Category Archives: Development Tools

Adobe’s Edge-y HTML5 Development Tools

Development Tools, HTML5/JS, Multimedia, Other Tools

With Flash being increasingly dismissed for many web projects, Adobe needed an answer to replace at least some of that functionality with a tool that used HTML/JS…resulting in the Edge suite of tools.

Here’s Wikipedia’s entry on the Edge tools. I’m not sure the overview paragraph is terribly accurate, but it’s a good reference page overall, outside Adobe’s site.

That said, Flash isn’t entirely out of the game. With CreateJS integrated, Flash can output to HTML5 Canvas, creating solid images, charts, and animations. I consider this the beginning of the Flash IDE transformation. Until it moves further, however, the Edge tools provide a lot of the otherwise missing HTML functionality.

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Project Narration Guidelines (for eLearning, or most anything)

Multimedia, Other Tools

If your eLearning project calls for narration – whether to enhance the on-screen content, provide navigation instruction, to address 508/Accessibility requirements, or just to have an extra bit of media within your piece (the suitability of all to be ideally determined in your instructional design phase) – there are essentially two approaches: Record it yourself (or ‘in-house’) or Hire a professional.

In-house narration can be worthwhile for a variety of reasons. For example, if a faculty member or subject-matter expert is well-known, having that SME record the narration can lend some weight to the overall engagement and perceived validity of the course; or if you need to work out the timing of various media elements, recording a temporary ‘scratch’ track can certainly help with production and beta reviews of the product before expenses are incurred using professional talent.

Professional narration does usually add a cost to the projects, of course, but with proper management of the script and resources, it doesn’t have to be expensive. The advantages of clean, clear, and properly-enunciated narration can only help improve the overall quality of the project.

If you work with outside, professional narrators – or even experienced narrators in-house – Rebecca Haugh (a narrator we’ve used often) has published a solid set of 5 Tips for eLearning Voice Recording. And of course, those are solid considerations to keep in mind when you are recording narration internally with less-experienced folks.

Having developed, managed, and even recorded untold numbers of narratives for eLearning projects, here are a few additional guidelines (some of which Rebecca touches on as well):

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Creative Cloud 2014 Release

Development Tools, General Spew

A new release of Adobe’s Creative Cloud is a mere few hours away! We look forward to this significant release and expect solid innovation (i.e. 3D printing support added to Photoshop!). Whether because they want to or really have little choice, professionals are continuing to take up Creative Cloud subscriptions; there are currently more than 1.3 million CC subscribers!

The 2014 release of Creative Cloud is coming: Watch the keynote live online.

On June 18th at 1pm ET see the next evolution of Creative Cloud. All-new desktop and mobile apps, new creative hardware, hundreds of new features and other surprises – all designed to accelerate your creativity and make everything you do every day easier and faster.

Watch the free keynote live on June 18th.

The CC 2014 release (note the addition of a  year to ‘CC’, so there IS some versioning in place, thanksfully) will not replace or overwrite any previous versions you may have installed on your computer and should run side-by-side with earlier software. You can decide when to upgrade and/or uninstall prior versions.

After the CC 2014 launch event, Adobe will commence the Create Now 2014 World Tour – a free live seminar in various citites where you can learn the latest about Creative Cloud, try new products, sharpen design skills, and get inspired!

Check out the Creative Cloud Mosaic fun…

New Recipe (CP7 and Video)

Captivate, Multimedia

In case you missed it, we’ve got a new (and the first) sample piece up on the Recipes page.  this example was created in Captivate 7 to demonstrate two concepts:

  1. How to do a simple ‘clickspot’ (or ‘hotspot’) overlay on video; using a ‘slide video’ on the timeline with clickspots placed at various points, pausing the video, to allow users to interact with the piece.
  2. Showing how an MP4 placed as an ‘Event video’ allows video-specific controls which will work on both desktop (SWF) and mobile (HTML5) output. Event videos in CP are the only way to show video-specific controls, but you cannot then accurately time other timeline events with those videos as they have their own controls.

Head over to the Recipes section to check it out!

Captivate: How to view the HTML5 version anywhere

Captivate, HTML5/JS

When you publish an Adobe Captivate project to both SWF and HTML5, three HTML pages are written to the output folder.

Captivate uses the project title as the filenames for the SWF-version of the published files. Say your project name is “MyProject”… In this case:

  • The SWF output will be titled ‘MyProject.swf’ and its parent HTML file will be titled ‘MyProject.htm”
  • The HTML output is called from the ‘index.html’ or ‘index_SCORM.html’ file (depending on whether or not SCORM is enabled for the project).
  • The third HTML file will be called ‘multiscreen.html’.

The multiscreen.html file involves some trickery which evaluates the browser and/or system that is accessing the project, then displays what it believes to be the appropriate version (SWF or HTML5) for the device. If you publish boimsmanifest-multiscreenth versions to a SCORM .zip package, the ‘imsmanifest.xml’ file within that package specifies the ‘multisceeen.html’ as the primary launch file; so when the user launches the lesson from the LMS, the ‘multiscreen’ file launches first, the trickery is invoked, and the proper version is presented.

If you always want the HTML5 version to  appear, you can edit that manifest file and change this line:

<resource identifier=”SCO_ID1_RES” type=”webcontent” href=”multiscreen.html” adlcp:scormtype=”sco”>

to be:

<resource identifier=”SCO_ID1_RES” type=”webcontent” href=”index_SCORM.html” adlcp:scormtype=”sco”>

However (!), be aware that not all desktop browsers work well with Captivate’s HTML5 output, so be warned this may cause issues for non-mobile users.

When I’m developing Captivate content to be delivered to both desktop and mobile devices, I rely on the manifest and multiscreen files to do their job. When testing published output, I upload the unzipped files to my staging server…and when doing quick tests, I directly load the index_SCORM.html (or just index.html) file using Chrome to do a quick evaluation of how well the mobile output will perform.

Of course, once further along, testing is done on a variety of devices for true evaluation…

So in sum, to quickly check Captivate’s HTML output on your desktop, call the ‘index’ files directly.