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The EnterPage The Source for ToolBook and VBTrain.Net News |
| ... | From Platte Canyon Multimedia Software Corporation. In This IssueIntroduction ToolBook Tips and News VBTrain.Net Tips and News More News and Information |
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IntroductionWe bring big news in this issue of the EnterPage. Instructor 2004 is available right now for purchase from Platte Canyon. Click2learn tells us it will be shipped mid to late December! We are also thrilled to announce a new stand-alone Exam Engine product that is a powerful authoring tool for creating tests of any length with content all stored in a database (SQL Server, Access or XML file). This is amazing stuff and will make it very easy for subject matter experts to enter questions and create exams easily and quickly. We're also working hard on the next version of Learning & Mastering Instructor which will feature a great deal of new content and a complete update of the current training. Whew! Have a look inside. We've again included a bunch of tips and tricks throughout this issue. We think you'll like what you see. |
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Top StoriesInstructor 2004 Ordering InformationOrder Instructor 2004 from Platte Canyon and receive a $50 credit that can be applied to your TBCON registration or any Platte Canyon product or training class. Order it now and get it shipped to you the minute it is available. Click2learn currently estimates a mid to late December shipping date. Here are the prices (U.S. and Canada only).
Buy Click2learn Premium Support for $995 and get the Instructor upgrade for 25% off the price listed above. https://www.plattecanyon.com/store/productslist.aspx?CategoryID=18&selection=4 Instructor 2004 Sneak PeakEveryone here at Platte Canyon agrees that the next version of Instructor is a "Wow" release. We've had a chance to run the beta for a couple of weeks now and we like Instructor 2004's powerful enhancements. Here are some new things you can do with Instructor 2004: Use the New "Recorder" Tool for Simulations Speed Up Development with the Improved Simulation UI Use Action Methods Take Advantage of the Improved Demonstration Mode Add Graphical Text Panes Make JavaScript Calls Interact with a SCORM LMS Avoid Problems with Large Fonts This is a MUST HAVE upgrade. Platte Canyon product note: More Information Platte Canyon Instructor 2004 Flyer (PDF) Instructor 2004 Data Sheet (PDF) Instructor 2004 “What’s New” Guide Brand New: Rich Online Tests and Surveys with the VBTrain Exam EnginePlatte Canyon is very pleased to announce the imminent release of its new Exam Engine product. If you’ve ever wanted to create an online exam or survey from questions in a database, then this is the tool for you. Note that you DON’T need Visual Studio or any other type of authoring environment at all. Here are the highlights: Pull Random Question from a Pool By Objective Communicate with a SCORM Learning Management System Store or Email Individual or Composite Results Highly Customizable Yet Easy to Use Allow Your Subject Matter Experts to Write Questions Rather Than Try to Learn an Authoring Tool Pricing: More Information Platte Canyon Exam Engine Flyer (PDF) Stand alone demo (not SCORM) Run the same sample from Tracker.Net via SCORM German ToolBook & VBTrain.Net EventA special ToolBook & VBTrain.Net event will take place in Karlsruhe, Germany just before the big LearnTech tradeshow and conference begins in the same city. Platte Canyon is proud to co-sponsor this ToolBook event along with Oliver Pincus of afelio GmbH. Here are the details:
Presentations by Jeff Rhodes, Chris Bell, Oliver Pincus, and Guido Walter will be held throughout the day. Jeff will talk about VBTrain.Net while Chris, Oliver, and Guido will focus on the exciting features and capabilities of ToolBook Instructor 2004. We’ll send a special email to all our European friends and customers once pricing and other details are finalized. More information is available at: Showdown: Exam Engine to Compete in "E-assessment Shootout"Platte Canyon's newest product, the VBTrain.Net Exam Engine, is slated to compete in the e-Assessment Shootout, March 1, 2, and 3, 2004, at the Training/Online Learning Conference in Atlanta. The audience will serve as judges in the competition and will rate each solution (on a scale of 1 to 10) in the following 4 areas:
More information on the VBTrain Exam Engine is available at: More information on Training/Online Learning Conference is available at: If you are going to the conference, please come by the shootout and visit us in booth 834. Announcing Learning & Mastering Instructor 2004We are in the process of adding tons of new content to our flagship ToolBook training CD. The new version will add detailed information on simulations and SCORM and will expand our already thorough coverage of the Actions Editor, Flash, and OpenScript. We’ve also added a new feature, Web Hints, throughout the training. We are working on the update now and plan to release it during the first quarter of 2004.
*If you're in a hurry, you can buy version 8 today and receive the 2004 version for free when it ships. Call us at 888-866-5251 or visit www.plattecanyon.com for more details. |
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ToolBook Tips and NewsPlug-In Pro Tool Spotlightby Chris Bell Plug-In Pro Options While most of Plug-In Pro's features are available via the customizable palettes, the powerful features accessible via the Options menu are worth noting as well. Here are my favorites: Graphic Paste Text Paste Open as Assistant Other Plug-In Pro Options include the ability to show normally hidden Actions Editor properties in the property browser and choices on whether a single click gets you out of editing text inside of groups. These helpful options are just another example of the power that Plug-In Pro brings to ToolBook. More information on Plug-In Pro is available at: Expert Information from the "Learning & Mastering ToolBook..." Seriesby Jeff Rhodes Flipping Pages Without the Flip Many of our pages reset themselves when you leave the page. If you happen to save your book on a page that is not in its “reset” state, the page may end up looking wrong the first time the customer enters it. How do you guard against this? On a smaller book, you can just type “flip all” in the command window. However, ToolBook will run out of memory if you try to do this on a larger book, such as the ones in our “Learning & Mastering ToolBook” products. The script shown is what I do instead. I put this script at the background level, go to the first page of the background, and then take off for lunch. When I get back, I know that the book has been “flipped.” Notice that you need to be very sure to remove this script before shipping your book. I hedged against the possibility of forgetting to remove it by checking a developmentMode book property that we always set to false before distribution. Here’s the code: -- temporary code for development to handle firstIdle if developmentMode of this book = true and sysLevel = "reader" if pageNumber of this page < 414 go to next page of this background end if end if forward end firstIdle The “if pageNumber of this page < 414” line makes sure that we don’t start over at the beginning and go in an endless loop. OpenScript Tipby Jeff Rhodes Setting the External Placeholder Graphic Value In connection with a recent ToolBook training class, we wanted to go through an existing book that had a “pageIdentifier” field on each page. The graphic to be associated with the external placeholder on each page was to be the text of this field plus “.gif.” The script below takes care of this. to handle buttonClick pageListStack = pageList(this book, 1, 10000) while pageListStack <> null pop pageListStack into pageId fieldId = field "pageidentifier" of pageId -- change above to use other field Name fileName = text of fieldId & ".gif" -- edit above for a relative path or .jpg widgetList = ASYM_CollectWidgets(pageID) while widgetList <> null pop widgetList into qid qName = ASYM_WID_Name of qid if (qName contains "Web Graphic") ASYMI_ImageRef of qid = fileName end if end while end while end buttonClick The script above sets the property correctly and the exported book has the graphics as desired. It does NOT look right in authoring mode, however, since we didn’t import the graphic or set the placeholder button’s normalGraphic to be the imported image. We’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader (or for the next issue). We weren’t completely done yet, though. We wanted to make a list of all the graphics needed so that the developer could more easily check that they were all there. The script below puts a list of all the external graphics required into the Command Window. to handle buttonClick pageListStack = pageList(this book, 1, 10000) fileNameList = null while pageListStack <> null pop pageListStack into pageId widgetList = ASYM_CollectWidgets(pageID) while widgetList <> null pop widgetList into qid qName = ASYM_WID_Name of qid if (qName contains "Web Graphic") If ASYM_TextlineInText(ASYMI_ImageRef of qid, fileNameList) = False fileNameList = fileNameList & CRLF & ASYMI_ImageRef of qid End if end if end while end while put fileNameList end buttonClick Look for this capability to be added to the Plug-In Pro 7. Actions Editor Tipby Cindy Kessler Array Elements Thanks to Denny Dedmore for discussing the "For each" loop at the ToolBook and VBTrain.Net User's Conference! You can see one example of how to fill and process arrays with the "buildAStory" application. When you want to loop through all the elements in an array, you need a way to reference each element. If your array is indexed with contiguous integers, the most common way to loop is with a counter variable. Suppose you have a "nouns" array with 5 elements (nouns[1], nouns[2],...,nouns[5]). A common way to loop through these elements in OpenScript is: ***** for counter = 1 to 5 The Actions Editor doesn't have this type of numeric loop. However it has an excellent looping structure that works just as well: For Each! Back to our 5-element nouns array. Here's how we could process each element in the Actions Editor: ***** For each element counter in array nouns In this example, counter will assume the values 1, 2,...,5 as it loops. What's even better about For Each loops is they work with "associative" arrays, or arrays that are indexed with strings instead of numbers. So we could have nouns["dog"], nouns["cat"], etc., and could still use the "For each" loop. For example, consider the following code: ***** Define local variable "test" (Initial value: "") -- this is an array Define local variable "i" (Initial value: "") Set test["dog"] to "canine" Set test["cat"] to "feline" For each element i in array test Display alert: i && test[i] End for each loop ***** Its output is: ***** dog canine cat feline ***** Nice feature! Links for this article: Run as DHTML ToolBook Source File Exported DHTML |
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VBTrain.Net Tips and NewsVBTrain.Net Tidbitby Jeff Rhodes So what does this have to do with .NET? He is going to need 30+ math tests that are all different. Rather than having to go out and buy them or trying to type them all in Word (and not necessarily achieving randomness), I decided to write him a test in ASP.NET. I chose ASP.NET rather than Windows Forms since the printing is easier and the FindControl() method available on the web side of the house is more convenient for looping through controls than using Reflection in Windows. To check out the test, go to: http://www.vbtrain.net/vbtrainsample/mathtest.aspx Right-click and refresh the page to see another random test. Derek can print as many tests as he wants in a manner of minutes. Each problem involves adding three numbers between 000 and 999. The first step was to make a web form and add the controls. Here are the tags for the first control: <asp:Label id="number_1_1" style="Z-INDEX: 102; LEFT: 24px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 64px" runat="server" CssClass="Operand">999</asp:Label> The first important point is the naming scheme. The first “1” refers to the problem number while the second “1” means that it is the first of three numbers in the problem. The CssClass is the style sheet class that determines the format of the control. To make the problems look good, we needed a fixed-width font such as Courier. Here’s the definition of the class from the Cascading Style Sheet:re .Operand
{
font-size:120%;
font-family:Courier New;
font-weight:bold;
}
The “999” refers to the value in design mode only (to make sure all looks good). The actual value is determined at runtime as shown below. Once I had one problem positioned correctly, I went to HTML View in Visual Studio .NET, copied the HTML tags (like the one above), and pasted them into TextPad. I then did a search and replace for “number_1” and changed it to “number_2.” I figured out the spacing (96 pixels) and changed all the “LEFT: 24px” to “LEFT: 120px.” This process worked until I got to the six problems across the row. I then copied the HTML for the entire row and replaced the names and the TOP values (to move everything down). I repeated this until we had four rows, though of course I could add as many rows as I wanted. The last part of the problem was the code to randomly generate the numbers. Here are both the “Constants” and “Page_Load” code for the page: #Region "Constants"
Private Const numQuestions As Integer = 24
Private Const numOperands As Integer = 3
Private Const startNum As Integer = 0
Private Const endNum As Integer = 999
#End Region
Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
'Build Random Exam
Dim randomNum As New Random
Dim questionCounter, operandCounter As Integer
Dim currentNum As Integer
Dim operandLabelId As Label
For questionCounter = 1 To numQuestions
For operandCounter = 1 To numOperands
currentNum = randomNum.Next(startNum, endNum)
operandLabelId = CType(FindControl (String.Concat("number_", questionCounter, "_", operandCounter)), Label)
If IsNothing(operandLabelId) = False Then
operandLabelId.Text = String.Format("{0:D3}", currentNum)
Else
Response.Write(String.Concat("Can't find control: number_", questionCounter, "_", operandCounter))
End If
Next
Next
End Sub
The Constants are self-explanatory. They make it easy to increase the number of questions or the number of digits in the problems. On the Page_Load, we first create a random number and declare the variables that we need. We then loop through the questions (1 – 24) and numbers (1 – 3). For each “operand,” we call the Next method of the random number and tell it to be between 0 and 999. We use the handy FindControl method of the page to locate the Label control with the name we specify. When then set that Label’s text to be the number formatted to three digits (this is what the {0:D3} represents). If we don’t find the control, we write an error message to the top of the page. This was for my benefit in making sure than I didn’t mess anything up in all my search and replaces. After about 45 minutes, Derek had his exams and I had a topic for this EnterPage issue. Links for this article: Run the sample Download the solution |
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MORE NEWS AND INFORMATIONCome See Us: The Platte Canyon World TourOur 2004 schedule is filling in. We will be exhibiting and probably presenting at the following conferences this year. We hope you can come by and say hi at any or all of these events: German ToolBook & VBTrain.Net Gathering LearnTech Training 2004 Conference and Expo, incorporating Online Learning Spring ASTD International Conference and Expo ToolBook & VBTrain.Net User's Conference Training Fall, incorporating Online Learning Platte Canyon Products in the PipelineOur immediate plans are to put the final touches on “Exam Engine” and continue working feverishly on “Learning & Mastering ToolBook Instructor 2004.” After that, look for a Plug-In Pro version 7. We also have a new spell-check and thesaurus product for ToolBook on the drawing board.
e-Learning Creation Tipby Chris Bell Design Tips for from Screen to Print The first time you need to create documentation or marketing materials, you will be switching from the relatively comfortable and predictable world of the computer screen to the more demanding environment of the printed page. For those who, like me, first created graphics on the computer screen (not counting stick figures on notebook paper), here are a few tips for working with print. 300 not 72 Screencaps are Small Vector art is Your Friend Keep Text as Text or Curves Output to PDF I hope that the above tips will help prepare a print piece that you are proud of. In the end, you may find that creating artwork for print is not much different than creating it for the screen, as long as you pay attention to the few issues discussed here. |
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Coming in the Next Issue of the EnterPage
About The EnterPageThe EnterPage is distributed four times a year, with occasional special issues. Individuals who have expressed interest in Platte Canyon Multimedia Software Corporation or its products receive The EnterPage. Suggestions for articles or proposals for article submissions are welcome. Send information to EP@plattecanyon.com. Back issues of the EnterPage are available at http://www.plattecanyon.com/enterpage.aspx. Information on SubscriptionsTo subscribe or unsubscribe, please send a message to EP@plattecanyon.com. Please include your name and company with new subscriptions.
All content copyright Platte Canyon Multimedia Software Corporation, 2003. |