Adobe Education Technologies

Widgets,Flash,Certificates

Adobe Captivate 4 has a new feature called "Widgets" which are a collection of Flash-created SWF files that you can add to your projects. Captivate ships with a bunch of them, and one of them in particular—the Certificate widget—is pretty fun. With it, you can offer a certificate to someone who passes a quiz you have created. There is even a button to print the certificate so you can proudly display your certificate of completion. We here at the Adobe Education Technologies blog built one called the Certificator, and you can see it in action by clicking the following link (link to the certificator: http://se.adobe.acrobat.com/certficator/). To learn more about how this was created, grab the Captivate project files, and start learning how to create your own widgets, read on. . .

Continue reading "Some Widget fun with Captivate 4" »

Posted by Timothy Plumer Jr at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Guest post by Jim Hoerricks, Forensic Image/Video Analyst.

(Jim Hoerricks is a Photoshop Instructor, an Author, and a court qualified expert witness in Forensic Video Analysis who also happens to work for a law enforcement agency in one of the US' major metropolitan areas)

I’ll start off today’s post by first thanking Rick Miller for inviting me to be today’s guest blogger, and by introducing myself. I’m Jim Hoerricks, Forensic Image / Video Analyst and best selling author of Forensic Photoshop – a comprehensive imaging workflow for forensic professionals (www.forensicphotoshopbook.com). I also blog at forensicphotoshop.blogspot.com. For more of my bio, check out the book’s link.

I’ve used Adobe products since the early/mid 1990’s. Some Adobe Products, like Pagemaker, I used before Adobe bought them from their respective owners.

Rick asked me to write a post about the Creative Suite and how it might benefit Criminal Justice students and practitioners. As always, I am happy to help.

So often, we think of Criminal Justice as laws, procedures, court cases, and lots of PT. (If you don’t know what PT stands for, get down and give me 20) I’m here to tell you that the state of modern policing is that … and much more. To illustrate my point, I’ll go down the list of Creative Suite products and show you how each piece fits perfectly within the Criminal Justice curriculum. By the time we’re done, I think that you’ll agree with me that owning the Creative Suite 4 Master Collection is the way to go.

Continue reading "Creative Suite 4 for Criminal Justice" »

Posted by Rick Miller at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Education Technologies,Acrobat 9 Pro,PDF Portfolios,ePortfolios,Multimedia,Video,Movies,Flash,Audio,Sound,3D Content,Web Content

With Adobe Flash Player integration within the new Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro and Adobe Reader 9, PDF files can become far more than static documents and forms. PDF portfolios (which are special types of PDF files) can be created to deliver a wide range of engaging multimedia content to include music, photos, movies, Flash (SWF and FLV) content, 3D content, and much more. The interface used to experience the PDF portfolio content is a Flash-based navigator with different layouts. Steve Adler (Adobe Acrobat Specialist for Education) has a fantastic blog article explaining how to create PDF portfolios and their possible uses in K-12 and Higher Education environments. Below I have provided five PDF portfolio examples which you can download and view offline using the free Adobe Reader 9 or a trial version of Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro. Examples include:

• biology thesis portfolio
• portfolio of college application forms
• design student portfolio
• high student portfolio
• marine biology course portfolio

Once you have viewed these PDF portfolios, try creating one yourself using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro. You can use Steve Adler's blog article as a guide or watch a recorded webinar. Also, there are new PDF portfolio navigator layouts you can download and start using for your projects.

Posted by Patrick Koster at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In Part 1 of Flash CS4: Motions Preset panel, I introduced the Motion Presets panel and demonstrated how it allows you to save as a preset your animation and apply it to an object on the Stage. I also pointed out that we’ve provided a library of prebuilt animations that you can preview before applying.

Well, how about if you want to preview your custom preset? Fortunately Flash CS4 allows you to do precisely that, and in this post I'll outline the steps.

Continue reading "Flash CS4: Motions Preset panel (Part 2)" »

Posted by Rick Miller at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

XFL,Adobe InDesign CS4,Adobe Flash CS4 Professional

In a previous Adobe Education Technologies blog article we examined how to use Adobe InDesign CS4 to create a visually rich layout, add interactivity with hyperlinks, buttons, and page transitions, and then export to SWF. We were able to do all of this without using Adobe Flash Professional and Actionscript programming. The downside of this direct-to-SWF export is that there isn't an easy way to edit the SWF file should we want to further modify it.

Now, Adobe InDesign CS4 allows designers to create multi-page layouts and then export to the new XFL (XML for Flash) file format. The XFL file can be opened directly in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional preserving layout and typographic fidelity. Then developers can enhance the file with animation, interactivity, and video. Let's take a look at the workflow:

Continue reading "XFL: Bringing Designers and Developers Together Since 2008" »

Posted by Patrick Koster at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)