ToolBook 10 Features

Using the ToolBook 10 preview software, you can now produce learning content to reach more users,
regardless of where they are.

Click here to register to download the preview release.

The Features

The following new features were added in Preview Release 2:

Media Control for Voice Recordings
You can now control the playback of a voice recording by using the Play, Pause, and Stop buttons from the Catalog. These catalog buttons have been updated to allow Voice Recording to be specified as the target player to control. The Play Media, Stop Media and Pause Media commands within the Actions Editor (in the Media category) have also been updated to allow the user to specify voice recording as the target player to control.

Additional Options in ToolBook for Exported Speaker Notes from PowerPoint
Speaker notes exported from a PowerPoint slide can be accessed through the Notes tab in the page properties dialog box for the corresponding page in ToolBook. A few additional options have been added to the Notes tab in the Page Properties such as the option to review all the notes in a book by exporting them, removing all page notes from a book, and removing all the text from the current page note.

Enhanced Quiz Summary Object
The Quiz Summary object has been enhanced with a few options on design. You can now specify how you want the quiz summary to appear. Options include defining the background color of the Quiz Summary object, the border style and color of the border around the quiz summary object, the use of a separator bar between the questions being summarized, its color etc.

What’s new in ToolBook 10?

A Quiz Summary Feature has been Added
ToolBook now has a new Quiz Summary feature that provides a summary of questions answered in the book. There is a new category called the Quiz Summary category that contains a Quiz Summary object and a variety of individual text components you can add to your summary object. The Quiz Summary object allows you to designate which questions will be summarized, based on a page range specified. By default, the Quiz Summary object is configured to display some general information about your questions. Other information can be added or removed as needed, using the various Quiz Summary components found in the Quiz Summary catalog category.

To support the quiz summary's ability to display the question text for a particular question, an enhancement has been made to each of the question objects, which now allow a user to specify the text to be used as the Question Text to be displayed in the Quiz Summary.

The Catalog User Interface has been Enhanced
The Catalog UI now has a new look! The background of the catalog, which used to be a gray earlier, is now white and the icons for objects have been updated to match the new look of the Catalog.

Audio in PowerPoint Presentations is now Supported
You can now export audio files from PowerPoint to ToolBook when publishing a PowerPoint presentation to a ToolBook book. Note that this applies to all sounds inserted via PowerPoint’s Insert menu, excluding sounds associated with Actions.

When you export a PowerPoint presentation containing audio to ToolBook (using the SumTotal Publish to ToolBook add-in), by default, all embedded sound files are exported to the target directory, i.e., the location you have specified for publishing your book. For audio files linked in your PowerPoint presentation however, there are two options on how they are exported to ToolBook – they can be copied to the same directory as your published ToolBook file or linked to their original locations.

Speaker Notes in PowerPoint Presentations is now Supported
The SumTotal Publish to ToolBook Add -in now has the ability to export speaker notes from PowerPoint into ToolBook. These speaker notes exported from a PowerPoint slide can be accessed through the page properties dialog box for the corresponding page in ToolBook. If there are no speaker notes for a slide in PowerPoint, you can use the page properties dialog box to enter notes or instructions relevant to a given
page. These notes can serve as a storyboard that capture relevant instructions for you to put the finishing touches on any given page (Example: An instruction to the author to add a hyperlink to the website on a given page).

The text on the Notes tab retains extended characters (such as Danish and Spanish) Present in the speaker notes. However, there are no additional formatting options available on the Notes tab.

The Speaker Notes feature can be used either before a publish (by adding speaker notes in PowerPoint) or after the publish (by adding notes in ToolBook).

Resource System Supports Additional Image Formats
Prior to ToolBook 10.0, images in all file formats with the exception of BMP and DIB were imported into ToolBook using third party filters and stored internally as resources. The only exception was the PNG file format which was imported using Microsoft Windows GDI+ (Graphics Device Interface Plus) libraries and could be stored in its native format.

Now ToolBook supports the import of TIFF, WMF, and EMF file formats as well (in addition to BMP, DIB, JPG, GIF and PNG). Additionally, now ToolBook uses GDI+ libraries for importing all the file formats that ToolBook currently supports for importing and stores them internally in their native compressed format.

The main advantage of the new improved bitmap resources feature is that the imported image can be exported in its original format and the user can edit the image if required. Another benefit is that GDI+ libraries also enable future image related enhancements.

A New Text Field Style has been Added
A new object called Question Text has been added to the text fields category. If you put one of these onto your question page and specify your question text within that field, the quiz summary object will, by default, automatically use this text within the quiz summary. This is not necessary if you are using a SmartPage since each question-type SmartPage already contains a field for you to put the question text in.

A Temporary LiveXtensions code is now Available
You can play around with LiveXtensions tools (available from the LiveX tab) even if you do not have a support contract with us, by using the following temporary support id number: LE325498.

SmartStyles Documentation
Documentation on creating SmartStyles is available at the following location:
http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/toolbook/demos/CreatingSmartStyles/index.html