MadWorld 2022 Schedule: Advanced Workshop

The skin editors provided by MadCap Flare enable you to customize a range of visual aspects including colors, fonts, and icons. However, many useful and exciting effects can be achieved by hand-coding the appropriate advanced styles into your topic stylesheet. This presentation shows you how to achieve a range of special effects including different colored borders beneath each of the Top Nav menus, additional text, and logos within the Header bar, and the flexibility to omit specific topics from the Top Nav or Side Nav menus even though they are included within the TOC. You will learn how to use Chrome Developer Tools to identify the required styles, as well as how to use some key CSS techniques to implement the effects.

Wish you could easily add and use metadata at multiple file levels to help manage your projects better? Check. Wish you could display micro content in more than one container in the output? Check. Wish you could use micro content in topics as well as search results? Check. Wish you could use meta tags to help control your micro content and make it more robust? Check. Wish you could get your project’s micro content included in Google’s search results? Check. In this workshop, I will get deep into the weeds and explain all of this. I will also walk you through some common use cases to illustrate how meta tags and micro content can help make your documentation more helpful and powerful.

The skin editors provided by MadCap Flare enable you to customize a range of visual aspects including colors, fonts, and icons. However, many useful and exciting effects can be achieved by hand-coding the appropriate advanced styles into your topic stylesheet. This presentation shows you how to achieve a range of special effects including different colored borders beneath each of the Top Nav menus, additional text, and logos within the Header bar, and the flexibility to omit specific topics from the Top Nav or Side Nav menus even though they are included within the TOC. You will learn how to use Chrome Developer Tools to identify the required styles, as well as how to use some key CSS techniques to implement the effects.

Wish you could easily add and use metadata at multiple file levels to help manage your projects better? Check. Wish you could display micro content in more than one container in the output? Check. Wish you could use micro content in topics as well as search results? Check. Wish you could use meta tags to help control your micro content and make it more robust? Check. Wish you could get your project’s micro content included in Google’s search results? Check. In this workshop, I will get deep into the weeds and explain all of this. I will also walk you through some common use cases to illustrate how meta tags and micro content can help make your documentation more helpful and powerful.

What is flexbox? Simply put, a flex layout is a CSS technique for creating responsive layouts such as clickable menu tiles. As its name implies, a flex layout provides a flexible means for adjusting an HTML5 layout automatically to fit different kinds of content. This makes flexbox a great way to add visual pizzazz to your HTML5 outputs by accommodating content that changes frequently. This workshop discusses the advantages (many) and disadvantages (a few) of using flexbox layouts in Flare. It covers manual layouts in which you fashion your own content from text, images, and links, as well as automated layouts constructed from Flare TOC proxies.

The number of features and processes in MadCap Central has grown quickly and extensively since it was first introduced a few years ago. In this workshop, Jennifer Morse will walk you through all of the most important pieces of this robust cloud-based software. This includes projects, source control, task and checklist management, topic reviews, outputs, analytics, and more. You will see how to put it all together, from beginning to end, and make the most of the unique relationship between Central and Flare. You’ll learn the details from every corner of Central, including some new and exciting features that are sure to make you want to jump on this moving train.

What is flexbox? Simply put, a flex layout is a CSS technique for creating responsive layouts such as clickable menu tiles. As its name implies, a flex layout provides a flexible means for adjusting an HTML5 layout automatically to fit different kinds of content. This makes flexbox a great way to add visual pizzazz to your HTML5 outputs by accommodating content that changes frequently. This workshop discusses the advantages (many) and disadvantages (a few) of using flexbox layouts in Flare. It covers manual layouts in which you fashion your own content from text, images, and links, as well as automated layouts constructed from Flare TOC proxies.

The number of features and processes in MadCap Central has grown quickly and extensively since it was first introduced a few years ago. In this workshop, Jennifer Morse will walk you through all of the most important pieces of this robust cloud-based software. This includes projects, source control, task and checklist management, topic reviews, outputs, analytics, and more. You will see how to put it all together, from beginning to end, and make the most of the unique relationship between Central and Flare. You’ll learn the details from every corner of Central, including some new and exciting features that are sure to make you want to jump on this moving train.

Micro content is a short block of content that can be easily consumed by users and reused for search results, context-sensitive help, chatbots, VR/AR systems, and more. But, there are several challenges and tasks involved in effectively creating and using micro content. How do we transition existing system-oriented or even EPPO-based content to micro content? How do we connect micro content to outside systems? How do you write and design micro content? In this workshop, I will define and answer common questions about micro content based on best practices. We will explore real-world examples of micro content, discuss a micro content-based development workflow, and walk-through methods for reusing micro content in external systems such as chatbots, Google's search, and AR/VR systems.

MadCap Flare is an amazing solution that lets you do a lot of cool things. Sometimes you need to make unique scripted customizations for your particular project that aren't supported out of the box. jQuery to the rescue! In this workshop, longtime MadWorld presenter Paul Pehrson will walk you through several jQuery scripts he uses in some of his Flare projects. First, we'll talk about some scripting basics, then we'll talk about the best way to add scripts to your project. Paul will then share with you the code for several jQuery enhancements he uses including sticky table headers, table sorting, scripted feedback link, show/hide divs based on a role, adding text before a thumbnail image, and changing the top menu size when scrolling. Sample scripts will be provided to all attendees as well as a working Flare project that contains the scripts so you can see them in action.

Micro content is a short block of content that can be easily consumed by users and reused for search results, context-sensitive help, chatbots, VR/AR systems, and more. But, there are several challenges and tasks involved in effectively creating and using micro content. How do we transition existing system-oriented or even EPPO-based content to micro content? How do we connect micro content to outside systems? How do you write and design micro content? In this workshop, I will define and answer common questions about micro content based on best practices. We will explore real-world examples of micro content, discuss a micro content-based development workflow, and walk-through methods for reusing micro content in external systems such as chatbots, Google's search, and AR/VR systems.

MadCap Flare is an amazing solution that lets you do a lot of cool things. Sometimes you need to make unique scripted customizations for your particular project that aren't supported out of the box. jQuery to the rescue! In this workshop, longtime MadWorld presenter Paul Pehrson will walk you through several jQuery scripts he uses in some of his Flare projects. First, we'll talk about some scripting basics, then we'll talk about the best way to add scripts to your project. Paul will then share with you the code for several jQuery enhancements he uses including sticky table headers, table sorting, scripted feedback link, show/hide divs based on a role, adding text before a thumbnail image, and changing the top menu size when scrolling. Sample scripts will be provided to all attendees as well as a working Flare project that contains the scripts so you can see them in action.

For many Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is a dark art akin to alchemy or voodoo. There are several techniques that you can use in your MadCap Flare topics, templates, and projects to improve your SEO. In this workshop we will be using one of the stock Flare Project templates included with Flare and we will go through the process of optimizing it for SEO purposes. We will be looking at keywords, metadata, micro content, search engine enrollment, and more. Some of these techniques may look familiar, however be prepared for some new items being shown at MadWorld for the first time.

It is one thing knowing about the ADDIE Model and the Blended Learning Model but have you got the skills to head back to the office and put it into action? Test your skills in this workshop where we will apply these models to create a training program for ‘MadCap Flare Introductory Training’. Ok, we aren’t really redesigning the course for MadCap Flare, however, we will use this as our topic cause it is something we all have in common. There will be no right or wrong in this workshop and a huge benefit will be achieved by listening to all the different ideas the group have on training delivery ideas. You will leave this workshop with a nice tool kit of training methodologies to spice up your training programs and MadCap Flare Online outputs.