab would be a mistake. The Description fields are easily searched (both locally and online) and taking a few minutes to fill them out as you go will save you the headache of realizing a few years down the road that you should have been doing it all along.  

 

My personal rule is to make sure I get those fields filled out when I make a PDF. I set the fields up in advance for files created in InDesign, FrameMaker and Word so that they are saved with the source file and simply appear each time I create a PDF.

The general steps are the same for all three applications (and many others that I won't address here). Basically, it's:

1. Open up a native file in your source application.
2. Figure out where to enter the description fields.
3. Create the PDF.
4. Open the PDF in Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to view the fields.

For the specifics on setting this up in InDesign, FrameMaker and Word, read on.

Adobe InDesign

1. Open any InDesign document.
2. Choose File > File Info > Description (Mac & Win), fill out the description fields and click OK. 
3. Choose File > Export to create the PDF document.
4. Open Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to see the fields.

To see any additional fields, click the Additional Metadatabutton.        

Adobe FrameMaker

1. Open any FrameMaker document.
2. Choose File > File Info, fill out the description fields and then click OK.
3. Choose File > Save as PDF to create the PDF document.
4. Open Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to see the fields.

Microsoft Word

1. Open any Word document.
2. Choose File > Properties (Mac) or File > Prepare > Properties (Windows) and fill out the description fields.

On Word for Windows, the fields appear at the top of the document. If you want to see the dialog box, you have to click Document Properties, and navigate to the Summary tab. On a Mac, you are taken right to the dialog box.


3. Choose File > Save as PDF (Mac) or PDFMaker(Win) to create the PDF document.
4. Open Acrobat or Reader.
5. Choose File > Properties > Description to see the fields. 

I know and use all of the steps as described above. Even so, yesterday I found myself with 50+ PDFs that I had just created. I was ready to send them off to the client and realized that I forgot to enter the description fields... on all of them! If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, check out next week's article: Adobe Acrobat X: Adding Description Fields to Multiple PDFs.

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Need to learn Acrobat? Barb's next Acrobat class is April 25. Come learn the basics in just two days.

eLearning: Discover Your Learner's Thinking Style

by AJ George 

Do you wish you could get inside the head of your learners and know exactly how their thought processes work? Me too, but we can't all be Professor Xavier.

Learning assessments provider Pearson TalentLens has managed to make a bit of self-examination possible at least. They have created the My Thinking Styles assessment to help people explore their unique thinking styles. The two part online assessment is free, takes only minutes to complete, and provides a basic report of the participant's thinking styles.

The service is not perfect. The end report focuses mainly on the benefits of each thinking style, rather than giving tips for improvement. Additionally, according to this report, I use nearly all thinking styles to a large degree so it would be difficult to focus on one style if I wanted. That being said, it is a useful free resource and may be one you would like to add to your metaphorical tool belt.

Allowing clients to complete the survey prior to creating eLearning for them (or passing it along for them to administer to all members of their team) might give you another perspective on how to approach their training. In a company setting it might also help you in the hiring process or to delegate tasks best suited to each team member's thinking style.

Give the assessment a try.  How accurately (or inaccurately) does it peg you?

PowerPoint & Articulate Studio: Resolve Performance Issues

by AJ George 

While working with a PowerPoint developer this week I learned that she was experiencing performance issues while using PowerPoint and Articulate Presenter.

I looked into her issues and found that it's a bad idea to work from a network or USB drive. In fact, it appears that doing so can cause crashes. The Articulate web site suggests that developers ensure that all associated files (presentations, audio, quizzes, etc) are on the C drive or local hard drive.

If you are sure you are working locally but are still seeing performance issues, try running a repair on Articulate Studio '09.

Still not working? There's one more solution. You may need to repair the software you are trying to use with Articulate (ie Microsoft Office). Click here and select your version of Microsoft Windows for applicable troubleshooting.

Adobe Captivate: Sometimes Manual Labor is the Best Kind of Labor

by Kevin Siegel  

During the recording process, Captivate typically does a wonderful job of creating screen captures on processes you perform within an application. I said "typically" because there are occasions when Captivate fails to create some of the screen captures and you are left in a bit of a pickle. You won't know Captivate missed an important screen capture until you stop the recording process and begin producing the lesson in Captivate. By then, the missing screen(s) may require you to record additional slides.

Assuming you are using Captivate's Automatic recording mode as you record a series of clicks on your computer, Captivate is supposed to automatically create a single slide (screen capture) every time you click your mouse. Alternatively, you can use Captivate's FMR mode during the recording process. Using this mode, Captivate will create a Full Motion Recording (FMR) video if you drag your mouse instead of individual screens. You will end up with fewer slides, but you'll have less flexibility since videos are harder to edit than individual slides.

What if you wanted to record your mouse pointer, along with the pointer path, as you pointed at screen objects? You weren't planning to click anything, you were just going to point at screen objects. Since Captivate's Automatic recording mode requires you to click your mouse to create a screen capture, you're stuck. If you don't click, you won't get that all-important screen capture. You could record an FMR, but you don't want a video. What's a developer to do?

To get around the problem, you can create the screen captures on your own--manually. First show Captivate's Preferences dialog box (Adobe Captivate menu if you are using a Macintosh; Edit menu if you are using Windows). Select theKeys category and make a note of the shortcut required To Capture a Screenshot. (If you don't like the default key, you can click in the field and type your own preferred keyboard combination.)

During the recording process, press the Manual Recordingkey on your keyboard whenever you want to capture the screen. Every time you press the Manual Recording key you will create one screen capture, just as if you had clicked your mouse.

There is one final thing thing to think about when it comes to screen captures. During the recording process, I have heard from developers that the Automatic recording type simply doesn't work (often times there is only a single screen captured during the recording process). While Captivate records the screen actions in most applications, some applications don't appear to get along with Captivate. In that event, I'd suggest using Captivate's third (and least-used) Recording Type: Manual. Just prior to recording the lesson, select Manual from the Recording Type area.

Using the Manual recording type will require you to press your keyboard shortcut each and every time you want a screen capture. If you forget to pull the screen capture you'll be out of luck since Captivate won't do anything for you at all. While this Recording Type will certainly require a significant amount of discipline on your part, your finished recording will contain every screenshot you were expecting.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Adobe Captivate: A Font Frenzy

by Kevin Siegel  

I received the following from fellow Captivate developer Johan Van Eeden. It seems Johan ran into some nasty font issues on his computer that totally derailed Captivate. He found a solution and shares it below.

Hi Kevin,

I recently sent you some information about a Captivate problem that I experienced: 

Soon after the green Captivate splash screen appears, the program freezes. 

The problem of Captivate hanging up on start-up is, according to the Adobe forums, one that is encountered quite a bit with versions 4, 5, and 5.5."

I tried installing, uninstalling and reinstalling Captivate several times, to no avail. The Captivate forum pages offer various remedies. I found a solution that worked on this page (at the bottom).

Apparently, if there are corrupted fonts on the PC, this can cause Captivate to hang up.

To resolve the issues, developers will need to:

1. Download and install FontFrenzy.
2. Take a Snapshot of the fonts on the PC.
3. "Unfrenzy" -- this moves all the non-system fonts on your PC to a specified directory. All you will have left in the Windows\Fonts directory will be the fonts that were installed with Windows.
4. Start Captivate.

To get your fonts back, you can "Refrenzy" them, or a selected group of fonts. I'm currently re-installing my fonts one letter of the alphabet at a time, then running Captivate after installing, for example, all the fonts starting with "C." In this way I hope to eventually track down the corrupted fonts."

UPDATE

I installed the fonts, alphabet letter by letter, until I got to I. After each letter's fonts were installed, Captivate would run. However, after I installed the fonts starting with the letter "I", Captivate froze again.

When I looked at the font names, I noticed that there were two fonts with an umlaut in the font name, on the letter "e", thus "ë."

I deleted both fonts from the Windows\Fonts directory and Captivate loaded without a problem.

It seems that, for whatever reason, Captivate can't handle fonts with an umlaut in the font name... something to bear in mind when people mention that they're experiencing the "Captivate freezes while loading problem." 

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Adobe RoboHelp: Importing & Linking Word Documents

RoboHelp allows you to integrate content created by different authors in Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker. You can create projects by linking or importing Word and FrameMaker documents and then publish in different formats, including printed documentation. You can also use Word and FrameMaker documents as source files in an existing RoboHelp project. 

This article is a quick summary of the import and linking process.

PowerPoint 2010: Copy a Master Slide from a Previous Presentation

by AJ George 

Ever received a PowerPoint presentation from someone and wished you could apply your own, previously created master slides in the presentation? Easy peasy; here's how:

1. Open both the recipient and the source presentation (the source presentation is the one that has the master slide you would like to use in the recipient presentation).
2. From within the source presentation, choose View > Master Views > Slide Master.
3. In the slide thumbnail pane on the left, right-click the master slide that you would like to copy. (Selecting the larger slide master at the top will automatically select all of its associated layouts. To copy just one layout, you would right-click and copy just that master slide.)
4. Choose View > Window > Switch Windows and select the recipient presentation. 
5. In the recipient presentation, choose View > Master Views > Slide Master.
6. If there is not already a customized slide master in the recipient presentation, right-click one of the blank slides and choose Paste (or press [Ctrl] [v]).
7. If the recipient presentation already contains customized slide masters, right-click below the last customized slide. You can select either Use the Destination Theme (the first image below) to use the theme of the current presentation; or Paste Keeping the Source Formatting (the second image below) so the pasted master will have the theme of the source presentation.
   
      
8. When you are finished, choose Slide Master > Close > Close Master View. 

Writing & Grammar: The Importance of Knowing (at least some) Parts of Speech

by Jennie Ruby  

If you have spoken English since infancy, you probably have a lot of the structures of English built into your head. You don't need me to tell you, for example, how to fix this sentence:

Towel the into the dryer went.

You probably immediately saw that the sentence was backwards (Yoda-speak) and that the word the goes beforetowel, not after it. The normally structured sentence would read:

The towel went into the dryer.

Why do we have to study grammar rules, then, if we know things like this without even thinking? Because not all areas of English are equally obvious. Punctuation, for example, is an area where we often have to fall back on rules instead of relying on, let's just call it "instinct." So in the interest of being able to punctuate correctly, today, I give you the coordinating conjunctions.

A conjunction is a word that joins things. We have several types of conjunctions in English, but the most commonly used are the coordinating conjunctions. They are used to coordinate two or more equally important points or ideas. There are only seven of them. I recommend memorizing them. Here they are:

But, Or, Yet, For, And, Nor, So

I have capitalized them here to facilitate memorization using the mnemonic device BOYFANS (or maybe you like the music of the Backstreet Boys, so you are a BOYS FAN). Either way, I recommend memorizing these seven words. Once you have them memorized, you can make snap decisions about punctuating compound sentences.

 A. She went to the grocery store early but they were all out of kale.

 B. She went to the grocery store early however they were all out of kale.

Which of these sentences requires a comma, and which requires a semicolon? If you have the seven coordinating conjunctions memorized, you can easily make this decision. Which example is actually two complete sentences joined by one of the seven coordinating conjunctions? If you said A, you'd be correct. Two complete sentences joined by a coordinating conjunction require a comma before the conjunction.

A. She went to the grocery store early, but they were all out of kale.

Try it on your own. My challenge this week is this: which of the following sentences consist of two complete sentences joined by a coordinating conjunction, and where does the comma go in each? Feel free to post your answers below by replying to this post. 

1. The teacup is on the table but the saucer is on the floor.
2. The File menu contains all of the commands for opening, saving, and renaming files.
3. The birdfeeder was full of sunflower seeds and corn yet the birds did not come.
4. The show featured two major stars so the budget was higher than normal.
5. The shadow of the billboard fell across the front windows and darkened the space within.

Also, keep an eye out for these kinds of sentences this week. Happy hunting!

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Jennie teaches two of our writing classes: Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts and Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts.