Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

For people new to the web design game, the process can seem kind of overwhelming. After all, at various points when designing and developing a website, you need:

1. aesthetic skills (to make things look good)
2. information architecture skills (organizing the content in a way so that users can find what they need)
3. interaction design skills (making sure that the paths within a website makes sense and are pleasurable for the user)
4. technical skills (XHTML, CSS, knowing how to turn on a computer)

Many web design shops have pros who are experts in each of these areas. How can you, a smart but inexperienced person, compete with that?  You're just trying to put together a little web site for yourself, your aunt the locally famous banjo player, or a volunteer organization...

divide et impera, or, Divide and Conquer

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Web Authoring, Web Design
No Comments »

If you have been using Twitter for a while, your Twitter Home page is probably becoming a blinding  jumble of unrelated messages. Because all your feeds pour into the same space, you need to do a lot of weeding to find what you want--that is, if you have the patience. Now, with the new Lists feature, Twitter allows you to categorize and filter tweets in any way you like. Just create and name one or more Lists and then assign people you are following to your various Lists.

Here's how:

In your Twitter space, click the Profile link at the top of the page. Under your username, click the Lists   button and choose New List. You can name your list anything, and make it Public or Private.

Once you have one or more lists, in the "Following" section on the right of your Profile, click the View All link. To the right of each of your followed usernames is a List button:   Click this button to see your lists, and then assign the selected username to a list.

Your Lists appear in the right section of your Home or Profile. Click a list to see only tweets that have been assigned to that list.

Posted in General News, Social Networking, Twitter
No Comments »

You might have noticed while idly clicking around that in some applications, clicks and double-clicks have different functionality.  In almost every application that involves text, clicking once will place a cursor, and clicking twice will select the work that you clicked on.  This can help to quickly select some text without having to press and drag.  But have you ever tried clicking more than twice?  Thrice?  Four times?  The fabled quintuple-click?

Let's see how InDesign handles this.

Open up an InDesign document with some text.  If you don't have a document handy, then simply create one and place a text-heavy Word document, or even a web page. (From the menu bar File->Place, and then locate a file to place.  Double-click the file, and then click on the page to place).

Now, select the Type tool from the toolbox, and test out the following.

• One click places a cursor in the text
• Two clicks in quick succession(double-click) will select a single word
• Three clicks in quick succession(triple-click) will select a single sentence
• Four clicks in quick succession(quadruple-click) will select an entire paragraph
• Five clicks in quick succession(quintuple-click) will select all the text in the frame (the same effect as going to the menu and selecting Edit->Select All)

InDesign is far ahead in the multiple-click arms race.  Most applications will support up to three clicks, (Word, Dreamweaver, most web browsers), and three clicks in these applications will commonly select an entire paragraph.

The Opera web browser is somewhat of an oddball as it will support four clicks, in the same way that InDesign handles four clicks.

Experiment with some of your other favorite applications, and see how much time you can save with extra clicks versus pressing and dragging.

Posted in Graphics, Animations and Page Layout, InDesign
No Comments »

It seems like every device these days includes a video camera.  Cell phones, music players, laptops and more all include easy to use video cameras.  Along with this, consumer level cameras are becoming cheaper and more powerful all the time.  But what to do with all of that video?  Well IT Training is here to help.  Starting next week, we'll begin teaching on video topics with the following workshops on 11/4 and 11/5:

Video Basics - An Overview of Tools and Resources - In this workshop, Donna Jones will discuss the basics of video, starting with a discussion of cameras, and what features to look for, and then using Windows Movie Maker to edit a short video.  While working on editing the video, the process of shooting a movie will be discussed, including setting up lighting, getting good quality audio, and setting up good shots.  Donna will also discuss some simple ways to make your production look more professional.

After Effects: Text Animation and Video Basics - Adobe After Effects is an animation program focused on video production which allows you to combine video and animations into a single project and then export it into many common video formats. In this workshop, Andy Hunsucker will guide you through the creation of a short movie trailer that combines text animation, video, and background music, along with some animations created entirely within After Effects.  Participants will get a chance to spend time working in the interface, and learn the basics of the animation system and the effects system.

See the workshop descriptions to sign up.  If you can't make it next week, we're doing a rerun on 11/17 and 11/18.  And don't forget about the same workshops being held at IUPUI.

Posted in After Effects, CS4, General News, Video Cameras, Video Editing
No Comments »

You can learn to use IU’s Oncourse Reorder Tools feature, or get training on how to conduct a Tandberg videoconference, by watching IU IT Training and Education’s award-winning tutorials.

In October IT Training & Education from Indiana University received awards for two training videos at the Fall ACM-SIGUCCS Conference in St. Louis, MO. ACM-SIGUCCS stands for The Association Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services; it is an international group of professionals involved in the support of information technology at institutions of higher education.

The communication awards were given in Category 3b: Electronic How-to Guides: http://www.siguccs.org/Conference/Fall2009/award_winners.html . Click "Read the rest of this entry," below, to see the tutorials.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in General News
No Comments »

A flu epidemic or service outage due to weather can cause serious disruption of classes. IU has designed a new instructional resource to help instructors match their preferred teaching techniques with IU-supported technologies. The web site, structured around best practices of teaching, provides instructors with information about remote teaching and collaboration technologies, and supplies directions on where to get help from a consultant.
Check out the resources at: http://keepteaching.iu.edu/

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in General News
1 Comment »

Unlike MS Word, InDesign won't let you "fake" a bold or italic style where the type itself doesn't include a bold or italic font. It will allow you to slant characters, but designers consider that to be bad form. Discussion of terminology of typography may help you understand why.

When people speak of fonts, they are typically using the word inaccurately. Here's the truth:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in CS3, CS4, Graphics, Animations and Page Layout, InDesign, Page Design
No Comments »

On October 29th, IT Training & Education and Adobe will be offering three special Acrobat hands-on workshops taught by Steve Adler, an Acrobat Field Specialist from Adobe. These special workshops are being offered at no cost to IU students, faculty and staff, and are intended to complement our regular Acrobat workshop offerings and take you deeper into key features.

This is a rare opportunity to get in-depth hands-on Acrobat training direct from the source, on topics that aren't normally covered in our IT Training & Education workshops. The workshops (with brief description and schedule information) are:

Enhanced ePortfolios Using Adobe Acrobat 9 - October 29th, 9-11am in Wells Library, rm. W302

Teaches how to organize and gather information from a variety of sources, collaborate and share documents in real-time, and collect and manage feedback in a single PDF document. Also shows how to include video, audio, interactivity and assessment in a single PDF wrapper.

Creating and Distributing Forms with Adobe Acrobat 9 - October 29th, 12:30-2:30pm in Kelly School of Business, rm. CG0030

Teaches how to use Acrobat 9 (and the included Adobe LiveCycle Designer) to convert existing forms into intelligent, interactive documents that reduce re-keying and errors; also shows how Acrobat's workflows can improve distribution, data collection, and analysis.

Achieving Efficiencies in collaboration and instruction with Acrobat 9 - October 29th, 3-5pm in Kelly School of Business, rm. CG0030

Participants will learn how to use Acrobat as a collaboration tool. Acrobat allows users to both view a document remotely and comment on it at the same time. This workshop will focus on how to these features can be used by faculty and students in the classroom.

You can find full descriptions and register for each workshop by clicking the title of the workshop above, or you can visit http://ittraining.iu.edu/Acrobat to see all IT Training STEPS workshops in Acrobat and register for the ones of your choice. Please contact us with any questions, and we hope to see you there.

Posted in General News
No Comments »

What is videoconferencing?

Videoconferencing enables groups of people at different locations to see and hear each other at the same time. This technology allows users to conduct meetings, teach courses, and collaborate in real time at any distance. To participate in a group videoconference, you must be using videoconferencing hardware and software.

What videoconferencing resources are available at IU?

Indiana University faculty and staff can schedule any of the 228 videoconferencing systems located across IU campuses. Video calls from IU are not limited to IU campuses, however; calls can be made to locations around the world that have compatible videoconferencing systems.

IU maintains special pricing on the Tandberg MXP-series high-definition videoconferencing system. Therefore, this is the recommended and supported group videoconferencing system.

Where can I get training on the Tandberg videoconferencing system?

You can watch a video tutorial on the Tandberg videoconferencing system at IU, at:
http://ittraining.iu.edu/online/tutorials/tandbergFinal/index.htm

Where can I get more information?

The IU Knowledge Base has information about videoconferencing at IU at: http://kb.iu.edu/data/ajtt.html.

Posted in General News, Tandberg, Uncategorized, Video Conferencing
No Comments »

I was teaching an Illustrator class recently, and talking briefly about the Pathfinder panel:

I realized as I was discussing it, that many of these options are not as straightforward as the end-user might like. I promised the class I would go into more depth on our blog.

So in the following video, I will explore the Pathfinder panel, and demonstrate each of the buttons, so that we can see exactly what they all can accomplish.  Hopefully this will spark your creativity, and give you a better idea of the power of these simple buttons.

Illustrator: Exploring the Pathfinder Panel

Posted in CS4, Graphics, Animations and Page Layout, Illustrator
No Comments »