293 Tips For Producing And Managing Flash Based E Learning Content

Edited by Bill Brandon

for Producing and Managing Flash-based e-Learning Content

239TIPS

Copyright © 2008 by The eLearning GuildPublished by The eLearning Guild375 E Street, Suite 200Santa Rosa, CA 95404www.elearningguild.com

You may download, display, print, and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retainingthis notice) for your personal, non-commercial use, or use within your organization. All otherrights 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 individ-ual contributor in any citation, and should take the following form: The eLearning Guild's 239 Tipsfor Producing and Managing Flash-based e-Learning Content

Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites, offered as citations or sources for further infor-mation, may have disappeared, or been changed, between the date this book was published andthe date it is read.

Other FREE Digital eBooks by The eLearning Guild include:The eLearning Guild's Handbook of e-Learning StrategyThe eLearning Guild's Handbook on Synchronous e-Learning162 Tips and Tricks for Working with e-Learning Tools834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction328 Tips on the SELECTION of an LMS or LCMS339 Tips on the IMPLEMENTATION of an LMS or LCMS311 Tips on the MANAGEMENT of an LMS or LCMS

Publisher: David HolcombeEditorial Director: Heidi FiskEditor: Bill BrandonCopy Editor: Charles HolcombeDesign Director: Nancy Marland Wolinski

The eLearning Guild™ Advisory BoardRuth Clark, Lance Dublin, Conrad Gottfredson, Bill Horton, Bob Mosher, Eric Parks, Brenda Pfaus,Marc Rosenberg, Allison Rossett.

239 Tips for Producing and Managing Flash-based e-Learning Content | 2


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 ToolsA. 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

Table of Contents


XII. 22 Tips Provided by Tool VendorsA. 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 AdvertisersAdobe Captivate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

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

A. IntroductionIn 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 sub-mit tips relating to any or all of 19 different tools (plus an “other” category) that either produceFlash output or that can incorporate Flash content. A total of 147 members responded to the sur-vey, contributing 239 usable tips on 28 products (17 of which were not included in the originallist).

As usual in our past surveys, the tips range in length from one-sentence ideas all the way upto multi-page discourses. Some are very basic in nature, and others are quite advanced. Thesetips were different from past surveys in one significant way: Many of them contain detailedActionScript code that will help you solve common problems. We have not edited the tips in anyway, 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 toincorporate into their own production process.

We began the process of turning these tips into an organized collection simply by separatingthe tips into groups that made sense. The largest group is the 105 tips for Adobe Flash Profes-sional and Flash Player. The next largest (31 tips) consists of recommended practices and generaltips 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 providedby users of the tools. Because many of the tips were long, and addressed more than one idea, itwas not possible to sort the tips further into sub-categories. As a result, we have provided sum-maries of the key idea in each tip (with a few exceptions). These summaries are printed in ALLCAPS at the start of the tips.

Another difference in this book, compared to our others, is that after each tip we provide thename of the tipster who provided it. A list of Tipsters appears at the end of the book. This mayhelp 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 findmany 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 contributionto 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 outlately, we encourage you to take a look at your earliest convenience.


I. How to Use These 239 Tips

USE EXTERNAL FILES FOR DATA — Don't hard-code text, or even images, inside your .SWF file. Usean 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 pro-gramming 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 andan uncompressed format. This will allow you to produce versions with different qualities simply bychanging the Publish Settings. Remember, MP3 is a format that loses quality when the compres-sion increases. Besides, all sounds are decompressed to be included in the Library of an editablefile (.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 no-brainer, but it's surprising how often it happens. Make sure to provide a default value, even if it'sjust a blank space or “ ”. Also, remember to initialize the setInterval every time you start anew content section. Not doing this may cause some random, hard to solve, problems. Even moreso when your content integrates inside another system, such as a LMS or custom player.Tipster: Adrián Murillo

OPTIMIZING E-LEARNING VIDEO FOR THE WEB — If you are looking to deliver to the largest audi-ence, you'll want to select Flash 7-based compression of your content. Using the Spark or On2Codecs (additional cost) will offer great quality video and easy integration into your content. Ifyour viewers have the latest Flash player 9 or higher, look to use the new H.264 compression tech-nology. This allows you to play back the highest quality video at the smallest sizes. General guide-lines 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 yourvideo. Also with the latest codec's, you can take advantage of pixel doubling where you compressat a smaller size and enlarge the video on your HTML file for playback. This allows a larger viewingarea with smaller downloads.

Compress your video as .FLVs which are external files to your main Flash tool or application. Thisallows 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 yourcompression toolset. Tipster: Nick Floro


When importinga sound to yourFlash movie, doit with goodquality and anuncompressedformat. This willallow you toproduce versionswith differentqualities simplyby changing thePublish Settings.Remember, MP3is a format thatloses qualitywhen the com-pression increas-es.

mario gutierréz toledo

II. Adobe Flash Professional & Flash Player

TARGET TO FLASH PLAYER 7 AS MUCH AS YOU CAN — Many systems don't have access to a moreupdated player version, such as, obviously, older systems like Windows 95 and NT, but most impor-tant, newer platforms such as the Nintendo Wii. It's surprising how many people are using themto browse the Internet. Naturally, this decision depends on your target user profiles.Tipster: Adrián Murillo

TEST YOUR CONTENT ON MULTIPLE BROWSER VERSIONS — Don't just test on Firefox, InternetExplorer, Opera, and so on. Test several browser versions also, such as FF 1, FF 2, IE 6, IE 7, or asappropriate. Sometimes the very same version of the Flash player behaves differently on differentbrowser versions. Tipster: Adrián Murillo

TEST YOUR CONTENT ON MULTIPLE PLAYER VERSIONS, STARTING FROM YOUR MINIMUM REQUIR-ED UP TO THE LATEST VERSION — Adobe has a tendency to implement new “security” fixes thatsometimes 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 Flashplayer blocks the getURL function calls, causing many problems on already-deployed content.Tipster: Adrián Murillo

HOW TO HAVE THE HOT SPOT E-LEARNING OBJECT DISPLAY THE CORRECT ANSWER — Whenusing the Flash learning objects you can specify the incorrect feedback. For example, "Sorry thatis not the correct answer. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West." Entering text works greatfor multiple choice,T/F, and fill-in-the-blank type questions. But what about “Click the area of thewindow” questions? Here's a tip that will allow you to show the correct answer for a hot-spotlearning 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 highlightthe correct answer.

3. Place this symbol in frame 1 of the mcCorrect layer, and name the instance "mcCorrect". Movethe 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 downto line 188. You'll see:

router.sessionStop();router.submitScore();

Below these lines add:

_root.mcCorrectSpot._visible = true;


Don't just test onFirefox, InternetExplorer, Opera,and so on. Testseveral browserversions also, suchas FF 1, FF 2, IE 6,IE 7, or as appro-priate. Sometimesthe very sameversion of theFlash playerbehaves differ-ently on differentbrowser versions.

Adrián Murillo

II. Adobe Flash Professional & Flash Player continued

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 aninstance of the mcCorrect symbol for every drop object. For example, if you have four dropobjects, you would need to have mcCorrect1, mcCorrect2, mcCorrect3, and mcCor-rect4. 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 compres-sion produces, commonly called “artifacts.” In short, avoid putting Darth Vader against the micro-phone. Tipster: Mario Gutiérrez Toledo

TEST EARLY FROM A REMOTE SERVER — Many content problems in Flash, such as external resourceloading or XML communication issues, may not present themselves until the .SWF is streamingfrom a remote server over the Internet. Keep bandwidth constraints in mind when designing anddeveloping content. Just because a .SWF loads quickly from your local hard drive or network doesnot mean it is bandwidth-friendly over an Internet connection. Always remember that users maybe accessing your content from home, via Cable, DSL, or over a modem.

Additionally, keep your loading screens light. Your loading indicators should display quickly, regard-less of the user’s connection speed.When you must display long text passages, minimize sur-rounding animation. Movement on the screen can distract the user, making long passages diffi-cult to read. Flashkit.com is a tremendous resource for all Flash developers. The Flash communityheavily traverses their forums, and the site contains countless sound loops, sound effects, andgraphics for royalty-free use. Tipster: Jason Harris

USE FLASH INTERACTION TO SUPPORT LEARNER EXPLORATION OF MATH CONCEPTS — We usedFlash 8.0 to create a course for Mathematics. Students drag the triangle, placed with ActionScriptprograms, to research the relationship of the three angles. The conclusion is 1+2+3=180°. Our tech-nology design is to improve the scientific mind of the students. The software shows each degreeof the angle, and two of the vertex points are defined. Students can drag one top point to makedifferent types of triangles. The software utilizes the motive character of Flash 8.0 to show thegeometrical graphics. It is quite effective, and the students get to look for an algebraic expressionfor 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 thatdoes something unique. If you don't, I guarantee that when you come back to the .FLA file sometime later, or someone else is using your file, you won't remember what the code is doing. Keepyour ActionScript on a separate locked layer in the timeline so that all the code is in one place. Use


When you mustdisplay longtext passages,minimize sur-rounding ani-mation. Move-ment on thescreen can dis-tract the user,making longpassages diffi-cult to read.Flashkit.com is a tremendousresource for allFlash develop-ers.

Jason Harris


Datasheet

Enjoy creative fl exibilityRealize your creative vision with a full complement of drawing, animation, and interactive design tools. Explore innovative styles and techniques, impress your clients 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 productivityLeverage the power of a true development environment. Utilize professional coding tools including code collapse, commenting, automatic syntax completion, streamlined error resolution, and more. Th e new ActionScript™ 3.0 language supports a structured and intuitive workfl ow that saves time and facilitates exchange between designers and developers, enabling individuals and teams to deliver predictable, consistent results that meet or exceed the original vision.

Easily work with other Adobe softwareNow your favorite tools will play well together. Enjoy timesaving integration with other Adobe creative soft ware, including Adobe Premiere® Pro, Photoshop®, Illustrator®, Flex™ Builder™ 2, Aft er Eff ects®, and Soundbooth™, as well as Adobe Bridge, the central hub of Adobe Creative Suite® 3. Easily exchange designs, assets, and fi les between applications without compromising fi delity.

Extend your reachExtend the reach of your work by creating content for Adobe Flash Player, the world’s most pervasive soft ware platform. Flash Player is installed on more than 700 million computers and devices worldwide, including 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 consumer electronics devices. Create content once, and then deploy it to multiple platforms.

Consider Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium

Move up to Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium software for everything you need to prototype, design, develop, and maintain websites, web applications, and mobile content.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium combines Adobe Bridge CS3, Adobe Version Cue® CS3, Adobe Device Central CS3, Adobe Stock Photos, and Adobe Acrobat® Connect™ with:

• Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3

• Adobe Flash CS3 Professional

• Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended

• Adobe Illustrator CS3

• Adobe Fireworks® CS3

• Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional

• Adobe Contribute® CS3

ADOBE® FLASH® CS3 PROFESSIONALCREATE AND DELIVER RICH, INTERACTIVE CONTENTAdobe Flash CS3 Professional software is the most advanced authoring environment for creating rich, interactive content for digital, web, and mobile platforms. Create interactive websites, rich media advertisements, instructional media, presentations, games, and more. Depend on Flash CS3 and Adobe Flash Player software to ensure your content reaches the widest possible audience.

Top reasons to buy Adobe Flash CS3 ProfessionalSystem 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 (certifi ed 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

* 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

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator importImport 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 timelineQuickly 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 primitivesEasily create pie wedges, round off rectangle corners, defi ne 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 developmentSave time with the new ActionScript 3.0 language, featuring improved performance, increased fl exibility, and more intuitive and structured development.

Sophisticated video toolsCreate, 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 supportIntegrate 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 capabilitiesVisually 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 architectureLeverage the Flash APIs to easily develop extensions that add custom functionality.

Convert animation to ActionScriptInstantly 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 CentralDesign, 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.

Adobe Systems Incorporated345 Park AvenueSan Jose, CA 95110-2704USAwww.adobe.com

Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Acrobat Connect, ActionScript, Adobe Premiere, After Eff ects, 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 United States and other countries. PowerPC is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. 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 fi ctional 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

For more information

For more details about Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, visit www.adobe.com/fl ash.

Create rich, interactive content for digital, web, and mobile platforms.

XML where possible, so that it is not necessary to republish the .SWF with each use — the XMLcan drive the content. Tipster:Wendy Phillips

USING FLASH TO MARKET E-LEARNING COURSES — Marketing is key to successful implementa-tion of an e-Learning course, and Flash is an excellent tool for this purpose. The rich media of Flashprovides 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 electronicannouncements, such as e-mails or Intranet articles, but via Flash you can deliver a more effectiveand entertaining message than with text and static graphics alone. Here are some tips for usingFlash 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 willencounter in the course.

2. Use characters in the advertisement. If the course has characters in it, use them. They can act asa spokesperson, or as actors in a skit. For example, they can be discussing their thoughts on thecourse, and why it was beneficial to them.

3. Make it interactive. This will not only keep your audience’s attention, but also provide a previewof the interactive elements in the course. If you can make the advertisement a short game, thatis a plus. However, the game must have the same goal as the advertisement, which is communi-cating 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 toimport into Flash, and if you are using it in your course it can provide a preview of the course’suse of audio as a medium.

6. Be sure to communicate why the course is relevant to your audience, and the benefits of takingthe course (what’s in it for them).

7. Keep the advertisement as brief as possible without sacrificing your message.

8. Conclude the advertisement with instructions on how to access the course, and a link to it or tothe learning management system where they can launch it.

9. Place the advertisement where the audience will most likely see it. For example, your organiza-tion’s Intranet homepage, the training department’s homepage, the first page of your learningmanagement system, and so on. I also like to e-mail a link to the advertisement to all potentialparticipants and their supervisors, preferably with some sort of tease that encourages them toclick the link. I find that if people like the advertisement, they will forward the e-mail, furtheringthe reach of the advertisement’s message. FYI: I load the Flash .SWF to my Intranet and send alink instead of sending the Flash .SWF directly in the body of the e-mail. Most e-mail systemswill strip the Flash .SWF out of the body of the e-mail.With Flash used as your marketing toolyou will get more of a “buzz” around e-Learning releases, and with that, an increase in the num-ber of people visiting and participating in your e-Learning courses. Tipster: Jeffery Goldman


The rich media ofFlash provides anexcellent meansof gaining youraudience’s atten-tion to a course,why the course is relevant tothem, and thebenefits of takingit. Many market-ing strategies uti-lize electronicannouncements,such as e-mails orIntranet articles,but via Flash youcan deliver amore effectiveand entertainingmessage thanwith text andstatic graphicsalone.

Jeffery Goldman


LOOPING AND STREAMS — If you set your sound's sync to stream, and then add loops, the file sizecan grow huge for each loop that is specified. Avoid looping sounds that are set to the stream set-ting. Tipster: Carlyne Lynch

ADDING AUDIO TO FLASH PIECES MAKES A POWERFUL LEARNING TOOL — However, audio adds alot to the final file size and benefits from external editing before importing into Flash. You can alsouse 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 contentricher and more accessible. Tipster: David Miller

SNIFFER CODE — Be sure to include sniffer code at the start of the module to ensure that learnershave the correct Flash player. Tipster: David Becker

HOW TO WORK WITH pageFiles — My tip is to break apart every single Flash file, and deliver con-tent on the fly and only when is needed. Let’s say that the course is going to look like a book, withsome 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 thebook, when he finishes reading it he will jump to the next pageFile and so on. Flash Files workwith levels; we can load as many Flash files into another as we want, but two .SWFs can't be load-ed at the same level. This means that we can control different .SWFs loaded at the same time, buthosted on different levels. The pageFiles should not be larger than 100K so Internet and Intranetusers can view them. To do that, you must have a file that controls it all. HTML must load this hostFlash (mainFile), and it will never be unloaded (Level 0). The mainFile must have all functions tocontrol 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 themainFile will calculate, organize, and take an appropriate action, like calling another pageFile orsetting 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 contentand forget about codes and everything to communicate with LMS. You can reuse this techniqueon all of your courses with just a little bit of a change between each one. I’ve developed this tech-nique, and applied it at major e-Learning companies in Brazil. They said, doing that they improvedperformance and reduced the time to develop and deliver a course to the client. Now they havemore time to focus on content and animations, improving the quality of the courses. If you needmore 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 yourprogram in the first frame. (I learned this tip from Chris Florio, and it's changed my workflow.)Tipster: Susan Steinfeldt


Be sure to in-clude sniffercode at the startof the moduleto ensure thatlearners havethe correctFlash player.

David Becker


IMPORTING PHOTOSHOP CONTENT INTO FLASH — I have to believe that you have received num-erous suggestions on this topic. Because it is such a good NEW tool in FLASH Creative Suite 3, Iwanted 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 forme. I create a layered .PSD file with objects that are not even related to each other. As long as theimage size will accommodate the needed image, I create it in one .PSD file. I have had 30-somelayers of non-related imagery in one file. I will manage content in layer folders sometimes. Nowcomes the beauty of the new feature — from within Flash I import the .PSD file, and all theimages are created as symbols in FLASH from the different layers in Photoshop. The user canchoose which layers to import with a checkbox. It neatly puts the new symbols into a folder inthe 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 onemaster .PSD has proved to be a good thing when looking for changes. I then only import/updatethe layer that was changed. Tipster: Joe Shultheis

SAVE TIME BY CREATING RE-USABLE OBJECTS ONLY ONCE — Put things like the navigation, com-pany logo, help menu, glossary, or anything else that will be part of the interface throughout theentire CBT in a separate .SWF file to be loaded into the main movie. You can then build each indi-vidual 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 usesome simple ActionScript on a blank layer of a single keyframe at the start of your movie. Here isthat 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 imagein a symbol from 50-100% over 30 frames or so, with and without this ActionScript to comparethe 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 screencaptures as .GIFs and then importing them into Flash, having the majority of text loaded from atext 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 alsodevelop storyboards first, to make sure the tutorial is correct before developing it in Flash. It isfaster to make changes recommended by a SME in Word than it is in Flash.We also love usingSnagIt for taking screen captures. Tipster: Jeff Krebs

REDUCE ANTI-ALIASING — Use the document properties in Flash to set your most-often-usedframe rate, stage size, and background color as your default. Now, every time you create a new


Place the audioin a single mov-ie clip and use it using Action-Script, instead ofplacing it on thetimeline alongwith animation.

Ram Mohan


Flash piece you can save a few clicks. In addition, using “snap to pixels” will reduce anti-aliasing ofyour 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 thecourse work with your LMS, and so on. Then start each course or module with the template so youdon't need to keep spending time recreating the wheel, or running the risk of missing somethingcritical. Tipster: Kathy Zottmann

AUDIO TIP — Place the audio in a single movie clip and use it using ActionScript, instead of plac-ing it on the timeline along with animation. Tipster: Ram Mohan

BUILD YOUR FLASH TUTORIAL USING “MODULAR DESIGN” PRINCIPLES — Here is something valu-able I learned as I started down the path of e-Learning and building tutorials in Adobe Flash. Learnto be resourceful when you’re building your .FLA files. If you take as much time as I do to organizeyour learning content into usable “chunks,” you should also apply this method to your main .FLAFlash files. Instead of placing all your content into one extremely long timeline, try developingyour master .FLA file to be “modular.”Think about it:When you’re organizing your learning con-tent, you probably do what I do — you divide the content into topics, and then subtopics.Why notdo 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/oractions, and keeps them separate for easy organization. This allows the developer flexibility inediting, adding, or removing content. Need to move your “Standards” content so it appears beforeyour “Roles and Responsibility” content? Easy — simply go to your Scenes window, left-click andhold 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 contentwill play out in sequence. Tipster: Fredd Gorham

SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF MODULAR DESIGN — Here’s an example of how I do this. This exampleassumes 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 win-dow 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 majortopic your learning content has by clicking the “Duplicate Scene” button at the bottom of thewindow.

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 orderto keep everything as seamless as possible, the beginning and end of each scene should follow acommon “transition” theme that does not vary much. This will allow you to move your scenesaround without much worry of creating a confusing experience for your viewers, or creatingmore work for you. If your scenes start with content fading into view, and end with content fad-ing out of view, you should follow that theme with each scene. Tipster: Fredd Gorham


Create a templatewith your back-ground, naviga-tion, code tomake the coursework with yourLMS, and so on.Then start eachcourse or modulewith the tem-plate so you don'tneed to keepspending timerecreating thewheel, or runningthe risk of missingsomething criti-cal.

Kathy Zottmann


Why not take your apps mobile?With adobe® Flash® lite,™ you already knoW hoW.

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

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.

ADDING NEW SCENES — If your tutorial is used on a regular basis, it may require additions toupdate 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“ windowand 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 ele-ments from the prior scene are relevant (that is, headers, section names, etc) you can just leavethem 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 largeinteractions and animations. It lets users know that the interaction will load on the page. Oftentimes, users click Next to move on because they didn't realize there was an interaction on thepage. Tipster: Cliff Singontiko

SMOOTHING IMAGE EDGES — Do you sometimes tween images and notice how pixilated theedges look as they move? For smoother results, check “Allow smoothing for” under “Bitmap Pro-perties” for the images in question. You will notice the jagged edges are gone, and your anima-tion 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 publishedcaptivate file that's loaded into a Flash movie. There are various reasons as to why you may notwant to use Captivate's inherent controls. Create custom controls that you can place anywhere inthe Flash movie. Launch some event upon completion of the Captivate. Sure you can do this usingCaptivate, but you may want to dynamically change what gets loaded based on any number ofconditions. You also have greater control of how the item gets loaded. Using Captivate, the itemwill 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 andpaste 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);


Writing Action-Script for controlfunctions on abutton can bedifficult to findat a later date.Place as much ofthe control func-tions as possiblein its own“action” layer.

Chris Stape


//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 someButton1.onRelease = function(){

mcHolder.rdcmndPause = 1; }//to go back someButton2.onRelease = function(){

mcHolder.rdcmndPrevious = 1; }//to go forward someButton3.onRelease = function(){

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, forexample an animation or a quiz, use a streaming audio file in the background for that. Add amedia streamer component, give it a reference to an audio file, and then create a list of actionshappening every time you reach a specific amount of seconds.What will happen is that (for exam-ple) an animation (movie clip) with an instance name of “myAnimation” will play when you get to


If you wish to“trigger” differentactions on screen,for example ananimation or aquiz, use astreaming audiofile in the back-ground for that.Add a mediastreamer compo-nent, give it a reference to anaudio file, andthen create a listof actions hap-pening every timeyou reach a spe-cific amount ofseconds.

Fabio Cujinoa


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=32803Tipster: Kathy Schroeder

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FLASH CS3 PROFESSIONAL INTERFACE — For Mac: http://www.atomiclearning.com/almovie?key=32732For PC: http://www.atomiclearning.com/almovie?key=32804Tipster: Kathy Schroeder

ADJUST THE FRAME RATE FOR SMOOTHER ANIMATIONS — When developing in Flash, rememberto 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 quiteslow for today's computers.Tipster: Angela Nicholas

LET USERS RESUME WHERE THEY STOPPED (AUTO BOOKMARKING) — If you use Flash SlidePresentation to build learning content, you can use Flash Shared Objects to remember which slidethe 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.current-

page)); } 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:


When developingin Flash, remem-ber to adjust theframe rate in theProperty Inspect-or. A higher framerate (24 fps is rec-ommended) willproduce smooth-er animations,but be moreprocessor inten-sive. The defaultof 12 fps is quiteslow for today’scomputers.

Angela Nicholas


// 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 | Publishsetting, then go to Flash tab, and in .JPG quality, you can assign the quality of images to 90. Therewon'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 forquality. 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 CON-TENT 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 thecontroller) 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 % oftotal — same as for sound).

Tipster: Sanatan Saraswati

AUDIO INTEGRATION WITHIN FLASH CAN BE TRICKY — It's even trickier when you have to makechanges to the audio, or if you want to localize your Flash movie. Remember these tips — all gooddevelopment 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 youraudio, or translation of your audio segment, will likely involve different audio play times, soadjustments to the timeline are required.

2. Audio should be sequenced into separate pieces. This is called “chunking.”Time these chunks toyour screen transitions. Transitions include subtle changes (or focus on the screen), not just tran-sitions 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 tochange since they affect less recorded audio time.


Place navigationeither in theFlash, or out-side. Providingboth optionsgets confusing.

Swan


3. Leave a second or two of empty frames in the timeline before your audio starts playing. Thisbuffer allows users to focus their eyes on any visual elements before hearing the audio, and pro-vides 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 youflexibility 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 subtitletext 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 trans-lated language versions.

Tipster: Robert (Butch) Pfremmer

EASY UPDATES — Keep your text-based content in external (usually XML) files so that updatingthe content is easy. Tipster: Grant Sherson

ACTIONSCRIPT 2 — Keeping track of multiple variables was difficult until I started assigning themto the _root. By doing that, you can reference them from anywhere in your Flash movie(s). Assignit,_root.myVariable=1, call it,_root.myVariable, check it,if (_root.myVari-able==1){... Tipster: Scott Gale

FLEXIBILITY FOR UPDATES — Plan to ensure that as much of the content as possible exists outsideof the .SWF file, and is pulled in dynamically. Text is a good starting point. This provides flexibilityfor being able to update the text should it need to change (such as technical specification chang-es 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 dramati-cally increase when you have to either engage multiple people to get a single change made, orteach someone making a writing change, for instance, how to make the same change in Flash. It'smuch 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 assetsshould also be external to the Flash files, and thus is easily updateable and reusable amongstother Flash files. Using this methodology parallels the methodology of creating small, reusableSCOs, and can allow for maximum reuse of a variety of content if your directory structures are setup 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 willalways match the related text. This works well when you have language changes, or move thetext around during your movie. You can call an empty hit box from the library with ActionScript, ordrag an instance onto the stage. Once you have the hit identified, you move it and size it to therelated item on your stage. Like this:

button1Hit_mc._x=button1txt_mc._x;

//move hit for button 1 into position and size it


Keep your text-based content inexternal (usual-ly XML) files sothat updatingthe content iseasy.

Grant Sherson


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 thetext height

Tipster: Scott Gale

ACTIONSCRIPT 2 — If you do not know about creating your own functions to do repetitive thingsin ActionScript, check them out. They are a big time saver, and can be moved from project to proj-ect 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 selectedwe 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


Just because youcan do it in Flash,doesn't mean youshould. It mightbe fun to makethings move,blink, buzz, orgrab your atten-tion in otherways, but if itdoesn't help theuser learn, don'tdo it. It just addsto your develop-ment time, andturns into a dis-traction for users.

Steve Johnson




and so on ...

if (myVariable==1){

item1_color.setRGB(0x0033AB);//blue MAKE THE ONE WEWANT BLUE

}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 repeti-tive 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 organiza-tion, despite the latest technologies and functions available in the latest version of the Flash play-er, it is best to produce content for a previous version. For example, Flash player 9 is currently avail-able, but I publish down to Flash player 7. The reason being, when multiple sites are accessing yourcontent, there is no guarantee that their users have current Web browser plug-ins. Your site maysupport Flash 9, but the next site over may only support Flash 8. By publishing down to two ver-sions previous, it is almost certain that there will not be any issues in users accessing the content. Ihope 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 atruntime. This way, your content developers can develop content in applications like MS Word (withthe XML tool pack). For example, I’ve created a “course player” that can be reused with content cre-ated 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 haveto answer the question right. The questions come from a Word file. Again, to use the content play-er, all the developer has to do is to modify a Word document. The content reuse ideal of SCORM is


Do not rely onFlash to com-press youraudio. Compres-sion is depend-ent upon appli-cation, but MP3is the most com-monly used formost purposes.

Andre' Chatelain


largely a pipe dream. The real power in SCORM isn’t content reuse, it’s tool reuse (isn’t it really allabout interoperability within LMSs [tools]?). By creating tools in Flash that can play content loadedat runtime, we can significantly extend our toolset. If you’re wondering, yes, people are successful-ly using this method. For example, the folks at Disney are using this method to quickly and effi-ciently 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 prac-tices, 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 uniqueidentifying variable. After making the text dynamic, you can build the source XML file with Note-pad 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 ActionScriptshould be easy to find in your Flash file, so put it in the first frame of your timeline — anothergood development habit. There are many excellent examples you can look at on the Web for acomplete tutorial. Tipster: Robert (Butch) Pfremmer

USE DREAMWEAVER EXTENSIONS TO DOWNLOAD A SCORM BUILDER — If you happen to haveDreamweaver 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 providingthem 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\fil-ters.xml Tipster: Carlyne Lynch

AVOID MAKING DISTRACTIONS — Just because you can do it in Flash, doesn't mean you should. Itmight be fun to make things move, blink, buzz, or grab your attention in other ways, but if it does-n't help the user learn, don't do it. It just adds to your development time, and turns into a distrac-tion for users. Tipster: Steve Johnson

MAKE AUDIO BEHAVE IN FLASH — I've discovered that there are many tricks to making audiowork well in Flash, and even when you use the right settings, the audio will not always sound theway it should. Here are a few of the tricks that I have discovered through several users and onlineblogs:

1. Do not rely on Flash to compress your audio. Compression is dependent upon application, butMP3 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 Bitrate 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


Adding a smallbit of silence toyour audiobefore import-ing it into Flashhelps assurethat it will notclip off thebeginning ofyour audio.Oddly enough,this also helpswith clickingsounds, or dis-torted audio(audio thatsounds like yourecorded it inthe bathroom).

Andre' Chatelain


audio. Event is usually used for sound effects, or things that need to start at the right time, butnothing 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 willnot clip off the beginning of your audio. Oddly enough, this also helps with clicking sounds, ordistorted 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 beenvery successfully combining instructor-led simulators with student preparation. In order to pre-pare students, they are taking standard CBT prior to entering the simulator.We have developed aFlash-animated job aid and glossary that contains alphabetized movie clips that show the keyconcepts, math calculation examples, and so on, that can be accessed through a laptop or iPodthat the students have with them in the simulator, and can take with them onto the job. Each clipis less than one minute long, and does not make the student look through an entire lesson to findthe exact function, concept, buttonology, and so on, that they need. Because the concepts are eachin an independent movie clip, they can be used to create custom glossaries for each lesson, orcombined for the entire course.We have also started using them in different schools across theenterprise. Tipster: Janeann Hudson

DRIVING INTERACTIVE NEED — In our training department we wanted to move toward interac-tive on-line training. The hard part was finding the time and resources to move forward quickly. Italso 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 comeswhen the end product is very customized to what we need. Creating interactive training drovesome need, but our real ROI home runs came from some not-so-traditional products. Internaldemand 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 thelimits of what we normally would do. A sales tool is training, targeted at what we want to presentor show a customer or sales person. A fancy Flash showing the product and all its parts, so whenyou mouse over it shows details or specific uses. A tool could be a customer ROI calculator show-ing what they will save with our product. Our sales folks like an interactive presentation thatincludes videos and sound where they can walk a customer through a product depending on theirneeds, and not just a PowerPoint. Simulators can reproduce the experience a customer will havewith 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 con-trols by actually doing it.We can set up scenarios, and make sure they understand how to handlemultiple situations. Our highest-demand item though is selection tools. These often have very lit-tle training associated with them. A selection tool asks a series of questions that allows a cus-tomer to choose certain features they need. Based on their answers, a Graco product is identifiedalong with related accessories. Sounds easy, but often times, when dealing with equipment, theitems 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


If you happen to have Dream-weaver as wellas Flash, use theDreamweaverextensions todownload aSCORM builder.The SCORMbuilder will loadall of your files,and packagethem to send to your LMS.

Anonymous


want a stainless pump, then you have to pick pump C or D. It gets complicated real quick, and it ishard to show all the relationships in a catalog. The result is customers ordering the wrong combi-nations, or frustrated with the process. They will just call their sales rep, who not so gladly spendshis or her time ordering for their customer.With a selection tool, we can ask the questions of whatthey need, and then only show items that fit their requirements. If they select a 240V motor, weonly 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 theyneed, and items that fit together. Internal demand for selection tools is far greater than ourresources, and we will eventually add more head count because of it. This demand directly sup-ports 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 theright situation, you directly drive sales, have more concrete ROI numbers, and internal demand foryour products will increase. Tipster: Scott Gale

CONVERT YOUR BITMAPS INTO SYMBOLS — Any bitmap used more than once (including in twokeyframes) 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 usingFlash, use .AS files to separate complex code functionality from the .FLA file, and check them into aversion control system such as Subversion. Taking the code out of the .FLA file will allow you to uti-lize the tools provided by the version control system to more effectively manage changes to thecode over time, and across multiple team members. Tipster: David Williams

USE MOVIE CLIPS WHENEVER POSSIBLE — This makes your design more modular so you can movemovies 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 directway to prevent users from using the PrintScreen key in the keyboard, since this function is con-trolled by the operating system. Here is a little hack to nullify the clipboard when the user pressesthe 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 timethe user attempts to do a screen print. Please note that there are still other ways the user can takea screen shot of your application, and this solution is primarily aimed at non-technical users.Tipster: Krishna Prathab R V


Any bitmap usedmore than once(including in twokeyframes) shouldbe converted intoa symbol so itonly downloadsonce.

Angela Nicholasa


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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 unrelatedcontent. If you do this, you will create a source file that is TONS easier to edit eight months laterwhen 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 edit-ing the file later.

3.When possible, paste in your graphics, instead of importing them. This seems strange, but whenyou 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 specificcompression for each graphic individually. You cannot globally set the output compression ofimported graphic files.

4. If you have developers on both Macs and PCs, spend some time up front choosing OR creatingfonts that will render similarly on both systems. Then make sure the final output is from oneplatform 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 cours-es, the graphic team used to have a lot of graphic elements specific to that page, including globalitems like bullets, buttons and so on.When can something go wrong? With the above practice, ifwe get any change request like change the size of a bullet and the color, what is the pain? Theteam will end up opening each of the course pages to update the graphic element. How to avoidthis? Build all the global graphic elements, possibly the page-specific graphic elements, in a singleFlash file. Then, while working on pages, choose File | Open External Library, and dragthe 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 notheavy. 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, keepthe simulation separate from the content that describes and/or supports it. That way you can eas-ily reuse the simulation in other contexts. For example, you might be building a simulation thatdescribes how an electric motor works, and your target audience is tertiary learners. If you put allthe text and explanations in the same Flash file as the simulation, you cannot easily reuse thatsimulation 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 ap-ply effects, filters, and blends to these clips. Add the movie just once, and change the attributes ofthe 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 altertheir script based on their receptivity in real time. The best e-Learning is highly customized, self-


Use movie clipswhenever possi-ble. This makesyour design moremodular so youcan move movieseasily around thestage, or exportthem into otherFlash-based e-Learning. Buildit once — use itoften.

Steve Johnson


changing depending on the user's choices. Flash is a very powerful programming tool that allowsyou to make use of complex variables that can alter the very nature of a training exercise as thelearner 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 makelearning that adjusts itself in real time. If you are simply using Flash to make entertaining anima-tions or funny buttons, you are likely missing the boat. I would challenge everyone in e-Learning tomake 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 theaverage 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 forFlash 8 and 9. It is a wonderful solution for tracking to a SCORM 1.2 or 2004 LMS without havingto figure out the ADL documentation. http://pipwerks.com/lab/scorm/ Tipster: Matt Perkins

USE JAVASCRIPT TO SYNCHRONIZE FLASH MOVIES — When using multiple Flash movies embed-ded on the same page, it is sometimes necessary to synchronize the two, or send informationfrom 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 aJavaScript function, which in turn calls an ActionScript function in Movie B. The ActionscriptExternalInterface class is the recommended mechanism for communication betweenJavaScript and the Flash Player, though fscommand() and getURL()may be used but are asyn-chronous and unidirectional, therefore less flexible. A simpler way to communicate between Flashmovies, 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 methodson each other's instance. Since a LocalConnection channel has two endpoints, this methodworks best for a pair of movies that need to communicate. Unlike the JavaScript relay approach,LocalConnectionworks across HTML frames and even browser windows without any addi-tional 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”);


While Flash isgenerally goodat resizing con-tent, keep inmind that mostcontent devel-opers have larg-er screens withhigher resolu-tion than theaverage learner— set a sensiblebase level forvisual content.

Stuart Hornsey


// 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” tostore information on the local machine, which is then accessible at any time in the future, such asafter the user has browsed to a different page, or even restarted their machine. The ActionScriptSharedObject class provides generic data containers that are stored locally, and which can later beretrieved 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 ex-ample, 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 samesite. 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 aclient can give a developer a “road map” to follow instead of aiming for one target, only to alterthe 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 todecide which version of the Flash player your .SWF file is intended to work with. There are two keyconsiderations. The first depends on the version of the player that installed on the desktops whereyour content is being viewed. You will need to ensure that the piece you create is less than orequal to the version of the player available on the desktops of the learners. (Especially in environ-ments where upgrades by the individual user are not an option). If you do choose an earlier ver-sion of the player to ensure better compatibility with desktops, then keep in mind you may haveto sacrifice some features in your program development. (As an example, the “Slide” feature inFlash 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 interac-tions. Although they are often based on storyboards, it sometimes helps to sketch it out on paperfirst. If you can't make it work on paper, you won't be able to make it work in Flash.Tipster: David Miller


It's all too easyto jump intoFlash and startcreating yourinteractions.Although theyare often basedon storyboards,it sometimeshelps to sketchit out on paperfirst. If you can'tmake it work onpaper, youwon't be able tomake it work inFlash.

David Miller


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 differentthan the format of the working documents. This results in workflows that must accommodatethe one-way .SWF compilation process. On teams where the instructional designer is not the Flashdeveloper, the compilation process requires that the Flash developer be involved in every develop-ment iteration and maintenance iteration, which affects staffing requirements and schedulesamong other things. Flash's proficiency with XML can be harnessed to free the Flash developerfrom each development iteration by unloading content, structure, and/or logic from the Flashproduct into XML-formatted documents, which will be familiar to HTML users and don't requirecompilation. You can realize changes to text, swapping of images or videos, and new behavior forinteractions without touching the raw or compiled Flash files. In the simplest case, text to displayin the Flash object can be loaded from a separate XML file.Why XML? It is immediately readableby 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 canthen implement text changes without a Flash developer. Furthermore, the text becomes search-able, since it is no longer stored in Flash's binary files. Beyond text extraction, content structureand sequencing is a prime candidate for offloading into XML, allowing you to rearrange, cut, oraugment the presentation's flow with a quick edit of the XML elements. You can even effectivelystate programmatic logic in XML, if abstracted thoughtfully, without the need for additionalActionScript. One compelling advantage of XML-based content is the possibility of including use-ful information that Flash won't use, such as metadata. Flash files have limited capability for hold-ing 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 sepa-rate content concerns from the Flash machinery and provide a usable format for the XML data. Ofcourse, 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 aDTD or XML schema can enforce proper formatting of the XML files so that Flash can use themwithout issue. There are XML authoring tools like Altova Authentic that can put a user-friendlyface on XML editing, making it as easy as filling out Web-based forms. In our case, we have beenusing these techniques and technologies to improve information accessibility, asset management,maintainability, traceability, team coordination, version management, standards adherence, anddevelopment time. Additionally, it has reduced the need for Flash and ActionScript expertise sincethe content-free Flash objects are inherently reusable. Finally, any improvements made to thegeneric 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 FlashSharedObject to keep track of student progress, so students won't have to complete a CBT inone sitting.

1. Initialize the SharedObject in the main module.

2. Create a variable that will track student progress and store it in the SharedObject.


Plan ahead.E-learning proj-ects go togetherso much betterwhen a client cangive a developera “road map” tofollow instead ofaiming for onetarget, only toalter the targetfor a differentone mid-project(or later). Doingthis can also savethe client money,and/or makemore money forthe developer bynot having towaste time/resources.

Jon Weber


3. Update the value of that variable at milestone markers along the way (ie. after each completedmodule)

4. Check the value of that variable each time the CBT launches. You can then build a simple tableof 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 contentusing Adobe Flash 8 and higher. It is not easy, or even reliable, when using a content reader in dif-ferent browsers. One way we figured out how to make a portion of text read on a button presswas to dynamically set the button's description onPress to the text we needed the reader toread. Then you update the AccProperties for the button. Then directly after that, on the samebutton press, we set it back to “” (blank), so when the student tabs back to the button it will bereread. 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 itplease let me know. Tipster: Rodger Stuffel

KEEP YOUR FLASH FILES SMALL — This tip is very basic, but I see people doing this wrong all thetime.When you are working to create a Flash-based e-Learning program, you really need to makesure 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 isbest. There are tons of ways you can optimize your output files, and Adobe has tools built rightinto Flash to allow you to analyze the bandwidth requirements of any Flash file. Take time to learnthese tools, and use them to optimize your content so it plays well over your lowest target band-width speed. Tipster:Tim Bobo

USE HIGHER FPS RATES FOR SMOOTHER ANIMATION — The default frames per second (fps) inFlash is 12, but when using Flash I like the design to appear more like video, so I bump it up some-where between 24 and 32.While it can be more memory intensive, I try to keep my movies assmall 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, theloader itself has to be small. Here is ActionScript for a loader that is about 300 bytes. Simply createa horizontal fill, for example 5 pixels by 100 pixels, and convert it to a “movieclip.” Add this code to


If you get reallystuck on someActionScript,and havesearched theforums, take abreak! Five min-utes away fromthe computer,and your chal-lenge, might beworth an hourof frustration.

David Miller


the “movieclip” itself to make it self-contained and reusable. This will be your loading indicatorthat 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 (0-100), 100 represents the entire .SWF

this._parent.play();// any action you want after loadingreaches the amount you specify

this._alpha = this._alpha - 5; // this fades the loadermovieclip by 5% per frame

} else {

// if needed, you can add action to do here, such as play a loadingmessage movieclip

}

}

Tipster: David Miller

PLAN AHEAD FOR FUTURE REVISIONS — It is a good idea to try to exercise a forward-thinkingapproach in programming courseware in Flash. Some additional code planning and preparationduring the initial build can make the course more modular and extendable. For example, even ifthe course you are building is to be delivered only in the English language, programming theentire course to pull the content based on the learner's language selection will allow the client tomore easily add multiple languages in a future course revision. It’s like wiring an unoccupied roomwith electricity ... when you're ready to move in, you just turn on the switch. This will minimize theimpact 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 differ-ent levels: learning interactions, graphics, Flash videos, quizzes, animations, and slideshows (toname just a few), or an entire SCORM-compliant course. To ease the transition, start small byadding Flash elements to your current courses. As you become more comfortable with the tech-nology, you can build up to more interactive and/or multimedia experiences that really do lookprofessional. My suggestion to an organization thinking about using Flash for e-Learning is to


If you are goingto use narrationin Flash, it's bestto record theaudio first andimport it, thentime the visualportion to it.Flash makes thiseasy by placingthe audio on thetimeline for ref-erence whenplacing text andillustrations, andfor timing yourtweens and ani-mations.

Kevin Wilcoxon


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. Learnhow Flash creates the page template structure. Experiment with some short quizzes. Publish toyour LMS. Annotate what the development and maintenance process will be. If you do not devel-op in-house, undertake a similar arrangement with a trusted vendor. Make sure to document yoursuccesses and issues! Tipster: Claudio Lerulli

TIP FOR RAPID DEVELOPMENT — Purchase or build a Flash/XML-based course player that isSCORM-conformant, and then skin it to fit your organization’s brand and needs. This allows forrapid development (all structure, navigation, and communication with the LMS are taken care ofalready), 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 theforums, take a break! Five minutes away from the computer, and your challenge, might be worthan hour of frustration. Tipster: David Miller

MAKE SMALLER FILES: USE .GIFs — When importing images into your Flash design, whenever pos-sible use .GIFs instead of .JPEGs. Depending on the image, you can save a lot on file size withoutsacrificing too much in image quality. This will make your Flash animation load faster and runsmoother. Tipster: Steve Johnson

RECORD THE NARRATION FIRST — If you are going to use narration in Flash, it's best to record theaudio first and import it, then time the visual portion to it. Flash makes this easy by placing theaudio on the timeline for reference when placing text and illustrations, and for timing yourtweens 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 con-tent. 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 foranimators and coding/scripters. This allows for a very professional animation design, with cleancode that results in smaller Flash files and faster downloading. The two roles work in tandem as ateam. Tipster:Tonia Dousay

TIPS FOR BETTER IMAGES IN FLASH — Edit your photographs for Flash in your image editing soft-ware 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 thefinal size needed, import your image, and, once the size is determined, use the built-in editing fea-ture to resize your image in Fireworks or Photoshop. Turn off Allow Bitmap Smoothing if theimage is not going to be tweened, and always place your images on whole pixels for best results.Tipster: David Miller


There is not agood method tosave data in Flashfor e-Learning.You cannot usecookies, becausestudents can useany machine onthe Internet toaccess your con-tent. Your interac-tivites, games, orlessons should nottake more than30-40 minutes tocomplete.

Joey Tuskan


USE EXTERNAL XML FILES TO CONTROL AN ENGINE IN FLASH — This way you can update contentwithout 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 navi-gate to any part of these options when needed. This could reduce the user interaction time, andalso 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 pan-els and display only the content. This mode can have separate settings, which would displayonly the necessary parts of the panel such as navigation buttons, show audio, audio on/off, andpage 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 whenthe 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 thetimeline itself. Using the same double forward slashes, add comments at critical points in yourtimeline, 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 intoa main Flash file or template. This process helps with the initial load time of Flash content; insteadof loading everything at once you can load specific pieces or modules on-demand, and only whenthe 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 _xand _y are your pixel placements ... so you can move it depending on the size of your canvas byentering different pixel values. Tipster: Scott Gaspar

USE FLASH APPROPRIATELY — Resist the urge to use animation simply for the sake of it, as poordesign can detract from learning. Make sure your Flash animations relate directly to the contentbeing examined, and, preferably, enhance learner understanding or engagement.Tipster: Glenn Hansen


Use externalXML files to con-trol an engine inFlash. This wayyou can updatecontent withoutrepublishing theFlash content.

Phil Cross


FASTER FRAME RATE (ONE MORE TIME) — The default frame rate in Flash has been 12 since at leastFlash 4 (was that 1999?). Today computers normally run video content at 30 frames per second, sowhy 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 bringin video at its native frame rate (in the US it’s 24 for PAL), and yield better results.Tipster: David Miller

NO EM DASHES IN FLASH! — While copying/pasting text from a script, if your writer has includedem dashes (oh! they love 'em), these punctuation marks will not appear correctly in Flash. Justreplace 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 dothe above. Tipster: Prakash Bebington

BUY TEMPLATES TO SAVE TIME — Rapidly develop a professional interactive Website by utilizingthe many Flash templates that are available for a small purchase price. As an example www.tem-platemonster.com. Tipster: Dave Harris

FLASH DRAWING TOOLS REDUCE FILE SIZES — Whenever possible, use the drawing tools providedby Flash to reduce file size and increase loading speed. Although there are better graphic designtools, 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-Learningtools is to use them in Flash as a resource. Say you are creating a large FLASH program that needsa glossary. Create the glossary in, say, Articulate, of course adjusting the parameters in Articulateto maintain a style of the parent FLASH project. Export as a .SWF file, and use it in the parentFLASH 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 foroptimum 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 goodidea to store frequently-updated content in an external file. There is a variety of text-based for-mats Flash can parse, but the two most frequently used are XML and variable/value pairs format-ted as in a GET string. One trick you can use to increase the readability of external data for non-programmers is to create a pseudo-array of data entries delimited by line breaks. This is especiallyuseful when the data contains a list of entries, such as in a glossary. Instead of using the standardampersand 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 linebreaks as your delimiter! Line wrapping is not an issue; however, it is important to encourage the


Rapidly developa professionalinteractiveWebsite by uti-lizing the manyFlash templatesthat are avail-able for a smallpurchase price.As an examplewww.template-monster.com.

Dave Harris


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. Onceread, Flash interprets this data as two variables. The first one,delimiter, is just a trick to be surethat the line breaks you will use to parse your data into a Flash array are the right ones. Anyonewho has had his or her linebreaks magically change upon upload to a Web server will know whatI'm getting at here. The second variable,data, is the one you must parse with ActionScript withinFlash. 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 easi-est for non-programmers to update successfully. The line breaks make the data much more read-able than ampersands with no white space. For more complex data types, I have used Word filescontaining a macro that converts table-based data to an appropriate XML format. Content expertsupdate 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 extremelyreliable 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 thou-sands of pre-developed Flash animations, pictures, backgrounds, video clips, sound effects, andmore. You can turn a boring course into an interactive course in a matter of hours, not days, and itrequires very little Flash experience. Two Websites I recommend are: http://www.animationfacto-ry.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 thatwe 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


When importingbitmaps, do notscale down orcrop them inFlash for opti-mum file sizes.Use an image-editing programto achieve thedesired size, andthen import.

Angela Nicholas


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 moretime-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 func-tion, then place them inside an Articulate Presenter e-Learning course. This way I can let Presenterdo a majority of the work by using its built-in navigation and sound capabilities, and use Flash forinteresting roll-overs, animations, and interactions. All at the same time, it takes the ArticulatePresenter course to the next level, makes use of Presenter's simplicity and rapid developmentcapability, and adds the impressive interactive abilities of Flash. Tipster: Steve Johnson

FLASH TO LMS COMMUNICATIONS — I have found that in our journey to effectively communicatewith our SCORM 2004 LMS,“ExternalInterface” is the method to use. In a simulation orcourse, we will use ExternalInterface to call a JavaScript function on our SCO page that tellsthe LMS to set cmi.completion_status to “completed”. On our “next” button within Flash,we will again use ExternalInterface to SetValue(“adl.nav.request”,“contin-ue”) in order to allow the user to move to the next SCO. This effectively lets the LMS know theuser has satisfied the status requirement, and allows us to navigate the LMS aggregate manifestmenu 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 ”ExternalInter-face.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 writersuse to build online help systems. It can also be used to build “learning systems.”You can embed


Inexpensive sub-scriptions to a fewgreat Web sitesallow you to easi-ly load and modi-fy thousands ofpre-developedFlash animations,pictures, back-grounds, videoclips, soundeffects, and more.You can turn aboring course intoan interactivecourse in a matterof hours, not days,and it requiresvery little Flashexperience.

Leigh Margaret Roberts


any Flash file into any topic in a Flare system. This means you can put any Captivate demo or sim-ulation, and any Articulate interactions (including PowerPoint shows), in a help-system-like struc-ture along with text and images. I'm even embedding Captivate Flash files into Engage interac-tions and dropping those into Flare topics, and they work great! Using Flare lets you organize yourmaterial and keep it all together in a flexible online structure. You can use the output for instruc-tor-led training (live or remote) or as a leave-behind, self-paced system. Another benefit to Flare isthat you can create multiple “targets” (specifically defined outputs), each with its own table ofcontents. You can put conditions on your content, so that it only displays in the targets it is intend-ed for (and not others). You can create online output, or you can output to Word or FrameMakerfrom the same content pool, which makes creating participant guides and exercise books that goalong with the online component much easier. I just started working with this to develop trainingfor our new customers. So far so good. I encourage others to try it if you have access to Flare. No, Ido not work for Madcap. .-) The only difficulty I've encountered so far is getting the Quizmakerquizzes to display in Flare without a lot of JavaScript fancy-dancing. If anyone has the answer tothat one, I'd love to hear it! Tipster: Laura Filla


While copying/pasting text froma script, if yourwriter has includ-ed em dashes (oh!they love 'em),these punctua-tion marks willnot appear cor-rectly in Flash.Just replace allthose pesky punc-tuations with twodashes (“--”)without spacesbefore and afterthem. Of course,you need to“Search & Find”all locations ofem dashes on thescript before youcan do the above.

Prakash Bebington


When 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.

Immersive first impressionsWorld-renowned university immerses web visitors into campus life in vivid motion showcasing Adobe® Flash® Player Video content

Success Story

University of Notre Dame

“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

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 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 messagesRather 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

Organization

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana

http://www.nd.edu

Challenge•Deployimmersivewebpresencefor

complex institution of higher learning

•Adoptindustry-leadingtechnologythatoffers broad community resources and reliable product support

•Createfirst-handperspectivesofcampuslife that would reach global audience

SolutionLaunch innovative new website showcasing life at Notre Dame through rich media Flash Player Video

Benefits• Increasedpagevisitdurationbynearly500%

•Doublednumberofhitsyeartoyear

•Decreasedbounceratesbyonethird

•Enabledseamlessworkflowsamongdesigners and developer for rapid production cycles

•Transitionedsmoothlyfromotherframeworks to Flash development environment

•Gainedunanimousteambuy-infromamong Marketing and IT teams

Toolkit•AdobeCreativeSuite3WebPremium.

Components used include:

• AdobeFlashCS3Professional

• AdobeIllustratorCS3

• AdobePhotoshopCS3

• AdobeFireworksCS3

•Platform:MacintoshPowerBook,MacBook,MacBookPro,andiMaccomputersusingMac OS X.4

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, aca-demic 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.

“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.

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

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 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.

Productivity gainsUsing 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

“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

Adobe Systems Incorporated 345ParkAvenue SanJose,CA95110-2704 USA www.adobe.com

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.

©2008AdobeSystemsIncorporated.Allrightsreserved.PrintedintheUSA.

95010493 03/08A

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 signifi-cantly longer, would not have resulted in the

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.

“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

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.

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 seg-ments of your upcoming meeting, or to organize your content for easy delivery. This step is veryimportant if you are going to record the meeting, as the layout names will become index markersin the archive transcript. Each time you change layouts while recording a meeting, Connect auto-matically 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 watch-es the recording, they can easily use the markers to navigate to specific places in the meetingrecording. Tipster: Peter Ryce

SAVE MEETING ROOM LAYOUTS AS TEMPLATES — After you create a nice layout within a meetingroom, you can now make that layout a Meeting Room Template that you can regularly use for allyour new meetings. To do this move the meeting room that contains the nice layout into MyTemplates under your user name within the User Meetings. Now when you create a new meetingroom, choose that layout from the drop down list. Otherwise if you want to allow all users to haveaccess to that meeting room template, move the room to the Shared Templates under SharedMeetings. Tipster: Aragon Heppel

ADOBE CONNECT PRO MEETING RECORDING TRICKS — To launch to a specific time point in arecording you can create a URL with the following parameter:?archiveOffset=x. The offset isin milliseconds, so multiply minutes by 60,000 to get the offset value; that is, if you want to startplayback three minutes into the recording, make the offset 180,000. For example, if my recordingURL were http://acme.acrobat.com/r123456/, then the URL to launch the recording from thethree-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 aparticipant’s rights to a Presenter or Host, enhance the participant’s rights for only one or a selec-tion of any of the Pods (Share, Notes, Poll, Camera & Voice, Chat, File Share,Web Links). To do thisselect an attendee, select the Pods Options (bottom right of attendee list) and then select the dif-ferent options. Tipster: Aragon Heppel

PRIOR TO A USER’S FIRST CONNECT MEETING, PRE-PREPARE THEM ... BUT KEEP IT SIMPLE — Forexample, Massey University uses a three-step pre-flight check http://elearning.massey.ac.nz/con-nect_support/preflight_check.html.We also have a number of tips for meeting hosts, but it's inmultimedia format, http://connect.massey.ac.nz/tipsforhosts. Tipster: Philip Roy

ALTERNATIVE TO SCREEN SHARING — In a meeting room, rather than screen-share an applicationwhich uses high bandwidth, record your mouse movements and actions with a program likeCaptivate and run the exported .SWF file instead of screen sharing. Doing this will keep the highquality of the voice and camera (if not already paused) working properly. To the end user, runningthe .SWF file within the room will be a seamless process rather than splitting the bandwidth ofthe room between camera, voice, screen sharing and other pods. Tipster: Aragon Heppel


In a meetingroom, rather thanscreen-share anapplication whichuses high band-width, record yourmouse move-ments and actionswith a programlike Captivate andrun the exported.SWF file insteadof screen sharing.Doing this willkeep the highquality of thevoice and camera(if not alreadypaused) workingproperly.

Aragon Heppel

III. Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (Breeze)

URL TRICKS FOR CONNECT MEETINGS — You can send guests an “Auto Login” URL with the follow-ing format: http://account.acrobat.com/meetingname?guestname=name. For example, if I want-ed to log in John as a guest to my meeting with the URL: http://acme.acrobat.com/widgets, thenthe URL I'd give to John would be http://acme.acrobat.com/widgets?guestname=John. N.B. Youwill name everyone who logs in with this URL “John,” so modify the URL for each guest you wantto log in uniquely. If you have installed the Connect Meeting Add in, but would like to launch themeeting without the Add in (instead using the Flash Player within a browser window) then usethis 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


Each time youchange layoutswhile recording ameeting, Connectautomatically cre-ates an indexmarker for therecording tran-script, and willgroup all theactivities (slidechanges, chatmessages, or asappropriate)within that indexmarker. When aviewer watchesthe recording,they can easilyuse the markersto navigate tospecific places inthe meetingrecording.

Peter Rycea

III. Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (Breeze) continued

CREATING MULTIPLE LEVELS OF FEEDBACK — In simulations, it's often useful to provide learnerswith multiple attempts, and offer additional feedback with each attempt. By default, AdobeCaptivate creates a single feedback caption, and then continues based on the attempt settings. Tocreate attempts with feedback ranging from “Try again” to “Let me show you,” simply do the fol-lowing. For the first attempt: Set the click-box settings to one attempt, and “Jump to the next logi-cal step” on a correct response, and “Continue on the slide” on an incorrect one. Set the associatedfailure caption to give your first level of feedback, for example,“Try again.” Copy and paste the clickbox, and make the following two changes: Set it to appear right after the first click box in thetimeline, and change the caption to your second level of feedback, for example. Check in the topleft of the screen. Copy and paste one of the click boxes, and make the following two changes: Setit to appear right after the second click box in the timeline, and change the caption to your thirdlevel of feedback, such as.“Let me show you.” Provide guidance for the rest of the slide in the formof adding the mouse pointer, providing more instruction, or using highlight boxes or animationsto help the learner. If you are scoring the click, ensure you only add one of the click boxes’ scoringto the total. (See advanced interaction dialog: All three click boxes show up with their points asso-ciated, but a learner can only receive for one of the clicks, if correct. Therefore, each click box needsto 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 YOURFLASH-BASED INTERACTIONS — Captivate has less of a learning curve, and can be used to createsimple interactivity such as hot-spot, zoom magnification, mockups of machines and environ-ments, branching between scenarios, and so on. Tipster: Ellen Meiselman

USING ANOTHER TOOL LIKE FLASH, LECTORA, OR ARTICULATE WITH A CAPTIVATE FILE — We havefound it is faster and easier to bring the Captivate animation in as a .SWF file, and add the audio inthe authoring tool rather than trying to embed the audio and time everything inside Captivate. Ifyou are playing Captivate as a stand-alone file, or you do not need tightly-integrated animationand voice over, it's fine to use Captivate's audio recording. However, if you are going to bringCaptivate 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 timeyour voice to the animation than vice versa. It may not be the absolute “best” output, but it is thefastest.We learned this the hard way. At first, we did the voice inside Captivate, then, a few timeswhen we ran out of time, we did a quick and dirty voice-over right before the deadline.When wereviewed the course two months later, we usually couldn't tell the difference between the pageswe carefully and painstakingly timed versus the ones we “talked over.” Tipster: Kieran Richardson

DEALING WITH LARGE SIMULATIONS (AVOIDING COGNITIVE LOAD AND DOWNLOADING ISSUESFOR LEARNERS) — Many times we may create large simulations that show the user a wide rangeof methods to learn how to do a certain process, whether for a software application or for softskills. It would be better to break up the simulations into small manageable sections, and savethese sections into separate Captivate movies, so that the user will have small manageable


If you are new toFlash, considerCaptivate. Capti-vate has less of alearning curve,and can be usedto create simpleinteractivity suchas hot-spot, zoommagnification,mockups ofmachines andenvironments,branchingbetween scenar-ios, and so on.

Ellen Meiselman

IV. Adobe Captivate

chunks of learning rather than a long simulation with many areas to learn and to remember. Inaddition, 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, testit on a server rather than just on your local machine. The default Flash security settings for localfiles often prevent external URLs from opening. Tipster: Christy Tucker

BUILD A FLASH BILLBOARD FOR YOUR E-LEARNING — When I first got Contribute, Ellen Wagner, ina personal conversation, described it as “Flash for everybody else.”With that in mind, once theproduct training was done for our client's software pre-sales demos, I made a Flash billboard thatencouraged visitors to give our client serious consideration as a supplier. A static product-landingpage became an internal advertisement.We helped them set and manage expectations (intro-duced the product and framed its purpose), established credibility (added testimonials and per-formance upside descriptions) and then went on to prove that the software would 1) Work aspromised, 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.Whoknew 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 filesize may actually end up smaller by letting Captivate convert the files to .MP3 when you publishthe 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 becomesquite a challenge to create software demonstrations and simulations that display correctly to allusers. A simple way to save any resizing pains is to capture the screens in the lowest possible reso-lution.

Tip 2 — Screen capture in Captivate is best done through the “Print Screen” key rather thanmouse-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. Forexample:“To check the configuration of your computer, right-click the My Computer icon on yourDesktop. For the purpose of this simulation, instead of right-clicking, left-click the My Computericon 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 textquite 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-


Try using .WAVaudio files ratherthan .MP3 files.The file size mayactually end upsmaller by lettingCaptivate convertthe files to .MP3when you publishthe Flash file.

Christy Tucker

IV. Adobe Captivate continued

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 howto 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 theauthors are SMEs, but have no graphics experience, consider injecting your main graphic designelements into custom Captivate Text Captions. There are full instructions on how to make customcaptions in the Captivate help file. You can program in all your corporate banners, logos, paragraphheadings, bulleted lines, and even pieces of illustration as captions, and use them with or withouttext. You then upload captions to Captivate's caption gallery directory, or, even easier, distributethem as templates, with the graphics elements already displayed on slides. These graphicsbecome 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 guar-antees that all Captivate authors, regardless of design experience, produce identical, professional-standard graphics, and thus the design remains faithful to your brand. This technique has beenused to produce the Design Templates available for free download on the Captivate Exchange. Inthe real world, our company uses this design method routinely — the technique is the startingpoint for, and strongly underpins, every large Captivate project. Tipster: Alison Lister

WORKING WITH SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS DURING CAPTIVATE RECORDING SESSIONS — Duringcourse development, if you will have SMEs step through online transactions that you're recordingin Captivate, capture the audio of them narrating it as they go. Have them point out what they'redoing on each screen and why, what they're looking at, and especially any errant keystrokes theymake (preferably along with how to recover). This will help you, the instructional designer, savehours of development time. During my first use of Captivate I didn't do this, and I spent hours try-ing to reconstruct what I thought the SME was doing, then going back to him for clarification. Itwas really hard figuring out the correct sequence when the SME made a mistake and doubledback in the screen flow. Then you can merely record your final narrative over the one you had dur-ing development. Tipster: Mike Dickinson

TEMPLATES FIRST — No matter what development tool you use, one of the first steps should be todevelop 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 settingsunder closed captioning. The help files do not list this information; I had to learn it by trial anderror. Tipster: Mike Hobby

FEWER SLIDES MEAN SHORTER LOAD TIMES — When using Captivate, a good best practice is tokeep your simulations under 50 slides total. The more slides you create, the longer the load timessince Captivate does not allow you to load external .SWF's to save loading time. It is an all-at-onceload with Captivate. (See my tip “LOADING EXTERNAL .SWF'S” under “Adobe Flash Professional.”)Tipster: Scott Gaspar


No matter whatdevelopmenttool you use,one of the firststeps should beto develop tem-plates for yourcontent to pro-mote continuityfor the learneracross topics.

Michael Baker


IMPROVE LEARNING FOR ADVANCED USERS — If a software simulation requires the learner toclick 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 movequickly through parts they know, and 2.) they feel empowered to direct their own learning, ratherthan locked into a “one size fits all” course of learning. Tipster:Andrew Smith

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 tocomplete the content. Highlight the button, and click on the “Reporting” tab. Click the “Include inQuiz” checkbox, give it 1 point, and check the “Add to Total” box. Make sure each forward buttondoes the same. Now when you publish, make sure to enable SCORM 2004 and “Report Score tothe LMS” as %. Import your manifest into the LMS, and you should have a content object thatautomatically reports percent complete. Tipster: Scott Hersey

TO CLOSE A CAPTIVATE PROJECT AFTER OPENING A NEW WINDOW: Create a very short (0.5 sec-ond) blank slide at the end of the project, then set the Project Preferences to close the window atthe end. If you want to provide a way to exit from any slide, you can create a button to go to thisfinal short slide. (Theoretically, you could use JavaScript to close the window. However, JavaScriptclose functions don’t seem to work in Firefox 2.0 with the additional security features.) Tipster: Christy Tucker

EASY WAY TO MAKE A BACKGROUND IMAGE IN CAPTIVATE — Design it in MS Word 2007, and saveit as a .JPEG. This has been the fastest, most effective way to design and import backgrounds forCaptivate that I've found to date. Tipster: Laura Jaffrey

CUSTOMIZE AND RE-USE HTML TEMPLATE FILE TO SAVE TIME — After your Adobe Captivate proj-ect 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 formator look-and-feel, and this can become a tedious and repetitive process.What you may not know isthat Captivate provides access to the template file used every time you generate a .SWF and itscorresponding HTML file, and thus you can customize this file once and reuse it for future publish-ing. The name of this file is standard.htm, and you can find it in the installation folder, which islikely to be C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 3\Templates\Publish\. This file is a regularHTML file, and you can edit it in any HTML editor, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, as well as a simpletext editor, including Notepad. Tipster: RJ Jacquez

HOW TO ADD CONTENT AFTER A REVIEW SLIDE — Normally, in Captivate, if you use a quiz with areview slide, adding a slide after the quiz review can cause problems. For example, if you want amenu slide to direct students to the next section after the review, you may find you can't even addor 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 shouldchange the recording options for any buttons before trying to move any content after the reviewslide. Tipster: Christy Tucker


Easy way to makea backgroundimage in Capti-vate. Design it inMS Word 2007,and save it as a.JPEG. This hasbeen the fastest,most effectiveway to design and import back-grounds forCaptivate thatI've found to date.

Laura Jaffrey


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

ADOBE® CAptivAtE® 3 RApiDly CREAtE EngAging lEARning ExpERiEnCEs • Rapidly 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

CAPTIVATE AND PRESENTER

A Complete Solution for Engaging Learners

Top Reasons to Switch to Adobe Captivate from Video-based Screen Recording Software

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 editingEdit audio and captured images, or even remove/add slides without having to record again.

software simulation modesGenerate 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 interactivityAdobe Captivate recognizes menus, links, and buttons, and automatically creates interactive hotspots, data entry fields, and descriptive text captions.

Mouse pointer and path alterationsModify recorded mouse movements, replace the pointer image, or add mouse paths to new screenshots or slides.

scenario branchingEasily 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 trackingCreate robust quizzes by choosing from a variety of question types, while delivering and tracking SCORM and AICC- compliant content.

Flash export for editingQuickly 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.

Adobe Systems Incorporated 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.

© 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

For more informationLearn more about Adobe Captivate 3 at www.adobe.com/captivateGo to www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/trials.html to download a free software trial.

Awards

“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 demon-

stration, 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

WEB RESOURCES THAT FOCUS ON CAPTIVATE TIPS — Specifically, Iconlogic.com, which offers train-ing materials and a free weekly newsletter with tips and answers to frequently asked questionson Captivate and other e-Learning software. Their training materials are so easy to use that youcan teach yourself the program without attending a class. Another creative Website that offerstips 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 alot of time. Tipster: Jody McNelis

CAPTIVATE PROJECT SIZING TIPS — When sizing an Adobe Captivate project with the intention oftaking the resulting Flash output and importing it into Articulate Presenter or Adobe BreezePresenter, there are several important considerations. First, the maximum size for importing to aPresenter slide without needing to crop or resize the Flash is 720 x 540. This size will consume theentire slide. If you want to display the PowerPoint title bar while the Flash video is running, use aproject size of 720 x 495. Second, Captivate has skin borders enabled by default. (Select Project Skinand select the Borders tab to see this feature.) While this can be a nice aesthetic touch for yourpublished Flash file, it adds a pixel to the height and width of your output. Thus, if you are using aprecise size when building your project, you could get an error message when importing intoArticulate or Breeze (now Adobe Acrobat Connect). Third, if you are recording a software simula-tion in Captivate (and why would you be using Captivate if you weren't doing that?!), try very hardto record in the exact size that you will need for your Flash output. Captivate has an easy-to-useresizing feature, but the output will always be blurrier if you resize your project. Finally, if youencounter a situation with any Flash development project and you want to maintain a certainsize, there are several useful aspect ratio calculators on the Web. Simply input the aspect ratio thatyou want to maintain, then type another height or width and it displays the new aspect ratio. Youcan Google on “aspect ratio calculators” to find one that you like, or use this link to one that I'vefound to be very useful: http://www.csgnetwork.com/pixelratiocalc.html. Tipster: Mark Simon

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 arealistic simulation, and can confuse learners when they attempt to use keyboard shortcuts in thetutorial. The reason for this is in the browser — a behavior called Seamless tabbing, which allowstabbing to extend beyond the movie and start with the browser address bar. To disable, followthese 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-basedtool used for making e-Learning modules. It’s good for non-programmers. Still needs a lot added


When using aclick box with aTab key shortcutassigned, the tab action canchange the focusfrom the .SWF fileto the browseritself. This doesnot create a real-istic simulation,and can confuselearners whenthey attempt touse keyboardshortcuts in thetutorial.

Suresh Jayaraman


to it to make it as powerful as Authorware. Overall it’s really simple for non-complex e-Learningmodules. 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 navigationbar so the learner can pause, stop, rewind, and restart a Captivate Flash file. Especially if it is a soft-ware demonstration. You never know when your learner needs to step away from the computerfor a moment, or, sometimes they just want to be able to back up a few steps. 2.) If recording asoftware 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 demonstra-tion), only capture the relevant window, or a specific part of the window, rather than the wholescreen — this will aid viewing for the student. Tipster: Stuart Hornsey

USE SCREENSHOTS TO REDUCE SIMULATION FILE SIZE — Here's how I use Captivate and screen-shots to simulate an application: Create a blank project in Adobe Captivate. Use SnagIt to acquirethe screenshots and regions that you will use in the presentation. Save them as .PNGs. Do thisinstead of recording your screen, because you will end up with a smaller file size, you won't haveerroneous 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 ofslide” 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 highlightbox over the region that you want the user to click. Insert a click box that pauses the presentationuntil the user clicks it. Make the click box action “go to next slide” or “jump to slide.” On the slidethat the click box opens, paste the image of the application, showing how it appears when theyselect that option. Initially, the workflow is more than just recording your screen, but the payoffwill 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


If capturing acomplex screen(for example, fora demonstration),only capture therelevant window,or a specific partof the window,rather than thewhole screen —this will aid view-ing for the stu-dent.

Stuart Hornsey


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 noteabout 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 thedownload 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 site-manager 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 thesame file. Tipster: Ram Mohan


Use the site-man-ager to coordi-nate files formulti-file findand replace. Thesite-manager alsomakes it easy toorganize yourcourses for regu-lar file access.

Red Resener

V. Adobe Dreamweaver

CREATING LOOPING PRESENTATIONS — There are at least two ways to do this.

First method: Choose the “Audio Editor” from the Presenter menu in PowerPoint and navigate tothe last slide you want in the loop. Click in the waveform editor area of the dialog box, then usethe “Insert” menu and choose “Command... .” Change the “Marker Type” to “Goto slide” and thenpick which slide you'd like to go back to when the user arrives here. Click OK, and close the AudioEditor, saving your changes.

Second method: Choose “Slide Properties” from the Presenter menu in PowerPoint, and select thelast slide you want in the loop. Click the Edit button and use the dropdown menu beside the Gotofield 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 asa set of welcome or instruction slides that can be used within Connect Pro meetings as “lobby”slides. Tipster: Peter Ryce

CREATING A URL THAT GOES DIRECTLY TO A PARTICULAR SLIDE IN AN ADOBE PRESENTER PRESEN-TATION — If you are hosting your Presenter content on your Adobe Connect server, you can add aparameter 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.acro-bat.com/microphones” and you wanted to start on slide 5, the result would be: “http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/microphones?slide=5”

Note:This only works with content hosted on an Adobe Connect server. However, it works both forour Adobe-hosted servers, and for customer-licensed servers. Tipster: Peter Ryce


If you are hostingyour Presentercontent on yourAdobe Connectserver, you canadd a parameterto the URL tomake the presen-tation start play-back on a particu-lar slide. Simplyadd “?slide=x” tothe existingConnect URL.

Peter Ryce

VI. Adobe Presenter

USE ENGAGE TO SAVE TIME — In this day of rapid development and tight deadlines, efficiency iseverything. Flash is a fantastic tool, but Articulate Engage can make nice-looking, functional ani-mations in a fraction of the time. Use Engage where you can to save time, and use Flash for morecustomized and complicated animations. Tipster: Steve Johnson

IMPORTING FLASH FILES CREATED IN CAPTIVATE INTO PRESENTER — If you are creating a Flash filein 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 fea-ture is enabled (it's a checkbox in the options area for the skin), Captivate outputs two .SWF filesinstead of one. There is a separate '_SKIN.SWF' file in addition to the content .SWF file, and theproblem is that neither will play if imported into Articulate because they need each other to playproperly. The simple solution: Don't use Captivate borders if you want to import the Flash file intoArticulate or Breeze. 2.) The borders add an extra pixel to the height and width, and if you havesized your Captivate project precisely to fit in an Articulate/PowerPoint slide, the extra pixel willcause Articulate to crop or resize your Flash file. For the record, your Flash file should be a maxi-mum of 720x540 if you are going to import it into Articulate/PowerPoint, and if you want to showthe 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 slideas a distinct slide .SWF. This means that you can use PowerPoint as a simple Flash animation cre-ator.With some practice, you can create animations in PowerPoint that rival the animations yousee in Flash, only you don't need Flash programming skills. Publish the file in Presenter, and thenpull the .SWF from the data folder. I do this all the time to quickly create .SWFs for my Web site, orto 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 publishedyour presentation and you want to incorporate your changes into your presentation, simply savethe updated .SWF file in the same location with the same name and publish the presentationagain. Tipster: Raghavendra

CONVERTING POWERPOINT CHARTS TO FLASH IN ARTICULATE — Articulate does an amazing jobof converting most PowerPoint information to Flash. One of the areas where I find it often fum-bles is in rendering charts. Articulate often will not draw the fonts and some of the graphics to beas smooth at they are in the PowerPoint chart. It is as if Articulate is having trouble fully accessingthe 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 agraphic, so it renders out just as pretty as it looks in PowerPoint. You can even just take the realchart and move it off to the side of the slide area, so it is always there if you need to make editsand update the screen shot. Tipster:Tim Bobo


If you updateyour Flash movieafter you havepublished yourpresentation andyou want toincorporate yourchanges into yourpresentation, sim-ply save theupdated .swf filein the same loca-tion with thesame name andpublish the pres-entation again.

Raghavendra

VII. Articulate Presenter and Engage

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How to leverage rapid e-learning tools for maximum benefit

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USE ARTICULATE PRESENTER PAGE LEVELS AND ARTICULATE ENGAGE FOR BETTER CONTENTORGANIZATION AND INTERACTIVITY — Frequently, Presenter is used to convert instructor-ledtraining into Flash-based e-Learning Content. As most of us know, this isn’t a straight one-to-oneconversion. It requires a different instructional design approach to, among other things, make upfor the lack of a live facilitator who can tailor the content to suit the needs of the audience. A cou-ple of simple ways to allow the learner to better navigate the content, or tailor it to their ownneeds, is chunking and setting context. Breaking the content into smaller, more easily digestedchunks, isn’t new, but it is frequently overlooked when converting ILT to an online format. Settingcontext may be a new concept for some, or you may know it by some other name. To me, settingcontext means informing the learner, at the start of each chunk, what it will cover, why it is impor-tant, and how it fits into the overall unit/lesson/module. Simply put, setting context provides thelearner with the best ability to remember the chunks of content, and allows them to choosewhich chunk(s) of content to consume. Setting context is crucial, especially when you can’t deter-mine the entering behaviors of your audience. The simplest way to chunk content in ArticulatePresenter is to use page levels. Page levels group slides into chunks of content, which is easier tonavigate using a tree style menu. To do this you open the Presenter slide properties managerusing the PowerPoint add-in menu for Articulate, and set the page level to one more than the firstslide in the chunk. For example, if you have 25 slides you want to break into five equal chunks, thefirst slide of each chunk is set, by default, to Level 1. The remaining four slides of each chunk wouldbe set to Level 2.When Presenter builds the navigation, each Level 1 slide is listed in the main slidelist. Clicking a slide title reveals the four additional slides in the chunk. You use the Level 1 slide toset context for the chunk. You can also group slides in the properties manager by slide type, whothe presenter is, the associated audio playlist, and whether the navigation automatically moves tothe next slide. A better method for chunking your content is to use Articulate Engage. Not onlydoes Engage do a better job of chunking your content and adding interactivity, it makes yourchunks 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 Inter-action 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 tipsfor 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 — Theprogram automatically creates files, and does not always warn you if you are about to overwritefiles. Be very careful, especially if you are recording directly in Articulate.We lost some audio filesbecause of this. To work around it, we set up a directory structure with separate folders for thePowerPoint 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


Structure yourproject directoryproperly beforeyou begin usingpresenter. Theprogram auto-matically cre-ates files, anddoes not alwayswarn you if youare about tooverwrite files.

Brian Dusablon

VII. Articulate Presenter and Engage continued

drawn in the wrong place when using the arrow keys on the keyboard to move forward or back-wards in the presentation. So, until this bug is fixed, an easy workaround is to make sure you havesome sort of introduction slide in PowerPoint before any Flash content. This will ensure that notwo Flash files are inserted in a row, and you will avoid this little Articulate bug. The result is some-thing that feels entirely natural. For example, if we have a Flash game, we will make a PowerPointslide with an introduction and a “continue” button. The continue button will just be a PowerPointbutton that links to the next slide. Thus the users will read the instructions on the PowerPointslide, then hit continue and immediately be in our Flash game. The extra PowerPoint slide feelsvery natural, and is easier to update than if you embedded the introduction information in theFlash file. Tipster:Tim Bobo

USE ARTICULATE TO AUTOMATICALLY ENGAGE LEARNERS — It involves delivery, but before Iexplain more, let me back up a bit and introduce something a bit more conceptual first. Supposeyour job was to get a balloon across a 20 foot room, how would you do it? Would you clench yourfirst, wind up and give it a big “whack?” Or would you “tap it” at strategic and specific intervals toensure 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 theground.Why the analogy? Hang on, we’re getting there. Let’s look at an average employee in a ho-hum position, working for a good company, but challenged daily with frustrations and distrac-tions. 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 todeliver new material, observe skill levels through role-plays, and so on, and motivate and inspireeveryone with new energy. Of course, what normally happens at a class is phenomenal. There’sinteraction, there’s collaboration, there’s observation and role-playing. Bottom line: People partici-pate and most leave charged with a new lease on life and renewed pep in their step, ready totackle their daily frustrations and distractions with a new positive boost of vigor and hope! Butwhat happens? Soon after they return to their daily routines the “pumped” feeling they all felt atclass soon begins to wane, and they are consumed again by their daily frustrations and distrac-tions. Now bear with me — earlier we agreed that hitting a balloon for all its worth is not the bestway for you to get a balloon across a room. Similarly, the problem with most instructor-led train-ing or live classroom instruction is that it is like whacking a balloon ONE TIME.When you only giveyour people a good boost ... without a specific follow-up regimen or plan in place ... they typicallyfall to the ground (or, in our case, fall victim to old habits, distractions and frustrations) and forgetwhat they were taught in class.Why do you think that is? Because most classroom instruction isnot followed up with by a consistent repetition and frequency program ... the proper “tapping” ifyou will. Most organizations run their BIG SEMINAR, or pack a ton of information in two days oflive 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 tocome along and help trainers in a very long time, but when you have the pleasure of using a prod-uct like Articulate, a sophisticated process becomes so easy that literally anyone can be an instruc-tional designer. Because they’re so easy to create, and so portable to utilize, Flash-based e-Learningpresentations have changed the way training courses are delivered … forever. First off, embedding


Because they’reso easy to cre-ate, and soportable to uti-lize, Flash-basede-Learning pre-sentations havechanged theway trainingcourses aredelivered … forever.

George Ritacco


an audio narrative and voice-over OR incorporating streaming video, adds an entirely new elementto interacting and engaging your trainees because you’re now able to teach to each of the threelearning 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 someoneaccording to a set timeline or schedule. And that’s my tip — taking an e-Learning course, createdrapidly with PowerPoint and Articulate, and combining it with an e-Learning scheduling and deliv-ery system. Vitally, the last and final point... As a trainer, you have in your hands something thatdifferentiates today’s trainers from those of five to ten years ago — an innate ability to leveragetechnology to maximize resources, improve productivity, and shorten training time.Tipster: George Ritacco



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 basedon the original PowerPoint file. For example, if you rename that file (as I'm in the habit of doingevery once in awhile for backup sake), or move it, you can appear to lose all your recorded narra-tives. 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 bulletitems, 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 per-fectly. If you record audio first, then create the narrations, you can still sync them up, but it's amuch more tedious process. Tipster: Mike Dickinson

BUILD AN INTERACTIVE TOUR — After redesigning our subscription-based e-Learning store, wewanted to add an interactive tour to introduce new users to the Web site.We didn't have the timeor budget to hire a multimedia specialist to build a Flashy media tour. Instead, I used ArticulateEngage to create a labeled graphic to build the tour, and imported audio to enhance the tour. Thetour is a big hit with sales personnel trying to sell subscriptions to the e-Learning store, and pro-vides 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 aninteractive job aid for a time clock. I inserted an image of the time clock on the master slide of thePowerPoint slide presentation, added customized clock menus on each slide, and used hyperlinksin PowerPoint to allow users to simulate performing transactions at the time clock. Using Arti-culate Engage I added two labeled-graphics interactions,“How to Use This Job Aid,” and “Usingthe Time Clock.” I was building the job aid for a popular casino, and inserted their logo in theArticulate 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


If you plan to useanimations inPowerPoint, likeflying-in bulletitems, and youalso plan to recordnarrations, it'smuch easier if youwill create the nar-rations first! Thatway you can click“next animation”while recordingthe audio and thetwo will sync upperfectly.

Mike Dickinson

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THE CHANGE CONTENTS ACTION IS YOUR FRIEND — Most people don't even realize how versatilethis action is. It doesn't just swap out images and text. It can swap out pretty much anything withsomething 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 easilymaintainable. 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 wayto insert a Flash-based file within Lectora is to insert the .SWF animation into its own page inLectora. Doing this allows the .SWF file to play when accessed, and when it is finished the userwould simply click on the navigation button within Lectora to move to next page. Users will beable to replay the .SWF file however many times if, say, it was a simulation of a software applica-tion. You could also set a text link to play the .SWF file as a pop-up window, and still not worryover 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 windowwould close and the course which was behind the simulation is now available for the learner tocontinue. Finally, when testing the above, it is best to do the testing on a Web server, rather than aPC, 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 utilizingExternal 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 refer-ence 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 youneed to analyze the value before doing something else. For example, if(VarChapterCom-plete.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 containsthe 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.


I have found thatthe best way toinsert a Flash-based file withinLectora is to insertthe .SWF anima-tion into its ownpage in Lectora.Doing this allowsthe .SWF file toplay when acces-sed, and when it isfinished the userwould simply clickon the navigationbutton withinLectora to move to next page.

Bruce Richard

IX. Trivantis Lectora

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 anyvalue 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. Soif you create a button, and it's HTML name is button123, then action123will execute theaction that is on button123's click tab. (Caution:action123will not execute any additionalactions added to button123, ONLY it's click-tab action. If you want to execute a group ofactions, then have button123's click-tab action run an action group.

Tipster:Tim Kindberg

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 wouldnormally 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 anyobject, 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 bereferenced by.

ii. The p and span tags control how they stylize the text in conjunction with .CSS styles.



By using the Ex-ternal Interface in Flash 8 andabove, you canuse Flash to mod-ify Lectora vari-ables, hide andshow Lectora con-tent, and createcustom naviga-tion buttons.

Mark Hemingway

IX. Trivantis Lectora continued

LAYERING ON TOP OF A FLASH MOVIE — You can layer objects on top of your Flash movie if youuse 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 modi-fy Lectora variables, hide and show Lectora content, and create custom navigation buttons.Tipster: Mark Hemingway


IX. Trivantis Lectora continued

KEEPING CAPTURE VIDEO AND SCREEN ACTION TOGETHER — Sometimes I miss a splash screen ora video capture. It's because each is displaying in separate layered windows.When using theCamtasia Recorder, remember to select multiple layers in order to capture video and screen actiontogether.

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'verecorded at (e.g. you recorded your entire screen, which is at 1024 x 768, but are producing out at640x480), small details like text and icons may be difficult to see clearly for your learners. So, usethe Zoom-n-Pan feature to make the area you are discussing larger.

Another advantage of using Zoom-n-Pan is that it isolates specific areas so that non-relevantparts of the screen or window don't distract your learners from the focal point. This is particularlyhelpful if you are showing an application that has many complicated elements.

A word of caution though: Over-using zooms and pans can make it difficult for your learners tomaintain a sense of visual context (i.e. where in the application/screen the part you are showingis) 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 theaudio in small bits and label the bits based on subject. For example, if I am doing a training serieson Getting Started with XYZ technology, I would record the audio in 1-2 sentence-length record-ings, save them with names like gsXYZ01.mp3, gsXYZ02.mp3, gsXYZ03.mp3 where gs representsthe subject, XYZ represents the technology or process, and 01, 02, and 03 represents the audio seg-ment being recording. From there I store and import each audio file, and place it in the appropri-ate place in the Flash training. This makes for easy recording, updating, and editing of audio in aproject. I use this format with Camtasia, Captivate, and other rapid e-Learning tools as a way toeffectively edit and manage audio for a project. The metadata tags in Audacity by SoundForge arealso useful for enhanced content management of audio files. Tipster: Laura Jaffrey

AVOIDING AUDIO PROBLEMS — Be sure to use the latest version of Camtasia. After usingCamtasia to record demonstrations, we had audio problems with the Flash playback in AdobeFlash Player (created with Articulate) which only occurred on some machines.We found thatupdating Camtasia and republishing the recordings fixed it. Tipster: Jeff Yoder


Be sure to use thelatest version ofCamtasia. Afterusing Camtasia to record demon-strations, we hadaudio problemswith the Flashplayback inAdobe Flash Play-er (created withArticulate) whichonly occurred onsome machines.We found thatupdating Cam-tasia and repub-lishing the record-ings fixed it.

Jeff Yoder

X. Camtasia Studio Screen Recording andPresentation

http://www.dazzletech.com

mailto:[email protected]

A. Microsoft PowerPointGET APPROVAL WHILE IN POWERPOINT STORYBOARD TO AVOID REWORK — We try to getapproval on the content while the storyboard is in PowerPoint format to eliminate rework oncewe develop in Flash. It's much easier and quicker to mock-up graphics and general flow in thePowerPoint format. The nice thing about this type of storyboard is that it's visual, and can give anidea not only of the content but the intended design. Tipster: Vicki Krajewski

REPLACE FLASH DEVELOPMENT BY USING POWERPOINT (SOMETIMES) — The Flash authoring pro-gram is certainly powerful, but it is also quite intimidating for the masses of instructional design-ers that rely on Microsoft Office for their daily work. Many of these designers are diehard Power-Point gurus who can animate a title sixty ways to Sunday, but would still rather avoid the stageand timeline.While PowerPoint may be great for drafting and storyboarding content prior to Flashdevelopment, in many cases it can replace Flash development entirely. PowerPoint-to-Flash con-verters have come a long way, though not all are created equal. Some conversion tools will onlytake a snapshot of each slide and play them in sequence, while others support animations, slidetransitions, videos, and sounds. Most tools offer a trial, so you can test whether it handles yourpresentations. You will usually find that the more capable tools are more expensive. If you've neverdelivered Flash content before, converting PowerPoint to Flash is an easy way to get your feet wetand 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. AsB/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 pre-sentations that are sent to others. If the recipients do not have those fonts installed on their com-puters, 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, levelis also bulleted, go up to only the next level, no further. Also, distinguish the levels with contrast-ing font types, preferably from the same font family. I personally prefer Arial for Level 1, and ArialNarrow for level 2.

Tip 4: Dark backgrounds in your presentations could force you to use images with transparent back-grounds. 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 allslides in your presentation within the slide window. Ensure no objects spill over outside the slidecanvas.

Tip 6:When copying or pasting text from elsewhere, do not paste “as is.” Instead, paste as unfor-matted text through “Edit | Paste | Special | Unformatted Text.”Tipster: Prakash Bebington


When copying orpasting text fromelsewhere, do not paste “as is.”Instead, paste asunformatted textthrough “Edit |Paste | Special |UnformattedText.”

Prakash Bebington

XI. Using Other Tools

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

fso2.CopyFolder sfo2, dfo2

Else

MsgBox dfol & “ already exists! Rename the folder and tryagain...”, vbExclamation, “Folder Exists”

End If

End If

End Sub

Set up your course shell files, then update the macro above to reflect the location of those files andfolders. Any questions about this, or automating e-Learning, e-mail [email protected]: Red Resener

PRESENT BRANCHED INFORMATION SAFELY IN POWERPOINT — In your PowerPoint show, if youhave to present branched information, prefer embedded slides over custom shows. This preventsthe embarassment of displaying the “hidden slides” in the custom shows while navigating back-wards 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


In your Power-Point show, if youhave to presentbranched infor-mation, preferembedded slidesover customshows. This pre-vents the embar-assment of dis-playing the “hid-den slides” in thecustom showswhile navigatingbackwards duringyour presenta-tion.

Prakash Bebington

XI. Using Other Tools continued

DO YOUR FLASH DEVELOPMENT HEAVY LIFTING IN POWERPOINT — Take advantage of new tech-nologies that ease the development of Flash content. PowerPoint 2003 and above gives you theability to add motion paths to objects. For example, you can show several items on a page, causeall but one to fade, enlarge and move the existing object, and add text. You can do all the heavylifting of creating motions in PowerPoint. Several PowerPoint-to-Flash conversion programs areappearing 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 completecourse with navigation and branching, or added to a development package such as OpusWorksComposer 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 processingwill go a long way in preventing formatting inconsistencies later. Explore the Format | Styles andFormatting option right away. Also, if you are amazed at how some people magically generatethat 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 asUnformatted 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 thoseexcess white spaces around your drawing.

Tip 4: Avoid page borders if you are not an expert Word user. Page borders look great in PrintPreview, 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 notcontinue 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 widthin Table Properties to 100%.

Tip 6: If your table spans multiple pages, repeat the header row across the pages. For this, selectthe header row, go to Table Properties | Row Options and select Repeat as header row at the topof each page.

Tipster: Prakash Bebington


Take advantageof new technolo-gies that ease thedevelopment ofFlash content.PowerPoint 2003and above givesyou the ability toadd motion pathsto objects.

John Best


C. Qarbon Viewlet BuilderThis tool by Qarbon, http://.www.qarbon.com, makes developing online training so easy and sim-ple. You can start with a PowerPoint presentation, and use a screen capture mode to convert itinto 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. Uponchoosing a few options, with one click, you can instantly create Flash-based SCORM- and AICC-compliant modules that run independently, within all LMS systems, or use the Viewlet Centralsolution. I have used Viewlet Builder products (Viewlet Builder, Viewlet Quiz, Viewlet Central) forover four years, and they just keep getting better. They have great support, and the license is veryreasonable.When creating an online product for my clients, I always recommend that they pur-chase a license, so that they can update courseware in the future – since the learning curve is soshort. Tipster: Karen Miller

D. zPhotozPhoto 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 orimages scanned in. I use it to display student work in a gallery, or to give examples of digital artwork 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 andtips. Using products such as Fraps and Sizer, capture video (at a specific frame rate and sized toyour needs) and import it into Flash. It's an easy way to add 3-D content to scenarios and ques-tions. 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 takinga few seconds of video and viewing the video's properties. This maintains the maximum qualityby 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 filmingby using Ctrl Alt 1. You can also turn off the chat bubbles under Preferences if desired. Check forattachments 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 youcan. Reducing the size of the viewer GUI will reduce the resources needed by Second Life, andallow for higher quality video. If you will be using separate audio files imported into Flash, thenconsider turning off the audio and streaming audio (music) under preferences in Second Life too.


Add Second Lifevideo (machini-ma) to your Flashwork. It's easywith a few inex-pensive tools andtips. Using prod-ucts such as Frapsand Sizer, capturevideo (at a specif-ic frame rate andsized to yourneeds) and importit into Flash. It'san easy way toadd 3-D contentto scenarios andquestions.

David Miller


Often parcels have streaming music playing that take up valuable computer resources. Make sureto close any other programs, and consider using a third-party tool to capture video rather than theone 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 workvery well. Several tools, that are very reasonably priced, are used for capturing MMORPG.While weare 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 thedefault positions), set your character(s) in the correct starting position(s) and then save that .CBPfile out as your template. Then, every time you need to start a new movie, you can open your tem-plate and save it out as your next movie. This eliminates having to import all your assets and setup your characters each time you make a new movie. Tipster: Chris Bahns

G. Microsoft InfoPathUse InfoPath to create an XML file to populate your Flash interactions. Create several Flash interac-tions (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. Itworks great! Tipster: Eric Hunter

H. Flash Wrappers E-Learning providers migrating to Flash from Authorware are often frustrated by Flash's securityrestrictions. Because the .SWF format targets the open Web rather than a corporate intranet orlocal 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 over-comes 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-specificActionScript 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


Use InfoPath tocreate an XML fileto populate yourFlash interactions.Create severalFlash interactions(games, quizzes,and other learn-ing objects) thatXML can popu-late. Then createan easy-to-useform in MicrosoftInfoPath so thatyour SMEs cancreate all of thecontent on theirown. It worksgreat!

Eric Hunter


I. Ignite Pro StudioThis tool focuses on aggregating or “stitching” multiple media types together, and then publishingthem as one structured course or a single lesson. It does import a variety of media formats, but forthe purposes of this particular eLearning Guild e-Book, .FLV and .SWF files are definitely amongthe supported types. .FLVs play back as simple movies of course, but .SWF files do retain theirinteractivity if you developed them as such. Pro Studio considers everything a “slide” which cansimply be moved up and down in the order, added, replaced, and so on. Once you have your Flashcontent 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 anew 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 calledIgniteCAST 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 toupload a fair amount of content before you hit any space limit that would trigger a need to usethe paid plans. If all you want to do is manage a bunch of Flash files easily and quickly, this tool isvery good for that purpose. However, the added benefit of being able to stitch in other mediatypes 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 AudioGenerator for over four years; it is a low-cost but highly effective method for collecting, convert-ing, and creating plug-and-play code to place in your training Webpages. I use Audio Generator forgathering client testimonials online, as well as creating audio training blurbs (up to 10 minutes) toembed 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 MemoSonic Memo Toolkit by Jay Jennings (www.jayjennings.com) is a quick, easy tool to put VCR-con-trol-type buttons and embed Flash-based audio into HTML pages. For a low monthly fee, trainingprofessionals can embed audio training blurbs into e-mails and Web pages. Tipster: Karen Miller

L. ZamzarHow many times have you needed your file in another format and it becomes such a hassle tomake sure you have the right conversion tools? Worry no more. www.Zamzar.com is an online


Sonic Memo Tool-kit by Jay Jennings(www.jayjennings.com) is a quick,easy tool to putVCR-control-typebuttons and em-bed Flash-basedaudio into HTMLpages. For a lowmonthly fee,training profes-sionals canembed audiotraining blurbsinto e-mails andWeb pages.

Karen Miller


conversion tool – and it's free. Let's say you have a .WAV file and want to convert it to .MP3. Go tothe Zamzar site, upload the file, decide upon the format you want the file to be converted to, enteryour 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



http://www.raptivity.com/downloads.html

http://www.raptivity.com

mailto:[email protected]

A. Content Point – Atlantic Link Use the Flash asset library to provide complex custom Flash interactions within your ContentPoint Flash courses. These can be configured through the Properties panel, meaning that no cod-ing or Flash skills are required. View the full list here: http://www.atlantic-link.co.uk/Flash_tem-plates.htm Tipster: Michael Alcock

B. QuickLessonsDo you wish your template could rearrange itself depending on the size of your text? Do you wishevery screen of your online course would color itself automatically so it always looks attractive? Doyou 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 ofthat is possible when you use Flash! Even more possible when you used Flash-based tools that canlead you towards a more attractive and functional online course, and without you having to learnhow 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 afriendly 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

C. Talking LetterTo 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. Userscan record video as they display pictures and record mouse clicks online. As soon as you are donerecording, your Flash-based e-Learning module is ready. Tipster: Fabio Cujino

D. Phasient Sim BuilderUse 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 youwould place an image, then control the animation with buttons or actions that are on theSimBuilder page, outside the Flash animation itself. Tipster: Denise Link

E. WILD SoftWILD (Worldwide Interactive Learning Designer) was created to rapidly deploy quality courses tak-ing 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


WILD (WorldwideInteractive Learn-ing Designer) wascreated to rapidlydeploy qualitycourses taking theteam approach.Leverage a toolwhere multipleusers can beworking on thesame project. Thiswill decreasedown time wait-ing on open issuesto be resolved.

Andrew Bagley

XII. Tips Provided by Tool Vendors

F. FlypaperFLYPAPER IS A FREE TOOL IN PUBLIC BETA — It can output .SWF files, .FLV, .MPG or .MP4 files. It hasmany uses, but a cool tip is taking .SWFs from Captivate, Raptivity, or Flash, combining them withother media (audio, images, text), and outputting to .MPG or .MP4 formats that can play on aniPod and/or other mobile devices. You can download it at http://www.flypaper.netTipster: Kieran Richardson

VIDEO COMPRESSION — If you are playing video through an e-Learning course, Flash .SWF filesare a good output. The latest version of the Flash player will also handle .FLV and .MPG and othervideo formats. In general, we try to keep our video files to less than 1 meg of video per minute.Weoften use Sorenson Squeeze to compress our files.We use the 256K setting from Squeeze withsome 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.Wehave had a lot of success getting “acceptable” video that plays on older and slower networks withthese settings. If you don't have Squeeze, you can download Flypaper, www.flypaper.net andimport the video. The import settings compress the video for you. You can then publish theFlypaper story and get the compressed video out of the resource folder, or you can select video asyou output and generate an .FLV, .MPG or .MP4 to play on other formats or embed in other files. Ofcourse, Flypaper can also just play the video in its native HTML file output, or embed it inside a sin-gle .SWF file. If you are going to use Squeeze or another compression tool, you can play aroundwith 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 oftemplates or tools like Lectora, Captivate, or Flypaper that offer animation, it can be a tough call asto 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 otherformats. One key factor is the content. If the content is not likely to change for the foreseeablefuture, it makes sense to build it once in Flash. If that content is constantly changing, you are bet-ter off using a less “Flashy” animation and keeping it in the tool you and your SME's can use likeCaptivate or Flypaper. Another key factor is code. If you need functionality that does not exist inyour regular authoring tool, Flash may be the way to go. If the content is constantly changing, andyou have to create code anyway, you might as well load the graphics dynamically and put the textin XML files. That way you won't need the programmer or the Flash IDE to recompile the file everytime you have to change a picture or fix a typo. The final key factor is re-use. If you are going tobuild this in Flash, try to design it so it can be a template and used repeatedly. It will take muchlonger to program, and you have to plan ahead, but in the end you will save time on the next proj-ect. Examples of Flash templates abound on sites like Flash Den and Flash Kit. Flypaper has itsown system of Flash Models that are re-usable pre-programmed Flash files. If your templates areflexible enough, you can change the look and the action enough that learners will not get bored


Use Flash to addmovement to apage, but savetime and makechanges easier byusing Sim-Builderto build in com-plexity and inter-activity. You canlayer a Flash ani-mation on a pageas you wouldplace an image,then control theanimation withbuttons or actionsthat are on theSimBuilder page,outside the Flashanimation itself.

Denise Link

XII. Tips Provided by Tool Vendors continued

with the “same-old, same-old.” For examples of nice templates and models go tohttp://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 makeit 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 vendorswho can take XML files and return them in the same XML format. If they want files in Word, andgive you back a Word document, find a new vendor. Tools like Raptivity, and the coming version ofCaptivate, offer options to export with folders and all the text in XML files. Flypaper exports all thetext content in XML as well. Tipster: Kieran Richardson

G. Unison Web-based Collaborative e-Learning DevelopmentSolution & Flashform Rapid e-Learning Studio (Rapid Intake)QUALITY ASSURANCE TESTING YOUR FLASH-BASED COURSE: HOW TO DO IT FASTER AND BETTERWITH UNISON — If you don’t know it already, you will eventually discover that what you havewhen you are finished with an online learning course is a software application. If you come from atraining background, rather than Web design or multimedia development, this concept may takea while to crystallize.“Well, I knew that already,” you might be thinking. Okay, I agree.What I’mpointing out with this concept is nothing that will blow your mind. However, we trainers oftenwant to think that developing a WBT is “different” from traditional Web sites or other softwareapplications because it is a tool that teaches.While that is true, the sooner we start thinking ofour online courses as software applications, and start modeling parts of our development process-es after traditional software development models, the better off we’ll be.While most productdevelopment models for WBT courses vary somewhat from software development (I don’t knowmany software engineers who write storyboards for their software), one of the many things theyshare 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 completelyworking before we release it. There is just no easy path from the fun stuff (design and develop-ment) to the real world of the production environment. In between lies the thorny road of qualityassurance testing.We have to track down every single issue, make sure that every link works, thatevery 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 dowe make this an effective process? Here are a few tips I’ve learned from experience that I hopewill be helpful:

1. Plan for more than one round of testing. You will never catch all of the bugs and defects in yourcourse with just one round of testing. People traditionally call the first round of testing theAlpha test, and the second round a Beta test. Once you do plan for more than one round of test-ing, 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 inlater rounds. Following the old 80/20 rule, two to three people can find the majority of the prob-


When includingtext in a Flashfile, it's best toput the text in a.TXT file or XMLfile. This willmake it mucheasier to trans-late or update.

Kieran Richardson


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, aswell as clear notes about how and when it was resolved. Later, this list can be an importantreminder of why you made certain decisions along the way, especially if there is ever a differ-ence 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 isextremely important. As a project manager,WBT producer, or one-man-team, you need to makesure that you took care of every defect before delivering it to your client. Remember though, ifyou 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 hasturned out to be very effective. Instead of having all the testers test at the same time and thenconsolidate notes, have them test one at a time, and perform quick fixes between testers. Beready to get their feedback quickly, even real-time if possible (you can do this with Unison), andmake the fixes as the issues come in or shortly thereafter. This allows the next tester to spendhis or her time finding other problems for you rather than submitting the same problemsalready submitted. Because of the quick turn-around time, using micro-cycle testing will giveyou 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 alearner 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 cre-ate the course and/or quiz. Flashform Rapid e-Learning Studio and Unison does the actual QuizReview development for you. To show the Quiz Review in Flashform, after selecting to add a pageand choosing the Quiz template, the developer fills in the Quiz Page template, making sure thatthe “Include Review” box is checked in the “Quiz Settings” section. This will ensure that the learnerhas the opportunity to see their answers, their scores, and what the correct answers were, if theyanswered 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 anLMS. However, if you just want the learner to be able to keep track of what they have completed,


If a course has amandatory passpercentage re-quired before alearner can moveon to a subse-quent course, aQuiz Review canbe critical to alearner’s success.

Joy Vinson


and the last page they visited, you can do that without the expense of an LMS. Traditionally, whencreating a Flash course, this type of tracking would require a lot of work:Writing the ActionScriptthat would write this data to a Flash cookie (which stores data on the local machine), additionalcode to read this cookie when the course started again, and still more to use the data to deter-mine where in the course the learner should be. You’re not finished yet. Once that is done, morecode is needed to take them to that location. Once the process is finally completed, you deserve anice vacation!

Mercifully, if you are developing a course in Flashform or Unison, the whole process takes mereseconds 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, CD-ROM, or a network drive, and direct the learners to it.With little effort, and virtually no stress, yourtask is complete. It’s so easy it almost feels like YOU are ON vacation (suntan not included). (By theway, Flashform and Unison courses also track bookmarking if they are launched from a LMS.)

Tipster: Steve Hancock

CREATING LINKS TO OTHER PAGES — Often, when creating an e-Learning course, you need yournavigation to link to other parts of the course. It is not always linear. In a Flashform or Unisoncourse, you can do this by linking to another page in the course. These pages may be visible in theTable of Contents, or be hidden. (To hide a page, just check the hidden-page checkbox.) You canuse one of two identifiers for linking to a page: the title of the page, or the link ID that you enteron the Advanced tab. If the title of the page is not unique, enter a link ID. You can create a link to apage in two ways: within text, or by creating your own interaction in Flash, and then including thismovie 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 creatingyour own Flash interaction, you can link to another page as well. For example, to include a but-ton 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 thisFlash movie is included inside a Flashform or Unison course using the external .SWF page


Often, when creat-ing an e-Learningcourse, you needyour navigation tolink to other partsof the course. It isnot always linear.In a Flashform orUnison course, youcan do this by link-ing to anotherpage in the course.

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 inter-active glossary can be created by simply entering terms and definitions. In addition, Flashform andUnison offer even more glossary features. For example, in the midst of another interaction you canlink directly to a glossary term. This link will cause the glossary to open and go directly to thatterm. There are two ways to create a link to a glossary term:Within text, or by creating your owninteraction in Flash and then including this movie as one of the pages in your course. To create alink 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,theTermWhere“theTerm” refers to the actual term in the glossary.“asfunction” is a designated wordused 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 glossaryterm.

4. Place the term you want to link to the glossary at the end after the comma. If you are creatingyour own Flash interaction, you can link to a glossary term as well. For example, if you want toinclude 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 .SWFpage 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 onwhether 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 anothercourse, simply copy the glossary.xml file from that course, and place it in a new course, replacingthe original glossary.xml file found in that project folder. The new course will then have that mainglossary. Tip: If you are creating a master glossary that you will use for many courses, you maysimply want to keep a copy of that glossary's XML file (the glossary.xml) on your computer, allow-ing you to simply upload that file each time you wish to put in the glossary.


Flashform orUnison develop-ers are awarethat an interac-tive glossary canbe created bysimply enteringterms and defi-nitions. In addi-tion, Flashformand Unison offereven more glos-sary features.

Steve Hancock


Standard Users. If you have a standard license of Unison, the best way for you to reuse a glossary isto create a new course that has nothing but a glossary inside. You will then want to save thiscourse as a Template, so anytime you want to create a new course with that glossary, you will cre-ate the course using that course template. Then, when you want to edit the master glossary, sim-ply 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 com-plete all of the pages within a specified section or topic of a course before they can move on tothe next topic. The way this forced sequential navigation might occur varies depending on thetool you are using to create the course. Flashform and Unison courses come with the ability toeasily restrict navigation by using the Navigation setting in the Edit Topic form. From the drop-down box, you need to select “Restricted based on Completion”. Once restricted, the pages of thenext topic are inactive in the TOC. If the learner tries to click the next button to move to the nexttopic, this alert is displayed:“You must complete the current topic before you can move to thenext topic.”The way the learner knows if a topic is complete is if a check mark appears next toeach page within the topic. Under normal circumstances, a check mark appears as soon as thelearner views the page. However, if you are using pageComplete, then there may be items on thepage that must be finished before considering the page complete. If a course contains a sequenceof topics that are restricted, the learner must to go through the course one topic at a time insequential order. The learner can jump between pages within a given topic, but must completeeach 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 ofCSS styles that can help you format text throughout a Unison or Flashform course. Instead of for-matting text on every page, you can format the text in one location – the CSS style sheet. Thatway, if you ever need to make a change, you can change it in one location and it affects all of thetext in the course. NOTE: You can always override the default style-sheet settings by clickingOverride Default Settings in the text box you are typing in. All templates that use text are alreadyassociated with a cascading style sheet that comes with Unison. To change the text format, simplylocate and open the style sheet, make changes to the settings, and save your changes. Flashformand 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 theproject file structure. To access the project file structure in Unison, you need to have PowerProCustomization 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.


Flash supports alimited number ofCSS styles thatcan help you for-mat text through-out a Unison orFlashform course.Instead of format-ting text on everypage, you can for-mat the text inone location – theCSS style sheet.That way, if youever need tomake a change,you can change itin one locationand it affects allof the text in thecourse.

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 makethe 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 aremaking 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. Forexample, to change the question format from 14 pixels to 16 pixels, change the font-size proper-ty 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 — Moste-Learning developers start by creating static Flash movies for e-Learning content. A “static” moviemeans you embed all text, audio, video, and images inside the .SWF movie. The disadvantage tothis approach is that to update anything, you need to open Flash, change the content, and repub-lish. A more maintainable solution is to create an “intelligent” Flash movie that reads settings thatpoint 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 oftext file that is used to store and organize information on the Internet. By using this approach, allcontent is stored outside the Flash movie, making it easier to maintain and localize into differentlanguages if needed. For example, you might want to:

• Modify the Table of Contents to reflect changes in the course, such as the addition, deletion, ormodification of pages.

• Build quizzes based upon questions stored externally to Flash. This enables you to develop abank 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 coursepages dynamically, you can change the content of the course to meet the needs of a given learn-er. For example, you can store a user profile, which determines the type of content that will dis-play.

• Build courses which can be easily localized. Store the content for each language that you plan tomake available in a separate file.When the learner selects a language, pull in the content thatcorresponds to that language.


Most e-Learningdevelopers startby creating staticFlash movies fore-Learning con-tent. A “static”movie means youembed all text,audio, video, andimages inside the.SWF movie. Thedisadvantage tothis approach isthat to updateanything, youneed to openFlash, change thecontent, andrepublish.

Garin Hess


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.

Unison stores the data in the following XML files (you can learn more about each of these XMLfiles 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 filehas five main tags that make up the file: sco, topics, topic, page, and narration. These tags arepopulated 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 theProject Home page. Once you unzip the file, you’ll find the sco.xml and glossary.xml. You’ll find thequiz.xml file in the .SWFS folder.

Building this kind of architecture in Flash would take even an experienced Flash developer severaldays or weeks. That’s one of the reasons Unison’s built-in Flash and XML architecture can save youso much time.

Tipster: Garin Hess

CREATING REUSABLE FLASH COURSE INTERFACES — Because of the limited number of interfacedesigns offered in most authoring tools, many companies wanting to present a unique look andfeel to their e-Learning courses end up creating their own. This is especially true for Flash-basedcourses. If you are using Unison or Flashform as your authoring tool, not only can you create a cus-tom interface, but also you can enable it so that other developers in your company can select anduse that style in their courses. If you feel comfortable creating content in Flash, you can create acustom style. Just follow these basic steps. For more detailed information refer to the documenta-tion.

1. Open Flashform and create a new project.When setting up the project, select the style youwould like to use as the starting point for your custom style. Also, make sure you select the CopySource 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 maywant to make changes in multiple files like the media controller, the quiz, any of the templatepages, 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 theplayer.fla file, include a Windows projector file and Macintosh projector file. Publishing a courseto CD-ROM uses these files. At this point you have finished the changes. However, in order toshare 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 thatyour custom style is based on. The style.xml file controls some of the default settings, and isrequired 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 maynot need to change any.


If you are usingUnison or Flash-form as yourauthoring tool,not only can youcreate a custominterface, but alsoyou can enable it so that otherdevelopers inyour companycan select and use that style intheir courses.

Steve Hancock


6. Change the name of the folder containing the new custom style. The name should have nospaces. In addition, if the style is built for Flash player 8, you should include “player8” in thename. Finally, at the end of the name you should include .SWF or .JPG depending on whether ornot you can change colors in the style. [.SWF is for changing colors (for example,cus-tomStylePlayer8_SWF)]. Lastly, you can create a preview, and then place the style inFlashform, if you desire. That’s all there is to it!


BUILDING A SCORM COURSE AND A SCORM PACKAGE — Making your course SCORM conformantis viewed as a “necessary evil” for most developers. Sometimes, they view getting the course tofinally run on an LMS viewed as an accomplishment equal to scaling Mount Everest. If SCORMwere easier to understand and implement, it might not elicit this kind of reaction. Thankfully, as aFlashform or Unison developer, you have a tool that will make your Flash-based courses easy todeploy in SCORM. Even beyond that, Flashform and Unison have built-in flexibility for those whowant to begin using more of what SCORM offers. First, let’s look at how easy it is to turn a courseinto a SCORM package that is ready to upload to an LMS.With Flashform, a few simple steps is allit 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 PublishSettings dialog closes, you are free to place these files on an LMS. (You may want to zip them upbefore 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.

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 andoptional 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 areyour 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 tocompletion (for example, a video is viewed to the end). This is done by using the “apiComplete”


Now that you seehow easy it is todeploy a SCORMcourse, let’s lookat some of theflexibility andoptional elementsthat are providedin setting upSCORM. First,select a comple-tion method.Flashform andUnison coursescan determinecompletion in anumber of differ-ent ways.

Steve Hancock


feature. This makes sure that the content on any given page has been completely viewed beforecompletion is marked. Set this up in the project settings area.

• Determine completion when the learner has completed a quiz. Use the quiz settings for thisoption.

• Determine completion when the learner has completed a quiz and received a passing score. Youalso set this up in the quiz settings.

By design, Flashform and Unison courses automatically track a number of SCORM elements. If youfind it necessary to track elements of your own, you can do this by tying into the provided SCORMfunctions. You do this by creating a Flash movie you want to use as content, and then usingActionScript to call one of the SCORM functions at the appropriate time. Here is an example ofhow 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 theattributes the SCORM function needs. In this case, it is a minimum score, maximum score and apercent. 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 yourchoosing. All the SCORM functions are described further in the documentation. Flashform andUnison 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 asExcel 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 documentsquickly and simply in Flashform. After you have started your project inside of Flashform, add apage 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, youthen highlight the word that you want to become a clickable link to bring up that file. Use phraseslike “Click Here to pull up sample” or anything that lets the learner know that they need to clickthere. Flashform will bring up a window for you to type in a URL, but instead of typing in the URLyou 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 tothe end of the document name. If it is a PDF then you type SampleText.pdf. Then select the drop-down box labeled “Target” and select “blank.”This will tell Flashform to pull up the document in anew blank window. The next step is to make sure you place that document inside of your coursestructure so Flashform knows which document to pull up. Bring up your project folder, and dragand drop the file into the folder. That’s it! Go back into Flashform and preview your course, click onthe link and then your document will pull right up. Any time you need to update the form, all youneed to do is open up the folder in Windows, name the new file name the same thing, and dragand drop it into your course structure and it will automatically pull up your new document.Tipster: Jeff Batt


After you havestarted your proj-ect inside ofFlashform, add a page thatincludes a textfield. This can bein your notes fieldarea, the mainbody-text fieldarea, or even thenarration fieldarea.

Jeff Batt


CREATING REUSABLE PAGE TEMPLATES — When creating Flash-based e-Learning courses, you mayfind yourself repeatedly creating the same interaction. You may also find the interaction types pro-vided by Flashform or Unison don’t meet all of your development needs. In both situations, youcan save loads of time by creating a reusable page template. Creating reusable page templates inFlashform 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 makesup for it. Creating a reusable page template involves creating two separate documents:TheOutput Page Template, which is a Flash file (.SWF) that is intelligent enough to read the informa-tion from the XML file and populate the content appropriately for the learner. And the Input Formused to specify how the page template works and what content it uses. This form writes the datato an XML file. Let’s first look at the steps for creating an output page template. These steps arequite basic, but they will give you a feel for what is involved. Refer to the documentation for moreinformation.

1. Create a sample course using Flashform or Unison. It is important to have a sample course youcan use to test your new page template.

2. Determine the XML structure for the new page template. You should spend some time familiar-izing yourself with the page tag used in Flashform and Unison courses. Next, determine whatinformation 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 asample course XML file (sco.xml) and enter in a sample page tag that contains the informationyour 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 youadd 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 Flashformmethod first. Once again, more detailed information can be found in the documentation. Theinput 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-LearningStudio\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 compo-nents 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 formore 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:


Creating theinput form forUnison involvescreating an XMLfile. Refer to thedocumentationfor more infor-mation. All youneed to do tocreate an inputpage form is tocreate a simpleXML file.

Steve Hancock


page

Tab

/Tab

/page

You can include as many tabs as you wish using that structure. The tab tag then contains othercomponents that make up the form fields, buttons, checkboxes, and text editors. Unison has alarge number of pre-built components, which you can use for building your page forms. Thesecomponents have no default values associated with them. A sample component would be ageneric text field, or a generic checkbox. For more information about the components you can addto a form, see the documentation.When you have finished creating the XML file, you need toupload it along with the page template file. You can do this by going to the Admin Tab and select-ing the Custom Page Type Templates link.



When you havefinished creatingthe XML file, youneed to upload italong with thepage templatefile. You can dothis by going tothe Admin Taband selecting theCustom PageType Templateslink.

Steve Hancock


www.atlanticlinkglobal.com – Atlantic Link Inc. 12600 Deerfield Parkway, Alpharetta, Georgia, 30004

Phone: 678 762 3360 – contact [email protected]

DETERMINE YOUR APPROACH — Get your Flash-based e-Learning content to work with a moreWebcentric approach for delivering course-based content. It's a very important strategy that takese-Learning to a higher-level of meeting very important business requirements that usually Flash-based e-Learning content can't entirely deliver on.We've been working on this strategy and imple-mentation 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 learn-ing, which include accessibility compliance, corporate branding, internal learning design standardsthat include the ability to deliver content via our intranet or extranet, and the ability to embracethe new Web 2.0 collaborative types of technologies. These new technologies are very Web-codecentric, 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 versionsof our e-Learning templates that take .SWF formatted learning content from tools like AdobeFlash, 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 lever-age the common Web-based internal navigation and actual Webpage code (UI), making it possi-ble to deliver courses that are 99% similar to internal Webpage templates, but also making it pos-sible to take the e-Learning content offline. Naturally I can't share the actual code with anyoneoutside of my company (without first getting consent from Cisco Legal, and so on), however that'snot as important as explaining to others how to take primarily Flash-based e-Learning content tothe next level for your company. These types of e-Learning templates are not just a visual look-and-feel change, but an actual fit that is coded in the same Web code that either your intranetand/or extranet Web pages are coded in. Embrace the Web developers in your company to helpyou to achieve this.

YOU MUST REALLY TEST FOR ACCESSIBILITY — This doesn't just mean alt-tags compliance. You willneed to consider how various screen readers work while being turned on or off, whether the Tab-key-focus functions properly, and that all shortcut keys don't conflict with various browsers. Thereare also many other types of accessibility issues including low visibility, color choices for colorblindness, using scalable font types, high-contrast modes, and mouse-over capabilities you mustimplement that are screen-reader and tab-key compliant.

DETERMINE HOW YOU WANT TO AUTHOR — You could use a combination of Flash/Captivate andother authoring tools to create .SWF content that goes into an e-Learning template. Once the con-tent is properly wrapped in a sort of content-player method, then you can import the final .SWFfiles into, say, Adobe Dreamweaver or other XHTML- or HTML-based authoring tool to put thepieces together in, hopefully, an XML-based approach, or whatever approach your Web developerscurrently use to deliver Web-based content in your company. This requires removing any existingplayer bars or skins that come out of tools like Adobe Captivate, and then using the componentfeatures of Flash to re-wrap the .SWF based content. Some of your components can be entirelyFlash-based, while others might leverage things like: .FLV players for video, import Captivate-basedcontent, and handle simple static types of content like text, graphics, and audio. Up to this pointwe'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


Consider swap-ping betweentwo types ofmice on a week-ly or monthlybasis. It will helpprevent repeti-tive injuries liketennis elbow orcarpal tunnelsyndrome.

David Miller

XIII. Work Practices and General Tips

current and future benefits the Web offers your e-Learning content. Plus the content's appearancewon'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 com-munity feel. Try a few, and find the one that challenges you. Actively seek posts that push yourproblem solving, and you will see your skills increase as well as other people's approaches to thesame problems. Tipster: David Miller

The key is:When you are about to start a Flash-based e-Learning project, it is not important whichtool is selling best in the market.What is more important is to identify which one will work bestwith your requirements for the current project in hand.

The first good step towards a successful project involving a Flash-based e-Learning content is toknow beforehand the kinds of functionality you will need, and which tools and options will workbest. All tools are competitive; however, certain tools score better than others, when it comes tospecific needs. One will allow rapid construction, while the other one will score better at offeringmore 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 toolbaris very helpful for testing various issues you may have with your browser-based training. Theextension adds a toolbar to Firefox with a wide variety of handy Web development tools. Some ofthe more helpful tools include the ability to view CSS style information, resize windows, and dis-play 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 forexample).

(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 preventrepetitive 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. TheTransition Mask (tranMask_mc) in the player.fla file really threw me for a loop when I increasedthe overall size of the stage. I just dragged the corner of the mask to match the size of the newstage. But every time I previewed the file, the Transition Mask was always about one third thewidth of the stage.What I discovered was the Transition Mask increases in size proportionately, as


Create a styleguide for everyproject, and hirean editor.

Tracey Kogelmann

XIII. Work Practices and General Tips continued

dictated by transitions.as. Simply increasing the size of the mask proportionately solved the prob-lem. Tipster: Dan Karwoski

Test at every stage you can, and test whatever you can. Create a test plan to ensure you cover allareas 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 con-tent operability, SCORM/AICC-related testing, and server and streaming testing. Test launching itfrom different locations globally. How does it handle inside an LMS, or inside the other applica-tions 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 isteaching. Have the link create an e-mail with the subject autofilled in and directed to whateversupport 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-mailaddressed to Support@company C, with the subject: Question regarding How to Archive E-Mail. Ifind 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 con-cepts). 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 stagesof 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-platformaccessibility. However, just having a rich-media e-Learning application means nothing if it's notused effectively.What does this mean? The advantages of a rich-media application lie in its poten-tial to engage and immerse users far more deeply and viscerally than a lecture or print. Being ableto experience something virtually, can have a longer-lasting impact than the written word. By thisconsideration, it makes no sense to develop e-Learning rich-media applications as simply books onthe Web. Though e-Learning is a new industry, other industries have spent decades refining howto make things captivating. Look at toy companies, game companies, advertising companies, andfilms for ideas to make your e-Learning application more engaging to the user. Of course, many ofthese products may be engaging in the short term, but you will find that the most powerful andmemorable media are created by those with an inherent passion for the subject matter. Takeadvantage of rich-media options, and use it to its full potential. But the true potential is still with-in the creators (clients working with vendors) to approach the subject matter with passion andexcitement. In truth, the rich-media application created by an apathetic team will have far lessimpact on the learner than the short paper pamphlet created by an excited team.Tipster: Daniel Fu


Flash-based e-Learning con-tents work fine,if it allowslearners to tog-gle between dif-ferent stages ofvideo content.Then it’s great...

Mohammad Noumans


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 thatthe design and development team agrees upon and adapts as common practice. This structuremakes it easy to locate materials, whether by navigating to a course file, or searching for a file. Forexample, if all storyboards are found in a storyboard file under development, and files are namedusing conventions, the files can quickly and easily be found. Tipster: Marcia Papalas

When producing animations with Flash, it is important to lay down some guidelines. One of themrelates to the size of the Flash animation produced. As our organization offers online postgraduatecourses, 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.Whenthere is audio in the FLASH animation, always check that only the necessary information is includ-ed and narrated. Tipster: Peggy Pang

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 develop-ment tools. I know this is sometimes not economically feasible, but on this particular topic, I don'trecommend creating your content in Flash alone. I would even possibly rename the title to beHow to incorporate Flash content into your e-Learning module.We tried to create an e-Learningmodule completely in Flash, and it turned out to be not only a huge file, but a huge maintenanceeffort. Even after breaking it up into smaller pieces, the flow kept being interrupted by the “PleaseWait, Module Loading” messages. Flash has a lot of Learning Interactions that (with a little imagi-nation) can be incorporated into some HTML content very effectively, or included as animationbetween static content slides of a Web conference. There are also a lot of tools (such as those atSwishZone.com and Camtasia Studio) that create .SWF files for use within an e-Learning module.Tipster: Brian Lauer

Organize your learning interactions by the task they support. For instance, you may have a Flashfile that allows a user to simulate logging into your proprietary system. You can insert that fileinto a self-paced course, push it out during a synchronous learning event, or post it under the helpportion of your intranet. Since one learning interaction can have several uses, use naming conven-tions 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 indi-vidual Flash file. You can then combine them to make a larger, overall task. This approach allowsyou greater flexibility with reusing and repackaging the Flash files to suit varying needs, enablesthe student to consume one task at a time and target their learning, and helps you manage filesize 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 willhelp in load time, and also in playback. Tipster: Kelly Peterson


Keep it moving,not just visually,but conceptual-ly. In this chan-nel-surfing, can-always-hit-the-rewind-buttonera, learnershave low toler-ance for produc-tions that areinefficient withtheir time.

Roger Courville


For large projects or organization-wide development efforts, use an LCMS to manage and shareFlash 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-the-rewind-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 haveadded complex learning objects, a very simple use of this technique is to build a simple .SWF filemade up of Flash's built-in components, such as scrolling fields, graphic panes, and text-entryfields. This works especially well for building e-Book self studies where screen real estate is at apremium. You may use PowerPoint's ability to import Flash files. The technique is even easier withthe Adobe Presenter plugin installed, which offers a menu item on the PowerPoint menu bar forimporting Flash. Tipster: Mark Scher

All of our courses have a Help button, as well as a final page which instructs the learner how tocomplete a post-assessment for the course. Since we constantly update our LMS, the content forthe Help and final pages often changes.What we've done is create one global page each for theHelp 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 theHelp 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 includestemplates in all tools. Set up things like colors, themes, pop-ups, text boxes, timing, logos, behav-ior, output, skins, the lot! Take the time to map your templates out, test them, and pilot thembefore you create your content. This will save you an incredible amount of time, and will guaran-tee you a consistent and great looking end product! Tipster: Petra Jennings

I have created Flash-based training courses for healthcare companies and the Department OfDefense for the past eight years. Over that time, I have learned that the most critical componentto any course is a shared delivery framework. This is a standardized frame or player, which auto-matically loads all learning content based on the user's role and the content available. The goal ofthis shared delivery framework, or shared player, is that a standard look can be stored and calledup 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, theshared player system is comprised of three or four components, depending on your use. A player, amenu, content .SWFs, and audio MP3s.

• The Player:This standard component runs the course. This includes your custom branding, aswell as a specific look and feel. Any buttons should be obvious, yet unobtrusive. Text boxesshould be clear, and large enough for any variables that are loaded into them. The player ensuresa consistent look and feel is maintained through the course.


I have been creat-ing multimediafor over 10 years.Conceptuallyclear is moreimportant thantechnically accu-rate. That's myless-than-10-minute story, andI'm sticking to it.

Scott Newman


• 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 ismuch easier to edit and modify. A different menu file can be created for each lesson or topic in acourse, 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 styleas the player, but this is up to the designer. The content .SWFs should reside in folders based ontopics or lessons. Content .SWFs can be simple slideshows, basic user interactions, or even com-plex animations.

• The Audio MP3s: Depending on your use, you may want to include narration for your content. Ifyou were to include this audio in the compiled content .SWFs, the resulting file size would makeloading next to unbearable for the user. The best way to include audio is to stream it in at play-time. This means that external MP3 files are loaded in and played while the user is viewing thecontent .SWFs.

• How They Work Together:To begin, the user will open a link which will load the remote playerand a local menu file. The player will process the menu file, and populate a graphical menu withthe titles of the content .SWFs. The player can then display the menu to the user, allowing theuser to select the content they need. Once the content is selected, the player can load the con-tent .SWF, and any available MP3s, based on the link listed in the menu. Also, this player is capa-ble 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 variablesset in the menu file.

Tipster: Rich Gamer

Remember the early 1990s when tool vendors told Instructional System Designers (ISDs) that noprogramming 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 out-putting it as Flash really is simple, using tools such as Adobe Presenter 6 or Articulate. So, my tip isto evaluate these products to see which best meets your needs, and use them when they are theright development tools for a given situation. The temptation, though, is to put such tools solely inthe hands of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) which is going to produce what we'd expect … SMEbrain dumps with clip art in Flash. The need for good ISD and graphic arts hasn't lessened with theintroduction of these rapid development tools into our toolkits. In fact, design may be moreimportant than ever. Our role is in “figuring things out” during the analysis phase, and designingthe most creative, learner-centered, job-relevant learning experiences possible, given the limita-tions of PowerPoint-to-Flash authoring tools. Further, we can set up content-free instructionalframeworks for SMEs to populate with content. These approaches embrace the easy-to-use toolsof 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 tostart by determining the needs and objectives of the training. Once you have a clear vision for


Know your audi-ence, specificallytheir technicalcapabilities. Thishelps you to cre-ate the appropri-ate media, andallows you tohave a knowntesting environ-ment.

Eric Shiblom


what the training needs to accomplish, then you can determine the best technology to supportthe training. Too many times, e-Learning professionals get a new technology and want to use it intheir next training initiative, when that might not be the best way of delivering the content. Don'tlet 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 multiplelanguages, you should take care of the amount of text and graphics included in a screen. This isespecially true for courses being developed in Flash, without the help of authoring tools. Thedeveloper 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. Asimple example is the word Print, which in Spanish is Impresion, an increase of four alpha charac-ters. Tipster: Himadri Chowdhury

Know your audience, specifically their technical capabilities. This helps you to create the appropri-ate 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 cut-ting out the fluff is not easy for most people to do. Never use transitional sentences like “On thisnext slide you will see…” Those are just wasted words that bore people to tears. Moreover, don'tput any graphics on screen unless they directly support what you are saying. Sorry, when you aretalking about e-mail, the worst thing you can show is that tired old animated .GIF of a mailboxopening and closing. RESIST THE URGE! Don't use technical terms. Pretend your intended audienceis your Mother.Would she really care (or understand) that a file was backwardly compatible orsimply 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-minutestory, and I'm sticking to it. Tipster: Scott Newman

Flash-based interactivity can be plucked in the LMS independently as a full-fledged course, andalso can be integrated with some other course made up in some different authoring tool. As in thefirst case, when one is thinking of independently integrating Flash on LMS, try to pluck Flash intoFlash (we can call it “Nested Flash”). This will ease the process of developing complicated coursesas well, like scenario-based or chain simulations or decision trees and so on. The ability of Flash inVideo and audio handling is amazing. There I will suggest the 3-D character-based animationscenes or scenarios, since at many places we face challenges in getting real persons performingthose scenes. Tipster: Bhanwar Singh

Build content in small blocks, which can be easily edited and reused repeatedly to form largerpieces of learning. Tipster: Hedley Hamilton

There are ways to use load time more creatively than an animated icon. In Plimoth Plantation'sOnline Learning Center (http://plimoth.org/education/olc/index_js2.html), we displayed questions


Build contentin small blocks,which can beeasily editedand reusedrepeatedly toform largerpieces of learn-ing.

Hedley Hamilton


that were relevant to the page that was loading. Hence, while waiting, a student started thinkingabout the topic they were about to learn about, such as primary sources or the Wampanoags.Wereceived very positive feedback on this feature from teachers and students, because it movedwaiting from drudgery to something fun and educational. And, realistically, lots of people stilldon't have broadband. Tipster: Lisa Neal



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 TechnologySpecialist,Tele Atlas

Andrew Teasdale, Process Manager,Humana, Inc.

Angela Nicholas, Instructional Designer,NWREL

Aragon Heppel,Training/Support/Development Manager,Webqem

Becky Kinney, Sole Proprietor,Moonlight Multimedia

Bhanwar Singh, Business Development –SE, Content Division, HarbingerKnowledge Products

Brian Dusablon, Instructional Designer,Administaff

Brian J. Kidd, Courseware Development,Walt Disney Parks and Resorts

Brian Lauer, Customer Education ProductSpecialist, Freddie Mac

Bruce Richards, Research andInstructional Design Coordinator,Missouri State University

Carlyne Lynch, Sharing Filter Libraries,ARRIS

Chris Bahns, e-Learning Designer,LexisNexis

Chris Stape,Training Program Manager,HAMMER/Hanford Training

Christy Tucker, Instructional Designer,Performance Learning Systems

Claudio Ierulli, Developer, CIBC

Cliff Singontiko, Senior Manager of ArtDirection, Farmers

Conan Heiselt, Instructional Designer,TechSmith Corp.

Dan Karwoski, Senior Media Designer,Intuit

Daniel Fu, Multimedia Designer,Enspire Learning

Daphen Gonzalvez,Teacher, SydneyDistance Education High School

Dave Harris, Business ApplicationsTraining Consultant, BCS

David Becker

David Miller, Multimedia Developer,Newmarket International

David Williams,VP,Technology, NexLearn

Denise Link,Vice President,Phasient Learning Technologies

Doug Marlowe, Master of theKnowledge Domain, teachITnow

Eber Ribeiro Pinto, Ciatech – Companhiada 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-LearningDeveloper, HDR

Garin Hess, CEO, Rapid Intake

George Aston, Senior e-LearningSpecialist, Regence BCBS

George Ritacco, Director,Client Services, Global VisionTechnologies, Inc.

Glenn Hansen, National Learning andDevelopment Consultant,The SalvationArmy Employment Plus

Grant Sherson, Universal College ofLearning (NZ)

Halil Ibrahim BÜLBÜL, Gazi University

Hedley Hamilton, MD, Any-3 Ltd.

Himadri Chowdhury, Logica

Janeann Hudson, InstructionalDesigner/Content Developer, USN

Janet Clifford, Instructional Designer,Kronos

Jasir Alherbish, e-Learning Consultant

Jason Harris, Latitude Consulting Group

Jeff Batt, Marketing Coordinator,Rapid Intake

Jeff Holth, CTO, Innova Products, LLC

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 ServicesCoordinator, Century College

Joey Tuskan, Interface Designer/Programmer, e4tn

John Anderson, UNC CH, SSW

John Best, Business ExcellenceEducational 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


XIV. Thanks to Our Tipsters

Kathy Schroeder, Director of Marketing,Atomic Learning

Kathy Zottmann, e-Learning Consultant,WaMu

Kelly Peterson,Trainer, RenaissanceLearning

Kevin O'Donnell, Senior GraphicsDesigner, JDA Software Group,Business Management Institute

Kevin Wilcoxon, Principal,The Instructional Web LLC

Kieran Richardson, Director of ProductManagement, Flypaper Studio, Inc.

Krishna Prathab R V, Owner,www.lastashero.com

Laura Filla, Sr.Technical Writer,TouchNet Information Systems, Inc.

Laura Jaffrey, Instructional Designer,Knowledgework

Lawrence Yau, Scientist, NATO

Leif Nelson, Instructional Designer/Technologist, University of Wisconsin –Green Bay

Leigh Anne McIntyre, InstructionalDesigner, Instructional Spice

Leigh Margaret Roberts, e-LearningPrograms Director, Career BuilderInstitute

Lisa Neal, Consultant, http://lisaneal.com

Madhanaraj Kubenderan,Tech Skill Lead,e-Learning, Robert Engineering andBusiness Solutions

Marcia Papalas

Marge Rutter, Instructional Designer,Springhouse Education and Consulting

Maria Coelho, Customer Relations,QuickLessons

Mario Gutiérrez Toledo, MultimediaProducer, Mystica Hipermedia,Santiago-Chile

Mark Hemingway, Co-founder and CIO,Sharp Media

Mark Scher, Principal, Scher Progression,LLC

Mark Simon, Sr.Training Specialist,Eliassen Group

Mark Temple, Multimedia Developer,Newmarket Internation Inc.

Matt Perkins

Maureen A. Barlow,Training &Development Specialist, e-Learning,TuftsHealth Plan

Michael Alcock, Managing Director,Atlantic Link

Michael Baker, Information ResourceCoordinator, South Carolina Departmentof Social Services

Mike Dickinson, Director, e-Learning &Curriculum,The SCOOTER Store

Mike Hobby,Training and DevelopmentManager, Oak Harbor Freight Lines, Inc.

Milo Dodds, IT Analyst – e-LearningDevelopment Lead, IT Learning Group –Cisco Systems Inc.

Mohammad Nouman, e-Lecturer,VirtualUniversity of Pakistan

Monika Sharma, Instructional DesignManager, Aptara, Inc.

Mrs. G. Mythili, Multimedia Developer,Sify Technologies Limited

Nick Floro, CEO,Sealworks Interactive Studios

Nick Stanziani, Duane Morris, LLP

Paul Vandegriff,Training Consultant,Various

Peggy Pang, Senior Manager,Learning Design, U21Global Pte, Ltd.

Peter Ryce, Evangelist,Adobe Systems, Inc.

Petra Jennings, Manager, LearningContent, Saba, Inc.

Phil Cross, Manager, Engineering,NexLearn

Philip Roy, E-Learning Facilitator,Massey University

Prakash Bebington, Learning Consultant,Aptech Limited

Raghavendra,Technical Writer, Oracle

Ram Mohan,Team Leader,Sterco Digitex Pvt. Limited

Red Resener, Director of Development,Automated Learning Solutions, Inc.

Rich Garner,Web Developer, Amerigroup

RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist,Adobe Systems, Inc.

Rob Wiggins, Learning Technology & ODSpecialist, St. Josephs HealthcareHamilton

Robbe Addis, Programmer &Instructional Developer, GeneralDynamics 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 FlashTechnology, 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 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

Silke Fleischer, Sr. Product MarketingManager, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Steve Hancock, President, Rapid Intake

Steve Johnson, Senior e-LearningDesigner

Steve Jones,The Alignment Group

Stuart Hornsey, Sales Director,Any-3 Ltd.

Suresh Jayaraman, Sr. Product MarketingManager, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Susan McDonald Osborn,Owner, Laurus Design, LLC

Susan Steinfeldt, Lead Educator,Computer Based Training,Carle Foundation Hospital

Swan, Director,WSB

Thomas Gnas, Manager of Learning andDevelopment, Eisai Medical Research

Tim Bobo, Owner, Left Brain Media

Tim Kindberg, Lead Designer,Trivantis

Todd Irvin,Training Manager,United Way of America

Tom Kuhlmann,VP, Community,Articulate

Tonia Dousay, e-Learning Manager,Texas Engineering Extension Service

Tracey Kogelmann, Multimedia Designerand Developer, Newmarket International

Uday Kranti, Senior Consultant, NIIT

Vicki Krajewski, Instructional Designer,Pearson

Wendy Phillips, Online Training Specialist,Bigpond

Wimong Ma, Student, Hebei University


VII. The Tipsters continued

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