Articulate Studio Cookbook: Go from Studio newbie to Studio guru

When the Articulate suite is installed on your computer, it should provide you with desktop icons for all four of the programs in the Suite. This is the easiest way to access any of the programs in the Suite:

If you need to perform this recovery feature, you will need to make sure to have administrator privileges on your computer. If you don't have such privileges, ask your system administrator for assistance.

There is also another way to access Articulate Presenter. Since Presenter is a plugin of PowerPoint, it opens whenever PowerPoint is opened.

The other method of launching Articulate Presenter is simply by going to Start | Programs | Microsoft Office on your computer's desktop and double-clicking on the Microsoft PowerPoint application. Launching it in this way actually cuts out a step for those concerned about efficiency.

Any presentation will consist of a number of slides. These slides may contain any of the text, graphics, and objects that PowerPoint can produce, along with other content that is created in Articulate Presenter or the other programs contained in the Articulate suite. We will be showing you how to add this material throughout this course.

In order to walk through the process of publishing a presentation, we're going to need a presentation that we can use. You can either open an existing PowerPoint presentation that you have on your computer or create a simple one. I've created a simple, three-slide presentation about the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

Once you have your presentation, there are two parts to accomplishing this recipe. The first one consists of creating the player template. Once we have created the template, we'll use that template to publish our simple course.

As you can see from this flow diagram, the process is a logical one. Typically, one starts by creating the presentation before creating or choosing the template. In this way, the template can be made to match the needs of the presentation.

As you can see from the tabs in the Publish dialog box, Articulate can publish your finished Flash presentation in a number of ways. The first tab, the one we used, creates the necessary files for publishing to the Web. You can also use this option for publishing on your computer for local use.

Once you start working in Articulate Presenter, it creates a second file for your presentation. So instead of only having a .pptx file from PowerPoint, you will also have a .ppta file. The name will be the same, and only the file extension will be different. If you need to move your presentation to another folder on your computer or put it on removable media for it to work on another computer, be sure to copy both the files, otherwise you will lose all the work that you did in Articulate.

The Flash presentations that Articulate creates are noneditable Flash files. This provides a great advantage over standard PowerPoint files, which can be modified by the end user. In training and sales presentation situations, where the user is viewing the presentation on their own, there is no possibility of the viewer accidentally or intentionally making changes to the file.

Once Articulate has finished publishing your Flash presentation, it will notify you by displaying the Publish Successful dialog box. This provides you with a number of options, including the ability to view your presentation, upload it to the Web via FTP, or compress it in a ZIP file.

If you open the folder that contains your presentation, you will see that it consists of a number of files. The folder will be titled with the name of the presentation, and it will contain two folders (titled data and player) and a player.HTML file. The player file is the one that you click to play the presentation. It will open in whatever program the user has selected as your default for Flash files, probably their default web browser.

You can rename this file as desired. However, don't rename the folders. If you need to copy, move, or upload your presentation, be sure to move the entire folder, including the subfolders and the player file. Otherwise, your flash presentation will not work.

Themes are created using PowerPoint's capability rather than Articulate's. However, the skin theme is created in Articulate:

Selecting a theme for a presentation gives us the following:

The themes themselves are fully customizable. There are three buttons located to the right-hand side of the shown themes, which provide for the customization of the colors, fonts, and effects in the theme.

Changing theme colors

By clicking on the Colors button in the Themes section of the ribbon, a drop-down appears that allows the selection of the existing color themes. This may be divided into two separate areas depending upon the selected theme, the upper section showing the color themes that are available for that particular theme, and the lower section listing all of the color themes that are built-in to Microsoft Office.

For most themes, selecting a color theme doesn't affect the background color; it affects the text and bullet point colors. However, there are a few themes that change to match the color scheme selected. You'll have to play with the theme you are using to see what changes it allows you to make. If none of the included color themes satisfy your need, you can modify them by selecting Create New Theme Colors… from the bottom of the drop-down list. This opens a dialog box for creating a new color theme.

By selecting one of the existing color themes, you can use it as your starting point for creating your new color theme. The theme shown in the screenshot of the dialog box is the "Text" theme. Each type of Text, Accent, and Hyperlink theme can be individually changed. Your new color theme can then be saved under whatever name you choose.

To change the background color, one would need to select Background Styles in the Background section of the ribbon. Since in many cases the backgrounds are pictures, you are somewhat limited to the amount of color change that you can make. However, there are some themes that are not images, but rather are designs that are appropriate for being used as the background. In these cases, you can change colors, add a texture, or change from a solid fill to a gradient. This varies from theme to theme, depending upon what is built in to that theme.

Changing theme fonts

Selecting Fonts from the Themes section on the ribbon allows you to select any of the standard Microsoft Office font style sets. These are the same font style sets that are used in Microsoft Word and other office applications.

Just as with the color themes, the font themes are fully customizable. Selecting Create New Theme Fonts… at the bottom of the Fonts drop-down opens a dialog box for selecting the heading and body fonts that you want to use in your theme. These can then be saved as a new font theme.

Note

The reason that you can only select the heading and body fonts rather than select a variety of different fonts is that, artistically speaking, it is not recommended to use more than two fonts in a document. You still have the availability to individually change the font of a specific word, line, or page of text if you so desire, but that would not be a part of the font theme.

Changing theme effects

The final area of customization available for your theme is the effects, selectable by clicking on the Effects button in the Themes section of the ribbon. The Effects drop-down provides a selection of the different effects that can be used in the theme. These effects are automatically applied to buttons and other objects in the presentation as a part of the theme.

Adding a theme from Microsoft.com or third-party websites

Although Microsoft PowerPoint comes with a number of themes preinstalled, it may not have the theme that you want for the presentation you are trying to produce. Never fear, that has already been considered, and the ability to add themes has been built right into PowerPoint.

You can find themes on Microsoft's website and a large number of third-party websites who produce them both for free and for sale. Both of these sources can be used and added to your personal copy of PowerPoint.

To search for and add themes from Microsoft, click on the button at the bottom of the scroll bar to the right-hand side of the themes thumbnails to open the themes drop-down list. On the bottom of this drop-down, you will see the words More Themes on Microsoft Office Online.... Clicking on that legend will take you to the themes page on the Microsoft website.

The web page will show you a variety of themes for all of the Microsoft Office products. Since we are working in PowerPoint, you will want to select the PowerPoint themes by using the button on the left-hand side of the screen.

Selecting a theme allows you to download it to your computer. This is essentially the same procedure you would use to select and download a theme from a third-party website. While the details will vary with the website, the idea is the same.

Themes consist of several files, so they are downloaded as a .zip file. You will need to unzip the file to a location on your hard drive in order to input it into a PowerPoint or Articulate presentation. Once the theme is downloaded and unzipped, you will need to find the theme, bring it into PowerPoint, and click on the legend Browse for Themes… on the themes drop-down list. This will open a standard Windows dialog box, allowing you to search for and select the theme and follow the prompts to install the new theme. It will show up immediately in PowerPoint without restarting.

You can find the button for the slide masters by clicking on the View tab. The Slide Master button appears on the Presentation Views section of the ribbon.

When the slide master appears, it will show the first slide master in the set as in the main editable part of the screen. To the left-hand side of the pane, where the thumbnails of the slides are normally shown, you will see the thumbnails of all the slide masters in the set, one for every layout option (there are usually 10). At the same time, the Slide Master tab will appear, allowing access to the Slide Master ribbon.

To create a totally new theme, you would start by clicking the Insert Slide Master button on the ribbon. This will insert a blank master set, which includes all the layouts that are in the current set. If you do this and then delete the existing master, you will have an entire new set of slide masters.

Creating a slide master consists of placing the things on the master that you want to have show up in all your slides. This can be done in one of two ways so that they are all on all the slides regardless of the type, or so that they are only on one type of slide layout.

A complete slide master not only deals with the background and objects that you want to show on all the slides, but also with all the layout options for the slides. Don't forget to make the necessary modifications to all the different layouts:

Looking at the thumbnails on the left-hand side pane of the PowerPoint window, you can see that the top one is larger, with the rest of the thumbnails connected to it as in a branched directory tree. That's because the first one is the master while the others are the various layouts that exist for that master. Any changes you make to the master, such as adding an image, will show up in all the layouts. Changes made to the individual layouts will only show up in that particular layout.

The exception to this rule is when you are dealing with the title slide. Changes made to the set do not affect the title slide, as many people have different title slides, but they are similar to the other layouts in the set.

There is an alternative way of accessing the various changes that we've made in this recipe, and that is to use the Edit Theme that is a part of the Slide Master ribbon. This provides the exact same changes to the theme as we saw in the Design ribbon.

Turning on Date, Slide number, and Footer placeholders

Along the bottom of every slide master are the placeholders for the date, slide number, and footer. Although these placeholders exist, they are normally hidden. To use them in your presentation, they need to be turned on. To do this, exit the slide master view by clicking on the Close Master View button on the Slide Master ribbon.

In the Insert ribbon, click on the Header & Footer button to open the Header and Footer dialog box. You can click on the radio buttons you desire for turning on the Date and time, Slide number, and Footer object placeholders. The Footer allows you a place to insert the text you want on the footer. Date and time allows you to choose between having the date automatically update to the current date or the date and time of the presentation, or to having a fixed date showing the date of your choice, such as the release date for the presentation.

Hyperlinks and the slide master

You can also add a hyperlink for any object on the slide master. This is done in the same way as in PowerPoint. The same hyperlink will show up and function on all the pages of the presentation. This would be especially useful for branching your presentation to various subjects or chapters.

You can also place an object on your slide master, which will be hyperlinked to different places on each slide. You can do this by placing the object on the slide master but creating the hyperlink on each slide.

Creating transparent hyperlinks

Let's say that you are creating a sales presentation demonstrating the benefits of a particular piece of technology. You want to make your presentation usable by both the general public and by engineers who will want to see the technical specifications for each feature. You can create your master slide with a series of buttons in the corner, essentially creating a button bar. Then you can create your presentation with each slide, showing a different feature for each piece of equipment.

The Home and Directory buttons can be hyperlinked directly on the slide master as they will be the same for all the slides. The Specs hyperlink will be different on each slide, so it cannot be hyperlinked on the master slide. Its hyperlinks will have to be done on each individual slide. But by putting the graphic button object on the master, we can ensure that it is always in the same place.

On the individual slides, another object will need to be placed over the Specs. button, in this case, a transparent rectangle. That object can then be made transparent by giving it no fill and no outline on the Format tab. This transparent object can then be hyperlinked just like any other object. That will allow the engineers to go to the detailed specs for that particular feature.

The learning games provided directly in Articulate Presenter are much simpler than those that can be created in Quizmaker. However, when something quick and simple is needed, this is much easier than creating a quiz and importing it into a presentation.

The learning games are accessed off the Articulate ribbon in PowerPoint by clicking on the Learning Games button:

The learning games are added to the presentation via a wizard, which creates the game from the information you fill in. The Learning Game Wizard, which opens once you click on the OK button of the previous dialog box, walks you through the process of creating the game.

Although you can fully customize the content of your learning game, you can't customize the appearance of it. Within Articulate Presenter, you are limited to the default game style. If you would like to be able to further customize your game, create it in Articulate Quizmaker. We will discuss how to do this in Chapter 3, Preparing Your Player.

One last detail about your learning game. Now that you've created a learning game in your presentation, when you click on the Learning Games button on the ribbon, you now have the option of editing previously created learning games. To do this, click on the Edit an existing learning game slide radio button, and then use the drop-down menu to select from the various learning games that you have in your presentation.

To preview the learning game, click on the Preview tab in the Articulate ribbon and you will see the following screenshot:

There are three types of learning games included in Articulate, as follows:

The Choices game allows you to select between Multiple choice and True/False. In both cases, you enter the question and your answers. You must also tell the wizrd which answer is the correct one.

The Word Quiz game allows you to enter only the question and the answer. The answer will be what they are trying to guess the letters for.

The Sequence game allows you to enter up to seven items, which the learner must put in order. You enter them in the correct order and the program randomizes them for you.

The following screenshot is for adding Multiple choice questions to the Choices learning game. Please note that towards the bottom you can select the amount of time given to the learner to select the correct answer. This option exists with all the games, for all types of questions. The default will be whatever you selected for the game back in the first step of the Learning Game Wizard dialog box. However, you can customize the length of the time that will be allowed for each question.

You can select the type of game you want from the learning game type drop-down menu on the Learning Games Wizard dialog box. Selecting a game type changes the thumbnail in the dialog box, providing visual recognition of the type of game you have selected. You can also input the name for your game in the area Learning game title. In the lower part of the dialog box, there are selections available for the customization of the gameplay: