|
Tom L. Hall President |
|
Issue 1
December
4, 2006 |
Welcome to
this premier issue of my newsletter. This newsletter comes about as a result of
my commitment to a group of students I had recently in a FastTrack
to ToolBook training I just completed in
In this Issue:
Getting a Local Developers Exchange Tool
Getting Rid of the Browser’s Image ToolBar
Getting a Local Developers Exchange
Tool
The Tools menu of ToolBook gives you access
to a really great set of Developer’s
Exchange Tools that you can launch from the SumTotal
Website. Basically, these tools are just
ToolBook books that you can launch from within the currently opened book and
provide you, as an Author, a lot of additional functionalities to help you be a
better Author.
For a
complete list of these tools, click here. Shown below is
the Remote Tools tab showing a
partial list along with all those that are new as of this printing.
You can
download an install a local version of all these tools or just those that you
use most often. A complete description of how to do this can be found by
clicking here. Once you have these files unzipped to your hard
drive, you can click on the Local Tools
tab.
Here you
see I have a listing of my current local tools. Many of them are from SumTotal, but a couple are from my
friend and colleague in
To import
the tools locally, click Import Tool,
and locate one of his downloaded Freebies , or locate
one from the zip file you downloaded from SumTotal. The tool should now show up in the list on
this tab. Now, you can go on the road
and work without a live Internet connection.
Additionally, these tools are available for all your books.
Getting Rid of the Browser’s Image ToolBar
Are you noticing in your ToolBook
HTML product that you are getting the small graphic such as that shown here in
this partial screenshot of a ToolBook book published to HTML and previewed in
the Browser? This is the Image ToolBar and can often be very annoying. Thanks to Peter
Jackson, here is a way of getting rid of this in the HTML Product. While on his Website, check out all the
Freebies he provides as well as some really great commercial products. I want you to download this Freebie directly
from his site so you can see what else he offers. I will give you my version of his small
tutorial on how to this Freebee.
1. Open Notepad and create this small text file:
<META
HTTP-EQUIV=”imagetoolbar” CONTENT=”no” />
2. Save this as imagetoolbaroff.txt and save it to a common development folder
on your hard drive.
3. Now, if you have not done so yet, click the
link to go to Peter’s site and grab the Freebee. Use the procedures described in the above
section to install this tool as a Local Developers Exchange Tool.
4. From any book that you have just exported,
open the Developers Exchange Tools dialog box and go to the Local Tools
tab.
5. Click Add HTML to INDEX HTML files TB89
as shown here.
6. Locate the imagetoolbaroff.txt file as shown below. Click After
and then decide if you are using Both IE
and NS or one or the other
only. Finally check All HTML and click the Add
Code button.
By now, if you are a reasonable ToolBook Author, you likely know about
Custom Catalogs. To create a custom Catalog and import it, follow these simple
steps:
1.
Open a blank ToolBook book.
2.
Name your background according to the name you want
for your new Catalog Category, such as My Custom Objects, etc.
3.
Use your ToolBook skills to create your custom
objects, naming them as you want them to appear in the Custom Catalog Category.
4.
Next, save the file, changing the file type to all,
and naming the file with a wbk extension.
5.
Finally, open an instance of ToolBook, right-click
over the Title Bar, then choose Customize Catalog.
6.
Click Import and locate the wbk file
you just saved.
7. Your new Catalog Category now
shows in the list. Click OK to
continue.
8.
Now, any objects you put on that page/background of that wbk file
are listed for the My Custom Objects Category.
Denny Dedmore of SumTotal has
provided a lot of useful material on his website, many downloads. Two files that I have found very useful are
his Question Images and Bullets. Download either one or both of these from his
Website and install them as Custom Catalogs using the procedures in the above
section.
1.
To use the Question
Images Category, open a book and go to a page that has a Question Object
such as a Multiple Choice Question.
2. Now, just locate
the new graphic set you want to apply to this question object and drag it on
top of the Question group.
Note: An ideal situation would be that you would set this
question object up with new images early in the process instead of having to apply
these new graphics to each question on each page. You could choose to export these new images
out of ToolBook and then import them back in as replacements for the original
images. In this manner, they (the
originals) are replaced as many times as they have been used.
TCC Publishing, Inc
Internet Address: tomhall1@tcc-pub.com
Phone:
252-758-4590
Fax:
252-758-4590