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Tom L. Hall President |
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Issue 8
July
26, 2007 |
Welcome to
this issue of my newsletter. In this issue, I will concentrate on the basics of
the new SmartStyles and SmartPages
features in ToolBook Instructor 9. In a
future newsletter, you will learn about SmartSim for ToolBook,
a new product Lee Karns and I have developed that takes this several steps
forward in that we have created several new Smart Styles and Smart Pages
specifically for building Simulations, along with some custom editors to make
it very easy for you to create Simulation lessons using the Smart Pages.
In this Issue:
What Constitutes a Smart Style
Using the Smart Styles and Smart Pages
More About Elements Found on a Smart Page
Two of the
most exciting new features in ToolBook Instructor 9 are SmartStyles and SmartPages.
These new features provide uniformity across the various methods available in
previous versions of ToolBook for building an application, including Templates
and the Book Specialist (now called the Book Wizard). SmartStyles
and SmartPages make available a wide variety of page
styles and pre-defined common page types that respond to todays learning
needs. These new features also provide developers with the ability to create their
own new styles and page types as desired. When the developer adds a new page to
a book, that page will then use the books current style. The developer also
can restyle the entire book by selecting a new style from the Catalog.
This is a summary of the terminology as it relates to these new features.
- Smart
Book a book that has been set up to allow the SmartStyles
and SmartPages features to work. Basically, it is
a book that has a Smart Style applied, meaning then that pages added adopt
that style and any style change will affect all Smart Pages and Smart
Objects in the book.
- SmartStyles the term used to refer to the new
styles feature
- Smart
Styles the actual styles available
- SmartPages the term used to refer to the new
pages feature
- Smart
Pages the actual pages available
- Smart
Backgrounds the backgrounds available to be used by Smart Pages
- Smart
Objects objects set up so that they can be restyled using SmartStyles
- Page
Types the different types of Smart Pages available
- SmartStyle
Outlines the various outlines designed to be used with Smart Styles
and Smart Pages
- Page
Usage defines how a Smart Page is used
- Page
Structure refers to the types of objects on a page based upon a Page
Type
What Constitutes a Smart Style
A Smart Style can include, but is not limited to, the following things:
Fonts used by various
objects
Graphics used by questions,
navigation panels and other objects
Background graphics
Page layout
The existing Smart Styles include:
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A Smart Page can include, but is not limited to the following things:
- Placeholder fields for Lesson
Title, Chapter Title, Prompt, and Navigation groups; normally, these
objects are on the background and thus will be common to all pages
- The foreground will contain
text fields for Topic Title, content, graphics placeholders for images,
media players, question objects
- Other interactive objects
depending upon the type of Smart Page
The Smart
Pages include, just to list a few:
Menu
Bullets
Text
Text and
Image
Text and
Media
Text with Two
Images
Multiple
Choice Question
True-False
Question
Fill in the
Blank Question
Three Text
Fields and Images
Horizontal
Button Options (an interactive page)
These new features described above are implemented via two new Catalog
Categories:
A Smart Style is applied to a book by just dragging one of these Catalog elements
to any page in the current book.
A new Smart Page is added to a Smart Book by dragging that Page Type from
this Catalog category.
Using the
Smart Styles and Smart Pages
Smart Styles and Smart Pages can be used in several
different ways:
- You
can open a blank book, drag a Smart Style to the book, and start adding
Smart Pages.
- You
can open a blank book, start adding Smart Pages, and then at some time
later add apply a Smart Style.
- You
can use any of the Templates which already have a Smart Style applied and
an outline of Smart Pages based upon the type of template chosen. At any
time, you can change the Smart Style and add new Smart Pages from the
Pages Category.
- You
can use the Book Wizard (or Lesson Design Wizard) and choose a Smart Style
for a new book, then choose from a list of outlines for various types of
lessons where the outline is composed of a selection of Smart Pages (or
you can create a custom outline and choose your own Smart Pages from those
available).
More About Elements Found on a Smart Page
This is a typical Smart Page (Text and Image). Notice the
placeholder text. A recordfield named Title contains %LESSONTITLE%. This
information comes from the Title of the book and recall that you assign this
from the Summary Tab of the Book Properties dialog box. A recordfield named
Subtitle contains %CHAPTERTITLE% and this information is
set by identifying the first page of a chapter from Behavior tab of the Page
Properties dialog box. A text field
named Topic contains %TOPICTITLE% and this information is
the name of the page.
This is what this page might look like at Reader level
after the Book Title is set to Using SmartStyles in ToolBook Instructor 9, after the name of
the chapter has been set to Smart Styles,
and after the name of the page has been set to Basic Smart Style, and after text has been added and a graphic
imported:
In my opinion this is a great time-saving feature along with
now easily setting up chapters or sections of the book. This is a menu page that I did not have to do
anything to at all. I just set up four pages as the first pages of chapters and
a Chapter Menu object on this menu page does the rest. Notice that the first chapter is marked as
visited which another great new feature. When all pages within a continuous
range of pages are visited, meaning that chapter is complete (or that section
is complete), then the checkmark appears.
TCC Publishing, Inc
Internet Address: tomhall1@tcc-pub.com
Phone:
252-758-4590
Fax: 252-758-4590