» 2011 » January

Workarounds for features lost in Adobe Captivate 5

Jan 212011

I’ve been using Captivate 5 fairly heavily for a while now. Because I had used previous versions for many years, I found the revamped interface in 5.0 took a bit of getting used to, but I am now really starting to appreciate some of its benefits. In particular, I like the fact that the properties for slides and objects are so easily accessible through the Properties Inspector.

Over time, however, I have picked up on a number of features within Captivate 4.0 that I seem to have lost with the upgrade to 5.0. There are workarounds for some of these, and others are fairly insignificant. But I thought that I would make a list of them as this information could be useful to anyone considering the migration from version 4.0 to 5.0: Read more...

Creating Interactive Documents with InDesign pt1

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Jan 212011

Interactivity is definitely the hot topic for most areas of publishing right now. InDesign CS5 has a variety of interactivity functions which will allow you to create impressive electronic publications without specialist coding skills. In a series of posts, I’m going to look at InDesign’s interactivity functions and how you might use them.

Over the series I’ll be covering hyperlinks, bookmarks, transitions, presentation mode, cross references, buttons, export to PDF, animation, timing, export to Flash and SWF. To get started I’m going to take a look at setting up your document.

Set up Read more...

What is wireframing?

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Jan 142011

This post is about introducing the concept of wireframing – specifically what is wireframing and do you need it/should you use it.

With the advent of the iPhone, iPad, tablets and smartphones in general, I have often found myself with the need to first draw a rough sketch of my idea to show people. Initially I just used pencil and paper, but then I wondered – are there apps out there for me use? and should I use them? Read more...

Fix for Captivate simulations anticipating user actions

Captivate No Responses »

Jan 062011

Have you noticed that when you create Captivate simulations using Automatic Recording, the resulting movies seem to anticipate the users’ actions? For example, on a slide where the user is required to select a menu item, the item is already highlighted as if the mouse is being hovered over it?

Well, there’s now a fix for this issue in the latest update for Adobe Captivate 5 (see http://www.adobe.com/support/captivate/downloads.html). Somewhat bizarrely though, the fix is not applied automatically when you install the update — you have to make a manual edit to a .ini file within the Captivate installation folder. I fortunately discovered this piece of information because I happened to read the fine details of the readme file that accompanies the update. Read more...

New Year housekeeping with InDesign

InDesign 1 Response »

Jan 052011

It’s traditional to start the new year with a home clear out but how many of us do that for our computers?

Here are some tips for getting InDesign into optimum shape.

Turn off Live Redraw. CS5 ships with Live Redraw on (Immediate in the preferences drop down). This allows you to zoom around your page with the pictures and illustrations redrawing in real time but requires a lot of memory and can result in slower performance. Change this to Delayed or turn it off altogether (Never) to make scrolling snappier.
InDesign CS5 Live Redraw preferences pane

Bookmarklets

HTML5 No Responses »

Jan 042011

What are bookmarklets? For those of you who do not know, they are a browser bookmark that has JavaScript inside them – instead of a url. What this means is that these bookmarklets as they are called, actually run a series of JavaScript commands. As a result they have become an important tool for me when I am teaching and surfing the web. Let me share with you some of my favourite bookmarklets…

Markup - http://markup.io/

MarkUp lets you draw on any webpage with a variety of tools to express your ideas etc. You can even share the resulting image. Read more...