What is a swfBook media file?
If you think of a swfBook as a slideshow, each media file represents one slide. This is the content the user will see. The simplest example is an image. Media files can be of any of the following file types: jpg, png, gif, flv, swf. The inclusion of the swf format opens the door for almost anything the web can handle, including video, news feeds, animation, and interactive content.
What about narration?
Because a swfBook media file might be a swf, and because swf files can contain narration, there is more than one way to add sound to a swfBook page. It is generally best to choose just one method: either use media that includes sound, or add a separate mp3 audio file by filling in the audio field in the slides editor. Audio provided as a separate mp3 is linked to an audio panel containing volume control, play/pause and a progress scrub bar. Audio recorded within PowerPoint and converted via iSpring has no user controls.
If I have iSpring Presenter, why shouldn't I just publish to one of the iSpring player options?
Good question. The iSpring Pro advanced player includes many of the features of a swfBook, and some that swfBook does not offer. You should only consider converting to the swfBook format if you feel your presentation would benefit from the addition of a glossary and/or quiz questions. These are especially useful when used in conjunction with interactive slides.
Is it okay to put html in my slide notes?
Flash's built-in support for html is extremely limited, however, you can safely use the following tags: <b><i><a><ul><ol><li>. Avoid putting a space between the opening < and the first letter of the tag identifier. In other words <b> will work, but < b> will not. By the same token, be sure you DO use a space when you include a less-than sign as part of the text itself, ie pi < 3.15. The xml editor provided on the web will replace special characters with their html equivalents.
Why am I seeing little rectangles sprinkled throughout my notes text?
Most likely you have cut-and-pasted text from Microsoft Office! Office's auto-correct feature puts a number of special characters into ordinary looking text. For instance, double hyphens are replaced with a character called an emdash, and straight quotation marks are replaced with directional quotation marks. To fix the problem, replace all special characters with their plain-text equivalents.
Why am I seeing little rectangles in my page titles?
Most often this is caused when you generate the slideshow.xml file using the PowerPoint macro. The macro replaces carriage returns with an unreadable character. You can remove these with any plain text editor. Note that this problem will not occur when a slide title includes a line wrap. That is, the title text might appear on two lines within PowerPoint, but stiill be okay in the swfBook. It all depends on whether or not you hit the ENTER key while typing the title text.