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Certified MadCap Flare Training Courses

MadCap Flare icon MadCap Flare Advanced Training Course

Audience

This course was designed for experienced Flare users.

Course Overview

This course uses a combination of lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on practice to introduce the advanced design and single sourcing features in Flare. By the end of the course, you will have the skills you need to design cutting-edge online targets efficiently using MadCap’s single sourcing features.

During this hands-on course, a Certified Flare Instructor will cover:

  • Responsive design best practices
  • "Reset" style definitions
  • CSS mediums
  • The Foundation grid
  • Advanced pseudo elements, pseudo classes, and selectors
  • Multiple template pages for home pages and other topics
  • Responsive layouts
  • Home page "card" design and layout
  • Advanced topic design and layout
  • Font Awesome icons
  • Google Fonts
  • Responsive tables
  • Responsive images
  • calc() and CSS variables
  • Language-specific style definitions
  • Single sourcing designs for print targets

Duration

3-day Web-based Training

Course Fee: $1,199

What’s Covered in This Course

Course overview

  • Welcome
  • Target Audience
  • Course Overview
  • Preparing Your Computer for the Course
  • About the Sample Project

CSS AND DESIGN OVERVIEW

  • Cascading Stylesheets Overview
  • Spans and Divs
  • IDs and Classes
  • Selectors
  • Adding Comments to a Stylesheet
  • Practice

Stylesheets

  • Creating a Stylesheet
  • Linking Stylesheets
  • Applying a Stylesheet to All Topics
  • Applying a Stylesheet to a Topic
  • Modifying a Style
  • Creating a Style Class
  • Creating a Style Class Based on Inline
  • Formatting
  • Creating a Generic Style Class
  • Applying a Style to Content
  • Best Practices for Stylesheets
  • Practice

Text and List Styles

  • About Default Fonts
  • Using a Google Font
  • Using a Font Set
  • Creating a Font Set
  • Sizing Text
  • Controlling Hyphenation
  • Specifying a Bullet Icon
  • Removing List Indentation
  • Auto-numbering Headings
  • Auto-numbering Figure and Table Captions
  • Best Practices for Formatting Text and Lists
  • Practice

Table Styles

  • Creating a Table Stylesheet
  • Setting Borders and Separators
  • Using Header and Footer Rows
  • Setting Alternating Row/Column Background Colors
  • Formatting Custom Row/Column Styles
  • Creating a Table Style for Print
  • Applying a Table Stylesheet to All Tables
  • Applying a Custom Table Row/Column Style
  • Best Practices for Tables
  • Practice

Print Styles

  • About Mediums
  • Changing the Font Family
  • Changing the Font Size
  • Setting TOC and Index Styles
  • Including Heading Styles in the TOC
  • Specifying a Maximum Width for Images
  • Best Practices for Formatting Print Targets
  • Practice

Linking Projects and External Resources

  • About Project Linking
  • Importing Files from Another Flare Project
  • About External Resource Linking
  • Importing an External Resource
  • Including Heading Styles in the TOC
  • Best Practices for Linking Projects and Using External Resources
  • Practice

Responsive Design: Topics

  • About Responsive Design
  • About Topic Design
  • Creating a 2-Column Responsive Layout
  • Adding a Breadcrumb Proxy to a Template Page
  • Formatting the Breadcrumb Proxy
  • Adding a Toolbar Proxy to a Template Page
  • Adding a Menu Proxy to a Template Page
  • Selecting a Template Page for a Target
  • Best Practices for Topic Design
  • Practice

Responsive Design: Home Page

  • About Home Page Design
  • Creating a “Home” Template Page
  • Creating a 1-Column Responsive Layout
  • Designing a Full-width Hero Image
  • Adding a Search Proxy to a Template Page
  • Hiding the Search Bar in an HTML5 Skin’s Header
  • Assigning a Template Page to a Topic
  • Creating a Responsive “Card” Layout
  • Creating a Complex CSS Selector
  • Using Font Awesome Icons
  • Best Practices for Home Page Design
  • Practice

Testing and Managing Styles

  • Testing Responsive Layouts
  • Finding and Fixing Inline Formatting
  • Removing Unused Style Classes
  • Disabling Styles
  • Pinning a Style
  • Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut to a Style
  • Browser CSS Support Charts
  • Best Practices for Testing and Managing Styles

Skins

  • About Skin Design Options
  • Designing an HTML5 Skin
  • Creating a Toolbar Skin
  • Designing a Toolbar Skin
  • Creating a Menu Skin
  • Designing a Menu Skin
  • Creating a Search Bar Skin
  • Designing a Search Bar Skin
  • Applying a Skin to a Proxy
  • Selecting a Skin in a Target
  • Best Practices for Skins
  • Practice

Variables and Snippets

  • About Variables and Snippets
  • Creating a Date/Time Variable
  • Creating a Variable with Multiple Definitions
  • Inserting a User-defined Variable
  • Inserting a System Variable into a TOC Item
  • Using a Variable in a Target
  • Selecting a Variable Definition in a Target
  • Creating a Snippet
  • Inserting a Snippet
  • Overriding a Variable’s Definition in a Snippet
  • Finding Potential Variables and Snippets
  • Finding and Fixing Typed Variables and Snippets
  • Creating Used Variable and Used Snippet Reports
  • Best Practices for Variables and Snippets
  • Practice

Condition Tags

  • About Condition Tags
  • Creating a Tag
  • Applying a Tag to a Topic, File, or Folder
  • Applying a Tag to Content
  • Applying a Tag to a Glossary Term
  • Using Snippet Conditions
  • Applying Conditions Using Styles
  • Excluding Condition Tags in a Target
  • Inserting a Snippet
  • Creating a Condition Tag Report
  • Best Practices for Conditions
  • Practice

Targets

  • About Targets
  • Creating a Publishing Destination
  • Publishing a Target
  • Batch Generating Targets
  • Best Practices for Targets and Publishing
  • Practice

Resources

  • Books
  • Articles
  • Websites
  • Flare Customer Showcase and Case Studies
My new team used a variety of different authoring tools, one of which was MadCap Flare. Until starting this job, I had never heard of Flare. The other writers on the team enjoyed authoring in Flare, so when my opportunity came to own a Flare project, I was excited about the possibilities. What I experienced next completely transformed my career as a technical writer. The more I used Flare, the more I enjoyed it. The more I became familiar with its features and functions, the more possibilities I could see on how I could meet my customers’ needs.

Daniel Ferguson | Founder & President, SmartOutput

Upcoming Advanced Training Course

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Click below for course details.

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MadCap Flare Advanced Training, Web-based (North America)

Led by Mike Hamilton, Certified MadCap Flare Instructor, this 3-day online training course will cover a variety of topics including formatting your content with cascading style sheets (CSS), designing master pages and skins, developing responsive content, and single-sourcing.

Click below for course details.

June 24-26, 2024

2024-06-24T00:00:00 - 2024-06-26T00:00:00

2024-06-26T00:00:00

MadCap Flare Advanced Training, Web-based (Europe)

Led by Mike Hamilton, Certified MadCap Flare Instructor, this 3-day online training course will cover a variety of topics including formatting your content with cascading style sheets (CSS), designing master pages and skins, developing responsive content, and single-sourcing.

Click below for course details.