for Producing and Managing Flash-based e

Transcription

239 for Producing and Managing
TIPS Flash-based e-Learning Content
Edited by Bill Brandon
239 Tips for Producing and Managing Flash-based e-Learning Content |
2
Copyright © 2008 by The eLearning Guild
Published by The eLearning Guild
375 E Street, Suite 200
Santa Rosa, CA 95404
www.elearningguild.com
You may download, display, print, and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retaining
this notice) for your personal, non-commercial use, or use within your organization. All other
rights are reserved.
This is a FREE Digital eBook. No one is authorized to charge a fee for it, or to use it to collect data.
Attribution notice for information from this publication must be given, must credit the individual contributor in any citation, and should take the following form: The eLearning Guild's 239 Tips
for Producing and Managing Flash-based e-Learning Content
Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites, offered as citations or sources for further information, may have disappeared, or been changed, between the date this book was published and
the date it is read.
Other FREE Digital eBooks by The eLearning Guild include:
The eLearning Guild's Handbook of e-Learning Strategy
The eLearning Guild's Handbook on Synchronous e-Learning
162 Tips and Tricks for Working with e-Learning Tools
834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction
328 Tips on the SELECTION of an LMS or LCMS
339 Tips on the IMPLEMENTATION of an LMS or LCMS
311 Tips on the MANAGEMENT of an LMS or LCMS
Publisher: David Holcombe
Editorial Director: Heidi Fisk
Editor: Bill Brandon
Copy Editor: Charles Holcombe
Design Director: Nancy Marland Wolinski
The eLearning Guild™ Advisory Board
Ruth Clark, Lance Dublin, Conrad Gottfredson, Bill Horton, Bob Mosher, Eric Parks, Brenda Pfaus,
Marc Rosenberg, Allison Rossett.
Table of Contents
I. How to Use These Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
A. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
II. 105 Tips for Using Adobe Flash Professional & Flash Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
III. 6 Tips for Using Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (Breeze) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
IV. 26 Tips for Using Adobe Captivate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
V. 3 Tips for Using Adobe Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
VI. 2 Tips for Using Adobe Presenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
VII. 9 Tips for Using Articulate Presenter & Engage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
VIII. 4 Tips for Using Artculate Rapid e-Learning Studio & Studio Pro . . . . . . .61
IX. 6 Tips for Using Trivantis Lectora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
X. 4 Tips for Using Camtasia Studio Screen Recording & Presentation . . . .66
XI. 21 Tips for Using Other Tools
A. Microsoft PowerPoint (6) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
B. Microsoft Word (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
C. Qarbon Viewlet Builder (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
D. zPhoto (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
E. Second Life (5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
F. Code Baby (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
G. Microsoft InfoPath (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
H. Flash wrappers (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
I. Ignite Pro Studio (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
J. Audio Generator (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
K. Sonic Memo (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
L. Zamzar (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
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XII. 22 Tips Provided by Tool Vendors
A. Content Point – Atlantic Link (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
B. Quick Lessons (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
C. Talking Letter (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
D. Phasient Sim Builder (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
E. WILD Software (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
F. Flypaper (4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
G. Unison (13) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
XIII. 31 Tips on Work Practices and General Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91
XIV. Thanks to Our Tipsters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
About Guild membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102
List of Advertisers
Adobe Captivate
50
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Adobe Flash CS3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Adobe Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Adobe Notre Dame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Articulate eBook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
Articulate Rapid e-Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Atlantic Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
Beeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Dazzletech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
Harbinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
QuickMind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
4
5
I. How to Use These 239 Tips
A. Introduction
In February and March, 2008, The eLearning Guild conducted a survey of its members, asking
for their favorite tips for producing and managing Flash-based e-Learning. Members could submit tips relating to any or all of 19 different tools (plus an “other” category) that either produce
Flash output or that can incorporate Flash content. A total of 147 members responded to the survey, contributing 239 usable tips on 28 products (17 of which were not included in the original
list).
As usual in our past surveys, the tips range in length from one-sentence ideas all the way up
to multi-page discourses. Some are very basic in nature, and others are quite advanced. These
tips were different from past surveys in one significant way: Many of them contain detailed
ActionScript code that will help you solve common problems. We have not edited the tips in any
way, other than to correct spelling – everything you see in this book is in the tipsters' own words.
As a result, these tips will be useful to any designer or developer looking for best practices to
incorporate into their own production process.
We began the process of turning these tips into an organized collection simply by separating
the tips into groups that made sense. The largest group is the 105 tips for Adobe Flash Professional and Flash Player. The next largest (31 tips) consists of recommended practices and general
tips for working with Flash. About half of the tools garnered only a single tip each.
Next, we separated the tips that vendors provided on their own tools from the tips provided
by users of the tools. Because many of the tips were long, and addressed more than one idea, it
was not possible to sort the tips further into sub-categories. As a result, we have provided summaries of the key idea in each tip (with a few exceptions). These summaries are printed in ALL
CAPS at the start of the tips.
Another difference in this book, compared to our others, is that after each tip we provide the
name of the tipster who provided it. A list of Tipsters appears at the end of the book. This may
help you to contact Tipsters for additional information. A few tips were contributed by
“Anonymous.”
We deeply appreciate the effort that contributors made to create these tips. We hope you find
many valuable ideas here that can help you as you create Flash content for online learning.
This FREE Digital eBook would not have been possible were it not for a generous contribution
to its development from these sponsors:
• Adobe
• Articulate
• Atlantic Link
• Beeline
• Dazzle Technologies
• Harbinger
• QuickMind
If you're not familiar with their products for e-Learning, or if you haven't checked them out
lately, we encourage you to take a look at your earliest convenience.
When importing
a sound to your
Flash movie, do
it with good
quality and an
uncompressed
format. This will
allow you to
produce versions
with different
qualities simply
by changing the
Publish Settings.
Remember, MP3
is a format that
loses quality
when the compression increases.
mario gutierréz toledo
6
II. Adobe Flash Professional & Flash Player
USE EXTERNAL FILES FOR DATA — Don't hard-code text, or even images, inside your .SWF file. Use
an external file, such as .XML, to store that information, and just load it dynamically at run time.
This will make any possible future update a snap. In addition, you can reuse the same Flash programming and produce many different content screens, just by loading different data files.
Tipster: Adrián Murillo
IMPORTING SOUND — When importing a sound to your Flash movie, do it with good quality and
an uncompressed format. This will allow you to produce versions with different qualities simply by
changing the Publish Settings. Remember, MP3 is a format that loses quality when the compression increases. Besides, all sounds are decompressed to be included in the Library of an editable
file (.FLA), so that the file size and the time to generate .SWF movies remain unchanged.
Tipster: Mario Gutierréz Toledo
ALWAYS DECLARE AND INITIALIZE VARIABLES — Don't just use them. This may seem like a nobrainer, but it's surprising how often it happens. Make sure to provide a default value, even if it's
just a blank space or “ ”. Also, remember to initialize the setInterval every time you start a
new content section. Not doing this may cause some random, hard to solve, problems. Even more
so when your content integrates inside another system, such as a LMS or custom player.
OPTIMIZING E-LEARNING VIDEO FOR THE WEB — If you are looking to deliver to the largest audience, you'll want to select Flash 7-based compression of your content. Using the Spark or On2
Codecs (additional cost) will offer great quality video and easy integration into your content. If
your viewers have the latest Flash player 9 or higher, look to use the new H.264 compression technology. This allows you to play back the highest quality video at the smallest sizes. General guidelines for compression:
• 15 frames per second
• 320 x 240 pixels or 512 x 384 pixels
• Keyframes: 90
• Audio: MP3 - 22 khz, Mono, 64 kBit/s
Remember, lowering your audio from Stereo to Mono will significantly reduce the file size of your
video. Also with the latest codec's, you can take advantage of pixel doubling where you compress
at a smaller size and enlarge the video on your HTML file for playback. This allows a larger viewing
area with smaller downloads.
Compress your video as .FLVs which are external files to your main Flash tool or application. This
allows you to easily swap or update your content as you develop, or need to update to a newer
version. Tipster: Joy Vinson
Tool Tips: Look at Sorenson Squeeze for Mac or PCs, or for Mac Video users look to Episode, for your
compression toolset. Tipster: Nick Floro
7
II. Adobe Flash Professional & Flash Player continued
Don't just test on
Firefox, Internet
Explorer, Opera,
and so on. Test
several browser
versions also, such
as FF 1, FF 2, IE 6,
IE 7, or as appropriate. Sometimes
the very same
version of the
Flash player
behaves differently on different
browser versions.
Adrián Murillo
TARGET TO FLASH PLAYER 7 AS MUCH AS YOU CAN — Many systems don't have access to a more
updated player version, such as, obviously, older systems like Windows 95 and NT, but most important, newer platforms such as the Nintendo Wii. It's surprising how many people are using them
to browse the Internet. Naturally, this decision depends on your target user profiles.
TEST YOUR CONTENT ON MULTIPLE BROWSER VERSIONS — Don't just test on Firefox, Internet
Explorer, Opera, and so on. Test several browser versions also, such as FF 1, FF 2, IE 6, IE 7, or as
appropriate. Sometimes the very same version of the Flash player behaves differently on different
browser versions. Tipster: Adrián Murillo
TEST YOUR CONTENT ON MULTIPLE PLAYER VERSIONS, STARTING FROM YOUR MINIMUM REQUIRED UP TO THE LATEST VERSION — Adobe has a tendency to implement new “security” fixes that
sometimes may block some functionality. Don't just test over major version changes, such as 7, 8,
or 9. Test over minor, such as 9.0.48, 9.0.115. For example, starting with version 9.0.115, the Flash
player blocks the getURL function calls, causing many problems on already-deployed content.
HOW TO HAVE THE HOT SPOT E-LEARNING OBJECT DISPLAY THE CORRECT ANSWER — When
using the Flash learning objects you can specify the incorrect feedback. For example, "Sorry that
is not the correct answer. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West." Entering text works great
for multiple choice, T/F, and fill-in-the-blank type questions. But what about “Click the area of the
window” questions? Here's a tip that will allow you to show the correct answer for a hot-spot
learning object.
1. Create a new layer above the Components layer — to keep yourself organized, name the layer
"mcCorrect".
2. Create a new movie symbol. In the symbol, draw a circle; this is what will be used to highlight
the correct answer.
3. Place this symbol in frame 1 of the mcCorrect layer, and name the instance "mcCorrect". Move
the mcCorrect over the object that is the correct answer.
4. Add the following ActionScript to frame 1 of the main timeline.
mcCorrectSpot._visible = false;
5. In the Action panel, open the HotObjects_single. In the actions for the object, scroll down
to line 188. You'll see:
router.sessionStop();
router.submitScore();
Below these lines add:
_root.mcCorrectSpot._visible = true;
8
When you must
display long
text passages,
minimize surrounding animation. Movement on the
screen can distract the user,
making long
passages difficult to read.
Flashkit.com is
a tremendous
resource for all
Flash developers.
Jason Harris
Your script will look like this:
router.sessionStop();
router.submitScore();
_root.mcCorrectSpot._visible = true;
You can apply the same logic to the drag-and-drop learning object. Note, you will need to add an
instance of the mcCorrect symbol for every drop object. For example, if you have four drop
objects, you would need to have mcCorrect1, mcCorrect2, mcCorrect3, and mcCorrect4. You would need to adjust the script to hide and show each instance accordingly.
Tipster: Tracey Kogelmann
SELECTING VOICES — For your narrations, prefer female voices, or men with a medium register.
This allows you to better disguise the high whistles (quantization errors) the MP3 Flash compression produces, commonly called “artifacts.” In short, avoid putting Darth Vader against the microphone. Tipster: Mario Gutiérrez Toledo
TEST EARLY FROM A REMOTE SERVER — Many content problems in Flash, such as external resource
loading or XML communication issues, may not present themselves until the .SWF is streaming
from a remote server over the Internet. Keep bandwidth constraints in mind when designing and
developing content. Just because a .SWF loads quickly from your local hard drive or network does
not mean it is bandwidth-friendly over an Internet connection. Always remember that users may
be accessing your content from home, via Cable, DSL, or over a modem.
Additionally, keep your loading screens light. Your loading indicators should display quickly, regardless of the user’s connection speed. When you must display long text passages, minimize surrounding animation. Movement on the screen can distract the user, making long passages difficult to read. Flashkit.com is a tremendous resource for all Flash developers. The Flash community
heavily traverses their forums, and the site contains countless sound loops, sound effects, and
graphics for royalty-free use. Tipster: Jason Harris
USE FLASH INTERACTION TO SUPPORT LEARNER EXPLORATION OF MATH CONCEPTS — We used
Flash 8.0 to create a course for Mathematics. Students drag the triangle, placed with ActionScript
programs, to research the relationship of the three angles. The conclusion is 1+2+3=180°. Our technology design is to improve the scientific mind of the students. The software shows each degree
of the angle, and two of the vertex points are defined. Students can drag one top point to make
different types of triangles. The software utilizes the motive character of Flash 8.0 to show the
geometrical graphics. It is quite effective, and the students get to look for an algebraic expression
for the relationship. They had a satisfied experience of Math learning. Tipster:Wimong Ma
ADD EXTENSIVE COMMENTS TO ANY ACTIONSCRIPT CODE — One comment for each line that
does something unique. If you don't, I guarantee that when you come back to the .FLA file some
time later, or someone else is using your file, you won't remember what the code is doing. Keep
your ActionScript on a separate locked layer in the timeline so that all the code is in one place. Use
Datasheet
ADOBE FLASH CS3
PROFESSIONAL
CREATE AND DELIVER RICH,
INTERACTIVE CONTENT
®
®
Adobe Flash CS3 Professional software is the most advanced
authoring environment for creating rich, interactive content
for digital, web, and mobile platforms. Create interactive
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presentations, games, and more. Depend on Flash CS3 and
Adobe Flash Player software to ensure your content reaches
the widest possible audience.
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Enjoy creative flexibility
Realize your creative vision with a full
complement of drawing, animation, and
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with more than they expected, and deliver
consistent results across multiple platforms.
With Flash CS3 Professional, the possibilities
extend as far as your imagination.
Maximize development productivity
Leverage the power of a true development
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Enjoy timesaving integration with other
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Easily exchange designs, assets, and
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Extend your reach
Extend the reach of your work by creating
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most pervasive soft ware platform. Flash Player
is installed on more than 700 million
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over 96% of Internet-enabled desktops. By
creating content with Flash CS3, you can
leverage your work not only to the Internet,
but also to a wide range of mobile and
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once, and then deploy it to multiple platforms.
System requirements
Windows®
• Intel® Pentium® 4, Intel Centrino®, Intel Xeon®,
or Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor
• Microsoft® Windows XP with Service Pack 2
or Windows Vista™ Home Premium,
Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (certified
for 32-bit editions)
• 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
• 2.5GB of available hard-disk space (additional
free space required during installation)
• 1,024x768 monitor resolution with 16-bit
video card
• DVD-ROM drive
• QuickTime 7.1.2 software required for
multimedia features
• DirectX 9.0c software
• Internet or phone connection required
for product activation
• Broadband Internet connection required
for Adobe Stock Photos* and other services
Macintosh
• 1GHz PowerPC® G4 or G5 or multicore
Intel processor
• Mac OS X v.10.4.8
• 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
• 2.5GB of available hard-disk space (additional
free space required during installation)
• 1,024x768 monitor resolution with 16-bit
video card
• DVD-ROM drive
• QuickTime 7.1.2 software required for
multimedia features
• Internet or phone connection required
for product activation
• Broadband Internet connection required for
Adobe Stock Photos* and other services
Top reasons to buy Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import
Import Photoshop (PSD) and Illustrator (AI)
fi les, while preserving layers and structure,
and then edit them in Flash CS3. Optimize
and customize the fi les during import.
Frame-based timeline
Quickly add motion to your creations with the
easy-to-use, highly controllable, frame-based
timeline inspired by traditional animation
principles such as keyframing and tweening.
Shape primitives
Easily create pie wedges, round off rectangle
corners, define an inner circle radius,
and do much more. Visually adjust shape
properties on the stage. And create custom
shapes with the included JavaScript
application programming interface (API).
ActionScript 3.0 development
Save time with the new ActionScript 3.0
language, featuring improved performance,
increased flexibility, and more intuitive
and structured development.
Sophisticated video tools
Create, edit, and deploy streaming and
progressive-download FLV fi les with a
standalone video encoder, alpha channel
support, a high-quality video codec,
embedded cue points, video import,
QuickTime import, and closed captioning.
MP3 audio support
Integrate audio into your projects by
importing MP3 fi les. Integration with
Adobe Soundbooth soft ware makes it easy
to edit fi les as needed, without requiring
audio production experience.
Rich drawing capabilities
Visually adjust shape properties on the
stage with smart shape drawing tools, create
precise vector illustrations with the new Pen
tool inspired by Adobe Illustrator, paste
illustrations from Illustrator CS3 into
Flash CS3, and more.
Extensible architecture
Leverage the Flash APIs to easily develop
extensions that add custom functionality.
Convert animation to ActionScript
Instantly convert timeline animations into
ActionScript 3.0 code that can be easily edited,
reused, and leveraged by developers. Copy
animations from one object to another.
Adobe Device Central
Design, preview, and test mobile device
content using Adobe Device Central CS3, now
integrated throughout Adobe Creative Suite 3.
Create and test interactive applications and
interfaces viewable with Flash Lite™ soft ware.
* Online services, including, but not limited to,
Adobe Stock Photos and Acrobat Connect, may
not be available in all countries, languages, and
currencies. Availability of services is subject to
change. Use of online services is governed by
terms and conditions of a separate agreement
and may be subject to additional fees. For details,
visit www.adobe.com.
Related products
• Adobe Flex
• Adobe Flash Media Server
For more information
For more details about Adobe Flash CS3
Professional, visit www.adobe.com/flash.
Create rich, interactive content for digital, web, and mobile platforms.
Adobe Systems Incorporated
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Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Acrobat Connect, ActionScript, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Contribute, Creative Suite, Dreamweaver, Fireworks,
Flash, Flash Lite, Flex, Flex Builder, Illustrator, Photoshop, Soundbooth, and Version Cue are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe
Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Mac OS and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other
countries. Intel, Intel Centrino, Intel Core, Intel Xeon, and Pentium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the
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Microsoft, Windows , and Windows Vista are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other
countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The names and logos referred to in the sample artwork are fictional and not
intended to refer to any actual organization or products.
© 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.
95008976 3/07
11
The rich media of
Flash provides an
excellent means
of gaining your
audience’s attention to a course,
why the course
is relevant to
them, and the
XML where possible, so that it is not necessary to republish the .SWF with each use — the XML
can drive the content. Tipster:Wendy Phillips
benefits of taking
it. Many marketing strategies utilize electronic
announcements,
such as e-mails or
Intranet articles,
but via Flash you
can deliver a
more effective
2. Use characters in the advertisement. If the course has characters in it, use them. They can act as
a spokesperson, or as actors in a skit. For example, they can be discussing their thoughts on the
course, and why it was beneficial to them.
and entertaining
message than
8. Conclude the advertisement with instructions on how to access the course, and a link to it or to
the learning management system where they can launch it.
with text and
static graphics
alone.
Jeffery Goldman
USING FLASH TO MARKET E-LEARNING COURSES — Marketing is key to successful implementation of an e-Learning course, and Flash is an excellent tool for this purpose. The rich media of Flash
provides an excellent means of gaining your audience’s attention to a course, why the course
is relevant to them, and the benefits of taking it. Many marketing strategies utilize electronic
announcements, such as e-mails or Intranet articles, but via Flash you can deliver a more effective
and entertaining message than with text and static graphics alone. Here are some tips for using
Flash to market your courses:
1. Reuse any appropriate Flash objects already created for the course. Not only will this save you
a lot of time, but it will also give the audience a preview of the content and design they will
encounter in the course.
3. Make it interactive. This will not only keep your audience’s attention, but also provide a preview
of the interactive elements in the course. If you can make the advertisement a short game, that
is a plus. However, the game must have the same goal as the advertisement, which is communicating why they should participate in the course.
4. Make it entertaining. If using humor, be very cautious not to offend anyone.
5. Include audio and any appropriate sound effects. Sound is a great attention grabber, easy to
import into Flash, and if you are using it in your course it can provide a preview of the course’s
use of audio as a medium.
6. Be sure to communicate why the course is relevant to your audience, and the benefits of taking
the course (what’s in it for them).
7. Keep the advertisement as brief as possible without sacrificing your message.
9. Place the advertisement where the audience will most likely see it. For example, your organization’s Intranet homepage, the training department’s homepage, the first page of your learning
management system, and so on. I also like to e-mail a link to the advertisement to all potential
participants and their supervisors, preferably with some sort of tease that encourages them to
click the link. I find that if people like the advertisement, they will forward the e-mail, furthering
the reach of the advertisement’s message. FYI: I load the Flash .SWF to my Intranet and send a
link instead of sending the Flash .SWF directly in the body of the e-mail. Most e-mail systems
will strip the Flash .SWF out of the body of the e-mail. With Flash used as your marketing tool
you will get more of a “buzz” around e-Learning releases, and with that, an increase in the number of people visiting and participating in your e-Learning courses. Tipster: Jeffery Goldman
12
Be sure to include sniffer
code at the start
of the module
to ensure that
learners have
the correct
Flash player.
LOOPING AND STREAMS — If you set your sound's sync to stream, and then add loops, the file size
can grow huge for each loop that is specified. Avoid looping sounds that are set to the stream setting. Tipster: Carlyne Lynch
ADDING AUDIO TO FLASH PIECES MAKES A POWERFUL LEARNING TOOL — However, audio adds a
lot to the final file size and benefits from external editing before importing into Flash. You can also
use the Property Inspector's audio-edit feature to trim dead air off the start and end of audio files.
Even silent audio space takes up kilobytes. Consider adding a text display to any files with audio.
This can be a simple text feature that the user can show or hide, and it helps make your content
richer and more accessible. Tipster: David Miller
SNIFFER CODE — Be sure to include sniffer code at the start of the module to ensure that learners
have the correct Flash player. Tipster: David Becker
David Becker
HOW TO WORK WITH pageFiles — My tip is to break apart every single Flash file, and deliver content on the fly and only when is needed. Let’s say that the course is going to look like a book, with
some chapters and several pages. Each chapter is a SCO, and each page would be a single Flash file
(pageFile). Therefore, when the user enters the Course/SCO, he would see the first page of the
book, when he finishes reading it he will jump to the next pageFile and so on. Flash Files work
with levels; we can load as many Flash files into another as we want, but two .SWFs can't be loaded at the same level. This means that we can control different .SWFs loaded at the same time, but
hosted on different levels. The pageFiles should not be larger than 100K so Internet and Intranet
users can view them. To do that, you must have a file that controls it all. HTML must load this host
Flash (mainFile), and it will never be unloaded (Level 0). The mainFile must have all functions to
control communication between pageFiles and the LMS through SCORM/AICC commands like:
loadNextFile, setScormScore, setScormStatus
and so on. When you load a pageFile (Level 1) it will call a function hosted on mainFile, and the
mainFile will calculate, organize, and take an appropriate action, like calling another pageFile or
setting a status completed on the LMS. Doing that, you can have a single file with all functions
(programming once) and several files with just content. This means that you can focus on content
and forget about codes and everything to communicate with LMS. You can reuse this technique
on all of your courses with just a little bit of a change between each one. I’ve developed this technique, and applied it at major e-Learning companies in Brazil. They said, doing that they improved
performance and reduced the time to develop and deliver a course to the client. Now they have
more time to focus on content and animations, improving the quality of the courses. If you need
more information, and samples of how to do it and how it works, just ask and I’ll be glad to help.
Tipster: Eber Ribeiro Pinto
SCRIPTING FOR BUTTONS IN THE FIRST FRAME — Put scripting for all buttons throughout your
program in the first frame. (I learned this tip from Chris Florio, and it's changed my workflow.)
Tipster: Susan Steinfeldt
13
Place the audio
in a single movie clip and use
it using ActionScript, instead of
placing it on the
timeline along
with animation.
Ram Mohan
IMPORTING PHOTOSHOP CONTENT INTO FLASH — I have to believe that you have received numerous suggestions on this topic. Because it is such a good NEW tool in FLASH Creative Suite 3, I
wanted to add my support. You can now import content created in Photoshop directly into Flash.
Flash asks if you want the .PSD layers to be created as separate symbols. This has been huge for
me. I create a layered .PSD file with objects that are not even related to each other. As long as the
image size will accommodate the needed image, I create it in one .PSD file. I have had 30-some
layers of non-related imagery in one file. I will manage content in layer folders sometimes. Now
comes the beauty of the new feature — from within Flash I import the .PSD file, and all the
images are created as symbols in FLASH from the different layers in Photoshop. The user can
choose which layers to import with a checkbox. It neatly puts the new symbols into a folder in
the FLASH library ready for use in the FLASH project. It does take a little getting used to while
working in Photoshop. To create a file with multiple images unrelated to one another is not how
I have used Photoshop in the past for creating FLASH content. However, the benefit of having one
master .PSD has proved to be a good thing when looking for changes. I then only import/update
the layer that was changed. Tipster: Joe Shultheis
SAVE TIME BY CREATING RE-USABLE OBJECTS ONLY ONCE — Put things like the navigation, company logo, help menu, glossary, or anything else that will be part of the interface throughout the
entire CBT in a separate .SWF file to be loaded into the main movie. You can then build each individual lesson or module without repeating these objects. Tipster: Marge Rutter
USING FLASH TO SCALE IMAGES IN AND OUT DURING YOUR ANIMATION — My advice is to use
some simple ActionScript on a blank layer of a single keyframe at the start of your movie. Here is
that ActionScript to copy into a blank keyframe on your timeline:
setProperty('', _highquality, '2')
I think you will find the results very effective and surprising. Try doing a simple scale of an image
in a symbol from 50-100% over 30 frames or so, with and without this ActionScript to compare
the results. Tipster: Kevin O'Donnell
TIPS FOR FASTER DEVELOPMENT — I develop interactive tutorials on software for GE Healthcare.
We have developed a Flash template that produces smaller published file sizes than Captivate,
and is just as fast, if not faster, to develop tutorials in. Other tricks we use are capturing screen
captures as .GIFs and then importing them into Flash, having the majority of text loaded from a
text or XML file (easier to quickly modify), and having pre-built interactions such as double click,
text validation, and single clicks. We can incorporate audio and video using .MP3 and .FLV files.
These are loaded from external file sizes, and do not add extra load time to the tutorial. We also
develop storyboards first, to make sure the tutorial is correct before developing it in Flash. It is
faster to make changes recommended by a SME in Word than it is in Flash. We also love using
SnagIt for taking screen captures. Tipster: Jeff Krebs
REDUCE ANTI-ALIASING — Use the document properties in Flash to set your most-often-used
frame rate, stage size, and background color as your default. Now, every time you create a new
14
Create a template
with your background, navigation, code to
make the course
work with your
LMS, and so on.
Then start each
course or module
with the template so you don't
need to keep
spending time
recreating the
wheel, or running
the risk of missing
something critical.
Kathy Zottmann
Flash piece you can save a few clicks. In addition, using “snap to pixels” will reduce anti-aliasing of
your text and images, and yield crisper and more professional results. Tipster: David Miller
MORE TEMPLATE TIPS — Create a template with your background, navigation, code to make the
course work with your LMS, and so on. Then start each course or module with the template so you
don't need to keep spending time recreating the wheel, or running the risk of missing something
critical. Tipster: Kathy Zottmann
AUDIO TIP — Place the audio in a single movie clip and use it using ActionScript, instead of placing it on the timeline along with animation. Tipster: Ram Mohan
BUILD YOUR FLASH TUTORIAL USING “MODULAR DESIGN” PRINCIPLES — Here is something valuable I learned as I started down the path of e-Learning and building tutorials in Adobe Flash. Learn
to be resourceful when you’re building your .FLA files. If you take as much time as I do to organize
your learning content into usable “chunks,” you should also apply this method to your main .FLA
Flash files. Instead of placing all your content into one extremely long timeline, try developing
your master .FLA file to be “modular.”Think about it:When you’re organizing your learning content, you probably do what I do — you divide the content into topics, and then subtopics. Why not
do the same thing with your main .FLA file?
As you well know, Adobe Flash has the ability to separate content by placing it into individual
“scenes.”This allows the developer to easily move between different tracks of content and/or
actions, and keeps them separate for easy organization. This allows the developer flexibility in
editing, adding, or removing content. Need to move your “Standards” content so it appears before
your “Roles and Responsibility” content? Easy — simply go to your Scenes window, left-click and
hold on the scene with the “Standards” content, and drag it up to a place before the scene holding
“Roles and Responsibility” content. After some navigational revisions, it’s all in place. Your content
will play out in sequence. Tipster: Fredd Gorham
SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF MODULAR DESIGN — Here’s an example of how I do this. This example
assumes you have already outlined your content into its main sections and laid out the first scene
(usually named “Scene 1”) in your .FLA document. You also need to have your “Scenes” menu window open (you can do this by going to WindowOther PanelsScenes.
1. Go to the ”Scenes“ window and highlight ”Scene 1.” Duplicate this scene once for every major
topic your learning content has by clicking the “Duplicate Scene” button at the bottom of the
window.
2. Go through these scenes, and rename them with the title of your major topic, in order.
3. Add your content. When you’re developing the scenes in your .FLA file, keep in mind that in order
to keep everything as seamless as possible, the beginning and end of each scene should follow a
common “transition” theme that does not vary much. This will allow you to move your scenes
around without much worry of creating a confusing experience for your viewers, or creating
more work for you. If your scenes start with content fading into view, and end with content fading out of view, you should follow that theme with each scene. Tipster: Fredd Gorham
Why not take your apps mobile?
With Adobe® Flash® Lite, you already
know how.
™
For a long time, mobile content was the future. Now, it’s the present.
And with Flash Lite technology, you can design and push innovative
content to millions of mobile devices using the Flash skills and tools
you already have today.
What is it?
Based on Adobe Flash technology, Flash Lite
is the runtime specifically optimized for
mobile phones and consumer electronic
devices. “Lite” means it has a light footprint
in all ways: file size, memory usage, and
CPU requirements.
What can I create?
Real-time, interactive traffic maps. Games.
Animated screen savers. Advertising and
mobile marketing applications. With Flash Lite,
you can design any mobile app you can
dream up—and even take your video content
mobile with Flash Lite 3, which now offers
FLV support. You can sell and distribute your
apps through Adobe’s network of partners
or create dynamic device interfaces for client
projects. No matter the application, Flash Lite
lets you take mobile design to a new level
of creativity and interactivity.
Who can I reach?
Today, nearly 300 million mobile devices
enabled with Flash Lite have shipped
around the world. And Adobe projects
that number will skyrocket to 1 billion—
yes, 1 billion—by the end of 2010. That
means there’s a significant opportunity
to make waves as an early innovator in
the world of mobile content and put your
work in the hands of millions of users
around the world.
How does it work?
With Flash CS3 Professional, and the new
Adobe Device Central CS3, you can quickly
design, preview, and test mobile content
using the skills and resources you use every
day. You can even repurpose your existing
Flash content and leverage in-house talent
to extend your application’s reach to the
frontier of mobile devices.
What are you waiting for?
Get started with Flash Lite today, and put your designs at the forefront
of mobile content delivery. Learn more at www.adobe.com/go/4it.
Adobe, the Adobe logo, Flash, and Flash Lite are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated
in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Flash Lite content and images provided by 01design, BlueskyNorth Ltd., CELL, Design Assembly GmbH., Moket, and Smashing Ideas, Inc.
© 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. 95010046 9/07
16
Writing ActionScript for control
functions on a
button can be
difficult to find
at a later date.
Place as much of
the control functions as possible
in its own
“action” layer.
Chris Stape
ADDING NEW SCENES — If your tutorial is used on a regular basis, it may require additions to
update it. This is a strong point of modular .FLA file design. Here is an example:
1. Once you identify where the additional content should reside, go into your ”Scenes“ window
and highlight a nearby scene. Click on “Duplicate Scene.”
2. Rename the duplicate scene with the name of the new topic.
3. Open the newly-created scene, and remove any content not relative to the new content. If elements from the prior scene are relevant (that is, headers, section names, etc) you can just leave
them in place, saving you time from having to recreate or reposition them again.
4. Add new content. That’s it in a nutshell. Tipster: Fredd Gorham
PRELOADER AND STATUS BAR TIP — Always build a preloader and status bar when building large
interactions and animations. It lets users know that the interaction will load on the page. Often
times, users click Next to move on because they didn't realize there was an interaction on the
page. Tipster: Cliff Singontiko
SMOOTHING IMAGE EDGES — Do you sometimes tween images and notice how pixilated the
edges look as they move? For smoother results, check “Allow smoothing for” under “Bitmap Properties” for the images in question. You will notice the jagged edges are gone, and your animation will look much smoother. Tipster: David Miller
BUTTON CONTROL FUNCTIONS — Writing ActionScript for control functions on a button can
be difficult to find at a later date. Place as much of the control functions as possible in its own
“action” layer. Tipster: Chris Stape
CONTROLLING A CAPTIVATE .SWF FROM A FLASH .SWF — Here is a tip for controlling a published
captivate file that's loaded into a Flash movie. There are various reasons as to why you may not
want to use Captivate's inherent controls. Create custom controls that you can place anywhere in
the Flash movie. Launch some event upon completion of the Captivate. Sure you can do this using
Captivate, but you may want to dynamically change what gets loaded based on any number of
conditions. You also have greater control of how the item gets loaded. Using Captivate, the item
will take over the whole window. Here is what you can do:
• Stop the loaded Captivate
• Resume
• Back one slide
• Forward one slide
• Check if Captivate is complete.
Chapter 9 of the Captivate manual lists additional commands.
The following script loads a Captivate .SWF using the MovieClipLoader class. You can copy and
paste everything below this line directly into the Actions panel of a frame:
var myMCLoader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
myMCLoader.addListener(this);
myMCLoader.loadClip('captivateFile.SWF', mcHolder);
17
If you wish to
“trigger” different
actions on screen,
for example an
animation or a
quiz, use a
streaming audio
file in the background for that.
Add a media
streamer component, give it a
reference to an
audio file, and
then create a list
of actions happening every time
you reach a specific amount of
seconds.
Fabio Cujinoa
//mcHolder is the MC into which the captivate gets loaded
//add these commands to buttons or other events to control
//to play
someButton0.onRelease = function(){
mcHolder.rdcmndResume = 1;
}
//to pause
mcHolder.rdcmndPause = 1;
}
//to go back
mcHolder.rdcmndPrevious = 1;
}
//to go forward
mcHolder.rdcmndNextSlide = 1;
}
//is the captivate movie complete
//this will trigger when the last slide is reached,
//you want to add a blank slide at the end no content if you are
//triggering some event so your viewers don't miss the content
//on the real last slide.
onEnterFrame = function(){
if(mcHolder.rdinfoCurrentSlide == mcHolder.rdinfoSlideCount){
// it's done! do something
}
}
//Do something while the captive is loading - this is tricky
//the Captivate will start running (streaming) before it's
//completely loaded, so you don't want to use
//the onLoadComplete listener function onLoadStart(mc:MovieClip) {
//add code here to do something
}
Tipster: Nick Stanziani
USING TRIGGERS FROM AUDIO FILES — If you wish to “trigger” different actions on screen, for
example an animation or a quiz, use a streaming audio file in the background for that. Add a
media streamer component, give it a reference to an audio file, and then create a list of actions
happening every time you reach a specific amount of seconds. What will happen is that (for example) an animation (movie clip) with an instance name of “myAnimation” will play when you get to
18
When developing
in Flash, remember to adjust the
frame rate in the
Property Inspector. A higher frame
rate (24 fps is recommended) will
produce smoother animations,
but be more
processor intensive. The default
of 12 fps is quite
slow for today’s
computers.
Angela Nicholas
xx seconds in the audio file. This is a great technique, and it makes the flow of elements perfect.
Tipster: Fabio Cujino
DON'T FORGET TO ANTI-ALIAS YOUR TEXT — This will help with readability for the user.
Tipster: Anonymous
FIND OUT HOW TO CREATE AND SAVE A FLASH DOCUMENT IN CS3 PROFESSIONAL —
For Mac: http://www.atomiclearning.com/almovie?key=32731
For PC: http://www.atomiclearning.com/almovie?key=32803
Tipster: Kathy Schroeder
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FLASH CS3 PROFESSIONAL INTERFACE —
For Mac: http://www.atomiclearning.com/almovie?key=32732
For PC: http://www.atomiclearning.com/almovie?key=32804
Tipster: Kathy Schroeder
ADJUST THE FRAME RATE FOR SMOOTHER ANIMATIONS — When developing in Flash, remember
to adjust the frame rate in the Property Inspector. A higher frame rate (24 fps is recommended)
will produce smoother animations, but be more processor intensive. The default of 12 fps is quite
slow for today's computers.
Tipster: Angela Nicholas
LET USERS RESUME WHERE THEY STOPPED (AUTO BOOKMARKING) — If you use Flash Slide
Presentation to build learning content, you can use Flash Shared Objects to remember which slide
the user last visited. Upon re-visiting the content, the end user is returned to the place they left.
This works for Web and CDROMs.
1. On the root slide, frame 1, add:
// Create the SO
pager_so = SharedObject.getLocal(“my_page”,'/');
2. On the first child slide, add this code to screen actions, under the 'on (reveal)' event:
// The first slide is always opened when a presentation
// is started. This code then loads the SO value and
// bounces the user off to the slide stored in the
// 'currentpage' variable.
if (_root.pager_so.data.currentpage != undefined) {
trace(“It exists! “+_root.pager_so.data.currentpage);
_root.currentSlide.gotoSlide(eval(_root.pager_so.data.currentpage)); } else {
trace(“does not exist”);
// Do some other actions
}
3. On every other slide throughout the presentation, you want to add this code to the slide's
'on (reveal)' event:
19
Place navigation
either in the
Flash, or outside. Providing
both options
gets confusing.
Swan
// This records the name of the slide into the SO.
// Tip: don't use spaces in slide names, this will not work.
// In #2 above, the SO is loaded and the value of 'currentpage'
// is the name of the slide that is getting stored in this step.
_root.pager_so.data.currentpage = “_root.” + this._name;
Enjoy your auto-bookmarking! Tipster: John Anderson
TO REDUCE THE FILE SIZE OF YOUR FLASH MOVIE — After finishing your movie, go to File | Publish
setting, then go to Flash tab, and in .JPG quality, you can assign the quality of images to 90. There
won't be much difference in the output, but file size is much reduced, and in the same Flash tab,
under Audio Stream | Event, in the Set button, you can assign 32 kbps for bit rate, and Best for
quality. Tipster: Mrs. G. Mythili
USE EMPTY MOVIE CLIPS TO MAKE CONTENT DYNAMIC —
loadMovie(“content.SWF”, empty_mc); Tipster: Red Resener
PLACE NAVIGATION EITHER IN THE FLASH, OR OUTSIDE — Providing both options gets confusing.
Tipster: Swan
GIVE YOUR LEARNERS FULL CONTROL OF VOICE-OVER AUDIO AND SYNCHRONIZED VISUAL CONTENT IN YOUR FLASH LEARNING OBJECTS —
1. Create a generic media controller to (a)pause, (b)play, (c)go back to beginning, (d)go to end, AND
(e)replay just the audio [but with all visuals on screen].
2. Link each voice-over file to the media controller.
3. When building your Flash object, add your audio file to the timeline (as well as linking it to the
controller) so you can easily see where to synchronize your visual layers. When you've finished,
just remove it from the timeline. NOTE: Spread your timeline across the length of the audio.
Label your first and last frames so your controller can remember where you pause/play (as % of
total — same as for sound).
Tipster: Sanatan Saraswati
AUDIO INTEGRATION WITHIN FLASH CAN BE TRICKY — It's even trickier when you have to make
changes to the audio, or if you want to localize your Flash movie. Remember these tips — all good
development practices — that will make it easier and more efficient.
1. Audio clips should be located in the same timeline, but in a separate layer. Changes to your
audio, or translation of your audio segment, will likely involve different audio play times, so
adjustments to the timeline are required.
2. Audio should be sequenced into separate pieces. This is called “chunking.”Time these chunks to
your screen transitions. Transitions include subtle changes (or focus on the screen), not just transitions to a new screen or window. Tie your audio segments to small, distinct subject contexts.
Smaller audio chunks are easier to sequence in the timeline, and they are more cost effective to
change since they affect less recorded audio time.
20
Keep your textbased content in
external (usually XML) files so
that updating
the content is
easy.
Grant Sherson
3. Leave a second or two of empty frames in the timeline before your audio starts playing. This
buffer allows users to focus their eyes on any visual elements before hearing the audio, and provides a window to adjust audio playback in the timeline, if you change the audio in the future.
4. Consider providing an optional subtitled text window to display your audio text. This gives you
flexibility in the future, should you want to provide your movie in different language markets.
Audio recording can be expensive, and this technique gives you the option to provide subtitle
text instead of recorded audio if cost becomes a factor. Identifying the appropriate “chunking”
takes some practice. Always plan as if you will have to change the audio, or replace it with translated language versions.
Tipster: Robert (Butch) Pfremmer
EASY UPDATES — Keep your text-based content in external (usually XML) files so that updating
the content is easy. Tipster: Grant Sherson
ACTIONSCRIPT 2 — Keeping track of multiple variables was difficult until I started assigning them
to the _root. By doing that, you can reference them from anywhere in your Flash movie(s). Assign
it, _root.myVariable=1, call it, _root.myVariable, check it, if (_root.myVariable==1){... Tipster: Scott Gale
FLEXIBILITY FOR UPDATES — Plan to ensure that as much of the content as possible exists outside
of the .SWF file, and is pulled in dynamically. Text is a good starting point. This provides flexibility
for being able to update the text should it need to change (such as technical specification changes at the last minute), as well as the opportunity to easily localize the content for other regions.
You can certainly treat images, sounds, and animations the same way. Production times dramatically increase when you have to either engage multiple people to get a single change made, or
teach someone making a writing change, for instance, how to make the same change in Flash. It's
much more effective to make changes to externalized assets that are dynamically pulled into the
.SWF. Flash is very effective at rendering dynamic text (in whatever font and size you wish),
images, and sounds. The programming that encompasses the dynamic nature of external assets
should also be external to the Flash files, and thus is easily updateable and reusable amongst
other Flash files. Using this methodology parallels the methodology of creating small, reusable
SCOs, and can allow for maximum reuse of a variety of content if your directory structures are set
up properly from the outset. Tipster: Scott Merrett
ACTIONSCRIPT 2 — When you want a hit spot over some text, you may want to size and move
the hit according to the text it is related to. By relating the hit to the text, the size of the hit will
always match the related text. This works well when you have language changes, or move the
text around during your movie. You can call an empty hit box from the library with ActionScript, or
drag an instance onto the stage. Once you have the hit identified, you move it and size it to the
related item on your stage. Like this:
button1Hit_mc._x=button1txt_mc._x;
//move hit for button 1 into position and size it
21
Just because you
can do it in Flash,
doesn't mean you
should. It might
be fun to make
things move,
blink, buzz, or
grab your attention in other
ways, but if it
doesn't help the
user learn, don't
do it. It just adds
to your development time, and
turns into a distraction for users.
Steve Johnson
button1Hit_mc._y=button1txt_mc._y;
button1Hit_mc._height=button1txt_mc._height;
button1Hit_mc._width=button1txt_mc._width-3;
//the -3 here just shrinks the hit width a little smaller than the
text height
Tipster: Scott Gale
ACTIONSCRIPT 2 — If you do not know about creating your own functions to do repetitive things
in ActionScript, check them out. They are a big time saver, and can be moved from project to project with ease. An example:We want to change the color of something depending on changes/
clicks in our program, so we set up the object movie called ”item1txt_mc” and call it
”item1_color”:
var item1_color:Color = new Color(item1txt_mc);
item1_color.setRGB(0x000000);
Then, each time we want to change the color, we write the text —
item_color.setRGB(0x000000);
This gets hard if we have 10 items, and want to change them all to black except the one selected
we want blue. It would look like this:
item1Hit_mc.onRelease=function(){
item1_color.setRGB(0x0033AB);//blue
item2_color.setRGB(0x000000);//black
}
and so on for all ten items
and this is then repeated for each hit . That, my friend, is a lot of code.
Using a function would look like this:
First I make the function and name it ”myColorFunction”
function myColorFunction(){
}
the guts go in here
Then I can call the function any time in the timeline/action script like this
myColorFunction();
In our example it would look like this:
function myColorFunction(){
item1_color.setRGB(0x000000);//black MAKE THEM ALL BLACK
22
Do not rely on
Flash to compress your
audio. Compression is dependent upon application, but MP3
is the most commonly used for
most purposes.
Andre' Chatelain
and so on ...
if (myVariable==1){
WANT BLUE
item1_color.setRGB(0x0033AB);//blue MAKE THE ONE WE
}else if (myVariable==2){
}else if (myVariable==3){
}
} and so on...
Then in my script on the hit, I assign the variable and call the function.
item1Hit_mc.onRelease=function(){
myVariable=1;
}
myColorFunction();
This is a real time saver, and can be used in many ways. You will find you can handle many repetitive tasks this way. I have found it best to keep the functions and calls together in one movie.
Tipster: Scott Gale
PUBLISH DOWN TWO VERSIONS — In my experience developing Flash content for an organization, despite the latest technologies and functions available in the latest version of the Flash player, it is best to produce content for a previous version. For example, Flash player 9 is currently available, but I publish down to Flash player 7. The reason being, when multiple sites are accessing your
content, there is no guarantee that their users have current Web browser plug-ins. Your site may
support Flash 9, but the next site over may only support Flash 8. By publishing down to two versions previous, it is almost certain that there will not be any issues in users accessing the content. I
hope that helps — let me know if you would like any further insight as I work with Flash daily.
Tipster: Thomas Gnas
BUILD IN FLASH “CONTENT PLAYERS” — The content players will play content from XML files at
runtime. This way, your content developers can develop content in applications like MS Word (with
the XML tool pack). For example, I’ve created a “course player” that can be reused with content created by multiple developers. All that people developing the course content have to do is, in Word,
identify the screen name and the content for that screen. Another one I’ve developed is a
”Concentration” game. A collection of “boxes” covers an image. To make a box disappear, you have
to answer the question right. The questions come from a Word file. Again, to use the content player, all the developer has to do is to modify a Word document. The content reuse ideal of SCORM is
23
Adding a small
bit of silence to
your audio
before importing it into Flash
helps assure
that it will not
clip off the
beginning of
your audio.
Oddly enough,
this also helps
with clicking
sounds, or distorted audio
(audio that
sounds like you
recorded it in
the bathroom).
Andre' Chatelain
largely a pipe dream. The real power in SCORM isn’t content reuse, it’s tool reuse (isn’t it really all
about interoperability within LMSs [tools]?). By creating tools in Flash that can play content loaded
at runtime, we can significantly extend our toolset. If you’re wondering, yes, people are successfully using this method. For example, the folks at Disney are using this method to quickly and efficiently develop e-Learning modules for their Cast Members. Tipster: Andrew Teasdale
ALWAYS USE EXTERNAL TEXT STRINGS IN YOUR FLASH FILES — It's a good development practice,
and allows for easy modification of the text in future updates. Like all good development practices, it allows for a more efficient translation process should you decide to localize your Flash file.
Set the text field to Dynamic type text in the Properties panel, and assign the string a unique
identifying variable. After making the text dynamic, you can build the source XML file with Notepad or any XML editor of your choice. Briefly, the strings in the XML file are referred to as elements
(or nodes). You reference these strings through XML Object type in ActionScript. Your ActionScript
should be easy to find in your Flash file, so put it in the first frame of your timeline — another
good development habit. There are many excellent examples you can look at on the Web for a
complete tutorial. Tipster: Robert (Butch) Pfremmer
USE DREAMWEAVER EXTENSIONS TO DOWNLOAD A SCORM BUILDER — If you happen to have
Dreamweaver as well as Flash, use the Dreamweaver extensions to download a SCORM builder.
The SCORM builder will load all of your files, and package them to send to your LMS.
Tipster: Anonymous
SHARE FILTER PRESETS — You can share filter presets with other team members by providing
them with the filter config file. This is an XML file saved in the Flash Configuration folder:
C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash 8\en\Configuration\Filters\filters.xml Tipster: Carlyne Lynch
AVOID MAKING DISTRACTIONS — Just because you can do it in Flash, doesn't mean you should. It
might be fun to make things move, blink, buzz, or grab your attention in other ways, but if it doesn't help the user learn, don't do it. It just adds to your development time, and turns into a distraction for users. Tipster: Steve Johnson
MAKE AUDIO BEHAVE IN FLASH — I've discovered that there are many tricks to making audio
work well in Flash, and even when you use the right settings, the audio will not always sound the
way it should. Here are a few of the tricks that I have discovered through several users and online
blogs:
1. Do not rely on Flash to compress your audio. Compression is dependent upon application, but
MP3 is the most commonly used for most purposes.
2. In the Flash Library, change the Export Settings of your audio files to Default.
3. In the Flash Publish Settings, change the Audio stream and event settings to MP3, and the Bit
rate to something no lower than what you originally compressed your audio.
4. On your timeline, change your audio to streaming if the visual corresponds or is timed to the
24
If you happen
to have Dreamweaver as well
as Flash, use the
Dreamweaver
extensions to
download a
SCORM builder.
The SCORM
builder will load
all of your files,
and package
them to send
to your LMS.
Anonymous
audio. Event is usually used for sound effects, or things that need to start at the right time, but
nothing is depending on it to end at a specific time.
5. Adding a small bit of silence to your audio before importing it into Flash helps assure that it will
not clip off the beginning of your audio. Oddly enough, this also helps with clicking sounds, or
distorted audio (audio that sounds like you recorded it in the bathroom).
Tipster: Andre' Chatelain
FLASH-ANIMATED JOB AID AND GLOSSARY TO ASSIST LEARNER PREPARATION — We have been
very successfully combining instructor-led simulators with student preparation. In order to prepare students, they are taking standard CBT prior to entering the simulator. We have developed a
Flash-animated job aid and glossary that contains alphabetized movie clips that show the key
concepts, math calculation examples, and so on, that can be accessed through a laptop or iPod
that the students have with them in the simulator, and can take with them onto the job. Each clip
is less than one minute long, and does not make the student look through an entire lesson to find
the exact function, concept, buttonology, and so on, that they need. Because the concepts are each
in an independent movie clip, they can be used to create custom glossaries for each lesson, or
combined for the entire course. We have also started using them in different schools across the
enterprise. Tipster: Janeann Hudson
DRIVING INTERACTIVE NEED — In our training department we wanted to move toward interactive on-line training. The hard part was finding the time and resources to move forward quickly. It
also seemed we had to “sell” the idea too much. We develop our products in Flash ActionScript 2,
so the learning curve is steep, and projects take a fair amount of time to create. The payoff comes
when the end product is very customized to what we need. Creating interactive training drove
some need, but our real ROI home runs came from some not-so-traditional products. Internal
demand for our products increased dramatically when we started building sales tools, simulators,
and selection tools. You can say all these tools are training, and I would agree, but they stretch the
limits of what we normally would do. A sales tool is training, targeted at what we want to present
or show a customer or sales person. A fancy Flash showing the product and all its parts, so when
you mouse over it shows details or specific uses. A tool could be a customer ROI calculator showing what they will save with our product. Our sales folks like an interactive presentation that
includes videos and sound where they can walk a customer through a product depending on their
needs, and not just a PowerPoint. Simulators can reproduce the experience a customer will have
with the products. We mainly use them for showing how to navigate through interface screens,
controls, or computer screens. In this case, a customer is learning how to use the screens or controls by actually doing it. We can set up scenarios, and make sure they understand how to handle
multiple situations. Our highest-demand item though is selection tools. These often have very little training associated with them. A selection tool asks a series of questions that allows a customer to choose certain features they need. Based on their answers, a Graco product is identified
along with related accessories. Sounds easy, but often times, when dealing with equipment, the
items a customer selects determines other items they can or cannot select. If you pick motor 1,
then you can pick pump A, B, or C, but if you pick motor 2 then you can pick pump B, C, or D. If you
25
Any bitmap used
more than once
(including in two
keyframes) should
be converted into
a symbol so it
only downloads
once.
Angela Nicholasa
want a stainless pump, then you have to pick pump C or D. It gets complicated real quick, and it is
hard to show all the relationships in a catalog. The result is customers ordering the wrong combinations, or frustrated with the process. They will just call their sales rep, who not so gladly spends
his or her time ordering for their customer. With a selection tool, we can ask the questions of what
they need, and then only show items that fit their requirements. If they select a 240V motor, we
only show accessories for a 240V motor and pumps, and so on. If they require a medium flow rate,
we don't show them small pumps or really large pumps. We allow them to choose what they
need, and items that fit together. Internal demand for selection tools is far greater than our
resources, and we will eventually add more head count because of it. This demand directly supports interactive training. To summarize, if you want to increase demand for interactive training,
you may want to look at building some not-so-conventional sales tools and selection tools. In the
right situation, you directly drive sales, have more concrete ROI numbers, and internal demand for
your products will increase. Tipster: Scott Gale
CONVERT YOUR BITMAPS INTO SYMBOLS — Any bitmap used more than once (including in two
keyframes) should be converted into a symbol so it only downloads once. Tipster: Angela Nicholas
HOW TO USE VERSION CONTROL TO MANAGE CHANGES — When developing applications using
Flash, use .AS files to separate complex code functionality from the .FLA file, and check them into a
version control system such as Subversion. Taking the code out of the .FLA file will allow you to utilize the tools provided by the version control system to more effectively manage changes to the
code over time, and across multiple team members. Tipster: David Williams
USE MOVIE CLIPS WHENEVER POSSIBLE — This makes your design more modular so you can move
movies easily around the stage, or export them into other Flash-based e-Learning. Build it once —
use it often. Tipster: Steve Johnson
PREVENTING USERS FROM TAKING SCREEN SHOTS OF YOUR APPLICATION — There is no direct
way to prevent users from using the PrintScreen key in the keyboard, since this function is controlled by the operating system. Here is a little hack to nullify the clipboard when the user presses
the PrintScreen key. Use this code:
this.onEnterFrame = function (){
if (Key.isDown(44)) {
}
}
System.setClipboard(“Screenshot Prohibited”);
This will nullify the clipboard, and the captured bitmap in the clipboard would be lost every time
the user attempts to do a screen print. Please note that there are still other ways the user can take
a screen shot of your application, and this solution is primarily aimed at non-technical users.
Tipster: Krishna Prathab R V
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27
Use movie clips
whenever possible. This makes
your design more
modular so you
can move movies
easily around the
stage, or export
them into other
Flash-based
e-Learning. Build
it once — use it
often.
Steve Johnson
BASIC FLASH TIPS FOR E-LEARNING —
1. Layers are free, don't scrimp on using them. Label your layers, and don't reuse them for unrelated
content. If you do this, you will create a source file that is TONS easier to edit eight months later
when a person is picking up a file from another user.
2. Make EVERYTHING a symbol. It takes a few extra seconds, but saves you tons of time when editing the file later.
3. When possible, paste in your graphics, instead of importing them. This seems strange, but when
you paste graphics in you can control the output compression for all items in the export settings.
If you import them, you have to either use the originally imported compression, or a specific
compression for each graphic individually. You cannot globally set the output compression of
imported graphic files.
4. If you have developers on both Macs and PCs, spend some time up front choosing OR creating
fonts that will render similarly on both systems. Then make sure the final output is from one
platform or the other. (Macs usually render fonts a little nicer than PCs.)
Tipster: Tim Bobo
USAGE OF COMMON LIBRARY FOR ASSETS — Situation: Typically, in Flash-based e-Learning courses, the graphic team used to have a lot of graphic elements specific to that page, including global
items like bullets, buttons and so on. When can something go wrong? With the above practice, if
we get any change request like change the size of a bullet and the color, what is the pain? The
team will end up opening each of the course pages to update the graphic element. How to avoid
this? Build all the global graphic elements, possibly the page-specific graphic elements, in a single
Flash file. Then, while working on pages, choose File | Open External Library, and drag
the graphic element to your stage. This will create a link to the external Flash file. Advantage:
Global maintenance of the graphic elements, therefore updating is simple. each page (.FLA) is not
heavy. It helps in exhibiting and getting approval of all graphic assets before the start of the work.
Tipster: Madhanaraj Kubenderan
SEPARATE SUPPORTING TEXT FROM SIMULATIONS — If part of your content is a simulation, keep
the simulation separate from the content that describes and/or supports it. That way you can easily reuse the simulation in other contexts. For example, you might be building a simulation that
describes how an electric motor works, and your target audience is tertiary learners. If you put all
the text and explanations in the same Flash file as the simulation, you cannot easily reuse that
simulation with junior school children, or with another language group. Tipster: Grant Sherson
MODIFYING MOVIE CLIPS — Movies have clips that have independent timelines, and you can apply effects, filters, and blends to these clips. Add the movie just once, and change the attributes of
the movie on the stage and the movie clip will remain unchanged in the library.
Tipster: Carlyne Lynch
FLASH THAT MODIFIES ITSELF “ON THE FLY” — A good teacher can read their audience, and alter
their script based on their receptivity in real time. The best e-Learning is highly customized, self-
28
While Flash is
generally good
at resizing content, keep in
mind that most
content developers have larger screens with
higher resolution than the
average learner
— set a sensible
base level for
visual content.
Stuart Hornsey
changing depending on the user's choices. Flash is a very powerful programming tool that allows
you to make use of complex variables that can alter the very nature of a training exercise as the
learner progresses through it. The more you can take advantage of arrays, variables, objects, and,
more recently, classes, you can not only produce reusable training components, but you can make
learning that adjusts itself in real time. If you are simply using Flash to make entertaining animations or funny buttons, you are likely missing the boat. I would challenge everyone in e-Learning to
make use of Flash as a tool to teach, not just present, content. Tipster: Ryan Cameron
DO LEARNERS SEE WHAT DEVELOPERS SEE? — While Flash is generally good at resizing content,
keep in mind that most content developers have larger screens with higher resolution than the
average learner — set a sensible base level for visual content. Tipster: Stuart Hornsey
SCORM ADAPTER FOR FLASH 8 AND 9 — Pipwerks recently has released a SCORM adapter for
Flash 8 and 9. It is a wonderful solution for tracking to a SCORM 1.2 or 2004 LMS without having
to figure out the ADL documentation. http://pipwerks.com/lab/scorm/ Tipster: Matt Perkins
USE JAVASCRIPT TO SYNCHRONIZE FLASH MOVIES — When using multiple Flash movies embedded on the same page, it is sometimes necessary to synchronize the two, or send information
from one to the other. For example, when the first movie stops playing you'd like the other to
start playing. One way to do this is by using JavaScript as a relay. ActionScript in Movie A calls a
JavaScript function, which in turn calls an ActionScript function in Movie B. The Actionscript
ExternalInterface class is the recommended mechanism for communication between
JavaScript and the Flash Player, though fscommand() and getURL() may be used but are asynchronous and unidirectional, therefore less flexible. A simpler way to communicate between Flash
movies, which doesn't involve JavaScript, is by using the ActionScript LocalConnection class.
Movie A and Movie B both establish LocalConnection instances, which can then call methods
on each other's instance. Since a LocalConnection channel has two endpoints, this method
works best for a pair of movies that need to communicate. Unlike the JavaScript relay approach,
LocalConnection works across HTML frames and even browser windows without any additional effort. Here is a LocalConnection example provided by the Adobe documentation:
// Code in the receiving .SWF file
this.createTextField(“result_txt”, 1, 10, 10, 100, 22);
result_txt.border = true;
var receiving_lc:LocalConnection = new LocalConnection();
receiving_lc.methodToExecute = function(param1:Number, param2:Number)
{
};
result_txt.text = param1+param2;
receiving_lc.connect(“lc_name”);
29
It's all too easy
to jump into
Flash and start
creating your
interactions.
Although they
are often based
on storyboards,
it sometimes
helps to sketch
it out on paper
first. If you can't
make it work on
paper, you
won't be able to
make it work in
Flash.
David Miller
// Code in the sending .SWF file
var sending_lc:LocalConnection = new LocalConnection();
sending_lc.send(“lc_name”, “methodToExecute”, 5, 7);
Another useful method of communication between movies uses a type of Flash Player “cookie” to
store information on the local machine, which is then accessible at any time in the future, such as
after the user has browsed to a different page, or even restarted their machine. The ActionScript
SharedObject class provides generic data containers that are stored locally, and which can later be
retrieved by name.
Here is a SharedObject example provided by the Adobe documentation:
var so:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal(“userHighScore”);
so.data.highScore = new Number();
so.flush();
Pay attention to the Flash Player security restrictions when using any of these methods. For example, it is possible for users to restrict Flash Player SharedObject “cookies” for your site. Also,
LocalConnection may be configured to only work for movies with the same URL or on the same
site. Note that the security restrictions have become tighter in newer versions of the Flash Player.
Tipster: Lawrence Yau
PLAN AHEAD — Then plan some more. E-learning projects go together so much better when a
client can give a developer a “road map” to follow instead of aiming for one target, only to alter
the target for a different one mid-project (or later). Doing this can also save the client money,
and/or make more money for the developer by not having to waste time/resources.
Tipster: Jon Weber
PUBLISH TO THE CORRECT FLASH PLAYER VERSION — Remember to use the Publish settings to
decide which version of the Flash player your .SWF file is intended to work with. There are two key
considerations. The first depends on the version of the player that installed on the desktops where
your content is being viewed. You will need to ensure that the piece you create is less than or
equal to the version of the player available on the desktops of the learners. (Especially in environments where upgrades by the individual user are not an option). If you do choose an earlier version of the player to ensure better compatibility with desktops, then keep in mind you may have
to sacrifice some features in your program development. (As an example, the “Slide” feature in
Flash Professional 2004 requires you to publish for Flash Player version 6 or higher.)
Tipster: Rob Wiggins
TRY IT OUT ON PAPER FIRST — It's all too easy to jump into Flash and start creating your interactions. Although they are often based on storyboards, it sometimes helps to sketch it out on paper
first. If you can't make it work on paper, you won't be able to make it work in Flash.
Tipster: David Miller
30
Plan ahead.
E-learning projects go together
so much better
when a client can
give a developer
a “road map” to
follow instead of
aiming for one
target, only to
alter the target
for a different
one mid-project
(or later). Doing
this can also save
the client money,
and/or make
more money for
the developer by
not having to
waste time/
resources.
Jon Weber
USE XML TO FACILITATE FLASH WORKFLOW — Unlike the basic e-Learning technologies of HTML,
Javascript, JPEG, and other image formats, in Flash the format for the deployed content is different
than the format of the working documents. This results in workflows that must accommodate
the one-way .SWF compilation process. On teams where the instructional designer is not the Flash
developer, the compilation process requires that the Flash developer be involved in every development iteration and maintenance iteration, which affects staffing requirements and schedules
among other things. Flash's proficiency with XML can be harnessed to free the Flash developer
from each development iteration by unloading content, structure, and/or logic from the Flash
product into XML-formatted documents, which will be familiar to HTML users and don't require
compilation. You can realize changes to text, swapping of images or videos, and new behavior for
interactions without touching the raw or compiled Flash files. In the simplest case, text to display
in the Flash object can be loaded from a separate XML file. Why XML? It is immediately readable
by both humans and machines, and there are thousands of tools for manipulating, processing,
and managing XML — not to mention that Flash happens to be quite handy with XML. You can
then implement text changes without a Flash developer. Furthermore, the text becomes searchable, since it is no longer stored in Flash's binary files. Beyond text extraction, content structure
and sequencing is a prime candidate for offloading into XML, allowing you to rearrange, cut, or
augment the presentation's flow with a quick edit of the XML elements. You can even effectively
state programmatic logic in XML, if abstracted thoughtfully, without the need for additional
ActionScript. One compelling advantage of XML-based content is the possibility of including useful information that Flash won't use, such as metadata. Flash files have limited capability for holding metadata, but XML is practically built for the task. You can safely keep properties, comments,
references, attributions, keywords, change histories, or complete documents inside the XML data.
The trick to making this all work is having a good developer, who knows how to effectively separate content concerns from the Flash machinery and provide a usable format for the XML data. Of
course, a cost-benefit analysis will reveal to what extent you should abstract content from Flash.
Expertise with XML will go a long way in making sure things run smoothly. For instance, having a
DTD or XML schema can enforce proper formatting of the XML files so that Flash can use them
without issue. There are XML authoring tools like Altova Authentic that can put a user-friendly
face on XML editing, making it as easy as filling out Web-based forms. In our case, we have been
using these techniques and technologies to improve information accessibility, asset management,
maintainability, traceability, team coordination, version management, standards adherence, and
development time. Additionally, it has reduced the need for Flash and ActionScript expertise since
the content-free Flash objects are inherently reusable. Finally, any improvements made to the
generic Flash objects immediately benefit our entire portfolio of e-Learning products.
Tipster: Lawrence Yau
TRACKING STUDENT PROGRESS WITHOUT AN LMS — If you are not using an LMS, use the Flash
SharedObject to keep track of student progress, so students won't have to complete a CBT in
one sitting.
1. Initialize the SharedObject in the main module.
2. Create a variable that will track student progress and store it in the SharedObject.
31
If you get really
stuck on some
ActionScript,
and have
searched the
forums, take a
break! Five minutes away from
the computer,
and your challenge, might be
worth an hour
of frustration.
David Miller
3. Update the value of that variable at milestone markers along the way (ie. after each completed
module)
4. Check the value of that variable each time the CBT launches. You can then build a simple table
of contents that somehow marks the completed modules vs. those the learner has yet to do.
The users’ computers will store their information.
Tipster: Marge Rutter
SECTION 508 COMPLIANCY ISSUE FOR READERS — It is possible to produce Section 508 content
using Adobe Flash 8 and higher. It is not easy, or even reliable, when using a content reader in different browsers. One way we figured out how to make a portion of text read on a button press
was to dynamically set the button's description onPress to the text we needed the reader to
read. Then you update the AccProperties for the button. Then directly after that, on the same
button press, we set it back to “” (blank), so when the student tabs back to the button it will be
reread. Flash will not reread something it recognizes as having already been read. It looks like this:
myButton.onPress = function(){
this._accProps.description = “the text you want read”;
Accessibility.updateProperties();
this._accProps.description;
}
Accessibility.updateProperties();
This took a little playing around to figure out. There might be an easier way out there; if you find it
please let me know. Tipster: Rodger Stuffel
KEEP YOUR FLASH FILES SMALL — This tip is very basic, but I see people doing this wrong all the
time. When you are working to create a Flash-based e-Learning program, you really need to make
sure you break up your Flash content into small bite-sized pieces. Unless you are showing a video,
never force the user to load more than a megabyte or two at a time. Keeping your files smaller is
best. There are tons of ways you can optimize your output files, and Adobe has tools built right
into Flash to allow you to analyze the bandwidth requirements of any Flash file. Take time to learn
these tools, and use them to optimize your content so it plays well over your lowest target bandwidth speed. Tipster: Tim Bobo
USE HIGHER FPS RATES FOR SMOOTHER ANIMATION — The default frames per second (fps) in
Flash is 12, but when using Flash I like the design to appear more like video, so I bump it up somewhere between 24 and 32. While it can be more memory intensive, I try to keep my movies as
small and efficient as possible so it does not become a problem. Tipster: Steve Johnson
ALMOST ANY FLASH INTERACTION WILL BENEFIT FROM A LOADING INDICATOR FOR THE USER —
A 300 KB piece can take five seconds to load at DSL speeds. To be effective for small files, the
loader itself has to be small. Here is ActionScript for a loader that is about 300 bytes. Simply create
a horizontal fill, for example 5 pixels by 100 pixels, and convert it to a “movieclip.” Add this code to
32
If you are going
to use narration
in Flash, it's best
to record the
audio first and
import it, then
time the visual
portion to it.
Flash makes this
easy by placing
the audio on the
timeline for reference when
placing text and
illustrations, and
for timing your
tweens and animations.
Kevin Wilcoxon
the “movieclip” itself to make it self-contained and reusable. This will be your loading indicator
that you place in the first frame of the root timeline. This code includes a function to fade out the
“movieclip” if it spans more than one frame.
onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
this._parent.stop();// stop the root timeline
percent = Math.abs(_parent.getBytesLoaded()*100/_parent.
getBytesTotal());
this._width = percent;// the movieclip that will scale
horizontally
if (percent=100) { // you can set this to any number (0100), 100 represents the entire .SWF
this._parent.play();// any action you want after loading
reaches the amount you specify
this._alpha = this._alpha - 5; // this fades the loader
movieclip by 5% per frame
} else {
// if needed, you can add action to do here, such as play a loading
message movieclip
}
}
PLAN AHEAD FOR FUTURE REVISIONS — It is a good idea to try to exercise a forward-thinking
approach in programming courseware in Flash. Some additional code planning and preparation
during the initial build can make the course more modular and extendable. For example, even if
the course you are building is to be delivered only in the English language, programming the
entire course to pull the content based on the learner's language selection will allow the client to
more easily add multiple languages in a future course revision. It’s like wiring an unoccupied room
with electricity ... when you're ready to move in, you just turn on the switch. This will minimize the
impact of time and effort to the course development team, and keep the client(s) very happy.
Tipster: Brian J. Kidd
STARTING OUT SMALL WITH FLASH — The beauty of Flash is that you can use it at so many different levels: learning interactions, graphics, Flash videos, quizzes, animations, and slideshows (to
name just a few), or an entire SCORM-compliant course. To ease the transition, start small by
adding Flash elements to your current courses. As you become more comfortable with the technology, you can build up to more interactive and/or multimedia experiences that really do look
professional. My suggestion to an organization thinking about using Flash for e-Learning is to
33
There is not a
good method to
save data in Flash
for e-Learning.
You cannot use
cookies, because
students can use
any machine on
the Internet to
access your content. Your interactivites, games, or
lessons should not
take more than
30-40 minutes to
complete.
Joey Tuskan
strike a project team in your organization to create a simple course prototype. Start with a simple,
page-turner course structure, similar to a good percentage of e-Learning currently available. Learn
how Flash creates the page template structure. Experiment with some short quizzes. Publish to
your LMS. Annotate what the development and maintenance process will be. If you do not develop in-house, undertake a similar arrangement with a trusted vendor. Make sure to document your
successes and issues! Tipster: Claudio Lerulli
TIP FOR RAPID DEVELOPMENT — Purchase or build a Flash/XML-based course player that is
SCORM-conformant, and then skin it to fit your organization’s brand and needs. This allows for
rapid development (all structure, navigation, and communication with the LMS are taken care of
already), but you still have full flexibility to create your content in Adobe Flash.
Tipster: George Aston
STUCK? TAKE A BREAK! — If you get really stuck on some ActionScript, and have searched the
forums, take a break! Five minutes away from the computer, and your challenge, might be worth
an hour of frustration. Tipster: David Miller
MAKE SMALLER FILES: USE .GIFs — When importing images into your Flash design, whenever possible use .GIFs instead of .JPEGs. Depending on the image, you can save a lot on file size without
sacrificing too much in image quality. This will make your Flash animation load faster and run
smoother. Tipster: Steve Johnson
RECORD THE NARRATION FIRST — If you are going to use narration in Flash, it's best to record the
audio first and import it, then time the visual portion to it. Flash makes this easy by placing the
audio on the timeline for reference when placing text and illustrations, and for timing your
tweens and animations. Tipster: Kevin Wilcoxon
KEEP FLASH MODULES SHORT — There is not a good method to save data in Flash for e-Learning.
You cannot use cookies, because students can use any machine on the Internet to access your content. Your interactivites, games, or lessons should not take more than 30-40 minutes to complete.
Tipster: Joey Tuskan
ANIMATION AND SCRIPTING ARE TWO SEPARATE ROLES — We prefer to have separate roles for
animators and coding/scripters. This allows for a very professional animation design, with clean
code that results in smaller Flash files and faster downloading. The two roles work in tandem as a
team. Tipster: Tonia Dousay
TIPS FOR BETTER IMAGES IN FLASH — Edit your photographs for Flash in your image editing software to the final size needed in the Flash piece. Avoid scaling images in Flash, unless for a tween,
to maintain optimal file sizes and best quality of your image assets. If you are not certain of the
final size needed, import your image, and, once the size is determined, use the built-in editing feature to resize your image in Fireworks or Photoshop. Turn off Allow Bitmap Smoothing if the
image is not going to be tweened, and always place your images on whole pixels for best results.
35
Use external
XML files to control an engine in
Flash. This way
you can update
content without
republishing the
Flash content.
Phil Cross
USE EXTERNAL XML FILES TO CONTROL AN ENGINE IN FLASH — This way you can update content
without republishing the Flash content. Tipster: Phil Cross
TIPS TO HELP THE USER —
1. We used to have separate pop-up windows for Notes, Bookmark, Go to Bookmark, print, help,
search, settings, and so on. These options can be categorized into tabs the user can use to navigate to any part of these options when needed. This could reduce the user interaction time, and
also make it easy for the user to access the navigation panel.
2. Users can be provided with a full-screen-mode option, which could hide the other unused panels and display only the content. This mode can have separate settings, which would display
only the necessary parts of the panel such as navigation buttons, show audio, audio on/off, and
page controls such as play/pause and replay. The user could be more focused on the course,
instead of viewing the complex template design. Note: The user can get the full template when
the full-screen mode is in the off state.
Tipster: S. R. Mithra
COMMENT YOUR TIMELINE — In addition to commenting within your code, also comment in the
timeline itself. Using the same double forward slashes, add comments at critical points in your
timeline, such as “//start audio here”, “//add image here”, and so on. Tipster:
David Miller
LOADING EXTERNAL .SWFs — A best practice is to load external .SWFs or smaller Flash movies into
a main Flash file or template. This process helps with the initial load time of Flash content; instead
of loading everything at once you can load specific pieces or modules on-demand, and only when
the specific content is needed. Code:
1. Create a Movieclip, and give it an instance name of “shell”
2. On the Layer above the Movieclip Layer, put some code that looks like the following:
shell.load(*file path of the .SWF);
You can then position the external .SWF with the following code on the same layer.
shell._x = 0;
shell._y = 0;
This places the externally loaded .SWF in the top left corner of your template. These values for _x
and _y are your pixel placements ... so you can move it depending on the size of your canvas by
entering different pixel values. Tipster: Scott Gaspar
USE FLASH APPROPRIATELY — Resist the urge to use animation simply for the sake of it, as poor
design can detract from learning. Make sure your Flash animations relate directly to the content
being examined, and, preferably, enhance learner understanding or engagement.
Tipster: Glenn Hansen
36
Rapidly develop
a professional
interactive
Website by utilizing the many
Flash templates
that are available for a small
purchase price.
As an example
www.templatemonster.com.
Dave Harris
FASTER FRAME RATE (ONE MORE TIME) — The default frame rate in Flash has been 12 since at least
Flash 4 (was that 1999?). Today computers normally run video content at 30 frames per second, so
why not try a higher rate with Flash? While the Flash Player is not the same as a video player,
appropriately-sized Flash pieces will play very well at 30 frames per second, allowing you to bring
in video at its native frame rate (in the US it’s 24 for PAL), and yield better results.
NO EM DASHES IN FLASH! — While copying/pasting text from a script, if your writer has included
em dashes (oh! they love 'em), these punctuation marks will not appear correctly in Flash. Just
replace all those pesky punctuations with two dashes (“--”) without spaces before and after them.
Of course, you need to “Search & Find” all locations of em dashes on the script before you can do
the above. Tipster: Prakash Bebington
BUY TEMPLATES TO SAVE TIME — Rapidly develop a professional interactive Website by utilizing
the many Flash templates that are available for a small purchase price. As an example www.templatemonster.com. Tipster: Dave Harris
FLASH DRAWING TOOLS REDUCE FILE SIZES — Whenever possible, use the drawing tools provided
by Flash to reduce file size and increase loading speed. Although there are better graphic design
tools, with a little creativity, you can do a lot with what Flash has to offer. Tipster: Steve Johnson
USING .SWF FILES AS A RESOURCE — Of course, a great use of .SWF files from other e-Learning
tools is to use them in Flash as a resource. Say you are creating a large FLASH program that needs
a glossary. Create the glossary in, say, Articulate, of course adjusting the parameters in Articulate
to maintain a style of the parent FLASH project. Export as a .SWF file, and use it in the parent
FLASH project. A fast, clean, simple glossary with no ActionScripting needed. A no-brainer.
Tipster: Joe Shultheis
IMPORTING BITMAPS — When importing bitmaps, do not scale down or crop them in Flash for
optimum file sizes. Use an image-editing program to achieve the desired size, and then import.
Tipster: Angela Nicholas
KEEP FREQUENTLY-UPDATED CONTENT IN AN EXTERNAL FILE — To maintain editability, it is a good
idea to store frequently-updated content in an external file. There is a variety of text-based formats Flash can parse, but the two most frequently used are XML and variable/value pairs formatted as in a GET string. One trick you can use to increase the readability of external data for nonprogrammers is to create a pseudo-array of data entries delimited by line breaks. This is especially
useful when the data contains a list of entries, such as in a glossary. Instead of using the standard
ampersand required by a GET string, try the following:
delimiter=&glossData=term1:definition of the first term
Note that if you expect a definition to contain a line break, it is best to use two or even three line
breaks as your delimiter! Line wrapping is not an issue; however, it is important to encourage the
37
When importing
bitmaps, do not
scale down or
crop them in
Flash for optimum file sizes.
Use an imageediting program
to achieve the
desired size, and
then import.
Angela Nicholas
use of a simple text editor. The data must be saved as .TXT or .RTF:
term2:definition of the second term.
term3:definition of the third term.
Content experts can continue adding terms in this relatively intuitive and readable format. Once
read, Flash interprets this data as two variables. The first one, delimiter, is just a trick to be sure
that the line breaks you will use to parse your data into a Flash array are the right ones. Anyone
who has had his or her linebreaks magically change upon upload to a Web server will know what
I'm getting at here. The second variable, data, is the one you must parse with ActionScript within
Flash. Here is the code you will need to use:
glossary_array=glossData.split(delimiter);
Now you can access each glossary entry from the glossary_array, like this:
glossary_array[0];//returns “term1:definition of the first term”
There are certainly many other ways to format flat text data, but I have found this to be the easiest for non-programmers to update successfully. The line breaks make the data much more readable than ampersands with no white space. For more complex data types, I have used Word files
containing a macro that converts table-based data to an appropriate XML format. Content experts
update the table, run the macro, and use the resulting file to overwrite the existing data file.
Parsing XML within Flash is beyond the scope of this tip, but I have found XML to be an extremely
reliable and flexible format for use in Flash.
Tipster: Becky Kinney
INCREASE THE QUALITY OF YOUR COURSE GRAPHICS AND DECREASE YOUR PRODUCTION TIMES
— Inexpensive subscriptions to a few great Web sites allow you to easily load and modify thousands of pre-developed Flash animations, pictures, backgrounds, video clips, sound effects, and
more. You can turn a boring course into an interactive course in a matter of hours, not days, and it
requires very little Flash experience. Two Websites I recommend are: http://www.animationfactory.com and http://www.istockphoto.com Tipster: Leigh Margaret Roberts
CREATE A TALKING AVATAR IN CRAZY TALK THAT RUNS IN FLASH — Here are the instructions that
we use to make Crazy Talk videos:
1. Make voice files and save as .WAV files using slide number in name
2. Open Crazy Talk and choose avatar.
a. Choose script
b. Click on folder icon and navigate to .WAV files
c. Select .WAV file. Choose Media: AVI format, 180 x 240, and then export to videoFiles folder
d. Save as .AVI file with slide number in name
3. Import video into Flash
a. Get in correct frame and layer
b. Choose File | Import | Import video and navigate to correct videoFiles folder
38
Inexpensive subscriptions to a few
great Web sites
allow you to easily load and modify thousands of
pre-developed
Flash animations,
pictures, backgrounds, video
clips, sound
effects, and more.
You can turn a
boring course into
an interactive
course in a matter
of hours, not days,
and it requires
very little Flash
experience.
Leigh Margaret Roberts
c. Accept progressive download
d. Under advanced settings, crop and trip, set top trim to 30, and same for bottom trim
e. Decide skin, none means there are no player controls
f. Finish
g. Move and resize video in Flash (120 x 120 works well)
Tipster: Steve Jones
INCORPORATE FLASH MOVIES INTO ARTICULATE PRESENTER — Designing in Flash is a lot more
time-consuming than designing using programs such as Articulate Presenter. To be more efficient,
I create a number of very small and relatively simple movies in Flash that have one specific function, then place them inside an Articulate Presenter e-Learning course. This way I can let Presenter
do a majority of the work by using its built-in navigation and sound capabilities, and use Flash for
interesting roll-overs, animations, and interactions. All at the same time, it takes the Articulate
Presenter course to the next level, makes use of Presenter's simplicity and rapid development
capability, and adds the impressive interactive abilities of Flash. Tipster: Steve Johnson
FLASH TO LMS COMMUNICATIONS — I have found that in our journey to effectively communicate
with our SCORM 2004 LMS, “ExternalInterface” is the method to use. In a simulation or
course, we will use ExternalInterface to call a JavaScript function on our SCO page that tells
the LMS to set cmi.completion_status to “completed”. On our “next” button within Flash,
we will again use ExternalInterface to SetValue(“adl.nav.request”,“continue”) in order to allow the user to move to the next SCO. This effectively lets the LMS know the
user has satisfied the status requirement, and allows us to navigate the LMS aggregate manifest
menu via Flash. An example in Flash ActionScript:
import Flash.external.*;
ExternalInterface.call(Javascript_function_name);
In SCO HTML:
script type=“text/javascript”
function Javascript_function_name ()
{
alert(“Flash to JavaScript Communications Have Occurred”);
}
XscriptX
The same works in reverse using the JavaScript to ActionScript method of ”ExternalInterface.addCallback(methodName, instance, method);”
This method has proven invaluable in many e-Learning applications in our organization.
Tipster: Robbe Addis
EMBED FLASH FILES IN MADCAP FLARE HELP SYSTEMS — Madcap Flare is a tool technical writers
use to build online help systems. It can also be used to build “learning systems.”You can embed
39
While copying/
pasting text from
a script, if your
writer has included em dashes (oh!
they love 'em),
these punctuation marks will
not appear correctly in Flash.
Just replace all
those pesky punctuations with two
dashes (“--”)
without spaces
before and after
them. Of course,
you need to
“Search & Find”
all locations of
em dashes on the
script before you
can do the above.
Prakash Bebington
any Flash file into any topic in a Flare system. This means you can put any Captivate demo or simulation, and any Articulate interactions (including PowerPoint shows), in a help-system-like structure along with text and images. I'm even embedding Captivate Flash files into Engage interactions and dropping those into Flare topics, and they work great! Using Flare lets you organize your
material and keep it all together in a flexible online structure. You can use the output for instructor-led training (live or remote) or as a leave-behind, self-paced system. Another benefit to Flare is
that you can create multiple “targets” (specifically defined outputs), each with its own table of
contents. You can put conditions on your content, so that it only displays in the targets it is intended for (and not others). You can create online output, or you can output to Word or FrameMaker
from the same content pool, which makes creating participant guides and exercise books that go
along with the online component much easier. I just started working with this to develop training
for our new customers. So far so good. I encourage others to try it if you have access to Flare. No, I
do not work for Madcap. .-) The only difficulty I've encountered so far is getting the Quizmaker
quizzes to display in Flare without a lot of JavaScript fancy-dancing. If anyone has the answer to
that one, I'd love to hear it! Tipster: Laura Filla
Success Story
University of
Notre Dame
Immersive first impressions
World-renowned university immerses web visitors
into campus life in vivid motion showcasing
Adobe® Flash® Player Video content
W
hen students dream about
the college experience,
they are likely to imagine
themselves at the University of Notre
Dame. In fact, Notre Dame—rated
one of the top 25 universities in the
United States by virtually every
leading business and educational
publication—ranks fifth in a listing
of “dream schools” in a recent
Princeton Review survey.
The University of Notre Dame’s newly revamped
website serves as an effective marketing tool.
Using Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, the web team
was able to easily achieve the fully interactive,
custom experience they wanted—including
layers, rotation, and spinning. The team also used
Adobe Photoshop CS3 software to design the site
mockups, Adobe Fireworks CS3 to slice the files,
and Adobe Illustrator CS3 to build vector images
that resize fluidly. The improved integration
among Adobe applications was a great advantage
in updating the website’s new design.
“With Flash Player Video, people can
experience the Notre Dame community
in ways not possible with any other
technology.”
Matthew Klawitter, director, Notre Dame Web Group
With more than five applicants for each
freshman class position, the University
continually seeks to attract top applicants
from all over the world, relying primarily
on its website as the first point of contact.
“In one sense, we’re in the first impression
business,” says Matthew Klawitter, director
of the Notre Dame Web Group. “People may
know we have outstanding academic programs
but they may be unaware of the amazing,
world-changing research that happens here.
People know us for athletics but don’t know
about the special student-athletes we have.”
While Notre Dame is viewed as a world leader
in higher education, the university needed to
focus on creating a more innovative web
presence in keeping with institutional standards,
to keep visitors engaged, and to serve as an
effective marketing tool. Under Klawitter’s
leadership, the web team set out to leverage
Adobe technology to meet these goals.
“We wanted to create a virtual canvas that
would draw people in and immediately
immerse them into the campus experience,”
says Klawitter. The team turned to Adobe
technology, including Adobe Flash CS3
Professional software and Adobe Flash Player
Video to deploy a revolving, interactive
carousel of video content that tells the Notre
Dame story in compelling, personal, and
relevant ways. “With Flash Player Video,
people can experience the Notre Dame
community in ways not possible with any
other technology.”
The results speak for themselves. Page visit
duration has increased from 45 seconds to
nearly 5 minutes. The number of page hits has
more than doubled year to year, and the
bounce rate has decreased by a third. “People
are engaged, and they keep coming back for
more,” says Klawitter.
Immersive core messages
Rather than being greeted by a pre-conceived
institutional introduction, visitors to nd.edu
are welcomed by a panel of video vignettes
from a revolving library of Flash Player Video
content that changes continually. Visitors
can click on the central panel and watch, for
example, a snippet of a United Nations advisor
presenting a public lecture from Notre Dame’s
“Embracing Flash CS3 Professional as a
development framework enabled us to convey
the dynamic nature of our university via a
stunning, totally immersive experience rather
than just a portal to web services.”
John Nunemaker, senior developer, Notre Dame Web Group
Organization
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana
http://www.nd.edu
Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
Or they can select an adjacent panel and
follow a computer science and engineering
professor’s progress in developing iris
recognition technology. New, interesting
personal perspectives about research, academic achievements, faculty expertise, and
campus activities are regularly produced by
the University’s news bureau and other
campus communications units and added to
the Notre Dame landing page.
Adobe Flash technology for development as
well as deployment—which included tapping
into a worldwide developer network and
receiving reliable support from Adobe. The
ubiquity of the Adobe Flash Player also meant
that content could be seamlessly delivered to
a global audience. “We’re in the marketing
division,” said Nunemaker, “and we easily
made a strong case to the IT team to move
forward using Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
for our first big foray into web video.”
“The carousel is a great tool to present layers of
our complex institution,” says John Nunemaker,
senior developer at Notre Dame. Since the site
went live, Notre Dame has been flooded with
kudos from visitors globally. “Embracing
Flash CS3 Professional as a development
framework enabled us to convey the dynamic
nature of our university via a stunning, totally
immersive experience rather than just a portal
to web services.” After studying trends in
traditional media including print, broadcast,
and social media, the team concluded that
people want to hear about a subject from a
personal perspective.
The impact of the new site is widespread. From
alumni, to parents, to prospective students, a
renewed sense of pride and admiration reigns.
The web team has received user comments that
tout the new site as the best in higher education,
one that makes a tremendously positive
impression about the institution. One visitor
relayed comments that the new site reflects the
“golden brightness” that is truly Notre Dame.
From a management as well as technical
standpoint, the decision to develop the new
project using Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
was easy. Previously, the team struggled with
various video formats, platform compatibility,
and cumbersome video players. The team
weighed the advantages of working with
Productivity gains
Using a variety of tools in Adobe Creative
Suite® 3 Web Premium, the designers and
developers at Notre Dame are collaborating in
seamless workflows. Nunemaker explains that
the transition from working in JavaScript to
Adobe Flash CS3 Professional software and its
ActionScript programming language was a
natural progression. “Honestly, we hadn’t
done much Flash development prior to this
Challenge
•Deploy immersive web presence for
complex institution of higher learning
•Adopt industry-leading technology that
offers broad community resources and
reliable product support
•Create first-hand perspectives of campus
life that would reach global audience
Solution
Launch innovative new website showcasing
life at Notre Dame through rich media Flash
Player Video
Benefits
•Increased page visit duration by nearly 500%
•Doubled number of hits year to year
•Decreased bounce rates by one third
•Enabled seamless workflows among
designers and developer for rapid
production cycles
•Transitioned smoothly from other
frameworks to Flash development
environment
•Gained unanimous team buy-in from
among Marketing and IT teams
Toolkit
•Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium.
Components used include:
• Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
• Adobe Illustrator CS3
• Adobe Photoshop CS3
• Adobe Fireworks CS3
•Platform: Macintosh PowerBook, MacBook,
MacBook Pro, and iMac computers using
Mac OS X.4
To update the website, the Notre
Dame web team turned to Adobe
technology including Adobe Flash
CS3 Professional and Adobe Flash
Player Video to create a revolving,
interactive carousel of video
content that tells the Notre Dame
story in compelling and relevant
ways. Rather than being greeted
by a pre-conceived institutional
introduction, visitors to nd.edu
are welcomed by a panel of video
vignettes from a revolving library
of Flash Player Video content that
changes continually.
“Now, having embraced Flash to a huge extent,
we are very happy with both the development
environment and the delivery method. We find
it very easy to get things done fast.”
John Nunemaker, senior developer, Notre Dame Web Group
project,” he says. “Now, having embraced
Flash to a huge extent, we are very happy with
both the development environment and the
delivery method. We find it very easy to get
things done fast.”
Adobe Flash provides a smooth, fluid look and
feel to the interactive experience. “Nothing
else would give us the same stunning effect,”
says Nunemaker. Using Adobe Flash CS3
Professional, the team was able to easily achieve
the fully interactive, custom experience they
wanted—including layers, rotation, and
spinning. Attempting the project with any
other technology would have taken significantly longer, would not have resulted in the
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
USA
www.adobe.com
same stunning look, and would have involved
debugging and cross-platform compatibility
checking to a much greater extent.
The team used Adobe Photoshop® CS3
software to design the site mockups, and
then went to Adobe Fireworks® CS3 to slice
the files. At the same time, they used Adobe
Illustrator® CS3 to build vector images that
resize fluidly. Nunemaker notes that the
improved integration among applications
was a great advantage working on this
project. “Being able to hand off files among
designers and developers really helped us
get through the production cycle rapidly.”
In all, the web team has leveraged Adobe
technology—and Flash Player Video in
particular—to help the University reach out
to prospective students, alumni, and the
higher education community with pride.
“Using Flash, we enable people to experience
Notre Dame in a way that we, the Notre Dame
family, inherently know,” says Klawitter.
Adobe, the Adobe logo, Creative Suite, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator, and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems
Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Macintosh and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the United States and other
countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
95010493 03/08 A
44
III. Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (Breeze)
In a meeting
room, rather than
screen-share an
application which
uses high bandwidth, record your
mouse movements and actions
with a program
like Captivate and
run the exported
.SWF file instead
of screen sharing.
Doing this will
keep the high
quality of the
voice and camera
(if not already
paused) working
properly.
CREATING INDEX MARKERS FOR RECORDING TRANSCRIPTS OF CONNECT PRO MEETINGS —
Before your meeting, create layouts with descriptive names to match the flow of the major segments of your upcoming meeting, or to organize your content for easy delivery. This step is very
important if you are going to record the meeting, as the layout names will become index markers
in the archive transcript. Each time you change layouts while recording a meeting, Connect automatically creates an index marker for the recording transcript, and will group all the activities
(slide changes, chat messages, or as appropriate) within that index marker. When a viewer watches the recording, they can easily use the markers to navigate to specific places in the meeting
recording. Tipster: Peter Ryce
SAVE MEETING ROOM LAYOUTS AS TEMPLATES — After you create a nice layout within a meeting
room, you can now make that layout a Meeting Room Template that you can regularly use for all
your new meetings. To do this move the meeting room that contains the nice layout into My
Templates under your user name within the User Meetings. Now when you create a new meeting
room, choose that layout from the drop down list. Otherwise if you want to allow all users to have
access to that meeting room template, move the room to the Shared Templates under Shared
Meetings. Tipster: Aragon Heppel
ADOBE CONNECT PRO MEETING RECORDING TRICKS — To launch to a specific time point in a
recording you can create a URL with the following parameter: ?archiveOffset=x. The offset is
in milliseconds, so multiply minutes by 60,000 to get the offset value; that is, if you want to start
playback three minutes into the recording, make the offset 180,000. For example, if my recording
URL were http://acme.acrobat.com/r123456/, then the URL to launch the recording from the
three-minute mark would be http://acme.acrobat.com/r123456/?archiveOffset=180000.
Tipster: Peter Ryce
ENHANCE PARTICIPANT RIGHTS FOR ONLY ONE POD — In a meeting room, rather than enhance a
participant’s rights to a Presenter or Host, enhance the participant’s rights for only one or a selection of any of the Pods (Share, Notes, Poll, Camera & Voice, Chat, File Share,Web Links). To do this
select an attendee, select the Pods Options (bottom right of attendee list) and then select the different options. Tipster: Aragon Heppel
Aragon Heppel
PRIOR TO A USER’S FIRST CONNECT MEETING, PRE-PREPARE THEM ... BUT KEEP IT SIMPLE — For
example, Massey University uses a three-step pre-flight check http://elearning.massey.ac.nz/connect_support/preflight_check.html. We also have a number of tips for meeting hosts, but it's in
multimedia format, http://connect.massey.ac.nz/tipsforhosts. Tipster: Philip Roy
ALTERNATIVE TO SCREEN SHARING — In a meeting room, rather than screen-share an application
which uses high bandwidth, record your mouse movements and actions with a program like
Captivate and run the exported .SWF file instead of screen sharing. Doing this will keep the high
quality of the voice and camera (if not already paused) working properly. To the end user, running
the .SWF file within the room will be a seamless process rather than splitting the bandwidth of
the room between camera, voice, screen sharing and other pods. Tipster: Aragon Heppel
45
III. Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (Breeze) continued
Each time you
change layouts
while recording a
meeting, Connect
automatically creates an index
marker for the
recording transcript, and will
group all the
activities (slide
changes, chat
messages, or as
appropriate)
within that index
marker. When a
viewer watches
the recording,
they can easily
use the markers
to navigate to
specific places in
the meeting
recording.
Peter Rycea
URL TRICKS FOR CONNECT MEETINGS — You can send guests an “Auto Login” URL with the following format: http://account.acrobat.com/meetingname?guestname=name. For example, if I wanted to log in John as a guest to my meeting with the URL: http://acme.acrobat.com/widgets, then
the URL I'd give to John would be http://acme.acrobat.com/widgets?guestname=John. N.B. You
will name everyone who logs in with this URL “John,” so modify the URL for each guest you want
to log in uniquely. If you have installed the Connect Meeting Add in, but would like to launch the
meeting without the Add in (instead using the Flash Player within a browser window) then use
this format: http://account.acrobat.com/meetingname?launcher=false. Therefore, to join the
“widget” meeting with just a browser, the URL would be http://acme.acrobat.com/widgets?
launcher=false. Tipster: Peter Ryce
46
IV. Adobe Captivate
If you are new to
Flash, consider
Captivate. Captivate has less of a
learning curve,
and can be used
to create simple
interactivity such
as hot-spot, zoom
magnification,
mockups of
machines and
environments,
branching
between scenarios, and so on.
Ellen Meiselman
CREATING MULTIPLE LEVELS OF FEEDBACK — In simulations, it's often useful to provide learners
with multiple attempts, and offer additional feedback with each attempt. By default, Adobe
Captivate creates a single feedback caption, and then continues based on the attempt settings. To
create attempts with feedback ranging from “Try again” to “Let me show you,” simply do the following. For the first attempt: Set the click-box settings to one attempt, and “Jump to the next logical step” on a correct response, and “Continue on the slide” on an incorrect one. Set the associated
failure caption to give your first level of feedback, for example,“Try again.” Copy and paste the click
box, and make the following two changes: Set it to appear right after the first click box in the
timeline, and change the caption to your second level of feedback, for example. Check in the top
left of the screen. Copy and paste one of the click boxes, and make the following two changes: Set
it to appear right after the second click box in the timeline, and change the caption to your third
level of feedback, such as.“Let me show you.” Provide guidance for the rest of the slide in the form
of adding the mouse pointer, providing more instruction, or using highlight boxes or animations
to help the learner. If you are scoring the click, ensure you only add one of the click boxes’ scoring
to the total. (See advanced interaction dialog: All three click boxes show up with their points associated, but a learner can only receive for one of the clicks, if correct. Therefore, each click box needs
to have points associated, but you should only check one of them to add to the total score).
Tipster: Silke Fleischer
IF YOU ARE NEW TO FLASH, CONSIDER USING CAPTIVATE INSTEAD OF FLASH TO CREATE YOUR
FLASH-BASED INTERACTIONS — Captivate has less of a learning curve, and can be used to create
simple interactivity such as hot-spot, zoom magnification, mockups of machines and environments, branching between scenarios, and so on. Tipster: Ellen Meiselman
USING ANOTHER TOOL LIKE FLASH, LECTORA, OR ARTICULATE WITH A CAPTIVATE FILE — We have
found it is faster and easier to bring the Captivate animation in as a .SWF file, and add the audio in
the authoring tool rather than trying to embed the audio and time everything inside Captivate. If
you are playing Captivate as a stand-alone file, or you do not need tightly-integrated animation
and voice over, it's fine to use Captivate's audio recording. However, if you are going to bring
Captivate into another tool, you are better off making one clean pass at the Captivate animation,
and then recording your voice while previewing the Captivate animation. It's much easier to time
your voice to the animation than vice versa. It may not be the absolute “best” output, but it is the
fastest. We learned this the hard way. At first, we did the voice inside Captivate, then, a few times
when we ran out of time, we did a quick and dirty voice-over right before the deadline. When we
reviewed the course two months later, we usually couldn't tell the difference between the pages
we carefully and painstakingly timed versus the ones we “talked over.” Tipster: Kieran Richardson
DEALING WITH LARGE SIMULATIONS (AVOIDING COGNITIVE LOAD AND DOWNLOADING ISSUES
FOR LEARNERS) — Many times we may create large simulations that show the user a wide range
of methods to learn how to do a certain process, whether for a software application or for soft
skills. It would be better to break up the simulations into small manageable sections, and save
these sections into separate Captivate movies, so that the user will have small manageable
47
IV. Adobe Captivate continued
Try using .WAV
audio files rather
than .MP3 files.
The file size may
actually end up
smaller by letting
Captivate convert
the files to .MP3
when you publish
the Flash file.
Christy Tucker
chunks of learning rather than a long simulation with many areas to learn and to remember. In
addition, the file sizes of the movies will be small, enabling the files to load quickly for the users.
Tipster: Bruce Richards
TEST CAPTIVATE LINKS TO EXTERNAL URLs — If your Captivate activity links to an external URL, test
it on a server rather than just on your local machine. The default Flash security settings for local
files often prevent external URLs from opening. Tipster: Christy Tucker
BUILD A FLASH BILLBOARD FOR YOUR E-LEARNING — When I first got Contribute, Ellen Wagner, in
a personal conversation, described it as “Flash for everybody else.”With that in mind, once the
product training was done for our client's software pre-sales demos, I made a Flash billboard that
encouraged visitors to give our client serious consideration as a supplier. A static product-landing
page became an internal advertisement. We helped them set and manage expectations (introduced the product and framed its purpose), established credibility (added testimonials and performance upside descriptions) and then went on to prove that the software would 1) Work as
promised, AND 2) Work as needed. All we did was decide on the billboard size, message, and look.
It was simple, effective, and added just the amount of sizzle they wanted for their steak. Who
knew you could make a great Flash ad in under 20 minutes! Tipster: Becky Smith
IMPORTING AUDIO INTO CAPTIVATE — Try using .WAV audio files rather than .MP3 files. The file
size may actually end up smaller by letting Captivate convert the files to .MP3 when you publish
the Flash file. Tipster: Christy Tucker
HALF A DOZEN GREAT IDEAS IN ONE TIP
Tip 1 — Given the diverse dimensions and resolutions of computer screens these days, it becomes
quite a challenge to create software demonstrations and simulations that display correctly to all
users. A simple way to save any resizing pains is to capture the screens in the lowest possible resolution.
Tip 2 — Screen capture in Captivate is best done through the “Print Screen” key rather than
mouse-click. Later, while editing the frames, you can place the mouse pointer wherever you want.
Tip 3 — In sims, avoid capturing screens with right-click functionality. If you must show the same,
mention the functionality in the instruction, but provide an alternative interaction for the user. For
example:“To check the configuration of your computer, right-click the My Computer icon on your
Desktop. For the purpose of this simulation, instead of right-clicking, left-click the My Computer
icon and then press Enter.”You can use the same strategy for ESC, TAB,WinKey, and function keys.
Tip 4 — When creating demos of software, keep the font type and size of the description text
quite different from the fonts used on the software interface. I personally prefer “Verdana 10pt”
for best readability.
Tip 5 — In demos, it is a tad annoying to see the mouse pointer taking a curved route to the target
(as if it is feigning). Change the global setting to make the mouse pointer move in a straight line.
Tip 6 — Always provide a blank slide before and after a demonstration or simulation, with a cen-
48
No matter what
development
tool you use,
one of the first
steps should be
to develop templates for your
content to promote continuity
for the learner
across topics.
Michael Baker
tral textbox that declares the purpose of the demo or sim. For example:“In this demonstration,
you will view how to save a Word document as a template.”“In this simulation, you practiced how
to save a Word document as a template.” Tipster: Prakash Bebington
CAPTION-BASED CAPTIVATE DESIGN — If you are working on a large project where many of the
authors are SMEs, but have no graphics experience, consider injecting your main graphic design
elements into custom Captivate Text Captions. There are full instructions on how to make custom
captions in the Captivate help file. You can program in all your corporate banners, logos, paragraph
headings, bulleted lines, and even pieces of illustration as captions, and use them with or without
text. You then upload captions to Captivate's caption gallery directory, or, even easier, distribute
them as templates, with the graphics elements already displayed on slides. These graphics
become available within Captivate as instant drawing tools, which are usable and reusable at will.
Making your corporate graphics available this way speeds up work flow phenomenally, and guarantees that all Captivate authors, regardless of design experience, produce identical, professionalstandard graphics, and thus the design remains faithful to your brand. This technique has been
used to produce the Design Templates available for free download on the Captivate Exchange. In
the real world, our company uses this design method routinely — the technique is the starting
point for, and strongly underpins, every large Captivate project. Tipster: Alison Lister
WORKING WITH SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS DURING CAPTIVATE RECORDING SESSIONS — During
course development, if you will have SMEs step through online transactions that you're recording
in Captivate, capture the audio of them narrating it as they go. Have them point out what they're
doing on each screen and why, what they're looking at, and especially any errant keystrokes they
make (preferably along with how to recover). This will help you, the instructional designer, save
hours of development time. During my first use of Captivate I didn't do this, and I spent hours trying to reconstruct what I thought the SME was doing, then going back to him for clarification. It
was really hard figuring out the correct sequence when the SME made a mistake and doubled
back in the screen flow. Then you can merely record your final narrative over the one you had during development. Tipster: Mike Dickinson
TEMPLATES FIRST — No matter what development tool you use, one of the first steps should be to
develop templates for your content to promote continuity for the learner across topics.
Tipster: Michael Baker
TO FORMAT THE CLOSED CAPTIONING TEXT — Go to Project > Skin and then select settings
under closed captioning. The help files do not list this information; I had to learn it by trial and
error. Tipster: Mike Hobby
FEWER SLIDES MEAN SHORTER LOAD TIMES — When using Captivate, a good best practice is to
keep your simulations under 50 slides total. The more slides you create, the longer the load times
since Captivate does not allow you to load external .SWF's to save loading time. It is an all-at-once
load with Captivate. (See my tip “LOADING EXTERNAL .SWF'S” under “Adobe Flash Professional.”)
Tipster: Scott Gaspar
49
Easy way to make
a background
image in Captivate. Design it in
MS Word 2007,
and save it as a
.JPEG. This has
been the fastest,
most effective
IMPROVE LEARNING FOR ADVANCED USERS — If a software simulation requires the learner to
click transparent buttons to advance, also add simple backward and forward arrows in one corner.
This improves the learning for advanced users of the subject because 1.) advanced users can move
quickly through parts they know, and 2.) they feel empowered to direct their own learning, rather
than locked into a “one size fits all” course of learning. Tipster:Andrew Smith
way to design
and import backgrounds for
Captivate that
I've found to date.
TO CLOSE A CAPTIVATE PROJECT AFTER OPENING A NEW WINDOW: Create a very short (0.5 second) blank slide at the end of the project, then set the Project Preferences to close the window at
the end. If you want to provide a way to exit from any slide, you can create a button to go to this
final short slide. (Theoretically, you could use JavaScript to close the window. However, JavaScript
close functions don’t seem to work in Firefox 2.0 with the additional security features.)
Tipster: Christy Tucker
Laura Jaffrey
MAKING SCORM-COMPLIANT PROJECTS, COMPLETE WITH PERCENTAGE — Simply put a “Next”
button on each page. Make the button show up after 10 seconds or so, to give the reader time to
complete the content. Highlight the button, and click on the “Reporting” tab. Click the “Include in
Quiz” checkbox, give it 1 point, and check the “Add to Total” box. Make sure each forward button
does the same. Now when you publish, make sure to enable SCORM 2004 and “Report Score to
the LMS” as %. Import your manifest into the LMS, and you should have a content object that
automatically reports percent complete. Tipster: Scott Hersey
EASY WAY TO MAKE A BACKGROUND IMAGE IN CAPTIVATE — Design it in MS Word 2007, and save
it as a .JPEG. This has been the fastest, most effective way to design and import backgrounds for
Captivate that I've found to date. Tipster: Laura Jaffrey
CUSTOMIZE AND RE-USE HTML TEMPLATE FILE TO SAVE TIME — After your Adobe Captivate project is complete, you can generate both the final .SWF and the HTML files via the File Publish menu.
The problem is that often you have to edit the resulting HTML file to conform to a specific format
or look-and-feel, and this can become a tedious and repetitive process. What you may not know is
that Captivate provides access to the template file used every time you generate a .SWF and its
corresponding HTML file, and thus you can customize this file once and reuse it for future publishing. The name of this file is standard.htm, and you can find it in the installation folder, which is
likely to be C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 3\Templates\Publish\. This file is a regular
HTML file, and you can edit it in any HTML editor, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, as well as a simple
text editor, including Notepad. Tipster: RJ Jacquez
HOW TO ADD CONTENT AFTER A REVIEW SLIDE — Normally, in Captivate, if you use a quiz with a
review slide, adding a slide after the quiz review can cause problems. For example, if you want a
menu slide to direct students to the next section after the review, you may find you can't even add
or move the slide there. The trick is to make sure that the buttons are not reported. Otherwise,
Captivate thinks they're part of the quiz and forces them before the review. Therefore, you should
change the recording options for any buttons before trying to move any content after the review
slide. Tipster: Christy Tucker
ADOBE® Captivate® 3
Rapidly create engaging
learning experiences
• R
apidly develop eLearning content in different learner modes such
as demonstrations, hands-on simulations, and assessments
• Add
interactivity, robust branching scenarios, and randomized quizzing
without programming knowledge
• Easily create engaging learning experiences without multimedia skills
• Give subject matter experts the ability to create their own eLearning content
• Integrate
with eLearning tools and learning management systems
via SCORM/AICC or publish directly to Acrobat® Connect™ Pro
• Deliver rich eLearning content to virtually anyone — anytime, anywhere
Top New Features of Adobe Captivate 3
Multimode screen recording (Demo, Simulation, Assessment)
Scenario branching enhancements
Randomized quizzing and question pools
Slide animation effects
New question types like sequencing and hot spot
Audio recording with preview
Rollover slidelets
Improved integration with Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro
XML (XLIFF) file export and import for easy localization
Streamlined workflow and usability enhancements
Automated rerecording
Microsoft® Windows® Vista® and Office® 2007 support
A Complete Solution for Engaging Learners
CAPTIVATE AND PRESENTER
Top Reasons to Switch to Adobe Captivate from
Video-based Screen Recording Software
“Captivate 3 has greatly extended its
testing capabilities, with randomized
questions and answers, as well as
question reuse from a question pool.
…When you record in Captivate, it
now simultaneously creates a demonstration, a software simulation, and
an assessment file. Each of these
can then be edited and published
separately, a terrific time saver.”
— Bob Doyle,
EContent, 8/7/07
“This is screen capture on steroids.
The program can capture any
movement on the computer screen,
including what you do with the
mouse, and any text you speak or
write to accompany that movement.”
— Bob and Joy Schwabach,
OnComputers, 9/2007
Smart screen recording
Record only the part of a task that you want
with event-based screen capture. Adobe
Captivate also supports smart full motion
recording during drag-and-drop tasks,
includes an option for real-time recording
useful for video or 3D applications, and
can record system sounds as well as audio
from microphones.
Easy editing
Edit audio and captured images, or
even remove/add slides without having
to record again.
Software simulation modes
Generate robust software simulations with
multiple learning modes in a single recording
session, including demonstration of the
procedure complete with mouse movements
and text descriptions of each recorded task,
a simulation for practicing the steps, and
an assessment with scored user interactions.
Automatic caption text, highlights,
and interactivity
Adobe Captivate recognizes menus, links,
and buttons, and automatically creates
interactive hotspots, data entry fields, and
descriptive text captions.
Mouse pointer and path alterations
Modify recorded mouse movements, replace
the pointer image, or add mouse paths to new
screenshots or slides.
Scenario branching
Easily include multiple interactions on a single
slide or recorded screen, add text entry fields
with multiple correct answer options, click
boxes, keyboard shortcuts, and buttons.
Randomized quizzing and score tracking
Create robust quizzes by choosing from
a variety of question types, while delivering
and tracking SCORM and AICCcompliant content.
Flash export for editing
Quickly capture screen tasks and export the
content to Adobe Flash® for further authoring
or advanced editing.
Printable handouts or storyboards
Instantly generate handouts with captions
and notes, create printable lessons with answer
keys, provide step-by-step instructions,
or create storyboards.
Awards
For more information
Learn more about Adobe Captivate 3 at www.adobe.com/captivate
Go to www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/trials.html to download a free software trial.
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
USA
www.adobe.com
Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Captivate, Connect, and Flash, are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the
United States and/or other countries. Microsoft, Windows, Vista, and Office, are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation
in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
52
When using a
click box with a
Tab key shortcut
assigned, the
tab action can
change the focus
from the .SWF file
to the browser
itself. This does
not create a realistic simulation,
and can confuse
learners when
they attempt to
use keyboard
shortcuts in the
tutorial.
WEB RESOURCES THAT FOCUS ON CAPTIVATE TIPS — Specifically, Iconlogic.com, which offers training materials and a free weekly newsletter with tips and answers to frequently asked questions
on Captivate and other e-Learning software. Their training materials are so easy to use that you
can teach yourself the program without attending a class. Another creative Website that offers
tips and tricks for Captivate is http://www.raisingaimee.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&
task=view&id=30&Itemid=29. This site offers Captivate templates and shortcuts that can save a
lot of time. Tipster: Jody McNelis
CAPTIVATE PROJECT SIZING TIPS — When sizing an Adobe Captivate project with the intention of
taking the resulting Flash output and importing it into Articulate Presenter or Adobe Breeze
Presenter, there are several important considerations. First, the maximum size for importing to a
Presenter slide without needing to crop or resize the Flash is 720 x 540. This size will consume the
entire slide. If you want to display the PowerPoint title bar while the Flash video is running, use a
project size of 720 x 495. Second, Captivate has skin borders enabled by default. (Select Project Skin
and select the Borders tab to see this feature.) While this can be a nice aesthetic touch for your
published Flash file, it adds a pixel to the height and width of your output. Thus, if you are using a
precise size when building your project, you could get an error message when importing into
Articulate or Breeze (now Adobe Acrobat Connect). Third, if you are recording a software simulation in Captivate (and why would you be using Captivate if you weren't doing that?!), try very hard
to record in the exact size that you will need for your Flash output. Captivate has an easy-to-use
resizing feature, but the output will always be blurrier if you resize your project. Finally, if you
encounter a situation with any Flash development project and you want to maintain a certain
size, there are several useful aspect ratio calculators on the Web. Simply input the aspect ratio that
you want to maintain, then type another height or width and it displays the new aspect ratio. You
can Google on “aspect ratio calculators” to find one that you like, or use this link to one that I've
found to be very useful: http://www.csgnetwork.com/pixelratiocalc.html. Tipster: Mark Simon
Suresh Jayaraman
HOW TO DISABLE SEAMLESS TABBING — When using a click box with a Tab key shortcut assigned,
the tab action can change the focus from the .SWF file to the browser itself. This does not create a
realistic simulation, and can confuse learners when they attempt to use keyboard shortcuts in the
tutorial. The reason for this is in the browser — a behavior called Seamless tabbing, which allows
tabbing to extend beyond the movie and start with the browser address bar. To disable, follow
these steps:
1. Open the HTML file that Adobe Captivate generates, in a note pad or HTML editor.
2. Between the XobjectX tags, add this parameter: name =“SeamlessTabbing”
value=“false”
3. Save the HTML file.
Your tabbing will now stay within the movie. It works for Internet Explorer and FireFox.
Tipster: Suresh Jayaraman
USE A COMBINATION OF LECTORA AND CAPTIVATE — Captivate is a power-packed Flash-based
tool used for making e-Learning modules. It’s good for non-programmers. Still needs a lot added
53
If capturing a
complex screen
(for example, for
a demonstration),
only capture the
relevant window,
or a specific part
of the window,
rather than the
whole screen —
this will aid viewing for the student.
Stuart Hornsey
to it to make it as powerful as Authorware. Overall it’s really simple for non-complex e-Learning
modules. As for me, I will go on by combining Lectora and Captivate to create e-Learning lessons.
Tipster: Rosh
TWO TIPS (NAVIGATION AND DEMO RECORDING) — 1.) Always ensure you provide a navigation
bar so the learner can pause, stop, rewind, and restart a Captivate Flash file. Especially if it is a software demonstration. You never know when your learner needs to step away from the computer
for a moment, or, sometimes they just want to be able to back up a few steps. 2.) If recording a
software demonstration, try to include a Demo and a “Try It” where time and/or budget allows.
This way you accommodate more than one learning style. Our learners often learn better by
“doing” than just “watching.” Tipster: Kathleen Shykula
CAPTURING COMPLEX SCREENS — If capturing a complex screen (for example, for a demonstration), only capture the relevant window, or a specific part of the window, rather than the whole
screen — this will aid viewing for the student. Tipster: Stuart Hornsey
USE SCREENSHOTS TO REDUCE SIMULATION FILE SIZE — Here's how I use Captivate and screenshots to simulate an application: Create a blank project in Adobe Captivate. Use SnagIt to acquire
the screenshots and regions that you will use in the presentation. Save them as .PNGs. Do this
instead of recording your screen, because you will end up with a smaller file size, you won't have
erroneous slides and animations, and you will have more control over each slide and element.
Paste a screenshot onto a blank slide, and change the options to show the image for the “Rest of
slide” with “No transitions.” Apply these settings “to all” to make it your new default for images.
Record the audio to describe what you want the user to do in the application. Insert a highlight
box over the region that you want the user to click. Insert a click box that pauses the presentation
until the user clicks it. Make the click box action “go to next slide” or “jump to slide.” On the slide
that the click box opens, paste the image of the application, showing how it appears when they
select that option. Initially, the workflow is more than just recording your screen, but the payoff
will be an interactive presentation. The visual quality will be better. The user control will be precise.
It will be like you coaching users through an actual application — only you don't have to be there!
Tipster: Leif Nelson
54
V. Adobe Dreamweaver
Use the site-manager to coordinate files for
multi-file find
and replace. The
site-manager also
makes it easy to
organize your
courses for regular file access.
Red Resener
GIVE USERS ESTIMATED DOWNLOAD TIMES AND A LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE FLASH PLAYER —
Whenever I include Flash content within the Web pages for my courses, I always include a note
about the download time for those on slow connections, and a link to download the Flash player.
Dreamweaver's Snippets feature makes this very easy. I have my standard text, including the
download link, saved as a snippet so I can easily reuse it in every course. Tipster: Christy Tucker
USE THE SITE-MANAGER TO COORDINATE FILES FOR MULTI-FILE FIND AND REPLACE — The sitemanager also makes it easy to organize your courses for regular file access. Tipster: Red Resener
USE LIBRARY AND TEMPLATE FOR THE COMMON CODE OR OBJECT — Instead of Save As for the
same file. Tipster: Ram Mohan
55
VI. Adobe Presenter
If you are hosting
your Presenter
content on your
Adobe Connect
server, you can
add a parameter
to the URL to
make the presentation start play-
CREATING LOOPING PRESENTATIONS — There are at least two ways to do this.
back on a particular slide. Simply
add “?slide=x” to
the existing
Connect URL.
CREATING A URL THAT GOES DIRECTLY TO A PARTICULAR SLIDE IN AN ADOBE PRESENTER PRESENTATION — If you are hosting your Presenter content on your Adobe Connect server, you can add a
parameter to the URL to make the presentation start playback on a particular slide. Simply add
?slide=x to the existing Connect URL. For example if the original URL is:“http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/microphones” and you wanted to start on slide 5, the result would be: “http://my.adobe.
acrobat.com/microphones?slide=5”
Peter Ryce
First method: Choose the “Audio Editor” from the Presenter menu in PowerPoint and navigate to
the last slide you want in the loop. Click in the waveform editor area of the dialog box, then use
the “Insert” menu and choose “Command... .” Change the “Marker Type” to “Goto slide” and then
pick which slide you'd like to go back to when the user arrives here. Click OK, and close the Audio
Editor, saving your changes.
Second method: Choose “Slide Properties” from the Presenter menu in PowerPoint, and select the
last slide you want in the loop. Click the Edit button and use the dropdown menu beside the Goto
field to select the slide you would like to be first in the loop. Click OK. After either of these options,
you can publish your presentation and it will continuously loop through your slides. This is ideal as
a set of welcome or instruction slides that can be used within Connect Pro meetings as “lobby”
slides. Tipster: Peter Ryce
Note: This only works with content hosted on an Adobe Connect server. However, it works both for
our Adobe-hosted servers, and for customer-licensed servers. Tipster: Peter Ryce
56
VII. Articulate Presenter and Engage
If you update
your Flash movie
after you have
published your
presentation and
you want to
incorporate your
changes into your
presentation, simply save the
updated .swf file
in the same location with the
same name and
publish the presentation again.
Raghavendra
USE ENGAGE TO SAVE TIME — In this day of rapid development and tight deadlines, efficiency is
everything. Flash is a fantastic tool, but Articulate Engage can make nice-looking, functional animations in a fraction of the time. Use Engage where you can to save time, and use Flash for more
customized and complicated animations. Tipster: Steve Johnson
IMPORTING FLASH FILES CREATED IN CAPTIVATE INTO PRESENTER — If you are creating a Flash file
in Adobe Captivate in order to import it into Articulate Presenter (or Adobe Breeze Presenter),
there are two potential problems if you use Captivate's borders feature. 1.) When the borders feature is enabled (it's a checkbox in the options area for the skin), Captivate outputs two .SWF files
instead of one. There is a separate '_SKIN.SWF' file in addition to the content .SWF file, and the
problem is that neither will play if imported into Articulate because they need each other to play
properly. The simple solution: Don't use Captivate borders if you want to import the Flash file into
Articulate or Breeze. 2.) The borders add an extra pixel to the height and width, and if you have
sized your Captivate project precisely to fit in an Articulate/PowerPoint slide, the extra pixel will
cause Articulate to crop or resize your Flash file. For the record, your Flash file should be a maximum of 720x540 if you are going to import it into Articulate/PowerPoint, and if you want to show
the PowerPoint title bar while the video is running, crank it down to 720x495. Tipster: Mark Simon
LEVERAGE YOUR RAPID AUTHORING TOOL — Articulate Presenter publishes each PowerPoint slide
as a distinct slide .SWF. This means that you can use PowerPoint as a simple Flash animation creator. With some practice, you can create animations in PowerPoint that rival the animations you
see in Flash, only you don't need Flash programming skills. Publish the file in Presenter, and then
pull the .SWF from the data folder. I do this all the time to quickly create .SWFs for my Web site, or
to use in other applications like Quizmaker or Engage. Tipster: Tom Kuhlmann
EASY UPDATES TO PUBLISHED MOVIES — If you update your Flash movie after you have published
your presentation and you want to incorporate your changes into your presentation, simply save
the updated .SWF file in the same location with the same name and publish the presentation
again. Tipster: Raghavendra
CONVERTING POWERPOINT CHARTS TO FLASH IN ARTICULATE — Articulate does an amazing job
of converting most PowerPoint information to Flash. One of the areas where I find it often fumbles is in rendering charts. Articulate often will not draw the fonts and some of the graphics to be
as smooth at they are in the PowerPoint chart. It is as if Articulate is having trouble fully accessing
the vector information in the chart. One quick work-around is to make a screen shot of the chart,
and use the screen shot in the PowerPoint file instead of the actual chart. The screen shot is just a
graphic, so it renders out just as pretty as it looks in PowerPoint. You can even just take the real
chart and move it off to the side of the slide area, so it is always there if you need to make edits
and update the screen shot. Tipster: Tim Bobo
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58
VII. Articulate Presenter and Engage continued
Structure your
project directory
properly before
you begin using
presenter. The
program automatically creates files, and
does not always
warn you if you
are about to
overwrite files.
Brian Dusablon
USE ARTICULATE PRESENTER PAGE LEVELS AND ARTICULATE ENGAGE FOR BETTER CONTENT
ORGANIZATION AND INTERACTIVITY — Frequently, Presenter is used to convert instructor-led
training into Flash-based e-Learning Content. As most of us know, this isn’t a straight one-to-one
conversion. It requires a different instructional design approach to, among other things, make up
for the lack of a live facilitator who can tailor the content to suit the needs of the audience. A couple of simple ways to allow the learner to better navigate the content, or tailor it to their own
needs, is chunking and setting context. Breaking the content into smaller, more easily digested
chunks, isn’t new, but it is frequently overlooked when converting ILT to an online format. Setting
context may be a new concept for some, or you may know it by some other name. To me, setting
context means informing the learner, at the start of each chunk, what it will cover, why it is important, and how it fits into the overall unit/lesson/module. Simply put, setting context provides the
learner with the best ability to remember the chunks of content, and allows them to choose
which chunk(s) of content to consume. Setting context is crucial, especially when you can’t determine the entering behaviors of your audience. The simplest way to chunk content in Articulate
Presenter is to use page levels. Page levels group slides into chunks of content, which is easier to
navigate using a tree style menu. To do this you open the Presenter slide properties manager
using the PowerPoint add-in menu for Articulate, and set the page level to one more than the first
slide in the chunk. For example, if you have 25 slides you want to break into five equal chunks, the
first slide of each chunk is set, by default, to Level 1. The remaining four slides of each chunk would
be set to Level 2. When Presenter builds the navigation, each Level 1 slide is listed in the main slide
list. Clicking a slide title reveals the four additional slides in the chunk. You use the Level 1 slide to
set context for the chunk. You can also group slides in the properties manager by slide type, who
the presenter is, the associated audio playlist, and whether the navigation automatically moves to
the next slide. A better method for chunking your content is to use Articulate Engage. Not only
does Engage do a better job of chunking your content and adding interactivity, it makes your
chunks portable. Once it has been created, you can use an Engage interaction in any presentation.
Using Engage, you take the slides for each chunk and place them in an interaction using Interaction Tabs or one of the following Interaction Slide types: Process, Timeline, Pyramid Diagram,
Labeled Graphic, Interactive FAQ, Media Tour, Guided Image, Circle Diagram, or Glossary. The tips
for getting the most out of Articulate Engage are a separate topic for discussion.
Tipster: Paul Vandegriff
STRUCTURE YOUR PROJECT DIRECTORY PROPERLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN USING PRESENTER — The
program automatically creates files, and does not always warn you if you are about to overwrite
files. Be very careful, especially if you are recording directly in Articulate. We lost some audio files
because of this. To work around it, we set up a directory structure with separate folders for the
PowerPoint file, the Articulate output files, and any other graphics or additional content we use.
This has helped. Tipster: Brian Dusablon
AVOIDING PROBLEMS CREATED BY HAVING TWO FLASH FILES ON ANY TWO SLIDES IN A ROW —
Articulate is great in that it allows Flash content to be inserted in the place of any slide. However,
it can also act funny if you insert two Flash files on any two slides in a row. The Flash files can be
59
Because they’re
so easy to create, and so
portable to utilize, Flash-based
e-Learning presentations have
changed the
way training
courses are
delivered …
forever.
George Ritacco
drawn in the wrong place when using the arrow keys on the keyboard to move forward or backwards in the presentation. So, until this bug is fixed, an easy workaround is to make sure you have
some sort of introduction slide in PowerPoint before any Flash content. This will ensure that no
two Flash files are inserted in a row, and you will avoid this little Articulate bug. The result is something that feels entirely natural. For example, if we have a Flash game, we will make a PowerPoint
slide with an introduction and a “continue” button. The continue button will just be a PowerPoint
button that links to the next slide. Thus the users will read the instructions on the PowerPoint
slide, then hit continue and immediately be in our Flash game. The extra PowerPoint slide feels
very natural, and is easier to update than if you embedded the introduction information in the
Flash file. Tipster: Tim Bobo
USE ARTICULATE TO AUTOMATICALLY ENGAGE LEARNERS — It involves delivery, but before I
explain more, let me back up a bit and introduce something a bit more conceptual first. Suppose
your job was to get a balloon across a 20 foot room, how would you do it? Would you clench your
first, wind up and give it a big “whack?” Or would you “tap it” at strategic and specific intervals to
ensure that your balloon reached its destination? Obviously, tapping is the correct way to go.
Why? Because with only one whack a balloon has a tendency to slow down and fall to the
ground. Why the analogy? Hang on, we’re getting there. Let’s look at an average employee in a hohum position, working for a good company, but challenged daily with frustrations and distractions. Now let’s look at instructor-led or classroom training for a moment. People are brought in,
flown in, or they drive in to a training session. Maybe it’s for one day, or more. And the goal is to
deliver new material, observe skill levels through role-plays, and so on, and motivate and inspire
everyone with new energy. Of course, what normally happens at a class is phenomenal. There’s
interaction, there’s collaboration, there’s observation and role-playing. Bottom line: People participate and most leave charged with a new lease on life and renewed pep in their step, ready to
tackle their daily frustrations and distractions with a new positive boost of vigor and hope! But
what happens? Soon after they return to their daily routines the “pumped” feeling they all felt at
class soon begins to wane, and they are consumed again by their daily frustrations and distractions. Now bear with me — earlier we agreed that hitting a balloon for all its worth is not the best
way for you to get a balloon across a room. Similarly, the problem with most instructor-led training or live classroom instruction is that it is like whacking a balloon ONE TIME. When you only give
your people a good boost ... without a specific follow-up regimen or plan in place ... they typically
fall to the ground (or, in our case, fall victim to old habits, distractions and frustrations) and forget
what they were taught in class. Why do you think that is? Because most classroom instruction is
not followed up with by a consistent repetition and frequency program ... the proper “tapping” if
you will. Most organizations run their BIG SEMINAR, or pack a ton of information in two days of
live training, and then they send everyone home with a workbook.
So what is there to do? Enter Flash-based e-Learning. Not only is Flash one of the best things to
come along and help trainers in a very long time, but when you have the pleasure of using a product like Articulate, a sophisticated process becomes so easy that literally anyone can be an instructional designer. Because they’re so easy to create, and so portable to utilize, Flash-based e-Learning
presentations have changed the way training courses are delivered … forever. First off, embedding
60
an audio narrative and voice-over OR incorporating streaming video, adds an entirely new element
to interacting and engaging your trainees because you’re now able to teach to each of the three
learning styles — auditory, visual and kinesthetic — easier and more effectively than ever before.
Second, at my company we speak about the concept of “Automated Engagement” (AE). AE is a
systematic and consistent approach to automatically “engaging” and interacting with someone
according to a set timeline or schedule. And that’s my tip — taking an e-Learning course, created
rapidly with PowerPoint and Articulate, and combining it with an e-Learning scheduling and delivery system. Vitally, the last and final point... As a trainer, you have in your hands something that
differentiates today’s trainers from those of five to ten years ago — an innate ability to leverage
technology to maximize resources, improve productivity, and shorten training time.
Tipster: George Ritacco
61
VIII. Articulate Rapid e-Learning Studio
and Studio Pro
If you plan to use
animations in
PowerPoint, like
flying-in bullet
items, and you
also plan to record
narrations, it's
much easier if you
will create the narrations first! That
way you can click
“next animation”
while recording
the audio and the
two will sync up
perfectly.
Mike Dickinson
BE CAREFUL ABOUT THE FOLDER AND FILE STRUCTURE — Unless I'm behind on a product update,
Articulate Presenter creates folders and files in a specific structure and naming convention based
on the original PowerPoint file. For example, if you rename that file (as I'm in the habit of doing
every once in awhile for backup sake), or move it, you can appear to lose all your recorded narratives. Articulate has a quick-reference guide that explains this at http://www.articulate.com/blog/
directory-structure/ Tipster: Mike Dickinson
CREATE NARRATION FIRST — If you plan to use animations in PowerPoint, like flying-in bullet
items, and you also plan to record narrations, it's much easier if you will create the narrations first!
That way you can click “next animation” while recording the audio and the two will sync up perfectly. If you record audio first, then create the narrations, you can still sync them up, but it's a
much more tedious process. Tipster: Mike Dickinson
BUILD AN INTERACTIVE TOUR — After redesigning our subscription-based e-Learning store, we
wanted to add an interactive tour to introduce new users to the Web site. We didn't have the time
or budget to hire a multimedia specialist to build a Flashy media tour. Instead, I used Articulate
Engage to create a labeled graphic to build the tour, and imported audio to enhance the tour. The
tour is a big hit with sales personnel trying to sell subscriptions to the e-Learning store, and provides a quick overview for new users. We can also easily edit the tour whenever we modify the
e-Learning store. Tipster: Janet Clifford
INTERACTIVE JOB AIDS — Using Articulate tools and Microsoft PowerPoint, I recently created an
interactive job aid for a time clock. I inserted an image of the time clock on the master slide of the
PowerPoint slide presentation, added customized clock menus on each slide, and used hyperlinks
in PowerPoint to allow users to simulate performing transactions at the time clock. Using Articulate Engage I added two labeled-graphics interactions,“How to Use This Job Aid,” and “Using
the Time Clock.” I was building the job aid for a popular casino, and inserted their logo in the
Articulate player as well as customized the Articulate player colors to represent their company
colors. Finally, I published the interactive job aid for Web delivery. Tipster: Janet Clifford
Who Knew E-Learning Tools This Quick and Easy
Could Make You Look This Good
“Articulate has dramatically changed the way we deliver employee training.
We can now deliver more training at less cost to a wider audience in a shorter period of time.”
Lora Davis, Instructional Designer, ADP
Award Winning Rapid E-Learning Software Tools
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Empower rapid e-learning with a set
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Presenter
Quickly create Flash-based presentations
and e-learning courses from PowerPoint.
Engage
Easily add stunning interactive content
to your e-learning courses.
Quizmaker
Effortlessly craft Flash-based quizzes,
assessments and surveys.
Articulate Online
Effectively track e-learning activity without
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Empowering Rapid E-Learning
With e-learning software tools that empower anyone to quickly
and easily create engaging courses, presentations, quizzes, and
surveys, everyone ends up looking good.
At Articulate, our mission is simple. We make everyone involved in organizational
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63
IX. Trivantis Lectora
I have found that
the best way to
insert a Flashbased file within
Lectora is to insert
the .SWF animation into its own
page in Lectora.
Doing this allows
the .SWF file to
play when accessed, and when it is
finished the user
would simply click
on the navigation
button within
Lectora to move
to next page.
Bruce Richard
THE CHANGE CONTENTS ACTION IS YOUR FRIEND — Most people don't even realize how versatile
this action is. It doesn't just swap out images and text. It can swap out pretty much anything with
something else. Swap Flash files, audio files, documents, images, text contents, buttons, and more.
This really opens up many possibilities in Lectora to create content that is dynamic and easily
maintainable. Always consider Change Contents when creating large scale courses!
Tipster: Tim Kindberg
MANAGING FLASH-BASED E-LEARNING CONTENT IN LECTORA — I have found that the best way
to insert a Flash-based file within Lectora is to insert the .SWF animation into its own page in
Lectora. Doing this allows the .SWF file to play when accessed, and when it is finished the user
would simply click on the navigation button within Lectora to move to next page. Users will be
able to replay the .SWF file however many times if, say, it was a simulation of a software application. You could also set a text link to play the .SWF file as a pop-up window, and still not worry
over navigation. You accomplish this by creating a button, then:
On Click,
Action: Go To;
Target: Web Address;
Web Address: SimName.SWF or SimName.htm
Then check the box to “Open in New Window.”When the simulation is completed, the window
would close and the course which was behind the simulation is now available for the learner to
continue. Finally, when testing the above, it is best to do the testing on a Web server, rather than a
PC, as the ActiveX control will prevent the .SWF file from running or displaying correctly.
Tipster: Bruce Richards
JAVASCRIPT METHODS THAT YOU CAN USE WITH LECTORA — These are helpful when utilizing
External HTML Objects within Lectora, or when calling to Lectora from Flash or other programs.
(Note: Variables in Lectora have the prefix “Var” added to the beginning of them during publish.
So if you've created a custom variable called ChapterComplete, then you would need to reference to it as VarChapterComplete. I'll use this example variable in the following examples.)
Some of my favorites:
1. VarChapterComplete.getValue()– Gets the value of the variable. Good for when you
need to analyze the value before doing something else. For example, if(VarChapterComplete.getValue() == true){ trivNextPage() }
2. VarChapterComplete.set(value) – Use to set a value of a variable. For example,
VarChapterComplete.set(false) will set ChapterComplete to false.
3. VarChapterComplete.contains(value) – This will test whether the variable contains
the value. For example, VarChapterComplete.contains(“t”) will look for the letter “t”
inside of the variable.
4. Button123.actionShow() and Button123.actionHide() – Show and Hide the object.
Just refer to its HTML-published name.
64
IX. Trivantis Lectora continued
By using the External Interface
in Flash 8 and
above, you can
use Flash to modify Lectora variables, hide and
show Lectora content, and create
custom navigation buttons.
Mark Hemingway
5. trivNextPage() and trivPrevPage()– Send the course to the next or previous pages.
6. alert(value) – This is helpful when you are trying to debug some code. It will display any
value inside an alert popup window. For example,
alert(VarChapterComplete.getValue())
displays ChapterComplete's value in an alert popup.
7. action123()– Executes the action of the button that has the same HTML-publish number. So
if you create a button, and it's HTML name is button123, then action123 will execute the
action that is on button123's click tab. (Caution: action123 will not execute any additional
actions added to button123, ONLY it's click-tab action. If you want to execute a group of
actions, then have button123's click-tab action run an action group.
MORE FLASH/LECTORA TIPS — Use
Flash.external.ExternalInterface.call(“functionName”);
in Flash instead of
getURL(“javascript:functionName()”);
For example, if I want to show a button in Lectora from Flash, in Flash ActionScript type
Flash.external.ExternalInterface.call(“button123.actionShow”);
where button123 is actually your button’s HTML name. Also leave off the “()” that you would
normally include in the getURL call. To see HTML names in Lectora, go to FilePreferences,
then check the “Show HTML-published object names in object properties.”Then double-click any
object, and its HTML name will be in the upper right corner of the properties dialogue.
A WALK-THROUGH OF THE SOURCE CODES STRUCTURE IN AN HTML PUBLISH FROM LECTORA —
This is taken from the class “The Guts of an HTML Publish.”
HTML Source
a.
Top of File Scripting — user added code.
-------------------------HEAD------------------------b.
title — taken from the page name in Lectora
c.
link — link to .CSS file (located in HTML folder);
d.
style — additional needed Text, Form, TOC, and body styles
e.
XscriptX and span tags
i. The div layer controls WHERE the text is on the screen and the ID that the object will be
referenced by.
ii. The p and span tags control how they stylize the text in conjunction with .CSS styles.
65
IX. Trivantis Lectora continued
LAYERING ON TOP OF A FLASH MOVIE — You can layer objects on top of your Flash movie if you
use the parameters tab in the properties of the animation to set the “wmode” parameter to
“transparent”. By using the External Interface in Flash 8 and above, you can use Flash to modify Lectora variables, hide and show Lectora content, and create custom navigation buttons.
Tipster: Mark Hemingway
66
X. Camtasia Studio Screen Recording and
Presentation
Be sure to use the
latest version of
Camtasia. After
using Camtasia
to record demonstrations, we had
audio problems
with the Flash
playback in
Adobe Flash Player (created with
KEEPING CAPTURE VIDEO AND SCREEN ACTION TOGETHER — Sometimes I miss a splash screen or
a video capture. It's because each is displaying in separate layered windows. When using the
Camtasia Recorder, remember to select multiple layers in order to capture video and screen action
together.
Articulate) which
Another advantage of using Zoom-n-Pan is that it isolates specific areas so that non-relevant
parts of the screen or window don't distract your learners from the focal point. This is particularly
helpful if you are showing an application that has many complicated elements.
only occurred on
some machines.
We found that
updating Camtasia and republishing the recordings fixed it.
Jeff Yoder
Step 1. Open Camtasia Studio
Step 2. Click on the menu items listed here: Tools | Camtasia Recorder | Tools | Options
Step 3. Click the selection box labeled “Capture layered windows”
Step 4. Click the screen button labeled “OK”
Step 5. Begin recording
Tipster: Doug Marlowe
LEARN ABOUT THE ZOOM-N-PAN FEATURE — If you are producing at a smaller size than you've
recorded at (e.g. you recorded your entire screen, which is at 1024 x 768, but are producing out at
640x480), small details like text and icons may be difficult to see clearly for your learners. So, use
the Zoom-n-Pan feature to make the area you are discussing larger.
A word of caution though: Over-using zooms and pans can make it difficult for your learners to
maintain a sense of visual context (i.e. where in the application/screen the part you are showing
is) and can significantly increase the size of your produced file.
Tipster: Conan Heiselt
EASY AUDIO IN PROJECTS — When using audio in a Flash e-Learning project, I like to record the
audio in small bits and label the bits based on subject. For example, if I am doing a training series
on Getting Started with XYZ technology, I would record the audio in 1-2 sentence-length recordings, save them with names like gsXYZ01.mp3, gsXYZ02.mp3, gsXYZ03.mp3 where gs represents
the subject, XYZ represents the technology or process, and 01, 02, and 03 represents the audio segment being recording. From there I store and import each audio file, and place it in the appropriate place in the Flash training. This makes for easy recording, updating, and editing of audio in a
project. I use this format with Camtasia, Captivate, and other rapid e-Learning tools as a way to
effectively edit and manage audio for a project. The metadata tags in Audacity by SoundForge are
also useful for enhanced content management of audio files. Tipster: Laura Jaffrey
AVOIDING AUDIO PROBLEMS — Be sure to use the latest version of Camtasia. After using
Camtasia to record demonstrations, we had audio problems with the Flash playback in Adobe
Flash Player (created with Articulate) which only occurred on some machines. We found that
updating Camtasia and republishing the recordings fixed it. Tipster: Jeff Yoder
68
XI. Using Other Tools
When copying or
pasting text from
elsewhere, do
not paste “as is.”
Instead, paste as
unformatted text
through “Edit |
Paste | Special |
Unformatted
Text.”
Prakash Bebington
A. Microsoft PowerPoint
GET APPROVAL WHILE IN POWERPOINT STORYBOARD TO AVOID REWORK — We try to get
approval on the content while the storyboard is in PowerPoint format to eliminate rework once
we develop in Flash. It's much easier and quicker to mock-up graphics and general flow in the
PowerPoint format. The nice thing about this type of storyboard is that it's visual, and can give an
idea not only of the content but the intended design. Tipster: Vicki Krajewski
REPLACE FLASH DEVELOPMENT BY USING POWERPOINT (SOMETIMES) — The Flash authoring program is certainly powerful, but it is also quite intimidating for the masses of instructional designers that rely on Microsoft Office for their daily work. Many of these designers are diehard PowerPoint gurus who can animate a title sixty ways to Sunday, but would still rather avoid the stage
and timeline. While PowerPoint may be great for drafting and storyboarding content prior to Flash
development, in many cases it can replace Flash development entirely. PowerPoint-to-Flash converters have come a long way, though not all are created equal. Some conversion tools will only
take a snapshot of each slide and play them in sequence, while others support animations, slide
transitions, videos, and sounds. Most tools offer a trial, so you can test whether it handles your
presentations. You will usually find that the more capable tools are more expensive. If you've never
delivered Flash content before, converting PowerPoint to Flash is an easy way to get your feet wet
and reach new audiences or create new business opportunities. Tipster: Lawrence Yau
POWERPOINT TIPS FOR DESIGNERS —
Tip 1: Avoid light text on dark background ... if the presentation is likely to be printed on paper. As
B/W printers still rule the roost, all light-colored text prints as black. If you still insist, then print as
“Color,” not “Grayscale.”
Tip 2: Avoid ornamental or unique font types (such as Script, English Old Style, or Dragonfly) in presentations that are sent to others. If the recipients do not have those fonts installed on their computers, your fonts will appear as their default font (which is usually not pretty).
Tip 3: It’s best to avoid three levels of bullets in PowerPoint presentations. As the first, default, level
is also bulleted, go up to only the next level, no further. Also, distinguish the levels with contrasting font types, preferably from the same font family. I personally prefer Arial for Level 1, and Arial
Narrow for level 2.
Tip 4: Dark backgrounds in your presentations could force you to use images with transparent backgrounds. If you have such images, then go for that dark or shaded background in the master slide.
Tip 5:When in Normal view, you can move better between slides using Page Down key, if you fit all
slides in your presentation within the slide window. Ensure no objects spill over outside the slide
canvas.
Tip 6:When copying or pasting text from elsewhere, do not paste “as is.” Instead, paste as unformatted text through “Edit | Paste | Special | Unformatted Text.”
Tipster: Prakash Bebington
69
XI. Using Other Tools continued
In your PowerPoint show, if you
have to present
branched information, prefer
embedded slides
over custom
shows. This prevents the embarassment of displaying the “hidden slides” in the
custom shows
while navigating
backwards during
your presentation.
AUTOMATE POWERPOINT CONTENT TO DYNAMICALLY BUILD SHELL FILE AND FOLDER
STRUCTURES —
Macro code for PowerPoint:
Sub BuildShellStructure()
Dim fso
Dim fso2
Dim sfol As String, dfol As String
Dim sfo2 As String, dfo2 As String
sfol = “C:\Projects\courseTemplate”
dfol = “C:\Projects\newsite”
Set fso = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
If Not fso.FolderExists(dfol) Then
fso.CopyFolder sfol, dfol
sfo2 = “C:\Projects\mediaTemplate” 'FLA files
dfo2 = “C:\Projects\newCourseMedia”
Set fso2 = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
If Not fso2.FolderExists(dfo2) Then
Else
fso2.CopyFolder sfo2, dfo2
MsgBox dfol & “ already exists! Rename the folder and try
again...”, vbExclamation, “Folder Exists”
End If
Prakash Bebington
End Sub
End If
Set up your course shell files, then update the macro above to reflect the location of those files and
folders. Any questions about this, or automating e-Learning, e-mail [email protected].
Tipster: Red Resener
PRESENT BRANCHED INFORMATION SAFELY IN POWERPOINT — In your PowerPoint show, if you
have to present branched information, prefer embedded slides over custom shows. This prevents
the embarassment of displaying the “hidden slides” in the custom shows while navigating backwards during your presentation. Follow these simple steps:
(1) Embed the layered information as PowerPoints on the page you'd like to branch out.
(2) Display as icon.
(3) Activate the PowerPoint icon through “Action Settings | Object Action: Show”.
(4) Rename the icon appropriately through “Presentation Object | Convert | Change Icon |
Caption”. Tipster: Prakash Bebington
70
Take advantage
of new technologies that ease the
development of
Flash content.
PowerPoint 2003
and above gives
you the ability to
add motion paths
to objects.
John Best
DO YOUR FLASH DEVELOPMENT HEAVY LIFTING IN POWERPOINT — Take advantage of new technologies that ease the development of Flash content. PowerPoint 2003 and above gives you the
ability to add motion paths to objects. For example, you can show several items on a page, cause
all but one to fade, enlarge and move the existing object, and add text. You can do all the heavy
lifting of creating motions in PowerPoint. Several PowerPoint-to-Flash conversion programs are
appearing that are inexpensive and very easy to use. They operate as PowerPoint add-ons.
Examples are Articulate Presenter and Flashpoint. The Flash files can be set up as a complete
course with navigation and branching, or added to a development package such as OpusWorks
Composer by The Quality Group. Tipster: John Best
B. Microsoft Word
A HALF-DOZEN USEFUL TIPS (NOT ALL RELATED TO FLASH)
Tip 1: Inculcating a discipline of setting your document styles at the start of your word processing
will go a long way in preventing formatting inconsistencies later. Explore the Format | Styles and
Formatting option right away. Also, if you are amazed at how some people magically generate
that hyperlinked Table of Contents, this too flows from the style-setting discipline.
Tip 2: If you follow style discipline, you must also follow the Paste Special rule. Never copy-paste,
always paste-special. This feature is available in Edit | Paste Special. If pasting text, paste as
Unformatted Text, then apply your preferred style.
Tip 3: MS Word is a word processing tool, NOT a drawing tool. If you want to draw autoshapes,
draw in PowerPoint, print-screen it, and paste in Word. Then, using the cropping tool, nick off those
excess white spaces around your drawing.
Tip 4: Avoid page borders if you are not an expert Word user. Page borders look great in Print
Preview, but when you print the page, an unseemly space remains at the bottom of the page.
Tip 5: If the bottom half of that table you just inserted disappeared below the page (and does not
continue to the next page), change the text wrapping in Table Properties (Table | Table Properties |
Text Wrapping | None). If the table spills over to the right outside the page, set the preferred width
in Table Properties to 100%.
Tip 6: If your table spans multiple pages, repeat the header row across the pages. For this, select
the header row, go to Table Properties | Row Options and select Repeat as header row at the top
of each page.
Tipster: Prakash Bebington
71
Add Second Life
video (machinima) to your Flash
work. It's easy
with a few inexpensive tools and
tips. Using products such as Fraps
and Sizer, capture
video (at a specific frame rate and
sized to your
needs) and import
it into Flash. It's
an easy way to
add 3-D content
to scenarios and
questions.
David Miller
C. Qarbon Viewlet Builder
This tool by Qarbon, http://.www.qarbon.com, makes developing online training so easy and simple. You can start with a PowerPoint presentation, and use a screen capture mode to convert it
into Viewlet Builder. At that point, you can create multiple click zones, add interactivity, add audio,
and customize the interface GUI to include a table of contents as well as the current screen. Upon
choosing a few options, with one click, you can instantly create Flash-based SCORM- and AICCcompliant modules that run independently, within all LMS systems, or use the Viewlet Central
solution. I have used Viewlet Builder products (Viewlet Builder, Viewlet Quiz, Viewlet Central) for
over four years, and they just keep getting better. They have great support, and the license is very
reasonable. When creating an online product for my clients, I always recommend that they purchase a license, so that they can update courseware in the future – since the learning curve is so
short. Tipster: Karen Miller
D. zPhoto
zPhoto is a free Flash-based photo album generator, available at http://0xcc.net/zphoto/index.
html.en. zPhoto creates a Flash-based on-line album from photos taken by a digital camera or
images scanned in. I use it to display student work in a gallery, or to give examples of digital art
work that can be created. Tipster: Daphen Gonzalvez
E. Second Life
Add Second Life video (machinima) to your Flash work. It's easy with a few inexpensive tools and
tips. Using products such as Fraps and Sizer, capture video (at a specific frame rate and sized to
your needs) and import it into Flash. It's an easy way to add 3-D content to scenarios and questions. Tipster: David Miller
When getting video out from Second Life, size the Second Life viewer to meet your requirements.
If the final video needs to be 640 x 480 pixels, then set your viewer to that size, and test by taking
a few seconds of video and viewing the video's properties. This maintains the maximum quality
by not resampling the video, and cuts down on production time. Tipster: David Miller
To get clean and professional results for video from Second Life, hide your interface when filming
by using Ctrl Alt 1. You can also turn off the chat bubbles under Preferences if desired. Check for
attachments in a little test footage before doing your final filming. Tipster: David Miller
Make your Second Life video in Flash shine by selecting the highest quality graphics settings you
can. Reducing the size of the viewer GUI will reduce the resources needed by Second Life, and
allow for higher quality video. If you will be using separate audio files imported into Flash, then
consider turning off the audio and streaming audio (music) under preferences in Second Life too.
72
Use InfoPath to
create an XML file
to populate your
Flash interactions.
Create several
Flash interactions
(games, quizzes,
and other learning objects) that
XML can populate. Then create
an easy-to-use
form in Microsoft
InfoPath so that
your SMEs can
create all of the
content on their
own. It works
great!
Often parcels have streaming music playing that take up valuable computer resources. Make sure
to close any other programs, and consider using a third-party tool to capture video rather than the
one built into Second Life. Tipster: David Miller
Using screencasting software allows you to add high-quality video to your Flash e-Learning.
Whether capturing metaverse video or desktop applications, using a video-based tool may work
very well. Several tools, that are very reasonably priced, are used for capturing MMORPG. While we
are used to other recording software, one that outputs a video-specific format, such as Fraps
(http://www.fraps.com) typically works well with Flash's video compression. Tipster: David Miller
F. CodeBaby
CHARACTER POSITION TEMPLATES — When you have a need to build multiple CodeBaby movies,
and you need the character(s) to be in the same position(s) from the start of each (other than the
default positions), set your character(s) in the correct starting position(s) and then save that .CBP
file out as your template. Then, every time you need to start a new movie, you can open your template and save it out as your next movie. This eliminates having to import all your assets and set
up your characters each time you make a new movie. Tipster: Chris Bahns
G. Microsoft InfoPath
Use InfoPath to create an XML file to populate your Flash interactions. Create several Flash interactions (games, quizzes, and other learning objects) that XML can populate. Then create an easy-touse form in Microsoft InfoPath so that your SMEs can create all of the content on their own. It
works great! Tipster: Eric Hunter
H. Flash Wrappers
Eric Hunter
E-Learning providers migrating to Flash from Authorware are often frustrated by Flash's security
restrictions. Because the .SWF format targets the open Web rather than a corporate intranet or
local application, operations that require accessing or creating local assets are severely limited.
Deploying Flash-based content within an executable wrapper such as .SWFStudio or Zinc overcomes many of these limitations. Adobe AIR may also be a good alternative once it matures a bit.
While it is possible to “wrap”' any .SWF using one of these tools, you will need wrapper-specific
ActionScript inside your .SWF to take advantage of the added functionality the wrapper provides.
In most cases this means using Flash itself for at least part of the .SWF publication process.
Tipster: Becky Kinney
73
Sonic Memo Toolkit by Jay Jennings
(www.jayjennings.
com) is a quick,
easy tool to put
VCR-control-type
buttons and embed Flash-based
audio into HTML
pages. For a low
monthly fee,
training professionals can
embed audio
training blurbs
into e-mails and
Web pages.
Karen Miller
I. Ignite Pro Studio
This tool focuses on aggregating or “stitching” multiple media types together, and then publishing
them as one structured course or a single lesson. It does import a variety of media formats, but for
the purposes of this particular eLearning Guild e-Book, .FLV and .SWF files are definitely among
the supported types. .FLVs play back as simple movies of course, but .SWF files do retain their
interactivity if you developed them as such. Pro Studio considers everything a “slide” which can
simply be moved up and down in the order, added, replaced, and so on. Once you have your Flash
content in the right order (and perhaps added screenshots, PowerPoints, other movie formats,
image files, or Webcam videos around the Flash content) you can then republish the content to a
new standalone .SWF that has all of the combined media in it. That’s not where the fun ends.
Ignite Pro Studio can also publish to .SWF, HTML, .EXE, SCORM 1.2 (yes, Ignite has a quiz mode),
.DOC, .PDF, and .RTF. Even that’s not where the fun ends. There is also a free hosting service called
IgniteCAST that you can publish directly to. Once uploaded, you can share the final output publicly,
or privately to specific users. Yes, there are subscription fees at ignitecast.com, but you have to
upload a fair amount of content before you hit any space limit that would trigger a need to use
the paid plans. If all you want to do is manage a bunch of Flash files easily and quickly, this tool is
very good for that purpose. However, the added benefit of being able to stitch in other media
types around Flash is what really makes it useful. Tipster: Jeff Holth
J. Audio Generator
LOOKING FOR A QUICK WAY TO ADD A TESTIMONIAL TO YOUR WEBSITE? — I have used Audio
Generator for over four years; it is a low-cost but highly effective method for collecting, converting, and creating plug-and-play code to place in your training Webpages. I use Audio Generator for
gathering client testimonials online, as well as creating audio training blurbs (up to 10 minutes) to
embed in my Web sites. Listen and see Audio Generator in action on my Web site
(www.design2train.com) I like it because you can embed audio in just three clicks.
Tipster: Karen Miller
K. Sonic Memo
Sonic Memo Toolkit by Jay Jennings (www.jayjennings.com) is a quick, easy tool to put VCR-control-type buttons and embed Flash-based audio into HTML pages. For a low monthly fee, training
professionals can embed audio training blurbs into e-mails and Web pages. Tipster: Karen Miller
L. Zamzar
How many times have you needed your file in another format and it becomes such a hassle to
make sure you have the right conversion tools? Worry no more. www.Zamzar.com is an online
74
conversion tool – and it's free. Let's say you have a .WAV file and want to convert it to .MP3. Go to
the Zamzar site, upload the file, decide upon the format you want the file to be converted to, enter
your e-mail address, and click. In minutes, you will receive an e-mail that your file was converted.
Download it, and there it is, with no hassle. Tipster: Karen Miller
76
XII. Tips Provided by Tool Vendors
WILD (Worldwide
Interactive Learning Designer) was
created to rapidly
deploy quality
courses taking the
team approach.
Leverage a tool
where multiple
users can be
working on the
same project. This
will decrease
down time wait-
A. Content Point – Atlantic Link
ing on open issues
to be resolved.
C. Talking Letter
Andrew Bagley
Use the Flash asset library to provide complex custom Flash interactions within your Content
Point Flash courses. These can be configured through the Properties panel, meaning that no coding or Flash skills are required. View the full list here: http://www.atlantic-link.co.uk/Flash_templates.htm Tipster: Michael Alcock
B. QuickLessons
Do you wish your template could rearrange itself depending on the size of your text? Do you wish
every screen of your online course would color itself automatically so it always looks attractive? Do
you wish you could insert your text into the screens without you having to edit files or program it?
Do you wish you could create characters that could change colors, clothes, hair, looks? Well, all of
that is possible when you use Flash! Even more possible when you used Flash-based tools that can
lead you towards a more attractive and functional online course, and without you having to learn
how to use Flash per se, or program anything. With QuickLessons you have everything in hand:
Flash-based characters, templates, quizzes, assessment, video, audio, and image bank, including a
friendly interface to help you create more high-quality courses in less time. And paying a lot less!
Access www.quicklessons.com now and subscribe for a free trial. Tipster: Maria Coelho
To easily produce Flash demos, including video and pictures, use free social software tools such us:
www.talkingletter.com. You can find some examples at the main page at talkingletter.com. Users
can record video as they display pictures and record mouse clicks online. As soon as you are done
recording, your Flash-based e-Learning module is ready. Tipster: Fabio Cujino
D. Phasient Sim Builder
Use Flash to add movement to a page, but save time and make changes easier by using SimBuilder to build in complexity and interactivity. You can layer a Flash animation on a page as you
would place an image, then control the animation with buttons or actions that are on the
SimBuilder page, outside the Flash animation itself. Tipster: Denise Link
E. WILD Soft
WILD (Worldwide Interactive Learning Designer) was created to rapidly deploy quality courses taking the team approach. Leverage a tool where multiple users can be working on the same project.
This will decrease down time waiting on open issues to be resolved. Tipster: Andrew Bagley
77
XII. Tips Provided by Tool Vendors continued
Use Flash to add
movement to a
page, but save
time and make
changes easier by
using Sim-Builder
to build in complexity and interactivity. You can
layer a Flash animation on a page
as you would
place an image,
then control the
animation with
buttons or actions
that are on the
SimBuilder page,
outside the Flash
animation itself.
Denise Link
F. Flypaper
FLYPAPER IS A FREE TOOL IN PUBLIC BETA — It can output .SWF files, .FLV, .MPG or .MP4 files. It has
many uses, but a cool tip is taking .SWFs from Captivate, Raptivity, or Flash, combining them with
other media (audio, images, text), and outputting to .MPG or .MP4 formats that can play on an
iPod and/or other mobile devices. You can download it at http://www.flypaper.net
Tipster: Kieran Richardson
VIDEO COMPRESSION — If you are playing video through an e-Learning course, Flash .SWF files
are a good output. The latest version of the Flash player will also handle .FLV and .MPG and other
video formats. In general, we try to keep our video files to less than 1 meg of video per minute. We
often use Sorenson Squeeze to compress our files. We use the 256K setting from Squeeze with
some changes. Audio: Frauhofer MP3 Codec, 32kps data rate, 16 Sample Size, 22050 sample rate,
mono. Video: Sorenson Spark Codec, Sorenson 2-Pass VBR method, 225 data rate, 1:1 frame rate. We
have had a lot of success getting “acceptable” video that plays on older and slower networks with
these settings. If you don't have Squeeze, you can download Flypaper, www.flypaper.net and
import the video. The import settings compress the video for you. You can then publish the
Flypaper story and get the compressed video out of the resource folder, or you can select video as
you output and generate an .FLV, .MPG or .MP4 to play on other formats or embed in other files. Of
course, Flypaper can also just play the video in its native HTML file output, or embed it inside a single .SWF file. If you are going to use Squeeze or another compression tool, you can play around
with the settings to get the best possible video at the smallest possible file size.
Tipster: Kieran Richardson
WHEN TO USE CUSTOM FLASH INSIDE ANOTHER E-LEARNING TOOL — When you have a set of
templates or tools like Lectora, Captivate, or Flypaper that offer animation, it can be a tough call as
to when to use the native animation in your e-Learning tool or when to build a custom Flash file.
If you leave that decision up to the graphic artist, the answer is often “custom Flash everywhere.”
It looks better, it can be faster to produce the first time, and you can reuse that animation in other
formats. One key factor is the content. If the content is not likely to change for the foreseeable
future, it makes sense to build it once in Flash. If that content is constantly changing, you are better off using a less “Flashy” animation and keeping it in the tool you and your SME's can use like
Captivate or Flypaper. Another key factor is code. If you need functionality that does not exist in
your regular authoring tool, Flash may be the way to go. If the content is constantly changing, and
you have to create code anyway, you might as well load the graphics dynamically and put the text
in XML files. That way you won't need the programmer or the Flash IDE to recompile the file every
time you have to change a picture or fix a typo. The final key factor is re-use. If you are going to
build this in Flash, try to design it so it can be a template and used repeatedly. It will take much
longer to program, and you have to plan ahead, but in the end you will save time on the next project. Examples of Flash templates abound on sites like Flash Den and Flash Kit. Flypaper has its
own system of Flash Models that are re-usable pre-programmed Flash files. If your templates are
flexible enough, you can change the look and the action enough that learners will not get bored
78
When including
text in a Flash
file, it's best to
put the text in a
.TXT file or XML
file. This will
make it much
easier to translate or update.
Kieran Richardson
with the “same-old, same-old.” For examples of nice templates and models go to
http://www.FlashDen.com or http://www.Flypaper.net. Tipster: Kieran Richardson
When including text in a Flash file, it's best to put the text in a .TXT file or XML file. This will make
it much easier to translate or update. The Flash Player has really improved how fast it loads XML,
and there are lots of free XML editing tools. When translating, only work with translation vendors
who can take XML files and return them in the same XML format. If they want files in Word, and
give you back a Word document, find a new vendor. Tools like Raptivity, and the coming version of
Captivate, offer options to export with folders and all the text in XML files. Flypaper exports all the
text content in XML as well. Tipster: Kieran Richardson
G. Unison Web-based Collaborative e-Learning Development
Solution & Flashform Rapid e-Learning Studio (Rapid Intake)
QUALITY ASSURANCE TESTING YOUR FLASH-BASED COURSE: HOW TO DO IT FASTER AND BETTER
WITH UNISON — If you don’t know it already, you will eventually discover that what you have
when you are finished with an online learning course is a software application. If you come from a
training background, rather than Web design or multimedia development, this concept may take
a while to crystallize.“Well, I knew that already,” you might be thinking. Okay, I agree. What I’m
pointing out with this concept is nothing that will blow your mind. However, we trainers often
want to think that developing a WBT is “different” from traditional Web sites or other software
applications because it is a tool that teaches. While that is true, the sooner we start thinking of
our online courses as software applications, and start modeling parts of our development processes after traditional software development models, the better off we’ll be. While most product
development models for WBT courses vary somewhat from software development (I don’t know
many software engineers who write storyboards for their software), one of the many things they
share in common is the quality assurance (QA) process.
One of the tedious, but critical, things we all have to do is make sure our course is completely
working before we release it. There is just no easy path from the fun stuff (design and development) to the real world of the production environment. In between lies the thorny road of quality
assurance testing. We have to track down every single issue, make sure that every link works, that
every punctuation mark is correct, that every Flash movie plays at the correct moment, and so on.
Any shortcuts we are tempted to take will usually end up hurting us down the road. So how do
we make this an effective process? Here are a few tips I’ve learned from experience that I hope
will be helpful:
1. Plan for more than one round of testing. You will never catch all of the bugs and defects in your
course with just one round of testing. People traditionally call the first round of testing the
Alpha test, and the second round a Beta test. Once you do plan for more than one round of testing, still attempt to find all of the defects in the first test.
2. Use the 80/20 Rule. Have just a few people test the first round, and have several more test in
later rounds. Following the old 80/20 rule, two to three people can find the majority of the prob-
79
If a course has a
mandatory pass
percentage required before a
learner can move
on to a subsequent course, a
Quiz Review can
be critical to a
learner’s success.
Joy Vinson
lems. However, it sometimes takes several people to uncover the remaining problems.
3. Don’t take any issue for granted. In other words, keep a detailed log of every problem found, as
well as clear notes about how and when it was resolved. Later, this list can be an important
reminder of why you made certain decisions along the way, especially if there is ever a difference of opinion among team members as to how and why an issue was resolved.
4. Verify every fix. Although this is my personally least favorite part of the process, this step is
extremely important. As a project manager,WBT producer, or one-man-team, you need to make
sure that you took care of every defect before delivering it to your client. Remember though, if
you are the one that made the fix, be sure someone else verifies the fix for you.
5.Where possible, perform testing micro-cycles. This technique we have been using for years has
turned out to be very effective. Instead of having all the testers test at the same time and then
consolidate notes, have them test one at a time, and perform quick fixes between testers. Be
ready to get their feedback quickly, even real-time if possible (you can do this with Unison), and
make the fixes as the issues come in or shortly thereafter. This allows the next tester to spend
his or her time finding other problems for you rather than submitting the same problems
already submitted. Because of the quick turn-around time, using micro-cycle testing will give
you more testing bang for your testing buck.
Tipster: Garin Hess
HOW TO SHOW A QUIZ REVIEW — If a course has a mandatory pass percentage required before a
learner can move on to a subsequent course, a Quiz Review can be critical to a learner’s success.
Some important components for an easy-to-understand Quiz Review are:
1. Repeat the quiz question as it was stated exactly in the quiz, including options and distracters
2. Correct/Incorrect assessment
3. Learner’s response
4. Correct Response (if learner’s response was incorrect)
How such a comprehensive Quiz Review is built depends largely upon the tools being used to create the course and/or quiz. Flashform Rapid e-Learning Studio and Unison does the actual Quiz
Review development for you. To show the Quiz Review in Flashform, after selecting to add a page
and choosing the Quiz template, the developer fills in the Quiz Page template, making sure that
the “Include Review” box is checked in the “Quiz Settings” section. This will ensure that the learner
has the opportunity to see their answers, their scores, and what the correct answers were, if they
answered incorrectly. In Unison, the developer needs to add a page, and select the Quiz template.
When the developer gets to Step 3 of the Quiz page, he or she needs to be sure to check the
”Include Review” option. This will give the learner the opportunity to see his or her quiz results,
and all of the correct and incorrect answers.
Tipster: Joy Vinson
BOOKMARKING COURSES WITHOUT AN LMS — Usually, tracking student course data requires an
LMS. However, if you just want the learner to be able to keep track of what they have completed,
80
Often, when creating an e-Learning
course, you need
your navigation to
link to other parts
of the course. It is
not always linear.
In a Flashform or
Unison course, you
can do this by linking to another
page in the course.
and the last page they visited, you can do that without the expense of an LMS. Traditionally, when
creating a Flash course, this type of tracking would require a lot of work:Writing the ActionScript
that would write this data to a Flash cookie (which stores data on the local machine), additional
code to read this cookie when the course started again, and still more to use the data to determine where in the course the learner should be. You’re not finished yet. Once that is done, more
code is needed to take them to that location. Once the process is finally completed, you deserve a
nice vacation!
Mercifully, if you are developing a course in Flashform or Unison, the whole process takes mere
seconds and you can do it in three simple steps:
1. Access the project settings by clicking Edit | Project.
2. In Flashform choose “cookie” as the tracking attribute. In Unison choose “bookmarking.”
3. Save your changes.
The course is now ready to track the learner’s status. You can now place the course on a server, CDROM, or a network drive, and direct the learners to it. With little effort, and virtually no stress, your
task is complete. It’s so easy it almost feels like YOU are ON vacation (suntan not included). (By the
way, Flashform and Unison courses also track bookmarking if they are launched from a LMS.)
Tipster: Steve Hancock
Steve Hancock
CREATING LINKS TO OTHER PAGES — Often, when creating an e-Learning course, you need your
navigation to link to other parts of the course. It is not always linear. In a Flashform or Unison
course, you can do this by linking to another page in the course. These pages may be visible in the
Table of Contents, or be hidden. (To hide a page, just check the hidden-page checkbox.) You can
use one of two identifiers for linking to a page: the title of the page, or the link ID that you enter
on the Advanced tab. If the title of the page is not unique, enter a link ID. You can create a link to a
page in two ways: within text, or by creating your own interaction in Flash, and then including this
movie as one of the pages in your course. To create a link to a page within a text field, simply:
1. Highlight the text that will be linked.
2. In the HTML link field, instead of entering a URL, enter the following:
asfunction:goToPage,linkID or pageTitle ;
3. The “asfunction” term is a special term used to specify a call to an ActionScript function.
4. Call the function “goToPage”. This function has been set up to allow linking to other pages.
5. Place the link ID or page title after the function name, separated by a comma. If you are creating
your own Flash interaction, you can link to another page as well. For example, to include a button in the Flash movie you are creating that links to another page simply:
a. Create the button.
b. In the event handler for that button place this ActionScript:
goToPage(“linkID or PageTitle”);
c. Place the link ID or page title after the function name, separated by a comma. When this
Flash movie is included inside a Flashform or Unison course using the external .SWF page
81
Flashform or
Unison developers are aware
that an interactive glossary can
be created by
simply entering
terms and definitions. In addition, Flashform
and Unison offer
even more glossary features.
Steve Hancock
type, this ActionScript will cause the button to navigate to the page. This function is global,
so it is accessible using the simple ActionScript shown.
CREATING LINKS TO GLOSSARY TERMS — Flashform or Unison developers are aware that an interactive glossary can be created by simply entering terms and definitions. In addition, Flashform and
Unison offer even more glossary features. For example, in the midst of another interaction you can
link directly to a glossary term. This link will cause the glossary to open and go directly to that
term. There are two ways to create a link to a glossary term:Within text, or by creating your own
interaction in Flash and then including this movie as one of the pages in your course. To create a
link to a glossary term within a text field, simply:
1. Highlight the text that will be linked.
2. In the HTML link field, instead of entering a URL, enter the following:
asfunction:glossary,theTerm
Where“theTerm” refers to the actual term in the glossary.“asfunction” is a designated word
used to specify a call to an ActionScript function.
3. Call the function titled “glossary”. This function has been set up to allow linking to a glossary
term.
4. Place the term you want to link to the glossary at the end after the comma. If you are creating
your own Flash interaction, you can link to a glossary term as well. For example, if you want to
include a button in the Flash movie you are creating that links to a glossary term simply:
a. Create the button.
b. In the event handler for that button place this ActionScript:
glossary(“theTerm”);
Once this Flash movie is included inside a Flashform or Unison course using the external .SWF
page type, this ActionScript will cause the glossary to open and display the included term. Give
it a try.
Here are two ways to reuse a glossary with Unison, and which way you will use depends on
whether you have a professional or standard license of Unison. Both options are described below:
Users with PowerPro Customization Access. If you have PowerPro Customization Access for Unison,
the process of reusing a glossary is quite simple. A glossary.xml file completely controls a glossary,
and is in every project folder. As a professional user, you have access to your online project folders.
In each you will find a glossary.xml file. To reuse a glossary that you have created in another
course, simply copy the glossary.xml file from that course, and place it in a new course, replacing
the original glossary.xml file found in that project folder. The new course will then have that main
glossary. Tip: If you are creating a master glossary that you will use for many courses, you may
simply want to keep a copy of that glossary's XML file (the glossary.xml) on your computer, allowing you to simply upload that file each time you wish to put in the glossary.
82
Flash supports a
limited number of
CSS styles that
can help you format text throughout a Unison or
Flashform course.
Instead of formatting text on every
page, you can format the text in
one location – the
CSS style sheet.
That way, if you
ever need to
make a change,
you can change it
in one location
and it affects all
of the text in the
course.
Garin Hess
Standard Users. If you have a standard license of Unison, the best way for you to reuse a glossary is
to create a new course that has nothing but a glossary inside. You will then want to save this
course as a Template, so anytime you want to create a new course with that glossary, you will create the course using that course template. Then, when you want to edit the master glossary, simply re-save the course as the original “glossary” course template.
Tipster: Garin Hess
RESTRICTING NAVIGATION — It is not uncommon to have a course that requires learners to complete all of the pages within a specified section or topic of a course before they can move on to
the next topic. The way this forced sequential navigation might occur varies depending on the
tool you are using to create the course. Flashform and Unison courses come with the ability to
easily restrict navigation by using the Navigation setting in the Edit Topic form. From the dropdown box, you need to select “Restricted based on Completion”. Once restricted, the pages of the
next topic are inactive in the TOC. If the learner tries to click the next button to move to the next
topic, this alert is displayed:“You must complete the current topic before you can move to the
next topic.”The way the learner knows if a topic is complete is if a check mark appears next to
each page within the topic. Under normal circumstances, a check mark appears as soon as the
learner views the page. However, if you are using pageComplete, then there may be items on the
page that must be finished before considering the page complete. If a course contains a sequence
of topics that are restricted, the learner must to go through the course one topic at a time in
sequential order. The learner can jump between pages within a given topic, but must complete
each page before moving to the next topic. Tipster: Joy Vinson
USING CSS TO FORMAT TEXT IN A FLASH-BASED COURSE — Flash supports a limited number of
CSS styles that can help you format text throughout a Unison or Flashform course. Instead of formatting text on every page, you can format the text in one location – the CSS style sheet. That
way, if you ever need to make a change, you can change it in one location and it affects all of the
text in the course. NOTE: You can always override the default style-sheet settings by clicking
Override Default Settings in the text box you are typing in. All templates that use text are already
associated with a cascading style sheet that comes with Unison. To change the text format, simply
locate and open the style sheet, make changes to the settings, and save your changes. Flashform
and Unison courses use these style sheets:
• glossary.css to format the glossary
• glossary_menu.css to format the glossary terms menu
• narration.css to format text entered into any narration field
• .SWFs/template_.SWFs/template.css to format text entered into any page and note fields
You can find these CSS files in any Unison or Flashform project directory when you look at the
project file structure. To access the project file structure in Unison, you need to have PowerPro
Customization Access as part of your subscription account. If you do, follow these steps in Unison:
1. Click the Admin Tab.
2. Click View | Update Projects and find the project you want.
83
Most e-Learning
developers start
by creating static
Flash movies for
e-Learning content. A “static”
movie means you
embed all text,
audio, video, and
images inside the
.SWF movie. The
disadvantage to
this approach is
that to update
anything, you
need to open
Flash, change the
content, and
republish.
Garin Hess
3. Click the Files link.
4. Click the Zip link next to All Files.
5. Unzip the download on your local computer, find the CSS files in the project directory and make
the changes.
6. Zip up the project directory, then upload the Zip file into Unison.
NOTE: You may want to change the status of the project so no one tries to edit it while you are
making these changes on your local computer.
To update the CSS style sheet associated with page templates, follow these steps:
1. Using a text editor such as Windows Notepad or WordPad, open the template_styes.css file
(SWFs/template_SWFs/template_styles.css).
2. Locate the style you want to change.
3. Change the characteristics of the style by changing the specific properties of the style. For
example, to change the question format from 14 pixels to 16 pixels, change the font-size property from 14px to 16px.
4. Save and close the style sheet.
5. Upload the style sheet back into the original online directory.
Tipster: Garin Hess
CREATING A FLASH AND XML ARCHITECTURE FOR A FLASH-BASED E-LEARNING COURSE — Most
e-Learning developers start by creating static Flash movies for e-Learning content. A “static” movie
means you embed all text, audio, video, and images inside the .SWF movie. The disadvantage to
this approach is that to update anything, you need to open Flash, change the content, and republish. A more maintainable solution is to create an “intelligent” Flash movie that reads settings that
point to where the content is stored, and pulls it into the Flash movie to display to the learner.
These kinds of settings are best stored in XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which is a type of
text file that is used to store and organize information on the Internet. By using this approach, all
content is stored outside the Flash movie, making it easier to maintain and localize into different
languages if needed. For example, you might want to:
• Modify the Table of Contents to reflect changes in the course, such as the addition, deletion, or
modification of pages.
• Build quizzes based upon questions stored externally to Flash. This enables you to develop a
bank of questions, and pull a subset of those questions into Flash to generate a quiz.
• Build course pages, which are tailored to the needs of a specific audience. By building course
pages dynamically, you can change the content of the course to meet the needs of a given learner. For example, you can store a user profile, which determines the type of content that will display.
• Build courses which can be easily localized. Store the content for each language that you plan to
make available in a separate file. When the learner selects a language, pull in the content that
corresponds to that language.
84
If you are using
Unison or Flashform as your
authoring tool,
not only can you
create a custom
interface, but also
you can enable
it so that other
Unison does this for you automatically. Everything you create in Unison stores the content in XML,
and then automatically populates the page content when the learner needs it.
developers in
your company
can select and
use that style in
their courses.
Building this kind of architecture in Flash would take even an experienced Flash developer several
days or weeks. That’s one of the reasons Unison’s built-in Flash and XML architecture can save you
so much time.
Steve Hancock
Unison stores the data in the following XML files (you can learn more about each of these XML
files by opening up Unison’s online help and looking in the Advanced Documentation section):
• sco.xml – This file stores most of the course data, organized by topics and pages. The sco.xml file
has five main tags that make up the file: sco, topics, topic, page, and narration. These tags are
populated with content when you fill out Unison’s forms.
• glossary.xml – This file stores all glossary terms and definitions.
• quiz.xml – This file stores all quiz question data.
To find these files, you need to download the course files from Unison by clicking Deploy on the
Project Home page. Once you unzip the file, you’ll find the sco.xml and glossary.xml. You’ll find the
quiz.xml file in the .SWFS folder.
Tipster: Garin Hess
CREATING REUSABLE FLASH COURSE INTERFACES — Because of the limited number of interface
designs offered in most authoring tools, many companies wanting to present a unique look and
feel to their e-Learning courses end up creating their own. This is especially true for Flash-based
courses. If you are using Unison or Flashform as your authoring tool, not only can you create a custom interface, but also you can enable it so that other developers in your company can select and
use that style in their courses. If you feel comfortable creating content in Flash, you can create a
custom style. Just follow these basic steps. For more detailed information refer to the documentation.
1. Open Flashform and create a new project. When setting up the project, select the style you
would like to use as the starting point for your custom style. Also, make sure you select the Copy
Source Files checkbox. This project will become the folder that contains your new style.
2. In the project folder, open the source files (.FLA or .AS) and make changes as necessary. You may
want to make changes in multiple files like the media controller, the quiz, any of the template
pages, or some of the other smaller files contained in a course. If you are changing functionality,
you would need to edit the code found in the different ActionScript files.
3. Publish all the .FLA files that are associated with any files you changed. When you publish the
player.fla file, include a Windows projector file and Macintosh projector file. Publishing a course
to CD-ROM uses these files. At this point you have finished the changes. However, in order to
share your newly created template, you still need to set the style up to run inside of Flashform.
4. Navigate to the Flashform install directory and copy the style.xml file from the style folder that
your custom style is based on. The style.xml file controls some of the default settings, and is
required for your style to run inside of Flashform.
5. Open style.xml and edit any of the settings (tags) that may be required. In some cases you may
not need to change any.
85
Now that you see
how easy it is to
deploy a SCORM
course, let’s look
at some of the
flexibility and
optional elements
that are provided
in setting up
SCORM. First,
select a completion method.
Flashform and
Unison courses
can determine
completion in a
number of different ways.
6. Change the name of the folder containing the new custom style. The name should have no
spaces. In addition, if the style is built for Flash player 8, you should include “player8” in the
name. Finally, at the end of the name you should include .SWF or .JPG depending on whether or
not you can change colors in the style. [.SWF is for changing colors (for example, customStylePlayer8_SWF)]. Lastly, you can create a preview, and then place the style in
Flashform, if you desire. That’s all there is to it!
BUILDING A SCORM COURSE AND A SCORM PACKAGE — Making your course SCORM conformant
is viewed as a “necessary evil” for most developers. Sometimes, they view getting the course to
finally run on an LMS viewed as an accomplishment equal to scaling Mount Everest. If SCORM
were easier to understand and implement, it might not elicit this kind of reaction. Thankfully, as a
Flashform or Unison developer, you have a tool that will make your Flash-based courses easy to
deploy in SCORM. Even beyond that, Flashform and Unison have built-in flexibility for those who
want to begin using more of what SCORM offers. First, let’s look at how easy it is to turn a course
into a SCORM package that is ready to upload to an LMS. With Flashform, a few simple steps is all
it takes:
1. With your project open in Flashform, click Publish Course.
2. Select the SCORM version you would like to use for your course.
3. Complete the fields that will be used to build the manifest file.
4. Click Publish.
Wait while Flashform copies the appropriate files into your project folder. Once the Publish
Settings dialog closes, you are free to place these files on an LMS. (You may want to zip them up
before uploading.) You’re done! That’s all there is to it.
Creating a SCORM course in Unison is just as easy:
1. If you have the authoring side of Unison open, close that browser window.
Steve Hancock
2. Navigate to the Deploy the Course page by clicking the Deploy the Course button.
3. In the Download column, choose the SCORM version you would like to use.
4. Fill out the form that corresponds to the version chosen.
5. Click Download Now at the bottom.
6. Save the Zip file to your machine. The Zip file is a SCORM package ready to upload to any LMS.
As simple as that, mission accomplished.
Now that you see how easy it is to deploy a SCORM course, let’s look at some of the flexibility and
optional elements that are provided in setting up SCORM. First, select a completion method.
Flashform and Unison courses can determine completion in a number of different ways. Here are
your options:
• Determine completion when all pages are visited. This is set up in the project settings area.
• Determine completion when all pages are visited and the content on each page is viewed to
completion (for example, a video is viewed to the end). This is done by using the “apiComplete”
86
After you have
started your project inside of
Flashform, add
a page that
includes a text
field. This can be
in your notes field
area, the main
body-text field
area, or even the
narration field
area.
Jeff Batt
feature. This makes sure that the content on any given page has been completely viewed before
completion is marked. Set this up in the project settings area.
• Determine completion when the learner has completed a quiz. Use the quiz settings for this
option.
• Determine completion when the learner has completed a quiz and received a passing score. You
also set this up in the quiz settings.
By design, Flashform and Unison courses automatically track a number of SCORM elements. If you
find it necessary to track elements of your own, you can do this by tying into the provided SCORM
functions. You do this by creating a Flash movie you want to use as content, and then using
ActionScript to call one of the SCORM functions at the appropriate time. Here is an example of
how you would call one of those functions:
playerMain_mc.apiSetScore(nMin,nMax,percent);
The playerMain_mc is a unique variable for Flashform and Unison courses that refers to
_level0. In this example, we use that variable and then the function name. We then pass in the
attributes the SCORM function needs. In this case, it is a minimum score, maximum score and a
percent. Many preset functions are available, or you can use the general set value function:
apiSetValue(sData,sValue). This function will let you set any SCORM element of your
choosing. All the SCORM functions are described further in the documentation. Flashform and
Unison have taken the complexity out of making courses SCORM conformant. Now you can
“climb Mount Everest” by taking the elevator!
In some cases you may want to link to external documents which have been pre-built, such as
Excel files,Word documents, or PDFs, so that your students can fill them out and/or print them. Or,
maybe you want them to watch a video in full-screen mode. You can link to external documents
quickly and simply in Flashform. After you have started your project inside of Flashform, add a
page that includes a text field. This can be in your notes field area, the main body-text field area,
or even the narration field area. Once you have typed your text inside of one of those fields, you
then highlight the word that you want to become a clickable link to bring up that file. Use phrases
like “Click Here to pull up sample” or anything that lets the learner know that they need to click
there. Flashform will bring up a window for you to type in a URL, but instead of typing in the URL
you type in the EXACT name of the document. The name DOES have to be exact. such as,
SampleText.doc. Make sure also you include the extension. If it is a Word document, add .doc to
the end of the document name. If it is a PDF then you type SampleText.pdf. Then select the dropdown box labeled “Target” and select “blank.”This will tell Flashform to pull up the document in a
new blank window. The next step is to make sure you place that document inside of your course
structure so Flashform knows which document to pull up. Bring up your project folder, and drag
and drop the file into the folder. That’s it! Go back into Flashform and preview your course, click on
the link and then your document will pull right up. Any time you need to update the form, all you
need to do is open up the folder in Windows, name the new file name the same thing, and drag
and drop it into your course structure and it will automatically pull up your new document.
Tipster: Jeff Batt
87
Creating the
input form for
Unison involves
creating an XML
file. Refer to the
documentation
for more information. All you
need to do to
CREATING REUSABLE PAGE TEMPLATES — When creating Flash-based e-Learning courses, you may
find yourself repeatedly creating the same interaction. You may also find the interaction types provided by Flashform or Unison don’t meet all of your development needs. In both situations, you
can save loads of time by creating a reusable page template. Creating reusable page templates in
Flashform and Unison requires a competent degree of Flash expertise, and some time investment.
However, the time saved by being able to reuse that page template repeatedly more than makes
up for it. Creating a reusable page template involves creating two separate documents: The
Output Page Template, which is a Flash file (.SWF) that is intelligent enough to read the information from the XML file and populate the content appropriately for the learner. And the Input Form
used to specify how the page template works and what content it uses. This form writes the data
to an XML file. Let’s first look at the steps for creating an output page template. These steps are
quite basic, but they will give you a feel for what is involved. Refer to the documentation for more
information.
create an input
page form is to
create a simple
XML file.
1. Create a sample course using Flashform or Unison. It is important to have a sample course you
can use to test your new page template.
Steve Hancock
2. Determine the XML structure for the new page template. You should spend some time familiarizing yourself with the page tag used in Flashform and Unison courses. Next, determine what
information you need to store, and figure out how to structure that information.
3. Create a sample page tag that includes your new page template information. Manually edit a
sample course XML file (sco.xml) and enter in a sample page tag that contains the information
your page template needs. Use this as a test page.
4. Build and code the new page template in Flash. This process may take several iterations. As you
add some elements, test them, and add additional elements as needed.
5. Once everything is tested, you are ready to go.
Creating the input form is different between Unison and Flashform. We will present the Flashform
method first. Once again, more detailed information can be found in the documentation. The
input form for Flashform is a Flash file that includes Flashform components.
1. Copy and rename this FLA file: Program Files\Rapid Intake\Flashform Rapid e-Learning
Studio\Templates\Nodes\page
2. Remove components that are for settings you will not use.
3. Add additional components to provide a way for a developer to add new settings. The components are in the library. Make sure to establish the settings properly.
4. Copy the TemplateCopySource.SWF file to the directory that contains the file you are creating.
You can find this file in the directory identified in Step 1.
5. Save the file and publish the .SWF.
6. Place the UI.SWF file in the Templates\Nodes\page folder of Flashform.
Creating the input form for Unison involves creating an XML file. Refer to the documentation for
more information. All you need to do to create an input page form is to create a simple XML file.
The XML file has a main tag called page. The XML file will take on the following generic form:
88
When you have
finished creating
the XML file, you
need to upload it
along with the
page template
file. You can do
this by going to
the Admin Tab
and selecting the
Custom Page
Type Templates
link.
Steve Hancock
page
/page
Tab
/Tab
You can include as many tabs as you wish using that structure. The tab tag then contains other
components that make up the form fields, buttons, checkboxes, and text editors. Unison has a
large number of pre-built components, which you can use for building your page forms. These
components have no default values associated with them. A sample component would be a
generic text field, or a generic checkbox. For more information about the components you can add
to a form, see the documentation. When you have finished creating the XML file, you need to
upload it along with the page template file. You can do this by going to the Admin Tab and selecting the Custom Page Type Templates link.
www.atlanticlinkglobal.com – Atlantic Link Inc. 12600 Deerfield Parkway, Alpharetta, Georgia, 30004
Phone: 678 762 3360 – contact [email protected]
91
XIII. Work Practices and General Tips
Consider swapping between
two types of
mice on a weekly or monthly
basis. It will help
prevent repetitive injuries like
tennis elbow or
carpal tunnel
syndrome.
David Miller
DETERMINE YOUR APPROACH — Get your Flash-based e-Learning content to work with a more
Webcentric approach for delivering course-based content. It's a very important strategy that takes
e-Learning to a higher-level of meeting very important business requirements that usually Flashbased e-Learning content can't entirely deliver on. We've been working on this strategy and implementation for the past three years, and have found that it's probably the best approach so far.
COMPLIANCE — Here at Cisco we are concerned with several important aspects of online learning, which include accessibility compliance, corporate branding, internal learning design standards
that include the ability to deliver content via our intranet or extranet, and the ability to embrace
the new Web 2.0 collaborative types of technologies. These new technologies are very Web-code
centric, and developing standalone Flash-based e-Learning content won't meet these needs.
GET HELP — My team, along with several third-party vendors, have implemented several versions
of our e-Learning templates that take .SWF formatted learning content from tools like Adobe
Flash, Adobe Captivate, and Raptivity, to name a few, and get this content to work in an XHTML
(accessibility-compliant version of HTML) to work in our internal Web environment. Thus we leverage the common Web-based internal navigation and actual Webpage code (UI), making it possible to deliver courses that are 99% similar to internal Webpage templates, but also making it possible to take the e-Learning content offline. Naturally I can't share the actual code with anyone
outside of my company (without first getting consent from Cisco Legal, and so on), however that's
not as important as explaining to others how to take primarily Flash-based e-Learning content to
the next level for your company. These types of e-Learning templates are not just a visual lookand-feel change, but an actual fit that is coded in the same Web code that either your intranet
and/or extranet Web pages are coded in. Embrace the Web developers in your company to help
you to achieve this.
YOU MUST REALLY TEST FOR ACCESSIBILITY — This doesn't just mean alt-tags compliance. You will
need to consider how various screen readers work while being turned on or off, whether the Tabkey-focus functions properly, and that all shortcut keys don't conflict with various browsers. There
are also many other types of accessibility issues including low visibility, color choices for color
blindness, using scalable font types, high-contrast modes, and mouse-over capabilities you must
implement that are screen-reader and tab-key compliant.
DETERMINE HOW YOU WANT TO AUTHOR — You could use a combination of Flash/Captivate and
other authoring tools to create .SWF content that goes into an e-Learning template. Once the content is properly wrapped in a sort of content-player method, then you can import the final .SWF
files into, say, Adobe Dreamweaver or other XHTML- or HTML-based authoring tool to put the
pieces together in, hopefully, an XML-based approach, or whatever approach your Web developers
currently use to deliver Web-based content in your company. This requires removing any existing
player bars or skins that come out of tools like Adobe Captivate, and then using the component
features of Flash to re-wrap the .SWF based content. Some of your components can be entirely
Flash-based, while others might leverage things like: .FLV players for video, import Captivate-based
content, and handle simple static types of content like text, graphics, and audio. Up to this point
we've discovered that most content is either time-based (audio/video), slide-based (Captivate/
PowerPoint) or possibly game- or application-based. If you use these tips, then you will reap the
92
XIII. Work Practices and General Tips continued
Create a style
guide for every
project, and hire
an editor.
Tracey Kogelmann
current and future benefits the Web offers your e-Learning content. Plus the content's appearance
won't shift when using various Web browsers. Tipster: Milo Dodds
Keep your product skills razor sharp by actively participating in online forums for those products.
Most tools have many forums to choose from, and each forum will have it's focus as well as community feel. Try a few, and find the one that challenges you. Actively seek posts that push your
problem solving, and you will see your skills increase as well as other people's approaches to the
same problems. Tipster: David Miller
The key is:When you are about to start a Flash-based e-Learning project, it is not important which
tool is selling best in the market. What is more important is to identify which one will work best
with your requirements for the current project in hand.
The first good step towards a successful project involving a Flash-based e-Learning content is to
know beforehand the kinds of functionality you will need, and which tools and options will work
best. All tools are competitive; however, certain tools score better than others, when it comes to
specific needs. One will allow rapid construction, while the other one will score better at offering
more configurable parameters so you get an output close to your specifications.
Tipster: Uday Kranti
Download and install the Web development toolbar extension for the Firefox browser. The toolbar
is very helpful for testing various issues you may have with your browser-based training. The
extension adds a toolbar to Firefox with a wide variety of handy Web development tools. Some of
the more helpful tools include the ability to view CSS style information, resize windows, and display various rulers. The extension also allows you to enable/disable numerous browsing options,
including JavaScript, cookies, cache, images, and CSS. Tipster: Mark Temple
Some General Tips:
(1) The produced content should somehow be compliant with any common standard (SCORM for
example).
(2) The ease of use is a feature that you should not compromise.
(3) The best of all: if you have the tools as added feature to your LMS, some are!
Tipster: Jasir Alherbish
Consider swapping between two types of mice on a weekly or monthly basis. It will help prevent
repetitive injuries like tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome. Tipster: David Miller
Building custom Flash templates can be a challenge, especially if you're resizing the stage. The
Transition Mask (tranMask_mc) in the player.fla file really threw me for a loop when I increased
the overall size of the stage. I just dragged the corner of the mask to match the size of the new
stage. But every time I previewed the file, the Transition Mask was always about one third the
width of the stage. What I discovered was the Transition Mask increases in size proportionately, as
93
Flash-based
e-Learning contents work fine,
if it allows
learners to toggle between different stages of
video content.
Then it’s great...
Mohammad Noumans
dictated by transitions.as. Simply increasing the size of the mask proportionately solved the problem. Tipster: Dan Karwoski
Test at every stage you can, and test whatever you can. Create a test plan to ensure you cover all
areas of testing needed for Flash content. Have several people test the same piece of content.
Don’t limit yourself to testing learner interaction. Think of the bigger testing picture – such as content operability, SCORM/AICC-related testing, and server and streaming testing. Test launching it
from different locations globally. How does it handle inside an LMS, or inside the other applications such as Web conferencing or virtual teaching environments? Tipster: Petra Jennings
Create a style guide for every project, and hire an editor. Tipster: Tracey Kogelmann
Place a Help Icon at the bottom of the screen. Link the Help Icon to whatever topic the instructor is
teaching. Have the link create an e-mail with the subject autofilled in and directed to whatever
support e-Mail address they use. For example: The instructor is covering “How to Archive E-Mail.”
The student, while watching the recording, hits the Help icon. Outlook opens up with an e-mail
addressed to Support@company C, with the subject: Question regarding How to Archive E-Mail. I
find this very helpful for the students, and it only takes a little time to set up at the end.
Tipster: Todd Irvin
If you can, try not to use audio to accompany your WBT (such as someone explaining the concepts). If you need to update the content, and that person is unavailable to record the narration,
then you will need to re-record all narration. Not using audio also reduces file size DRAMATICALLY!
Tipster: Petra Jennings
Flash-based e-Learning contents work fine, if it allows learners to toggle between different stages
of video content. Then it’s great... Tipster: Mohammad Noumans
The advantage of using Flash for e-Learning lies in its rich-media applications and multi-platform
accessibility. However, just having a rich-media e-Learning application means nothing if it's not
used effectively. What does this mean? The advantages of a rich-media application lie in its potential to engage and immerse users far more deeply and viscerally than a lecture or print. Being able
to experience something virtually, can have a longer-lasting impact than the written word. By this
consideration, it makes no sense to develop e-Learning rich-media applications as simply books on
the Web. Though e-Learning is a new industry, other industries have spent decades refining how
to make things captivating. Look at toy companies, game companies, advertising companies, and
films for ideas to make your e-Learning application more engaging to the user. Of course, many of
these products may be engaging in the short term, but you will find that the most powerful and
memorable media are created by those with an inherent passion for the subject matter. Take
advantage of rich-media options, and use it to its full potential. But the true potential is still within the creators (clients working with vendors) to approach the subject matter with passion and
excitement. In truth, the rich-media application created by an apathetic team will have far less
impact on the learner than the short paper pamphlet created by an excited team.
Tipster: Daniel Fu
94
Keep it moving,
not just visually,
but conceptually. In this channel-surfing, canalways-hit-therewind-button
era, learners
have low toler-
Use file-naming conventions for source files and course files. This makes it easy to locate the files,
especially if you want to repurpose them for another course. Also, use a course file structure that
the design and development team agrees upon and adapts as common practice. This structure
makes it easy to locate materials, whether by navigating to a course file, or searching for a file. For
example, if all storyboards are found in a storyboard file under development, and files are named
using conventions, the files can quickly and easily be found. Tipster: Marcia Papalas
ance for productions that are
inefficient with
their time.
My comment is more around how Flash is included into the structure of your e-Learning content.
My personal opinion is that, as a developer, I should have a toolbox of e-Learning content development tools. I know this is sometimes not economically feasible, but on this particular topic, I don't
recommend creating your content in Flash alone. I would even possibly rename the title to be
How to incorporate Flash content into your e-Learning module. We tried to create an e-Learning
module completely in Flash, and it turned out to be not only a huge file, but a huge maintenance
effort. Even after breaking it up into smaller pieces, the flow kept being interrupted by the “Please
Wait, Module Loading” messages. Flash has a lot of Learning Interactions that (with a little imagination) can be incorporated into some HTML content very effectively, or included as animation
between static content slides of a Web conference. There are also a lot of tools (such as those at
SwishZone.com and Camtasia Studio) that create .SWF files for use within an e-Learning module.
Tipster: Brian Lauer
Roger Courville
When producing animations with Flash, it is important to lay down some guidelines. One of them
relates to the size of the Flash animation produced. As our organization offers online postgraduate
courses, we have to ensure that it does not take ages for these Flash animations to download …
particularly, we have learners in countries where broadband is still not widely accessible. When
there is audio in the FLASH animation, always check that only the necessary information is included and narrated. Tipster: Peggy Pang
Organize your learning interactions by the task they support. For instance, you may have a Flash
file that allows a user to simulate logging into your proprietary system. You can insert that file
into a self-paced course, push it out during a synchronous learning event, or post it under the help
portion of your intranet. Since one learning interaction can have several uses, use naming conventions and folder structures that allow you, and others, to easily find them when needed.
Tipster: Andrew Shields
Smaller is better! This especially applies to computer or software training. Make each task an individual Flash file. You can then combine them to make a larger, overall task. This approach allows
you greater flexibility with reusing and repackaging the Flash files to suit varying needs, enables
the student to consume one task at a time and target their learning, and helps you manage file
size for storage and filing handling such as importing into LMSs. Tipster: Petra Jennings
When creating images in Flash or Captivate, make sure that the image size is not real big. This will
help in load time, and also in playback. Tipster: Kelly Peterson
95
I have been creating multimedia
for over 10 years.
Conceptually
clear is more
important than
technically accurate. That's my
less-than-10minute story, and
I'm sticking to it.
Scott Newman
For large projects or organization-wide development efforts, use an LCMS to manage and share
Flash blocks between authors to ensure best practices and optimize reuse. Tipster: Stuart Hornsey
Keep it moving, not just visually, but conceptually. In this channel-surfing, can-always-hit-therewind-button era, learners have low tolerance for productions that are inefficient with their time.
Tipster: Roger Courville
I embed Flash .SWF files in PowerPoint slides to give the slides some interactivity. Though I have
added complex learning objects, a very simple use of this technique is to build a simple .SWF file
made up of Flash's built-in components, such as scrolling fields, graphic panes, and text-entry
fields. This works especially well for building e-Book self studies where screen real estate is at a
premium. You may use PowerPoint's ability to import Flash files. The technique is even easier with
the Adobe Presenter plugin installed, which offers a menu item on the PowerPoint menu bar for
importing Flash. Tipster: Mark Scher
All of our courses have a Help button, as well as a final page which instructs the learner how to
complete a post-assessment for the course. Since we constantly update our LMS, the content for
the Help and final pages often changes. What we've done is create one global page each for the
Help and final sections using Adobe Flash, and we simply link these global pages to each CBT,
regardless of the tools with which we created each CBT. That way, if the content changes for the
Help and final page sections, we only have to update those two pages rather than each CBT.
Tipster: Maureen A. Barlow
TEMPLATES, TEMPLATES, TEMPLATES! —Try to create templates wherever possible. This includes
templates in all tools. Set up things like colors, themes, pop-ups, text boxes, timing, logos, behavior, output, skins, the lot! Take the time to map your templates out, test them, and pilot them
before you create your content. This will save you an incredible amount of time, and will guarantee you a consistent and great looking end product! Tipster: Petra Jennings
I have created Flash-based training courses for healthcare companies and the Department Of
Defense for the past eight years. Over that time, I have learned that the most critical component
to any course is a shared delivery framework. This is a standardized frame or player, which automatically loads all learning content based on the user's role and the content available. The goal of
this shared delivery framework, or shared player, is that a standard look can be stored and called
up every time a user loads a set of content. The player would be stored remotely in one location,
while the content is entirely loaded from different locations. This also helps to reduce rework time,
since any changes to the player only need to happen once to affect all content. Basically, the
shared player system is comprised of three or four components, depending on your use. A player, a
menu, content .SWFs, and audio MP3s.
• The Player: This standard component runs the course. This includes your custom branding, as
well as a specific look and feel. Any buttons should be obvious, yet unobtrusive. Text boxes
should be clear, and large enough for any variables that are loaded into them. The player ensures
a consistent look and feel is maintained through the course.
96
Know your audience, specifically
their technical
capabilities. This
helps you to create the appropriate media, and
allows you to
have a known
testing environment.
Eric Shiblom
• The Menu: This is the listing of content .SWFs to be loaded into the player. This includes titles,
and link locations or URLs for each lesson. The menu can be a simple .TXT file, but an .XML file is
much easier to edit and modify. A different menu file can be created for each lesson or topic in a
course, or one menu file can be used throughout an entire course.
• The Content .SWFs: These are the teaching components. These should have a similar design style
as the player, but this is up to the designer. The content .SWFs should reside in folders based on
topics or lessons. Content .SWFs can be simple slideshows, basic user interactions, or even complex animations.
• The Audio MP3s: Depending on your use, you may want to include narration for your content. If
you were to include this audio in the compiled content .SWFs, the resulting file size would make
loading next to unbearable for the user. The best way to include audio is to stream it in at playtime. This means that external MP3 files are loaded in and played while the user is viewing the
content .SWFs.
• How They Work Together: To begin, the user will open a link which will load the remote player
and a local menu file. The player will process the menu file, and populate a graphical menu with
the titles of the content .SWFs. The player can then display the menu to the user, allowing the
user to select the content they need. Once the content is selected, the player can load the content .SWF, and any available MP3s, based on the link listed in the menu. Also, this player is capable of loading or executing more than standard .SWFs. The player can also launch Web pages,
PowerPoint slideshows, open PDF documents, and even display images based on the variables
set in the menu file.
Tipster: Rich Gamer
Remember the early 1990s when tool vendors told Instructional System Designers (ISDs) that no
programming skills were required to create online learning? It was so simple even an ISD could
do it! Well, I'm an ISD, not a programmer, and I struggled with early authoring tools. Today, the
e-Learning tools vendors come through on their claims. Creating content in PowerPoint and outputting it as Flash really is simple, using tools such as Adobe Presenter 6 or Articulate. So, my tip is
to evaluate these products to see which best meets your needs, and use them when they are the
right development tools for a given situation. The temptation, though, is to put such tools solely in
the hands of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) which is going to produce what we'd expect … SME
brain dumps with clip art in Flash. The need for good ISD and graphic arts hasn't lessened with the
introduction of these rapid development tools into our toolkits. In fact, design may be more
important than ever. Our role is in “figuring things out” during the analysis phase, and designing
the most creative, learner-centered, job-relevant learning experiences possible, given the limitations of PowerPoint-to-Flash authoring tools. Further, we can set up content-free instructional
frameworks for SMEs to populate with content. These approaches embrace the easy-to-use tools
of today, while not discarding quality in terms of instructional integrity and quality visuals.
Tipster: Susan McDonald Osborn
DON'T LET THE TECHNOLOGY DRIVE YOUR TRAINING! — When building e-Learning, it's best to
start by determining the needs and objectives of the training. Once you have a clear vision for
97
Build content
in small blocks,
which can be
easily edited
and reused
repeatedly to
form larger
pieces of learning.
Hedley Hamilton
what the training needs to accomplish, then you can determine the best technology to support
the training. Too many times, e-Learning professionals get a new technology and want to use it in
their next training initiative, when that might not be the best way of delivering the content. Don't
let the technology drive the training. Once you establish the needs and objectives of the training,
then use technology to support the training needs and objectives. Tipster: Chris Bahns
While developing bespoke e-Learning courses that you need to translate or localize in multiple
languages, you should take care of the amount of text and graphics included in a screen. This is
especially true for courses being developed in Flash, without the help of authoring tools. The
developer should keep at least 30-40% extra space in the content area and graphics with text.
Even the buttons should be bigger so as to accommodate an increase of text after translation. A
simple example is the word Print, which in Spanish is Impresion, an increase of four alpha characters. Tipster: Himadri Chowdhury
Know your audience, specifically their technical capabilities. This helps you to create the appropriate media, and allows you to have a known testing environment. Tipster: Eric Shiblom
Tell a story, make it “meaty,” and tell it in less than 10 minutes. Yes, that requires scripting, and cutting out the fluff is not easy for most people to do. Never use transitional sentences like “On this
next slide you will see…” Those are just wasted words that bore people to tears. Moreover, don't
put any graphics on screen unless they directly support what you are saying. Sorry, when you are
talking about e-mail, the worst thing you can show is that tired old animated .GIF of a mailbox
opening and closing. RESIST THE URGE! Don't use technical terms. Pretend your intended audience
is your Mother. Would she really care (or understand) that a file was backwardly compatible or
simply can be opened by older programs? I have been creating multimedia for over 10 years.
Conceptually clear is more important than technically accurate. That's my less-than-10-minute
story, and I'm sticking to it. Tipster: Scott Newman
Flash-based interactivity can be plucked in the LMS independently as a full-fledged course, and
also can be integrated with some other course made up in some different authoring tool. As in the
first case, when one is thinking of independently integrating Flash on LMS, try to pluck Flash into
Flash (we can call it “Nested Flash”). This will ease the process of developing complicated courses
as well, like scenario-based or chain simulations or decision trees and so on. The ability of Flash in
Video and audio handling is amazing. There I will suggest the 3-D character-based animation
scenes or scenarios, since at many places we face challenges in getting real persons performing
those scenes. Tipster: Bhanwar Singh
Build content in small blocks, which can be easily edited and reused repeatedly to form larger
pieces of learning. Tipster: Hedley Hamilton
There are ways to use load time more creatively than an animated icon. In Plimoth Plantation's
Online Learning Center (http://plimoth.org/education/olc/index_js2.html), we displayed questions
98
that were relevant to the page that was loading. Hence, while waiting, a student started thinking
about the topic they were about to learn about, such as primary sources or the Wampanoags. We
received very positive feedback on this feature from teachers and students, because it moved
waiting from drudgery to something fun and educational. And, realistically, lots of people still
don't have broadband. Tipster: Lisa Neal
99
XIV. Thanks to Our Tipsters
Adrián Murillo, CIO, Aura Interactiva
Alison Lister, Director, Jazztech
Solutions Limited
Andre' Chatelain, Instructional Designer,
Applied Simulation Technology
Andrew Bagley, Consultant,
mySmartSimulations
Andrew Shields, Director of Learning
and Development, Aristotle
Andrew Smith, Learning Technology
Specialist,Tele Atlas
Andrew Teasdale, Process Manager,
Humana, Inc.
Cliff Singontiko, Senior Manager of Art
Direction, Farmers
Conan Heiselt, Instructional Designer,
TechSmith Corp.
Dan Karwoski, Senior Media Designer,
Intuit
Daniel Fu, Multimedia Designer,
Enspire Learning
Daphen Gonzalvez,Teacher, Sydney
Distance Education High School
Dave Harris, Business Applications
Training Consultant, BCS
David Becker
Glenn Hansen, National Learning and
Development Consultant,The Salvation
Army Employment Plus
Grant Sherson, Universal College of
Learning (NZ)
Halil Ibrahim BÜLBÜL, Gazi University
Hedley Hamilton, MD, Any-3 Ltd.
Himadri Chowdhury, Logica
Janeann Hudson, Instructional
Designer/Content Developer, USN
Janet Clifford, Instructional Designer,
Kronos
Jasir Alherbish, e-Learning Consultant
Angela Nicholas, Instructional Designer,
NWREL
David Miller, Multimedia Developer,
Newmarket International
Jason Harris, Latitude Consulting Group
Aragon Heppel,Training/Support/
Development Manager,Webqem
David Williams, VP,Technology, NexLearn
Jeff Batt, Marketing Coordinator,
Rapid Intake
Denise Link, Vice President,
Phasient Learning Technologies
Jeff Holth, CTO, Innova Products, LLC
Becky Kinney, Sole Proprietor,
Moonlight Multimedia
Bhanwar Singh, Business Development –
SE, Content Division, Harbinger
Knowledge Products
Brian Dusablon, Instructional Designer,
Administaff
Brian J. Kidd, Courseware Development,
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
Brian Lauer, Customer Education Product
Specialist, Freddie Mac
Bruce Richards, Research and
Instructional Design Coordinator,
Missouri State University
Carlyne Lynch, Sharing Filter Libraries,
ARRIS
Chris Bahns, e-Learning Designer,
LexisNexis
Doug Marlowe, Master of the
Knowledge Domain, teachITnow
Eber Ribeiro Pinto, Ciatech – Companhia
da Arte Multimidia
Elisio Carmona, Senior Consultant,
Deloitte
Ellen Meiselman, e-Learning Developer,
University of Michigan Health System
Eric Hunter, e-Learning Designer,
eBay Inc.
Eric Shiblom, Software Engineer,
NexLearn
Fabio Cujino, CEO, Safari Development
Fredd Gorham, Senior e-Learning
Developer, HDR
Garin Hess, CEO, Rapid Intake
Chris Stape,Training Program Manager,
HAMMER/Hanford Training
George Aston, Senior e-Learning
Specialist, Regence BCBS
Christy Tucker, Instructional Designer,
Performance Learning Systems
George Ritacco, Director,
Client Services, Global Vision
Technologies, Inc.
Claudio Ierulli, Developer, CIBC
Jeff Krebs, Senior Educational Consultant,
GE Healthcare
Jeff Yoder, Senior Director, Education, SAP
Jeffery Goldman, e-Learning Designer,
Provident Bank
Jody McNelis, Instructional Designer,
Aetna
Joe Shultheis, e-Learning Services
Coordinator, Century College
Joey Tuskan, Interface Designer/
Programmer, e4tn
John Anderson, UNC CH, SSW
John Best, Business Excellence
Educational Development,
Seagate Technology
Jon Weber, Owner/Artist, Jon Weber
Joy Vinson, Customer Representative,
Rapid Intake
Karen Miller, President, Design2Train
Kathleen Shykula, e-Learning Developer,
Consultant
VII. The Tipsters
100
continued
Kathy Schroeder, Director of Marketing,
Atomic Learning
Mark Hemingway, Co-founder and CIO,
Sharp Media
Petra Jennings, Manager, Learning
Content, Saba, Inc.
Kathy Zottmann, e-Learning Consultant,
WaMu
Mark Scher, Principal, Scher Progression,
LLC
Phil Cross, Manager, Engineering,
NexLearn
Kelly Peterson,Trainer, Renaissance
Learning
Mark Simon, Sr.Training Specialist,
Eliassen Group
Philip Roy, E-Learning Facilitator,
Massey University
Kevin O'Donnell, Senior Graphics
Designer, JDA Software Group,
Business Management Institute
Mark Temple, Multimedia Developer,
Newmarket Internation Inc.
Prakash Bebington, Learning Consultant,
Aptech Limited
Matt Perkins
Raghavendra,Technical Writer, Oracle
Maureen A. Barlow,Training &
Development Specialist, e-Learning,Tufts
Health Plan
Ram Mohan,Team Leader,
Sterco Digitex Pvt. Limited
Kevin Wilcoxon, Principal,
The Instructional Web LLC
Kieran Richardson, Director of Product
Management, Flypaper Studio, Inc.
Krishna Prathab R V, Owner,
www.lastashero.com
Michael Alcock, Managing Director,
Atlantic Link
Red Resener, Director of Development,
Automated Learning Solutions, Inc.
Rich Garner,Web Developer, Amerigroup
Laura Filla, Sr.Technical Writer,
TouchNet Information Systems, Inc.
Michael Baker, Information Resource
Coordinator, South Carolina Department
of Social Services
RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist,
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Laura Jaffrey, Instructional Designer,
Knowledgework
Mike Dickinson, Director, e-Learning &
Curriculum,The SCOOTER Store
Rob Wiggins, Learning Technology & OD
Specialist, St. Josephs Healthcare
Hamilton
Lawrence Yau, Scientist, NATO
Mike Hobby,Training and Development
Manager, Oak Harbor Freight Lines, Inc.
Leif Nelson, Instructional Designer/
Technologist, University of Wisconsin –
Green Bay
Leigh Anne McIntyre, Instructional
Designer, Instructional Spice
Leigh Margaret Roberts, e-Learning
Programs Director, Career Builder
Institute
Lisa Neal, Consultant, http://lisaneal.com
Madhanaraj Kubenderan,Tech Skill Lead,
e-Learning, Robert Engineering and
Business Solutions
Milo Dodds, IT Analyst – e-Learning
Development Lead, IT Learning Group –
Cisco Systems Inc.
Mohammad Nouman, e-Lecturer, Virtual
University of Pakistan
Monika Sharma, Instructional Design
Manager, Aptara, Inc.
Mrs. G. Mythili, Multimedia Developer,
Sify Technologies Limited
Nick Floro, CEO,
Sealworks Interactive Studios
Marcia Papalas
Nick Stanziani, Duane Morris, LLP
Marge Rutter, Instructional Designer,
Springhouse Education and Consulting
Paul Vandegriff,Training Consultant,
Various
Maria Coelho, Customer Relations,
QuickLessons
Peggy Pang, Senior Manager,
Learning Design, U21Global Pte, Ltd.
Mario Gutiérrez Toledo, Multimedia
Producer, Mystica Hipermedia,
Santiago-Chile
Peter Ryce, Evangelist,
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Robbe Addis, Programmer &
Instructional Developer, General
Dynamics Information Technology
Robert (Butch) Pfremmer, VP &
e-Learning Practice Manager,Welocalize
Rodger Stuffel, Production Manager,
C2 Technologies
Roger Courville, Principal, 1080 Group, LLC
Rosh, Developer, SONGS
Ryan Cameron, Director of Flash
Technology, Jeffrey Gitomer's Train One,
Inc.
S.R.Mithra, Senior Graphic Designer,
Sify Technologies
Sanatan Saraswati, e-Learning Designer,
Axial
Scott Gale, Sr. Instructional Designer
e-Learning, Graco, inc
Scott Gaspar, e-Learning Developer,
Jobing.com
VII. The Tipsters
101
continued
Scott Hersey, Developer, Unum
Scott Merrett, e-Learning Manager,
Research In Motion
Scott Newman, Director of Training,
Dechert LLP
Shaunda Paden, Instructional Designer,
DesignComm, Inc.
Shilpi, PI Lead, Edutech
Stuart Hornsey, Sales Director,
Any-3 Ltd.
Todd Irvin,Training Manager,
United Way of America
Suresh Jayaraman, Sr. Product Marketing
Manager, Adobe Systems, Inc.
Tom Kuhlmann, VP, Community,
Articulate
Susan McDonald Osborn,
Owner, Laurus Design, LLC
Tonia Dousay, e-Learning Manager,
Texas Engineering Extension Service
Susan Steinfeldt, Lead Educator,
Computer Based Training,
Carle Foundation Hospital
Tracey Kogelmann, Multimedia Designer
and Developer, Newmarket International
Uday Kranti, Senior Consultant, NIIT
Silke Fleischer, Sr. Product Marketing
Manager, Adobe Systems, Inc.
Swan, Director,WSB
Steve Hancock, President, Rapid Intake
Thomas Gnas, Manager of Learning and
Development, Eisai Medical Research
Steve Johnson, Senior e-Learning
Designer
Tim Bobo, Owner, Left Brain Media
Wendy Phillips, Online Training Specialist,
Bigpond
Tim Kindberg, Lead Designer,Trivantis
Wimong Ma, Student, Hebei University
Steve Jones,The Alignment Group
Vicki Krajewski, Instructional Designer,
Pearson
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