In This Issue
Introduction
ToolBook User's
Conference 2000 Report
Three New Releases From Platte Canyon
- TBK Tracker 2.1
- Plug-In Pro 5.0
- Resources Plus 2.0
Conference Previews: OLL Europe and OLL
Platte Canyon Products in the Pipeline
Action Editor Tip from Cindy Kessler: Shared
Actions
CBT Creation Tip from Chris Bell: Flash
and ToolBook
Expert Information from "Learning
& Mastering..." Series
OpenScript Tip from Jeff Rhodes
Coming in the Next Issue
Information on Subscriptions and Article
Submissions
by Chris Bell
It's a big Platte Canyon product time right now. We are enjoying
spreading the word about our three new releases. And we are in the midst
of working on some very exiting new products to come out over the next
few months. While working on ToolBook-related products is practically
our favorite thing to do around here, we also like meeting up with other
ToolBook developers.
It was a treat to see so many developers at the ToolBook User's
Conference. It's always fun to see what wonderful applications people
are creating with ToolBook. If we didn't get a chance to hook up at the
ToolBook User's Conference, please stop by our booth or one of our
presentations at OLL Europe or OLL. We'd love to see you.
This issue of the EnterPage covers our newest product releases as
well as giving an early preview about the newest products to come out
from Platte Canyon. And, as always, you'll also find a collection of
tips and information for ToolBook developers.
Enjoy!
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The ToolBook User's Conference finished its three-day run on June 28,
but we have continued to receive unsolicited comments from attendees
ever since. As a group, these comments provide a good picture of the
event. Here are selections from the comments:
"I had a wonderful time at the conference!! Besides it being
very informative, I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with all of
the users of ToolBook and hear about the exciting new ideas they
have."
"I came back so motivated."
"TBCON was well organized and enriching."
"I turned in a survey but I would also like to add that the
conference has been a real help in my job. I found tons of hints and
tips there and will be back in the future."
"The conference was a great success. We have wasted no time
incorporating ideas from the conference into some of our projects."
"Great Users Conference! I had a great time, accommodations were
surprisingly comfortable (Loomis Hall), food was out of this world and
of course the session themselves were A number 1!"
"I very much enjoyed the conference -- it was very well
organized, and I liked the "small" feeling of it with easy
access to the presenters and other attendees. The scope of material
covered was very good too. I'm looking forward to the CD as well!"
"It was a great conference just loaded with real solutions not
promises of what you should be able to do."
"This was one of the smoothest running, best organized,
valuable, and fun conferences I have ever been around."
"We brought away a wealth of useful information."
"I had a great time at the conference and look forward to next
year. I found something of value in every session I attended."
For those of you who couldn't attend the conference or would like
extra copies, conference CD's will soon be available for $50 plus $5
shipping & handling ($10 outside of the U.S.). To place an order, go
to https://outlaw.securewebs.com/plattecanyon/store/
or call us at 888-866-5251.
Plan ahead for next year's conference: ToolBook User's Conference
2001 Colorado Springs, Colorado July 30 to August 1, 2001
We'll be spreading the preconference over both Saturday and Sunday
(July 28 and 29) next year with the idea that most people will attend
one day or the other.
See pictures from the 2000 conference and watch for more information
on the 2001 event at www.tbcon.com.
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We have been busy updating products designed to meet our company goal
of "Improving the Lives of Training Developers." Since the
last EnterPage, we have released three major upgrades to our products.
Here are some product descriptions:
TBK Tracker 2.1
Version 2.1 of this powerful student tracking and course management
system brings a wealth of industry-leading features to ToolBook 7.1 or
later courses. Whether you are interested in the date a student
completed a lesson or detailed question analysis, TBK Tracker has the
information you need.
Simultaneously track thousands of users on a local area network or
single users via CD or Neuron deployment. TBK Tracker is the easiest
(no scripting required), most powerful, and most easily managed
tracking system for natively deployed ToolBook courses.
Use the Administrator to configure courses and lessons, set global
properties, or (optionally) assign courses to students.
Then use the TBK Tracker catalog and new "TBTrack" menu
to quickly set up your Instructor or Assistant books. Deploy your
application with no runtime fees. We even give you the complete
InstallShield Professional source code for creating a CD installation.
Use the Reporter to analyze the data with over 90 built-in reports
(using Crystal Reports 8) on students, courses, lessons, and classes.
For more information, see www.plattecanyon.com/tbktracker.aspx
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Plug-In Pro 5.0
What Is It?
The Plug-in Pro 5.0 extends what you can do in ToolBook, making
authoring fast and easy.
-Automates repetitive manual tasks
-Displays information about multiple objects in a single editor
-Performs operations on specified objects or types of objects
What Can It Do?
Makes working on your course easier
-Show or hide objects at the touch of a button
Make reviewing your course easier
-Apply "sticky notes" during reviews; move from sticky note
to sticky note to make the changes
-Create external "comment" files
Makes managing resources easier
-Import and export graphic resources or clips
Makes editing questions easier
-Brand new question editors
-Edit key properties from a single page
One-click access to…
-A list of resources in the book
-Opening the Catalog directly to Questions
-A detailed "book" report
-Pages in the current or another book
-Much, much more
For more information, see www.plattecanyon.com/pluginpro.aspx
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Resources Plus 2.0
Have you ever wished you could sort your bitmap, shared script, or
other resources alphabetically? Have you ever had to painstakingly
delete resources one-by-one? Have you ever inadvertently had multiple
copies of the same shared script? If so, Resources Plus is for you:
-Easily sort and delete multiple resources -Build either a
"delete" or "keep" list from bitmap files in a
directory -View thumbnails of your graphic resources, the actual text
of shared scripts, and representations of menubar resources -Fix
duplicate shared scripts by "combining" them so that a
single shared script is used by all affected objects - Much more
For more information, see www.plattecanyon.com/resourcesplus.aspx
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Stop by and see us at these upcoming conferences:
OnLine Learning Euro 2000
September 5 - 7
Cheltenham, UK
This event, which has also traditionally served as the European
ToolBook Developers Conference, attracts developers from around Europe
and the world. Platte Canyon is pleased to once again sponsor this
fine conference. Both Jeff Rhodes and Chris Bell will be attending and
presenting this year:
Tuesday, September 5, 10:00 am to 4:30 pm
Jeff and Chris present a preconference seminar on "A Detailed
Look at ToolBook Instructor."
Wednesday, September 6, 11:30 am to 12:15 pm
Chris will present "User Interface Design for ToolBook Using
PhotoShop."
Wednesday, September 6, 3:45 pm to 4:30 pm
Jeff will present "ADO, Databases, and ToolBook."
Thursday, September 7, 10:15 am to 11:00 am
Jeff will present "Secrets Behind the 'Learning & Mastering
ToolBook' Series"
Thursday, September 7, 12:15 pm to 1:00 pm
Chris will present "CBT Essentials: The Art, Sound, and Motion of
Training"
Be sure to bring your checkbooks to the charity dinner on Wednesday
night. Kevin and his staff will be auctioning copies of "Learning
& Mastering ToolBook Instructor 7.1", "Learning &
Mastering ToolBook Assistant 7.1", "Plug-In Pro
5.0", and a "Product Sampler" disk containing TB Start,
Resources Plus, Answer Key, and FTS Pro. There will also be various
Click2learn products available. All proceeds go to a local
charity.
OnLine Learning 2000
September 25 - 28
Denver, Colorado
www.onlinelearning2000.com
Hosted in Denver for the first time, this is a large general focus
conference for those interested in on-line training. Here are some
known Platte Canyon Highlights:
Throughout the conference:
Stop by the Platte Canyon booth (#1400) located right by the front
door. See live demonstrations of the full Platte Canyon product line.
Pick up a pen, a notepad folder, or just say Hi.
Monday, September 25, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm
Jeff will present "Case Study on Creating CBT on a Software
Package" (Session 324)
Wednesday, September 27, 9:30 am to 11:00 am
Chris will present "Using 3D Animation to Improve CBT - A Case
Study" (Session 719)
Wednesday, September 27, 3:15 pm to 04:45 pm (Community Room)
Jeff and Chris will host a "ToolBook Q & A" session in
the Click2learn Community Room.
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What products can you expect to see from Platte Canyon in the next
six months or so?
- ToolBook External Data System (TEDS) 1.0. This is a brand new
product that gives you the option of storing any or all content in
an Access database. It will allow you to switch content "on the
fly" when using traditional deployment or simply load your book
in author mode (e.g., to load your book with Spanish before
publishing to the web). Look for release around the end of October.
- Progress Tracker 2.0. This major update will allow you to track
your "single book" modules natively in an Access database.
It will support an optional "menu" book of all "open
enrollment" or assigned modules for a particular student.
Administration and reporting will also be vastly improved. Look for
release around the end of November.
- TB Start 2.0. This update will add the ability to run totally from
CD. For those of you who receive a TBCON 2000 CD, you'll see the
prototype for this functionality in its "autorun"
application. It detects if author-level 7.2 is available and, if so,
enables a "Start in Author Mode" button. Either way, its
"Start in Runtime" button launches the 7.2 runtime files
and starts the correct book - all from CD. Look for release whenever
we can squeeze this in.
- Learning & Mastering ToolBook Instructor 8 / Learning &
Mastering ToolBook Assistant 8. We'll be working hard on updating
our popular training products once we can get our hands on any kind
of beta copy of Instructor and Assistant 8. Look for release about
45 days after Instructor and Assistant 8 ship.
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Shared Actions cannot use variable object references
One technique frequently used in OpenScript that is NOT available in
the Action System is the use of variables to reference objects.
Consider the following OpenScript code that sets the caption of six
buttons:
step num from 1 to 6
caption of button ("button" && num) = "Step" && num
end step
To do this same thing in a shared action, you need to provide the
object reference for each button to the page level:
set caption of button "button 1" of page "Steps" to "Step 1"
set caption of button "button 2" of page "Steps" to "Step 2"
set caption of button "button 3" of page "Steps" to "Step 3"
etc.
This clearly has an impact on the re-usability of shared actions
since you cannot use these same actions to modify buttons on a different
page.
One alternative: Create a shared action that receives the name of
each button as a parameter and returns a caption based on that name.
Then call the shared action from each button, passing "name of
self" as the parameter. Assign another action that sets the caption
of self to the returnValue. This allows you to duplicate and rename the
buttons without changing the action.
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CBT Creation Tip from Chris Bell: Flash
and ToolBook
Macromedia's Flash product has made a splash. The program is an
excellent animation package that even allows some interactivity ... and
it works perfectly inside of ToolBook. Once you create a Flash Movie,
there are several ways of getting it to work inside of ToolBook, the
simplest is to use the Universal Media Player.
To do so, simply drag the Universal Media Player from the catalog to
your page and set its extended property to point to the Flash file you
created. It is best to have the Flash file and ToolBook file in the same
directory. That's it! Set up is complete.
The biggest advantage to using the Universal Media Player is that the
Flash animation will export to DHTML without requiring any additional
developer setup. Also, the Action System works with the Universal Media
Player, so you can add interactivity and communicate back and forth
between ToolBook and the Flash movie.
It is important to realize, however, that when deploying a native
ToolBook file (rather than exporting to DHTML), all users will need to
have the Macromedia Flash ActiveX control installed on their system.
While it is likely that many users will already have the Flash ActiveX
control on their system, it is not guaranteed. Therefore, at the very
least, the developer should alert the users that they need to download
the Flash player from the Macromedia Web site.
For professional CD-ROM based applications we advise creating an
installation routine that installs the ToolBook Runtime files and then
automatically checks the system to determine if the Flash ActiveX
control is installed. If it is not installed, the setup routine would
install it automatically. This requires a license to distribute the
Flash Player ActiveX control, which is available free form Macromedia.
This type of installation routine requires a professional installation
package such as InstallShield Pro.
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Array Properties, System Variables, and Maximum Size
Although arrays can be stored as user properties, you can't read or
write the individual elements of them directly. You must first assign
the array to a local or system variable. If you need to change it, then
you must save it back to a property again. To avoid this, I store all
frequently used arrays as system variables. However, system variables
initially have no value when you start up your application. If the array
has a reasonable amount of data that doesn't change from session to
session, a good way to initialize the array is to set the system
variable to the contents of a user property on enterApplication, and
then update it through the session solely as a system variable. Here's
an example from our Progress Tracker.
to handle setUpChapters book bookID
system chaptersAndSections [maxChapters of bookID][17][2]
-- this is called as part of enterApplication
-- other code deleted here
chaptersAndSections = chaptersAndSections of bookID
-- rest of handler
end setUpChapters
At this point, specific student tracking information is read from
external files into this chaptersAndSections array.
The answers, feedback, and other information in ToolBook's CBT
question objects is stored in user properties of each individual object.
In order to change the content of these (e.g., to change the language to
French or Spanish), you have to assign the array property to a local
property as shown below.
to handle populateQuestionContent object objectID, word num
system string s_currentPageQuestionContent[][]
local tempAnswerArray[][], tempDelayedFeedbackArray[][]
-- code skipped for clarity
tempAnswerArray = asym_wid_ansArray of objectID
tempDelayedFeedbackArray = asym_wid_summaryFeedback of
objectID
-- make changes to the tempAnswerArray and
-- tempDelayedFeedbackArray here
asym_wid_ansArray of objectID = tempAnswerArray
if hasFeedback = true
asym_wid_summaryFeedback of objectID =
tempDelayedFeedbackArray
end if
end populateQuestionContent
One
final piece of information on arrays: Each element can contain up to 64K
of data. This is the same as a single local or system variable. Thus,
arrays are a good way to avoid some of the built-in limits of ToolBook.
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One of the challenges in creating the TBCON 2000 Conference CD was
creating a ToolBook page for each session and a corresponding directory
on the CD to hold that session's files. As with many other ToolBook
challenges, using OpenScript helped tremendously. The code below is part
of a "Generate Pages and Subdirectories" handler accessible
from the author-level "TBCON" menu. I had previously read both
the session names and desired directory names from an Access database
into the sessionArray[][] variable. We then use a "source"
page that is the first page of the background (this is variable
sourcePageID). For each session that doesn't already have a
corresponding page, we copy the source page and set some relevant
properties. We then do the same thing for the directory: check to see if
it's there and, if not, create it.
backgroundID = background "presentations"
linkDLL "tbfile32.dll"
INT createDirectory32(STRING)
INT setCurrentDirectory32(STRING)
end linkDLL
numDirs = 0
numSessions = item 1 of dimensions(sessionArray)
sourcePageID = page 1 of backgroundID
numPages = pageCount of backgroundID
pagesCreated = 0
step num from 1 to numSessions
sessionName = sessionArray[num][4]
pageName = removeSpaces(sessionName)
pageName = trimPageName(pageName)
if isObject(page pageName) = FALSE
-- create page
pageID = copyObject(sourcePageID, (page numPages of backgroundID))
increment numPages
increment pagesCreated
arrayNum of pageID = num
name of pageID = pageName
end if
newDir = s_bookDir & sessionArray[num][16]
sysSuspend = false
clear sysError
get setCurrentDirectory32(newDir)
if sysError <> null or it <> 1
clear sysError
get createDirectory32(newDir)
if sysError <> null or it <> 1
request "Error in creating directory:" && (name of pageID) && "Error = " && sysError
else
increment numDirs
end if
end if
end step
sysSuspend = true
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- Preview of TEDS 1.0
- Preview of the Progress Tracker 2.0
- Platte Canyon Products in the Pipeline
- Report on OLL Europe and OLL
- More CBT Creation Tips from Chris Bell
- More Action System Tips from Cindy Kessler
- More OpenScript Tips from Jeff Rhodes
- ToolBook Tip (from Learning and Mastering CD-ROM)
- More
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