Introduction

We live in amazing times. Through the ToolBook and VBTrain.Net email lists, I have come to know friends thousands of miles away better than I know my neighbor down the street. There's really no need to be face to face anymore -- especially when working in the e-Learning industry.

This is one of the reasons why I love TBCON. The conference is a gathering of people who have come to know each other through email messages and perhaps a phone call or two. It's a pleasure to meet these friends face-to-face. In a mailing for the 2003 conference, we said "It's about the software. It's about the people." That pretty much sums it up. The software is our common bond, but the people make the event truly special.

Thank you to everyone who attended. It was great seeing you. And, if you didn't make it to the conference this year, I hope to see you in a future year.

Now that TBCON 2003 is wrapped up, we'll go back to email, phone, and maybe an instant message or two. Or perhaps we'll have a chance to meet at OnLine Learning or another conference. Otherwise, we'll wait until June, when TBCON 2004 will bring one more chance to shake hands with friends new and old.

This issue of the EnterPage both looks back at TBCON 2003 and looks ahead at new products and news from the worlds of ToolBook and VBTrain.Net.

Enjoy!

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ToolBook Tips and News

Plug-In Pro Tool Spotlight: Magnification

Sometimes you need to see your ToolBook page bigger than normal to make sure things are working just right. If you want simple magnification, then you might be okay just using ToolBook's Magnify tool. But when you want lots of flexibility and power, then the Plug-In Pro magnification tool is the only way to go.

Say you want to zoom in at 1600% and look at the new object that you just created to make sure it's positioned just right. At this big, scroll bars are difficult to use. Wouldn't it be nicer to specify the object you want to inspect and then just navigate around that object? Plug-In Pro's magnification lets you do this.

Also, the time I use it the most is in reader mode. ToolBook's built in magnification does not work in reader mode, but Plug-In Pro's Magnification palette stays active even in reader. This means you can test your mouseEnter/mouseLeave behavior while zoomed in on the exact area of the screen you need to see.

Magnification is just one of the 140+ tools in the Plug-In Pro. See the online help for Magnification at:

http://www.plattecanyon.com/help/pluginpro/Magnifying_Your_Screen.htm

Learn more about Plug-In Pro at:

http://www.plattecanyon.com/pluginpro.aspx

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Expert Information from the "Learning & Mastering ToolBook..." Series

by Jeff Rhodes

There are two schools of thought in regards to where to locate your system books.

1) Put them in the ToolBook directory (the one defined by the system property sysToolBookDirectory). One big advantage of this approach is that there will only be ONE copy of the system book on the machine. There is no chance of having the system book diverge into different copies for different applications. The other big plus for this approach is that the system book will typically be installed on the hard disk along with the ToolBook runtime. This allows you to distribute patches if necessary without having to repress CD's (if using CD-ROM distribution). Editor’s note: We had to do EXACTLY this to make the Learning & Mastering 8 CD work with ToolBook 8.5 author mode. When you put the hardest (and most likely to break) code in the system book, this minimizes the chances you'll have to update the application books themselves. The principal disadvantage of the ToolBook directory approach is that you have to be extremely careful not to make system book changes that will break previously delivered applications. Any change to the book must be scrutinized to ensure that delivering it to the field won't introduce errors.

2) Put the system books in the same directory as the individual ToolBook application. The big advantage here is that you don't have to be concerned with the effects of any system book changes on other applications. The disadvantage is that you may eventually end up with a large number of what is essentially the same system book. However, when getting ready to ship your applications, you might be too scared that you've overlooked some change to actually overwrite the system book with a standard copy.

Which do we use at Platte Canyon? Number 1: putting them in the ToolBook directory. I've been through the pain of finding multiple copies of the same system book spread over four developer's machines, with a variety of file dates.

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OpenScript Tip

by Cindy Kessler

In a custom application we have been building, there are functions that vary by state, such as "determineMatch" and "computeTotal". So we have all these state-dependent functions on their own page per state within the system book, with each page named "stateScripts_"<state> (e.g., stateScripts_IL).

Then when we start a new state, we duplicate that script page, rename it, rename the functions (function names contain state), and modify the logic in each function to match the criteria for that state.

But on the main page of the book, we have only a single stub for each general method that dynamically builds and executes the function call (including any parameters) depending on the selected state. This prevents our needing to modify that when we add a state and we never need to change the base call from the main application.

The key to using this functionality is the execute command. It is not the most efficient OpenScript call, but the slight cost in speed is more than worth it in decreased development time and improved maintenance.

Here's an example stub:

**********
to get determineMatch string patientId
        system string selectedState
        local string returnVal, pgName, ftnCall, exeScript

        pgName = "stateScripts_" & selectedState
        ftnCall = "determineMatch_" & selectedState & "(patientId)"
        exeScript = "returnVal =" && ftnCall && "of page" && quote & pgName & quote && "of self"
        execute exeScript

        return returnVal
end determineMatch
***********

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Actions Editor Tip

by Cindy Kessler

OpenScript Utilities

Back to our Mastermind game from the last issue...
See an on-line demo of the application discussed here at:

http://www.plattecanyon.com/ep/ep602-mastermind-demo/index.html

Download the source ToolBook application at:

http://www.plattecanyon.com/ep/ep602-mastermind.zip

There are 16 “peg and chip” groups in this game and each group contains 12 objects. This means 192 objects on the page for those groups alone. No way was I going to edit the action sequences for each group. Here’s where we give thanks to OpenScript and Tim Barham’s "Inside the Actions System" document:

ftp://ftp.click2learn.com/pub/techdocs/insideactionssystem.pdf

For example, one way I used OpenScript when creating this game was to get one "peg group" working, duplicate it, select it, then execute the following OpenScript in the command window.

***********
-- update new peg group
local tempArray[]
g = selection -- the group
gNum = char 10 of name of g + 1 -- new group number
name of g = "pegGroup" && gNum
-- rename pegs
oList = getObjectList(g, "button", false)
while oList <> null
	pop oList
	name of it = "peg" && gNum && char 7 of name of it
end while
-- update action method to reference new peg names
tempArray = ASYM_EA_ActionMethod(BroadcastToGroupPegs) of g
step num from 1 to 6
	tempString = tempArray[num]
	tempString = ReplaceString(tempString, "peg" && gNum - 1, "peg" && gNum)
	tempArray[num] = tempString
end step
ASYM_EA_ActionMethod(BroadcastToGroupPegs) of g = tempArray
send ASYM_EA_ApplyActionArray g, "actionMethod BroadcastToGroupPegs", tempArray
***********

-- copy an object’s action sequence to a local array
tempArray = ASYM_EA_ActionMethod(BroadcastToGroupPegs) of g
-- manipulate the array as you wish
-- set the action sequence property of the object to the new array
ASYM_EA_ActionMethod(BroadcastToGroupPegs) of g = tempArray
-- apply it
send ASYM_EA_ApplyActionArray g, "actionMethod BroadcastToGroupPegs", tempArray

And we never need to open the Actions Editor!

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MORE NEWS AND INFORMATION

Platte Canyon Products in the Pipeline

Once the VBTrain Content object is out the door (see above), next out of the chute will likely be the Web Document. It will do for display PDF and other types of web documents what the Web Player does for displaying media. Simply setting a property or allowing the control to determine the appropriate type of control based on file extension is all that is required to add the right type of ActiveX control or Netscape plugin to your web page.

Also coming on the horizon is a completely updated “Learning & Mastering ToolBook Instructor” for the next version of ToolBook. We’ll jump into high gear once our friends from Click2learn get us an alpha or beta version.

Beyond that, we have some exciting concepts that we’re not ready to release to the world yet. But we won’t be goofing off, that’s for sure!

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e-Learning Creation Tip from Chris Bell: Finding or Making Music

by Chris Bell

Nothing polishes up a training application more than good sounding music. The catch is that your application needs to use music specifically licensed for use in multimedia applications. Most of the time, this means using royalty free music. For a long time, there was only one answer for royalty free music: buying ready-made pieces that came on CDs. This was our approach with the latest version of the "Learning & Mastering ToolBook" CDs. We were quite happy with the series from Network Music (http://www.networkmusic.com) but if you'd like to explore other options, a quick Google search for Royalty Free Music will turn up more links than you'll ever need.

Another way to go is to make your own music. This may sound out of reach, especially if you are not musically talented. But just as PhotoShop gives non-artists the ability to make good looking graphics, Acid from Sonic Foundry allows non-musicians to make excellent music.

At Platte Canyon, we have Acid Pro, which we picked up at a good sale price. Pro is the flagship of the Acid product line, but any of the variants of Acid will suffice as well. Acid is based on placing loops of music together to create your song. Many loops come with the software and more are available for free on the web site. Sonic Foundry also sells Acid loops sets which are royalty free collections all ready to work with Acid. Creating a song in Acid is an exercise in choosing the loops you like, laying them out on a timeline, and layering them with others. The technical aspects of doing this are quite easy. The artistic effort is a bit more substantial. Still, without much difficulty, you can create your own soundtrack that is timed just right and gets just the mood you want. Once it sounds just how you want, you simply "Publish" your masterpiece to a file and away you go.

Also, Don Bowyer of the University of Alabama – Huntsville gave a great presentation at TBCON called "Creating Your Own Sound Files." In it he discusses using Cakewalk Sonar and Sound Forge XP to do similar things to Acid. His presentation is available to all attendees and others who pay the $50 access fee to the TBCON Archives.

http://www.tbcon.com/archives_2003.aspx

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