Interesting to see that others have taken up the PDF topic as well based on my blog post.

http://www.blogherald.com/2007/02/20/dont-let-pdf-files-freeze-your-browser/

Check out the link for some suggestions on improving the PDF-Browser experience.

Useful forum post from Articulate MVP doofdaddy on how you can find the X/Y coordinates of an inserted SWF.

http://forums.articulate.com/13283-post1.html

Want to update your user's profiles but don't want to update them manually or import an updated CSV? (for info on bulk updating via csv see this kb article)

In Articulate Online if you make content private, and require guestbook information, user profiles will be automatically updated with information entered in the guestbook.

So a quick, easy way to get all your user profiles updated (or filled in) would be to send your users a content link to content that requires a login, and has required guestbook fields.

Labels: Articulate Online

I have yet again decided to change the design of my blog.

I really wanted to redesign my blog again because there were several things about it I didn't like:

1. It wasn't very readable. I went with a comic book theme which, was dark, ugly, and horribly unreadable, which is a bad idea for a blog.
2. The comic book character I used didn't look anything like me (based on feedback I received)
3. It was ugly

So I decided to redesign the blog again, and changed my picture to a cartoon that looks much more like me. The image I used is an image of what I would look like if I was on South Park.

Well, anyways, I hope you like the new site design, and please let me know if you have any feedback.

P.S. There are still some issues in various browser issues that I am trying to correct.

Isn't it annoying when you accidentally click on a link to a PDF document? Then your system stalls for about 20 seconds as it tries to open Acrobat Reader?

I sure hope Adobe doesn't do to the Flash Player what it did to Acrobat Reader.

How bad would it suck if it took as long to open a piece of Flash content as it does to open a piece of PDF content?

Labels: Junk

Check out this review of Articulate Online by Robin Good:

Track Online Course Delivery And Student Performance Without A LMS - Articulate Online

Even includes a YouTube remix that is really cool.

Labels: Articulate Online

One of the features I am really glad we included in Articulate Online is added security. Articulate Online uses SSL for login pages and for publishing. This will ensure that your login information can not be stolen by a malicious user.

It is a cool feature that I a glad we added. For more info on SSL, and what it means see the following wiki post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

Labels: Articulate Online

I just upgraded to Office 2007, and I am a little confused as to why the Paste button is here when sending an email in Outlook 2007. Shouldn't the send button be there instead (like it was in Office 2003)?

Don't get me wrong, the new Office is pretty cool, but I just thought this was odd, as I almost never paste into emails, and I always Send emails I begin.

So why not place the Send button in the same location that it was in Office 2003?

Labels: Bad UI

If you have ever worked with a Learning Management System before you probably have noticed that uploading content from any eLearning development tool can be an arduous and confusing task. For example, check out the blog posting I did several months ago on uploading content to Moodle. When working with an LMS you will quickly realize what a pain it is to upload content to a Learning Management System.

The typical workflow for uploading content to a Learning Management System is as follows:

1. Start your authoring tool of choice - Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker recommended :-)
2. Select the LMS standard that your LMS uses, either AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004
3. Set your tracking options
4. Publish your content as a zip file
5. Log into your Learning Management System
6. Upload your content to your Learning Management System

If you are unfamiliar (or even if you are familiar), publishing to a LMS can be very confusing.

Questions you might ask yourself:

• what LMS standard does my LMS use?
• what does AICC or SCORM mean?
• how do I upload content to my Learning Management System?
• why are there so many damn acronyms?

When we designed Articulate Online we definitely saw this as a problem that we didn't want Articulate Online users to experience.

That is why we created a simple one click publishing process for Articulate Online.

At this point I was going to create a presentation that compared how easy it was to publish content to Articulate Online as opposed to Moodle or Breeze, but then I realized how much work that would be, and Alli Starr's presentation documents pretty well how easy it is to publish to Articulate Online.

But, if you want to see an example of how easy it is to publish to Articulate Online compared to Moodle, check out Alli's presentation to see publishing to Articulate Online, and this blog posting for publishing to Moodle.

So if you haven't done so already, sign up for a free trial of Articulate Online to check it out yourself.

Labels: Articulate Online

Since the Articulate Online beta launch (and subsequent release) I have moved some of the presentations (Articulate Video Examples, Custom Color Schemes) that I have previously posted on my website to Articulate Online to take advantage of Articulate Online's reports.

The reports that Articulate Online offers are by far one of the most visually appealing set of reports offered by any LMS or LMS-like system on the market.

Articulate Online also allows you to export any of the reports to PDF, CSV or XML...which is pretty sweet, because I can take the PDF and email it to a colleague, take the CSV or XML and import those results into a database or into another program.

Example exports of the Progress Report for my Custom Color Schemes presentation:

Progress Report PDF

Progress Report XML

Progress Report CSV

As you can see from the reports above, the progress report shows me how far the viewers of my presentation have progressed, and where the average person stops viewing (slide 7) my presentation. This can be useful in determining where my users are losing interest in the presentation.

The Progress Report is just one of the 12 reports that Articulate Online offers. The reports tell you virtually everything you could ever want to know about how your students are viewing your presentations, and taking your quizzes.

So if you haven't checked out Articulate Online yet, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial account at http://www.articulate.com/free.aspx.

Also, if you haven't already seen them, the demos of Articulate Online created by Alli Starr are pretty awesome. You can find them here.

Labels: Articulate Online