Have you ever wanted to develop your own custom Articulate Presenter player to give your eLearning courses that extra bit of customization?  Have you ever been tasked with developing eLearning content for a client who didn’t want you to use the Articulate Presenter player?  Did you know it IS currently possible to develop your own totally customized skin, and it actually isn’t that hard?

I built my totally customized #Articulate Presenter skin in less than an hour and you can too.

Here is what you will need to do to develop your own skin:

1. Build a skin using the Articulate SDK to mask the actual Articulate Presenter skin (a 980×640 SWF file that we will load on top of the Articulate Presenter Player).
2. Build an ast_remote.swf file to load our custom skin on top of the Articulate Presenter player
3. Package our skin in a format that can be easily shared and installed.

Worried that you don’t know how to use Flash?  No need to worry.  I don’t know Flash either.

Let’s check out the player I developed.  The idea was I wanted a small sized player that I could fit in my blog and would play well on devices with smaller screens, like mobile devices that have the Flash Player.  I also wanted to make it Zen, so it has only a few buttons.  So here it is below, click the play button to start playback.

View at Mozealous.com

Notice the big play/forward/back buttons, the mute icon, and the slide counter.  Very minimalist and blog friendly right?

1. Let’s build a skin to mask the Articulate Presenter skin

So how did I build it?  Well the first thing I did was build my custom skin in Flash.  What we are going to do is build a Flash file that will mask (hide) the actual Articulate Player.

Check out the 4:15 screencast below to see how I created the skin.

If you want to play along, download the FLA for this file here. You will need Flash CS3 or CS4 to edit the FLA.

View at Screenr

Easy peasy huh? I suck at Flash, and seriously this took me less than an hour to build.

Now let’s…

2. Build an ast_remote.swf to load our new custom skin

What is the ast_remote.swf file?  Well, it is a file that the Articulate Presenter loads on launch.  So what I have done is modify this file to load my own custom skin on top of the Articulate Presenter player.

You can download my ast_remote.fla file here to create your own ast_remote.swf.

Once you download it, the only thing you will want to change is this line:

loadMovieNum (“player/custom_player.swf”, 100);

Change the custom_player.swf to point to your custom skin.  So for example, with my skin the line looks like this:

loadMovieNum (“player/API_Tester.swf”, 100);

What does all the other code do in the ast_remote.swf file do?  The other code in the file makes sure that your custom skin is loaded before the rest of the player, so that you won’t ever see the regular Articulate Presenter player.

So now that we have created our skin, modified the ast_remote, it is time to…

3. Package our skin in a format that can be easily installed.

One of the cool things we added in Articulate Presenter ‘09 Update 5 is the ability to create and install custom skin packages.  What is an Articulate Presenter custom skin package?  Check out this screencast for an explanation.

View at Screenr

So now let’s get to creating our Articulate Presenter Skin Package…

Download my Blog Player.artpkg file here so you can follow along.

View at Screenr

Did I go too fast in my explanation of what the .ARTPKG file contains?  If I did no sweat, here is a recap of what it should contain:

• ast_remote.swf
• your custom skin.swf
• Any other files you want to contain
• **<templatename>.xml should be a template configured to match the requirements of the template needed. Remember to set the <communityplayer> tag to “true”.
• Package.xml – the XML that describes the package

And the package.xml should contain the following:

• uniqueID – (a GUID) that identifies the player (create a GUID here).
• content title –  the name of your template
• version - the version of your player
• presenterTemplate – the player template that is included in your package
• playerFiles – List of all files you want included when a presentation is published with your skin

** To create my template.xml file this is what I did:

1. Started PowerPoint
2. Went to Articulate>Player Templates
3. Added/Removed options that I wanted included in my Player Template
4. Select File>Save As…
5. Navigated to the folder that template was saved:
   (WINXP: C:\Program Files\Articulate\Presenter\templates\ )
   (WIN7/VISTA: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Articulate\Presenter\templates )
6. Added that template.xml file to my .artpkg

That is it, you have now developed your own Articulate Presenter skin

More info…

Get the Articulate Presenter SDK

In order to build your community skin you will probably want all the SDK documentation.  You can purchase the Articulate Presenter SDK from our store here or if you are an Articulate PMP customer you get access to it for free by contacting our support department here.

If you want to see everything that is possible to do in the SDK you can find the sample documentation here.

Get help developing your custom skin

Need help developing your skin?  Send a support request asking for access to the Articulate SDK forum here. This is a special forum setup for people with questions related to the SDK.  If you want you can also post questions in the comments here, but I suck at Flash, so if you have Flash related questions I might direct you to the forum.

Got a pimped out skin you want Articulate to see?

Awesome, we would love to see it.  Upload it here so we can check it out.

Having trouble finding all files referenced in this post?

No worries, you can download all files referenced here:

• My blog player FLA file
• ast_remote.fla
• Blog Player.artpkg

Want a custom skin, but suck at Flash worse than I do?

So you want a custom skin, but you don’t know or have Flash at all?  I can recommend a couple of people who have made some pretty sweet custom skins.

• Articulate MVP James Kinglsey – developed this sweet skin here for a customer of his, and he can build you an entirely custom skin for a price.
• e-Mersion – has built many custom skins, and even gives one away for free.  You can find out about all the services they offer here.

Note: Articulate Presenter ‘09 currently supports ActionScript 2.0.  In the next version we do of Articulate Presenter we will be migrating our content to ActionScript 3, so players you develop for Articulate Studio ‘09 will not work in future versions.  Just thought I would give you a heads up.

This post is written in response to Deepak Saini’s questions in a comment on one of my posts.

So here is the problem: You have a bunch of Articulate presentations that you have published and uploaded to your website, and now it is your job to take all those presentations and upload them to your new LMS, but the problem is you no longer have the source presentations. How can you convert your Web published content to LMS content without republishing from Articulate Presenter?

Whenever possible, you should republish your content, doing this method ain’t going to be easy.

A couple notes:

• Make a backup of any project that you are going to modify so that you can undo anything that breaks.
• These instructions aren’t supported by Articulate.
• I am assuming your are going to use SCORM 1.2. You can do the same thing for SCORM 2004, or AICC but the instructions need to be tweaked a bit.

Convert your Articulate Web content to LMS without republishing

1. Install Beyond Comapre

Using Beyond Compare will make this process a whole lot easier to understand. You can download a trial of it from the good folks at Scooter Software here.

Why do you need Beyond Compare?  We are going to publish a presentation to LMS output, and then compare those files with the files that you already have published to Web. We will then either copy over files as needed, or modify existing files to make the Web output into LMS output.

Once you have downloaded Beyond Compare install it, choosing all the default options.

2. Download your Web output

Download the entire folder of web presentation from your website to your local machine.

Note: Make sure if you are downloading via FTP that you choose “binary mode” in your FTP program.

Once you have downloaded your presentation make sure that the content plays fine before modifying anything. Then make a backup of it. If it doesn’t play after downloading likely you didn’t download in “binary mode”.

3. Publish a sample presentation for LMS

Like I mentioned earlier, we need some sample LMS content to compare to our Web content to make this work.

Note: It is important that you use the same version of Articulate Presenter to publish your sample LMS presentation as your Web presentation. Things will likely break if you follow this article using LMS output from Articulate Presenter ‘09 and Web output from Articulate Presenter 5.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Create a blank PowerPoint presentation
2. Select Articulate>Publish
3. Select the LMS tab
4. Set your Publish title to match your the Published title of your Web presentation
5. Select your LMS type (SCORM 1.2, 2004, AICC)
6. Publish

4. Compare your Web output to your LMS output

Now we are going to use Beyond Compare to compare the output and replace files as necessary.

Ok, this section is very difficult to explain, but very easy to show. So I created a Screenr Screencast that walks you through it.

View on Screenr

In the screencast above I neglected to show changing another line in the player.html. In the Web version of the player.html find a line that says this:
var g_bLMS = false;
set it to this:
var g_bLMS = true;
and save the file.

5. Modify the imsmanifest.xml

You are going to have to make some changes to the imsmanifest.xml file that is in your published output folder to make sure that it is valid SCORM content.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Open the imsmanifest.xml in the Web published folder in a text editing program like notepad
2. Navigate to the <resources> section
3. The section should list all files that are contained in the package. So you need to list a reference for each file that is contained in the output folder. If you followed the instructions above correctly, the only files you should need to add will be in the /data/swf folder. The references should look something like this:
   <file href=”data/swf/slide7.swf”/>
   <file href=”data/swf/tb1.swf”/>
4. After you are done adding references for all the files, Save the imsmanifest.xml

Now it is time to upload and test it in your LMS.

6. Zip up the contents of the folder and upload to your LMS

Zip up the contents (but not the folder itself) of your Web folder, and upload it to your LMS. You should be all set.

That’s it. I know this isn’t super easy, but if you don’t have any way of republishing it might be your only option.

Remember to test your content thoroughly before sending out the content to everyone.  There is a good chance things could break when following these instructions, so testing is important.

Updated 5/20/10: We released an updated version of Studio ‘09 today that supports Office 2010.  You can download it here.

Today Microsoft released the Office 2010 Public Beta, meaning anyone who wants it can download it here.  I wanted to give you a heads up, and let you know how it impacts Articulate Presenter ‘09, and for those brave enough to try the two, what you can do if you run into issues.

What you should know about the Office 2010 Beta and Articulate Presenter ‘09:

1. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta is Free. You can download it from Microsoft – Download office 2010 Beta.
   
2. Currently Articulate does not support PowerPoint 2010 Beta. Articulate supports Office 2007 and previous, but I have been using PowerPoint 2010 for a bit and it seems to work fairly well so far, but I am running into an issue here or there.  This all being said, if you run into issues, let me know about them.  Info below on how to report issues to me (the QA Manager for Articulate Presenter).
3. You can have Office 2010 and Office 2007 installed on the same machine. When you do the install of Office 2010, select a Customized install, and chose not to remove existing versions of Office. You can’t have two versions of Outlook installed.  I just chose not to install Outlook 2010.
4. Don’t use PowerPoint 2010 and Articulate Presenter for production work. As PowerPoint 2010 is not supported by Articulate I can’t guarantee everything will work really seamlessly, so if you are doing production work use a supported version of PowerPoint.

How to report issues with Office 2010 Beta and Articulate Presenter ‘09:

Here are a couple ways you can contact me about Office 2010 and Articulate Presenter ‘09:

• You can contact me via Twitter at @dmozealous
• Add a comment to this blog

I welcome any feedback from anyone.

So if you are brave enough, install Office 2010 and try it out with Articulate Presenter!

3 1/2 years ago I blogged about uploading an Articulate Quizmaker to Moodle.  It has been one of my most popular and heavily commented on posts.  In this post I wanted to revist that demo.  I used Captivate at the time to create the demo, so I wanted to redo the demo using Screenr, and add some narration.

Old School Learning Tools

1. Articulate Studio ‘09. Hands down, the best eLearning toolset on the market  How about that for a completely unbiased opinion from the QA Manager for 3 out of the 4 tools in the suite?  Honestly, I do think it is the best eLearning toolset on the market or I wouldn’t work at Articulate.  We offer great support, and make products that are so easy to learn even your grandma could use them.
2. Wordpress. It is impossible to ignore what blogs have done for eLearning, and how can my list be complete without including the BEST Blogging software.  Wordpress.
3. Twitter. This choice might turn some heads…you might be thinking, how does constant updates from Ashton Kutcher and Shaq facilitate learning?  Good question…it depends on how you use Twitter.  If you only follow the tweeps like Shaq or Ashton Kutcher you probably aren’t going to gain much from it, and you probably don’t have a whole lot of friends (Ok, I admit it, I follow Shaq).  However, if you use Twitter to connect, share, and ask advice from other professionals in your industry it can be an invaluable tool.  Find a blog that you like, and subscribe to his/her Twitter feed, you will be smarter for it.
4. Screenr.  Screenr is a tool for creating instant screencasts for Twitter.  Although this is a very new tool, it is easy to see the impact this is going to have on people making software demos and screencasts.  Screenr has eliminated the barriers to entry for anyone looking to create demos and screencasts.
   
5. Wikipedia. Originally I was going to list this as Wiki’s in general, but then figured I should probably suggest a specific vendor.  Problem is I don’t know enough about the different Wiki vendors to say which one is the best.  I don’t really think I need to explain this selection, it kinda speaks for itself.
   
6. Articulate Online. Another tool from the great guys at Articulate.  I know listing two products from the same company (or 3 I guess, technically) is a no-no, but this had to make my list.  The reason…Articulate Online has made distributing and tracking eLearning training easy.  One problem with traditional Learning Management Systems is that it is often difficult to deploy content to them, and then distribute content once it is on the LMS.  Articulate Online has changed that with one click publishing and easy deployment links.
7. Moodle.  Yes, Moodle, the Open Source LMS.  Why does this make my list…so many people are using it to distribute and track training.  It is free and reasonably good, which means it works for a lot of people.
   
8. Google Search. I am reading an eBook on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), because it came free with the purchase of my Wordpress theme, and in the book it mentions that 90-98% of Google’s revenue comes from ad-words placed on Google’s site.  So why does that matter?  Well, Google stops making boat loads of cash if people stop using their search, and people will stop using their search if they stop finding what they are looking for.  So cool, now you get the Google business model, but what hell does this have to do with learning and being a good learning tool?  Simple, it allows you to easily and quickly find the information you are looking for.  My dog @winstonpotacho has recently been diagnosed with an elevated lymphocyte count, and the only reason I know what the implications are of a high lymphocyte count is that I was able to find the information by googling for it.  I now know just as much about leukemia in dogs as just about anyone.  In the time before Google I would have no idea what it meant to have an elevated lymphocyte count.  On the positive side of not knowing though, I probably would have slept more than 4 hours a night the last 2 weeks.

Like my list?  Don’t like my list?  Want to submit your own list?  You should let the Center for Learning and Performance technologies know here.

The Articulate Studio ‘09 book published by Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher is finally available.  Highly recomend that you buy it.  Why you might ask?  Fairly certain my name appears in the book at least once.  Patti and Jennifer live close to me and we met up several times this past year to discuss some of the technical details of the book.  Patti and Jennifer were also nice enough to send me a bunch of candy and cookies for helping them out.

You can order the book directly via the publisher and receive a 35% discount with coupon code art0586: Essential Articulate Studio ’09 by Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher (ISBN: 9781598220582).

Congrats again Patti and Jennifer.

Over the past several months I have been ocassionally been lending a technical hand to Patti Shank and Jennifer Bircher on the book they are writing on Articulate Studio ‘09.  Well I am excited to announce that the book is now available for pre-order from Amazon here.

Here is the editorial review of the book that sums up pretty much everything that is covered in the book:

Essential Articulate Studio ‘09 is designed to help novice to intermediate users of Articulate Studio ‘09 get the most from using these tools-Presenter, Engage, Quizmaker, and Video Encoder-to develop quality informational and instructional materials. It was written with the following goals in mind: Help new users get up to speed as quickly and painlessly as possible; Assist users of previous versions of Articulate Studio (and previous versions of Presenter, Engage, and Quizmaker) in capitalizing on improvements made to these tools in the ‘09 versions; Provide tips and tools that make information and instruction faster, easier, and better; Help new and previous users develop information and instruction that is more valuable for the intended audience(s) This book is unique because it can serve as both a tutorial for the Studio ‘09 products and as a primer on designing and building good information and instruction with these tools.

If you are a new user to Articulate, or a novice user trying to become more familiar with the product I highly recommend picking it up.

Congrats to Patti and Jennifer on the book, I know they put many, many hours into getting this book written.

Just did a guest blog post over on Gabe’s WOM blog about getting perfect looking screenshots in Presenter ‘09.  If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out:

http://www.articulate.com/blog/how-to-get-perfect-screenshots-in-presenter-09/

I often see questions in the forums about how to get the best looking screenshots, well the blog post linked above is THE definitive guide on getting perfect looking screenshots.

Last Tuesday we released Articulate Studio ‘09 to the world after about 2 years of development, and I am certain once you try it you will find that it was well worth the wait.

It has taken me over a week to blog about this because honestly it takes you, as a QA person, about a week to get your stress level back down from a 10 to a 3 following a release.  We started the beta of Studio ‘09 back in May, and you won’t believe how many hours the entire Articulate team has worked in the last year to get these products out there.

We added some really cool new features to the product that were some of the more popular feature requests over the past several years.  Here are some of those features:

Articulate Presenter ‘09

• Direct FLV support on a slide (no more using my complicated workaround)
• Notes formatting
• A project file for easy project sharing
• A usable Audio Editor
• Improved image conversion
• Improved support for native PowerPoint shapes (basically everything should look better)
• Branching support

Articulate Quizmaker ‘09

• Slide view authoring environment modeled like PowerPoint so that you can make your quiz slides look exactly as you want them to
• A visual timeline to arrange objects and have them appear at certain times
• A free form drawing tool for hotspot questions
• Question grouping and locking (lock questions in place)
• Branching support

Articulate Engage ‘09

• Branching support to link from one step to another
• A color scheme editor to easily edit your color schemes
• Ability to create a summary slide

So those are some of the highlights of the more commonly requested features in the new studio, but that is not all.  We have also released the Articulate Video Encoder as part of Articulate Studio ‘09.  The video encoder allows anyone to easily convert almost any video format to FLV for use in any of their eLearning content.  It also allows you to easily record from your webcam and automatically convert it to FLV format.

I think the thing that shocks people the most when they try out the new Studio ‘09 is what Articulate Quizmaker has become.  Quizmaker was rebuilt from the ground up, and is truely now the easiest to use and most powerful quiz creation tool on the market.  We still offer you the ability to easily and rapidly create great looking quizzes as we have always done, but added the flexibility to customize your quizzes in almost anyway imagineable.  If you have not done so, check out some of the sample content created with the new Quizmaker ‘09:

http://www.articulate.com/products/quizmaker-demos.php

I am certain you will be blown away.

We have also made some big changes to our website (www.articulate.com), and we are still in the process of working on revamping our documentation.  So we still got many great things to come.

Well, I am very stoked that these products are now out there, and now that they are released I should have more time to devote to blogging, so hopefully you will start to see more of me.

Alright, have fun everyone!

Ever notice how your presenter photo has some gray area below or above it? Prevent this from happening by using the perfectly sized photo.

The optimal zie for a presenter photo is 72×84. This will prevent any unwanted grey area above, below or on the side of a presenter photo.