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Tom L. Hall President |
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Issue 7
June
20, 2007 |
Welcome to
this issue of my Newsletter. It has been a while but I have been busy doing QA
of Blackcomb, now officially called ToolBook
Instructor 9. Now that the release has been announced, I would like to
present to you information related to the changes and new features. For an in depth review of this new version,
you might want to take a look at an eLearning
Guild article I have written.
In this Issue:
This section
will present many of the changes that you will find in Instructor 9.
Improved
Support for Newer Windows Operating Systems - This version will allow
developers to author and deploy to the newer operating systems including 64 bit
Windows. Long filenames are now
supported.
Improved
Browser Support - The ToolBook HTML product will now work well with Microsoft
Internet Explorer 7. Support has been
expanded to address the Internet Explorer “Eolas” related update that affected
how Web pages that use ActiveX controls and other dynamic content items
display, thus eliminating the “Click to activate” prompt.
This is
the new Splash screen:
You also
will now see a new icon that represents ToolBook if you have a shortcut on your
Desktop, etc:
The Startup
Dialog box now shows a Book Wizards tab instead of what we have seen as the
Book Specialists tab. On this tab, you
will find a Book Wizard (formerly
known as the Book Specialist) and the Lesson
Design Wizard.
There have
been significant changes (updates) to the Graphical User Interface:
Tool Bar –
the Tool Bar now has a “modern” look as the icons have been updated.
Tool
Palette – the same is true for the Tool Palette.
Tool Bar
for Script Editor – same as above, a new look for the
icons.
Property
Browsers – ditto for any Property Browsers you might open by right-clicking
over an object.
Lesson
Properties Dialog Box – now gives you options for randomizing questions and
choosing a random sub-set of questions.
Enhanced
Quiz Summary - From
the Tools menu, developers can
choose Quiz Summary to obtain a
detailed summary of all questions in a book.
A Generate Checklist button
provides a means of saving important question information to a text file.
New Default Template – Many of you that I have trained have
heard me talk about the “Ugly Blue Default Template”. Well, that is gone forever, giving way to a new Default Template that has a
Smart Style applied.
Actions Editor
– There are a couple of new supported properties within the Actions Editor,
including RGBStroke and Transparent. Many of you have heard me comment on the
desire to have an RGBStroke to
accompany RGBFill and I finally have
it.
There are several significant new features in ToolBook Instructor 9.
Book Explorer
One of the most significant new features is the Book Explorer.
This is a
tool that opens just like the Catalog. Here you see it docked to the left of
the Catalog. Clicking on the Plus signs
allow you to expand the view of a page, background and/or group. You can use the Book Explorer to reposition
pages using drag and drop as well as reorder the layers of objects on both the
page and background. If you right-click
over any object, you obtain the right-click menu for that object. From here, you can edit any of the properties
of that object as desired.
Another
nice part of the Book Explorer is that you get a thumbnail view of any page by
just hovering over that page in the Book Explorer.
Finally,
the Book Explorer allows for quick navigation to any page in a book by just
clicking that Page.
SmartStyles
and SmartPages
Two new
Catalog Categories (Pages and Styles as shown here) provide
developers with an easier way to quickly create the core components for a
lesson. Once the core of the lesson is
built, the developer just adds their specific content.
One of the
nice things about these two new features as that you can create your own Smart
Styles and Smart Pages if you have a bit of knowledge about Cascading Style
Sheets and XML.
In future
Newsletters, I will cover in detail these new SmartStyles and SmartPages
features. Likewise, I will cover a new product,
SmartSim
for ToolBook Instructor 9, that Lee Karns and I have been working
on.
New Go
To Dialog Box
This
dialog box can be used to quickly navigate to any part of the book.
LiveXtensions
This is a new product feature that extends ToolBook beyond
what is provided in the shipped product.
This feature is only available to those that have a current Technical
Support subscription. You might notice
that from this dialog box, you can also access the Developer’s Exchange tools
which are free add-ons. Recall that I
covered this in an earlier Newsletter (Issue 1).
New Catalog Categories
A Navigation Objects
Category has been replaced by a Navigation Panels Category. A Pages
Category contains the Smart Pages while the Styles Category contains the Smart Styles (this was explained in
detail earlier). A Questions Category is available now with a single Multiple Choice
and True-False question object along with the various other question
types. What this means is that the Style
chosen controls the graphics on the Multiple Choice and True-False buttons. The old Questions
(Multiple Choice) and Questions
(True-False) Categories are still available if you customize the Catalog.
New Objects in Existing Categories
The Action Objects Category now contains a ShowInfo object
along with a ShowMore and ShowLess object.
The Navigation Objects Category contains a Chapter Menu object.
I have been very busy also updating my existing books to produce two new
books:
An Introduction to ToolBook Instructor 9
The
Actions Editor, HTTP Post, and Simulations in ToolBook Instructor 9
For the most part, neither of these new books contain significant differences in terms of the lessons that
have been provided in my current books on Instructor 2004. I do cover the new features and changes,
providing updated screenshots. I would
not go rushing to pull the credit card out to buy the new Actions Editor book
since it has changed the least. A
significant change/addition to the Intro book relates to use of the Book
Explorer as well as extensive description and use of SmartStyles and
SmartPages. In one of the modules, I
provide lessons on how to create your own simple Smart Style and a couple of
simple Smart Pages. That might be worth
the cost of that book since it is not a trivial process. I spent weeks figuring that feature out and
it is likely that I still don’t have it nailed down completely. I am looking forward to cornering Tim Barham
at TBCON about this and other things.
I will be at TBCON (
And then there’s the fun stuff. Please join me at
TCC Publishing, Inc
Internet Address: tomhall1@tcc-pub.com
Phone:
252-758-4590
Fax:
252-758-4590