Combine two topics on one page?

[owilkes]

Hi All,

Am trying to convince our existing trainers (ppt enthusiasts) that they will still be able to deliver their training courses based on Flare output.

The progressive disclosure enabled by Powerpoint can probably be replaced by a setup from Mimic - or another video.

However, when it comes to presenting multiple topics in one slide, I can't find a workaround.

The plan is to break down the content of their courses into multiple topics. Problem is, some of their slides contain information that should appear on more than one topic. So the slides are being broken up.

Is there any way these topics can be linked together, so two topics appear on the same page?

Any suggestions of how this and other training objections have been overcome gratefully received!

Thanks

[Paul Griffiths]

We are also looking at single-sourcing training materials from Flare, although we are still in the theoretical design stage.

When it comes to replacing PP slides, my current thinking is to aim for a WebHelp presentation in a maximised browser. That way, you could do reveals etc using Flare's expanding/drop-down text features (or by additional javascript if you need something more fancy).

If I understand you correctly, there is some content that needs to appear on several "slides"? My suggestion would be to put that content in a snippet, and include it the relevant topics - perhaps in a div that you could float to one side - maybe with a TrainingPresentationOnly condition tag so you can condition it out of other targets.

HTH

[owilkes]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll look into the expanding/drop-down text features - haven't been aware of that up until now.

I actually have content on one slide that would be split out into multiple topics - so where there are 3 facts on one slide, I would want each fact to have its own topic. The question is - how do I merge 3 topics so that they appear on one 'page' in my output? Can this be done?

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

[lacastle]

The question is - how do I merge 3 topics so that they appear on one 'page' in my output? Can this be done?

if you don't assign a page-break-before to the heading of those topics, they will flow together on the page (in print layout). what kind of output are you making?

[owilkes]

The output will be for the trainers to train - so will have an output for the trainees, and an output for themselves which would include information tagged as 'trainer only'.

We'll use whichever output can work best, and include this function!

I'll look into the page-break-before- however, I would assume this is something I would assign in the TOC - as I might want to merge two topics for one course, but not for another.

Thanks

[lacastle]

I'll look into the page-break-before- however, I would assume this is something I would assign in the TOC - as I might want to merge two topics for one course, but not for another.

this is a property of a style in the CSS. you set page numbering to continue in the TOC.
you could try making a style that was only a page break, and condition it to be used only for certain outputs. (one sample forum topic about this - http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =10&t=8385 )

[owilkes]

Hmmm, so by default we would always have a page break, and then when we wanted to merge some documents, we don't put in the page break.

I can see how it would work, but it looks like a bit of a workaround to me - and as these are new users to the software, might put them off/go horribly wrong, and lead to scratched heads in 2 years time when we try to understand the unexpected page breaks. Also, I assume this means it ties us to the Print-style output?

As an interim solution, I'm going to create 'Overview' facts which are made up of snippets from the ppt slides that have been broken down into 2+ topics. Not a perfect solution, but I think one that is fairly transparent to the user.

I am surprised that, as such a widely used tool, there isn't much for catering for those who want to create training courses from the end output.

Thanks for the help and suggestions