IT Training - The Blog

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Captivate Aggregator vs. TOC

We've received a few questions about the Aggregate feature in Captivate 4. Allow me to explain what Aggregate is, why you might use it, and how it's different from the Table of Contents.

Aggregator



The aggregate feature is a new addition to Captivate 4 and allows a user to compile several individual files into one big file. To do this, your individual files need to be already published in .swf form. When you open the aggregator, choose your Action Script version (keep it consistent with your individual file AS settings) and then add the individual .swf files from their saved location. The result will be a new, larger .swf that includes the attached projects and a menu on the left allowing the user to navigate.

The aggregator is better for very large projects that can be broken up into individual sequences. This will help cut down on publish and preview time because you won’t have 50+ slides to process; instead, you’ll have individual 15-20 slide projects that can be compiled together.

Table of Contents











Captivate gives you the ability to create a table of contents within a single Captivate project. While the end result (being able to navigate through a project) is essentially the same as that of the aggregator feature, the table of contents is different because it navigates at a more local level (slide by slide), whereas the aggregator navigates at a broader level (project by project).

The table of contents is better for smaller, contained projects that still need navigability.

For more information about these features and more in Captivate 4, register for our Captivate class at http://it.byu.edu/training.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Bleeding Slugs in the Gutter (It's not as bad as it sounds)

First and foremost, let me put in a plug for our excellent InDesign/Desktop Publishing class. If you are in charge of fliers, posters, newsletters, or any other publication, you will want to sign up for this free class.

In Word, you have probably run into the problem of trying to get everything to fit on one page. You make the font a little smaller, then you make the margins a little smaller. With just one line of text left on the next page and a font size that shouldn't be any smaller, you resort to making the margins smaller and smaller until at last, it all fits on that one page. Perfect. Click print and...

"The margins of section ? are set outside the printable area of the page."Doh! This begs the question, how then do magazines and other publications print with ink to the edge of the paper?Do they just have fancier printers than I do? Well, the truth is, probably. But it's not just the printers. In desktop publishing, there are a few features of document design that enable this effect. If you have ever used InDesign, you've probably seen such terms as bleed, margin, slug, gutter, etc. All of these terms have to do with printing and document layout.

To see what I mean, open a new document in InDesign. I'll create it with the following settings:If you can't see all the options in the picture above, click More Options. Don't know what kind of measurement this is? See what Google has to say.

Once you click OK, you will see the first page of your document. And a lot of lines. At least it's colorful! Right? Well, all the lines mean something and I've put together this handy little picture as a reference for you. Below, I will discuss each line.Here is my breakdown of each one of the regions displayed above (the answer to the problem stated above is found in the bleed description):

Paper Size
This is the simplest one and easiest to understand. The black line is showing you the paper size. In our case, it is 8.5" x 11". Everything inside the black line will be visible on the final printed publication. Everything (or close to it) outside it is useful but will not be visible when all is said and done. Keep that in mind.

Margin
The margin is a region inside of the paper. It is the space between your text and the edge of the paper. Because paper gets ruffled or torn on the edges, or because you don't want the possibility of your printer messing up and printing text of the paper, we use a margin as kind of "safety zone." I personally think it helps readability if text isn't going right up to the edge.

Gutter
This is basically a margin for columns. That's it. It is the space in between two columns.

Bleed
The bleed is the red (how clever) region just outside the paper. If you were going to send your publication to a printer, they would specify how big your bleed should be. Imagine this: you are creating a publication that is 8.5" x 11". Well, like you, the publisher's printer can't print to edge of the paper. How do they do it? They print your 8.5" x 11" publication on bigger paper (the printer would tell you how big so you could set the bleed) and then they cut your paper. When they are done, it appears as if the ink bleeds right to the edge of the paper.You can see in this image that the left would be pre-printed, and the right would be end result. (picture courtesy of Printernational)

Slug
The slug is like a comments section for non-printing information that might be helpful if you are collaborating with a team of people. For example, the title of the document, any edits you may have made, the date of the most recent update, etc.

If you have any other questions or are interested in more basics of InDesign, sign up for an InDesign Foundations class today.

Branching in Qualtrics

So you’re about to create three different surveys to send to three different audiences, (for example prospective students, students, and grad students)… except you don’t know how do you make sure each respondent gets the right survey. Qualtrics has an easy answer, just create one survey and use branches to get the right information from everyone.

Start out with a question that segregates your audiences (are you a student, grad student exc.). Then set up three blocks, one for the responses for each group. Now go into your survey flow, and add branch for each possible answer to your first question. These branches work a little like skip logic in that you set up a condition, and only the respondents that meet that condition see that part of the survey. Set a condition for each possible answer to the first question, and then add as a new element the block of questions for that group.

By using branches, you just simplified your survey sending process! You now only need one mailing list, and you can ensure the right people are answering the right questions.

To learn more about Qualtrics, sign up for our Qualtrics course.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Why "Alpha?!"

The reason the transparency color option is called "Alpha" in Adobe Flash:

So you've sat through class; Adobe Flash Day 3. You're now making a slide show on your own. You've imported images, you've made them all symbols and now you're adding the fade in and fade out effects. You select your graphic symbol, cruise on down to the Properties tab and see "Color: None." Confidently, you select the drop-down menu to make your fade-out transition effects and see....Alpha? How does that even make sense?!

From what i can find, it all goes back to the development of a type of code made up of 0s and 1s that was created in the 70s. This code, which refers specifically to an element called the "alpha channel," is used for storing information about a 2D image in computer graphics. The 0s and 1s represent if there is any information to be saved per pixel. (A 0 indicates a fully transparent color and a 1 represents a fully opaque color.) I'm assuming they chose the word "Alpha" for this topmost channel because "alpha" is the first letter of the Greek alphabet (get it? ALPHAbet?) like the letter "A" (get it? A for ALPHA?!) Anyway - the process of Alpha compositing is adjusting the values in the alpha channel (the top layer where color information is stored on a per pixel basis) so as to combine the image with it's background to give it a transparent effect.

Get This!:
For the invention and development of the alpha channel, Smith, Catmull, Porter, and Duff won a technical Academy Award in 1996!!
Want to learn more about Adobe Flash or sign up for a class? Click here!

Sources:
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_compositing
2.http://research.swtch.com/2008/01/alpha-compositing.html