tips for tutorial authors
by Joop Blokker.
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text flow
The Mokum Mail program is not only great for writing E-mails, it is also a fine tool for writing tutorials!
If your tutorials contain pictures then these little routines may come in handy.
To have the text flow around the images, you can use Mokum Mail's picture feature. In the editor click on the PICTURE button, select a picture and set it e.g. at the left side.
Here the explanation of the picture setting ends. Now the next line should appear BELOW this picture.
See... this line starts starts neatly below the picture. For this we use a special BR line-break tag, which pushes the rest of the text below the picture.
To copy this code, RIGHT-click on the line and click on "Select all". RIGHT-click again and click on 'Copy'. The line is now at the clipboard and can be pasted in your script.
printing
If the tutorial has to be printed to paper, you should add a clickable link to print the tutorial, just like you see at the start of this tutorial. Here is the code:
adding page breaks
You should avoid printing a part of an image at the end of a sheet and the rest on the next page. Adding page breaks should be the very last thing you do, when all text and pictures are looking good on your screen. Then save your tutorial as an .HTM file (click on the EXPORT button in MM's editor and reload the .HTM script in the editor, so you can see all of the code. In the HEAD - /HEAD section of the .HTM script you must place this little STYLE definition:
When you have done this, you should view your tutorial in IE and click on the 'Print this lesson' link. Do not waste paper: make sure to set the print routine to show a Preview.
Look at page 1 of the preview and - if an image at the bottom is cut off - then you must put these lines in the script, immediately above the image tag:
The whole image will now be printed on the next page. Another not-so-nice thing is when the header of a paragraph is at the end of a sheet and the text is on the next one. Just put a page break above the header line to move it to the next sheet.
Repeat the test print until all pictures and headers print O.K. and finally save the .HTM script.
If you have any comments or questions, you can send Karen a message by clicking HERE