I Came, I Saw, I Learned...

Adobe RoboHelp: Apply a CSS Project-Wide in a Snap

by Kevin Siegel  

If you want to ensure that the appearance of your topics is consistent project-wide, one of the first things you should think about doing is creating a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and then assigning the CSS to all the topics in your project.

To assign the CSS to a single topic, open the topic. On the Formatting toolbar, click the Assign Style Sheet or Create New command. Select an existing CSS from the drop-down menu (or create a new one on the fly) and you are done.

Using the technique above will get the job done. However, you can only use this technique to assign a style sheet to one topic at a time. A typical RoboHelp project is likely to have hundreds (if not thousands) of topics.

To assign style sheets to multiple topics, use the Topic Listpod to select as many topics as you want (you can select all of the topics by clicking once on any topic and then pressing [Ctrl] [a] on your keyboard). With the topics selected, chooseEdit > Properties to open the Topic Properties dialog box.

On the Appearance tab, select the CSS you'd like to use from the list of Style Sheets at the left (in the Style Sheet area) and click the OK button.

Since multiple topics were selected before you opened the Topic Properties dialog box, all of the selected topics will now be using the same CSS.

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Need to learn RoboHelp? We have a 2-day class starting January 30.

Adobe Captivate: FMRs With all the Trimmings

by Kevin Siegel  

Last week I showed you how to use Captivate to create a seamless video using the Full Motion Recording (FMR) mode. One of the problems with FMRs is limited editing ability. If you use Captivate's Automatic mode, every time you click your mouse a screen capture will be created. However, if you use the FMR mode, a single video will be created.

When it comes to post-recording editing, the difference between the Automatic and FMR modes is very stark. Using the slide-based screen capture approach of the Automatic recording mode, you can edit every aspect of a slide, even a slide's background (using external programs such as Photoshop or Paint). With the FMR mode's video-based recording approach you still have editing options, but they are limited.

Edit an FMR

To begin the FMR editing process, select the FMR on the Timeline. 

On the Properties panel, locate the FMR Edit Options group. There are three options: Insert, Split and Trim.

If you choose Insert, you'll have an opportunity to record another FMR within the selected FMR. This is a handy option if you need to add more video in the middle of an existing scene.

The Split option will splice your video wherever you position the Playhead on the Timeline and create a second segment. The new segment will automatically appear on a new slide. I've found this option to be useful when a single slide FMR is simply too long. In my opinion, slides that play for a shorter duration will be more effective in the long run when compared to slides that tend to play on and on and on.

I've found the final option, Trim, to be the most beneficial, especially if I've made a mistake during the recording process and need to get rid of it.

Using the Trim option is simple enough. With the FMR selected on the Timeline, choose Trim from the FMR Edit Options drop-down menu.

On the Timeline, select the area of the FMR that you'd like to remove. If you find it difficult to manually select specific areas on the FMR, you can use the Trim From and To fields on the FMR Edit Options group. Or you can let Captivate do the selecting for you by choosing a Start and End Marker.

The last step is to simply click the Trim button on the bottom of the FMR Edit Options group.

 

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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: FMRs Rule?

by Kevin Siegel  

I've been teaching and developing with Adobe Captivate for years. The program has always been able to record Full Motion Recordings (FMRs). Never heard of an FMR? You are not alone. Usually developers learn about them by accident. If you record your screen using Captivate's Automatic mode, every click of your mouse will result in a single screen capture. Those screen captures convert to single slides in a Captivate project once you end the recording session.

During the recording process, if you perform a mouse drag (click the mouse clicker and then move the mouse around the screen), Captivate won't capture a single screen. Instead, Captivate will capture the entire drag event as a video--it'll be as if you've pointed a video camera at the screen and turned it on. When you finish with the recording, you'll see a single slide in Captivate representing the captured event.

Since FMRs aren't as easy to edit or control as single slides, I usually tell new Captivate developers to shy away from dragging the mouse during the recording process. Instead, I encourage everyone to click on screen items to ensure they get single screen captures.

In retrospect, I may have been overly hard on FMRs--they do have a role. FMRs can be useful if you want to demonstrate complex mouse events smoothly. For instance, if you're trying to show someone how to use a specific filter in Photoshop, capturing the process with an FMR might be more effective than simple screen captures.

To create an FMR during the recording process, simply select Full Motion from the Recording Type area and record your lesson. 

 

Once you end the recording, the captured video will appear on the Filmstrip as a single slide. You'll be able to differentiate FMR slides from regular slides easily enough... FMR thumbnails on the Filmstrip have a little camera icon in the lower right.

 

Next week I'll show you how to edit the FMR. In the meantime, check out the FMR I created late last year (it shows thedifferences between Captivate 5 and 5.5).

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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: Import Word Documents and Keep the Shapes

by Kevin Siegel  

You can do a lot of fancy stuff in Word. In fact, if you're really comfortable using the program, you can create a book that looks every bit as good as those produced by desktop publishers using programs such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign or Adobe FrameMaker. (Okay, okay... I'm not going to venture any deeper into the muck... Word can create some pretty complex stuff, but it's not for me... I prefer to use FrameMaker.)

Many people who use RoboHelp also use Word as the main authoring tool for the content that will be imported into RoboHelp. Unfortunately, during the import process there's potential trouble around every corner. For instance, the more complex the Word layout, the higher the risk that something will go wrong when that layout is imported into RoboHelp.

Let's take Word's ability to wrap text around an item and the Shapes feature as examples. You can use the Shapes feature to quickly draw a line or a callout to a screen capture inserted into a Word document. The shapes may look just fine in Word. However, once imported into a RoboHelp project the resulting collection of screen capture, line and callout will rarely look very good. This is especially true if you use any of Word'sWrap Text features other than Inline with Text. (One would use Word's Wrap feature on an object to control exactly where that object appears in the Word layout.) For example, in the image below Word's Wrap Text was set to Tight. There's a callout to the right and a squiggly line. 

The image below shows the content after it has been imported into a new RoboHelp topic. Notice that the Shapes did make it into RoboHelp... but the integrity of the layout has been lost.

 

If you need to use the text wrap and Shapes feature in Word, I have a simple trick that will allow you to maintain much of the layout in RoboHelp.

1. Select the screen capture and shapes in the Word document. (Shift-click works nicely for this purpose.)
2. Cut the selected items to the clipboard (Ctrl-x).
3. On the Home tab of Word's Ribbon, click the bottom of the Paste command and choose Paste Special.
   
    
   
   The Paste Special dialog box opens.  
   
    
4. Select Picture (JPEG) from the As list and click the OKbutton.
   
   

The independent shapes have been converted into a single image. Once imported into RoboHelp, the Shapes will appear as they did in Word... and they'll Generate just fine too.

 

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Need to learn RoboHelp? We have a 2-day class starting soon.

Adobe Captivate: Nudge the Screen Area

by Kevin Siegel  

When creating a new Software Simulation in Adobe Captivate, the red box that you can drag to any area of your screen display is known as the Screen Area.

Anyone who has tried dragging the pesky screen area from one part of the screen display to another knows that grabbing the screen area's border can get a bit tricky. I don't know about you but I am rarely able to grab the edge of the screen area the first time. And I'll readily admit that it sometimes takes me two or three attempts before I am successful in moving the thing where I need it.

During my most recent online Captivate class, one of my students asked if it was possible to move the screen area without using the mouse. Specifically, he wanted to use the arrow keys on his keyboard to nudge the screen area this way or that.

I told the student that he had made a perfectly reasonable request, but the ability to nudge the screen area with the keyboard wasn't a feature found in the current version of Captivate.

A few minutes later, the student, Timothy Matthews, informed me that he had found a way to do it. I hate to admit it when I'm wrong... but kudos to Timothy. He did indeed, find a way. Here is what he discovered:

With the red-bordered screen area on the display selected, he clicked and held the border of the screen area (don't let go of the mouse clicker or the trick won't work). 

 

 

Next, Timothy pressed the arrow keys on his keyboard to nudge the screen area box. He also found that he could nudge in smaller increments by pressing the [Ctrl] key and the arrow keys.

While I think the ability to nudge the screen area with the keyboard is great, it would be even better if you didn't have to keep your mouse clicker pressed the whole time... that just seems like too many contortions to go through or remember. I'd like it a whole lot better if you could just click on the edge of the red box to select it, release the clicker and then press the arrow keys. Perhaps Captivate 6? In any event, thanks to Timothy, you now know that there is a way to nudge that pesky screen area.

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5 or 5.5? We offer Beginner andAdvanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

Writing and Grammar: More on Lists, Bullets, and Tufte

by Jennie Ruby

"PowerPoint...has beaten the bulleted list to death," says Skills & Drills reader Jeannine Statter. "Add a new content slide to a PowerPoint presentation and up pops a bullet followed by Click to add text. [Because every]  new slide [is presented] this way, I'm lead to believe I need a bulleted list whether I really have items that need bulleting or not."

She goes on to say that "A list is an invaluable means of presenting information when it is used properly.  But a sea of bullets in a presentation or manual is just as ineffective as no bullets at all." Her colleague Michael Stein seconds this opinion:

Tufte's opinion [on bullets and builds] seems to be too heavy handed. The goal of a presentation is to convey information to the consumer in the manner that works best for the delivery of the content.  Sometimes bullets are not effective. Sometimes bullets are effective. Sometimes they are most effective when displayed one at a time. This is particularly true when the presenter needs to convey a dramatic point. If you saw all of the bullet points at one time, the presenter would lose the impact.

For example:

• In 1940, 4,000 molecules per million of carbon in the atmosphere
• In 1950, 25,000 molecules
• In 1960, 400,000 molecules
• In 1970, 2.5 million molecules

Displaying all of these at once would take away from the dramatic impact. Making the font size for each subsequent bullet larger would make it even more dramatic. The presenter should determine if bullet points are the right choice for conveying this particular piece of information. Tufte goes too far when he says that they should never be used.

Stein gives us some good guidelines, echoing Melanie Scott's comments from last week:

To design an effective presentation, the presenter must ask the following questions before deciding upon the presentation medium and manner of presentation: 

1. Who is my audience?
2. What do I need to convey to this audience?
3. What is the best method for conveying this information to this audience?

But what if we have multiple audiences using the material in various ways and in various situations? Stein tells us:

If the presentation is to be given to the audience in an electronic format for later personal use, then the presenter must change the presentation for this format. What works effectively for a live, in-person presentation does not work effectively for the person viewing the presentation on a computer or iPad. When presenters provide the audience with an electronic copy, it is necessary to provide presentation notes to explain the slide content.

Failure to heed this last point: providing notes to explain slide content, is the pet peeve of reader Julie Warnus:

If I ruled the world, every creator of a presentation would include his/her script in the Notes portion. We have thousands of PPTs posted on our intranet or saved in our records management system. A good number of them are utterly useless -- because there is no accompanying text that explains the slides.

This complaint is certainly well-taken, but I find that I do not add speaker notes because I often use PowerPoint to create a handout for the audience. I am concerned that if what I am going to say is in print in front of the audience, they will be distracted by reading instead of listening, or they will be reading ahead instead of participating in the current discussion. Am I just a control freak? Or is this a legitimate concern?

My practice is usually right in line with what reader Kay Honaker says:

I use a presentation as much for myself as for my audience: it helps keep me organized and assures that none of the amazing and salient points I want to make are left out. Thus, bullet lists on multiple slides serves the same function as an outline. Each list item is a talking point from which I can launch into discussion or analysis, follow a teaching moment, give background, answer questions.

She seems to share my concern about distraction:

If I'm [talking] for any length of time I blank the screen so the slide doesn't become a distraction.

What do you think? Should slide presentations always contain speaker notes? Should those be in front of the audience during the presentation? Is there a convenient way to create the handouts with no speaker notes, but then make the speaker notes available when putting the presentation online for wider consumption? Am I being, as Tufte says, "authoritarian" or too controlling if I want to use builds in PowerPoint to keep the audience with me? Can revealing bullets one by one be very effective, as Stein says? If you have techniques or opinions on these questions (especially on "Is Jennie a control freak?"), we would love to hear from you.

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

Creating Pop-up Text in Adobe Captivate 5.5

Check out this awesome example of how to use Advanced Actions to create some nifty pop-up information in a Captivate lesson. I especially like the way the lesson makes full use of Captivate's Full Motion Recording and Panning features.

eLearning: Google Goggles Update

by AJ George 

I wrote an article about  Google releasing an app called Google Goggles for Android nearly two years ago. I wondered if it could be the next big app, and how it could positively impact the eLearning community. My feeling at the time was that in the right environment, Google Goggles could be used to scan images in real time and receive just-in-time learning on the go.

Now that it's had some time to develop and work out the kinks, Google has improved Google Goggles with its 1.7 update. Google has added a continuous shooting mode to its repertoire. This means you can scan the room for objects and get instant Google searches on them without actually having to press the shutter button. Additionally, Google has added text recognition to search, which I think is even more valuable for the eLearning community.

Imagine you are given a handout in a class/meeting/convention with an excerpt from a magazine or other printed publication. You would like to share the excerpt with your students/colleagues/twitter followers but you don't want to take a low-res image of the excerpt and have everyone go blind trying to read it. You also don't want to manually retype the whole thing. With Google Goggles, just scan part of the text  and, if there is an online version, Google will find it, allowing you to link to it for all to see. Technology!

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Adobe Captivate: Say Goodbye to the Mouse Click Sound

by Kevin Siegel  

I received an SOS from a fellow Captivate developer who was having a hate-hate relationship with the mouse click sounds he was hearing in his Adobe Captivate demonstration. He told me he had spent over an hour trying to figure out how to disable the mouse-click sound, project-wide. Project-wide? Heck, he was so frustrated at this point that he was willing to disable the mouse click sound, one mouse pointer at a time. The solution is actually quite simple, and can be used project-wide. I shared it with him and now I'm going to share it with you.

First, select any of the mouse pointers on any slide in your project. Then, on the Properties panel, open the Options group (if necessary) and deselect Mouse Click Sound.

To apply the change to every mouse pointer in the project, click the drop-down menu in the upper right of the Options group and chooseApply to all items of this type.

 

 

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5 or 5.5? We offer Beginner andAdvanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

Camtasia Studio: Speech to Text

Camtasia Studio 7.1 can convert (transcribe) speech to text... an awesome feature that will help make quick work out of creating closed captions. Review this video to learn how to use the speech to text feature.