Author Archive for Dwight Davidson

Techniques For Moving Objects In Adobe Illustrator

Published
by
Dwight Davidson
on July 17, 2009
in Computer Training
. 0 Comments
by Dwight Davidson

Because Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing environment, each Illustrator drawing consists of independent elements or objects. Much of the process of creating a drawing consists of transforming objects, either to customise them or to derive other objects. In this article, we will examine some of the key techniques used when carry out such transformations.

First of all transformations can be carried out in three different way: using the selection or free transform tool, using the transform tools (scale, rotate, shear and reflect) or using the options in the Transform sub-menu of the Object menu. Using the selection or free transform tools is very much like transforming vector and other objects in most non-specialist programs such as Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.

Moving objects is one of the simplest forms of transformation. To move an object with the pointer or free transform tool, simply position the cursor over the object, click and hold down the mouse button and drag the object to a new position. If you hold down the Shift key as you do so, you will constrain the movement of the object to the horizontal, vertical or diagonal plane.

It is also possible to highlight the object and then use the cursor keys on your keyboard to move it up, down, left or right. The amount of movement is dictated by one of the settings in your preferences. To change this, choose Preferences from the Edit menu (Windows) or choose Illustrator from the Apple menu (Macintosh). In the general category, enter a setting for “Keyboard Increment”. (The default setting is 0.3528 mm.)

You can also increase the amount of movement by a factor of ten by holding down the Shift key in conjunction with any of the cursor keys. Also, bear in mind that keys repeat; so if you keep a cursor key down, the object will move continuously. You don’t have to press the key repeatedly.

Illustrator also offers a more precise way of moving an object, using the menu command Object-Transform-Move. This displays a dialogue in which you can enter the precise distance that you would like the object to move. There are four settings: horizontal, vertical, distance and angle. Any of the four can be modified and the other three will be automatically updated. For example, if you enter 10 for horizontal and 10 for vertical, Illustrator will automatically enter 45 degrees for the angle and 14.1421 for the distance. If you then enter 10 for the distance, Illustrator will change both the horizontal and vertical settings to 7.0711; and so forth. The Move dialog also contains a preview option, so that you can verify that the object will end up where you want it to as well a Copy button allowing you to duplicate and offset the original object.

About the Author:
The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Illustrator Classes in London and throughout the UK.

Customizing Audience Handouts In Microsoft PowerPoint

Published
by
Dwight Davidson
on July 6, 2009
in Computer Training
. 0 Comments
by Dwight Davidson

PowerPoint audience handouts provide a way of giving the attendees of your presentations something to remember you by. They normally consist of printouts of the presentation; one, two, three, four six or nine slides to a page. Naturally, however, whether or not the essence of your presentation can be captured by this kind of printout depends on the nature of the presentation.

To personalize the look of your handouts, click on the View tab of the PowerPoint ribbon and then click on the Handout Master button. In PowerPoint, masters allow you to determine the format of the three main elements within a presentation; slides, speaker notes and handouts. When you are in handout master mode, the Handout Master contextual tab appears. It contains a Page Setup section which allows you to choose the orientation of both the page as a whole and of the individual slide miniatures. It also contains buttons for activating or deactivating the header, footer, date and page number as well as for formatting the background of the slide.

Given that Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to produce three separate elements (slides, speaker notes and handouts), when the print command is used, you need to specify which of these elements you wish to print. This is done by choosing an option from the Print What drop-down menu. In addition to the three elements mentioned above, you can also print the outline of the presentation.

If your presentation contains a lot of important detail, it may be more useful to print out the slide outline and distribute it to the audience in place of PowerPoint’s usual handouts. Better still, you can export your presentation into Microsoft Word and then customise it for your audience. To export an outline, from the Office button, choose Publish and then Create Handouts in Microsoft Word.

When exporting to Word in this way, you will be presented with a dialogue box which allows you to choose one of five page layout options. Firstly, you can have speaker notes next to slides. This will create a two column layout with a slide miniature in column one and speaker notes next to it in column two. If you have used the speaker notes feature in your presentation, this may be a useful solution. The second option is Blank Lines Next to Slides: this produces the same two column layout as the first option but the right hand column is blank, so that you can enter notes next to each slide.

The options we have seen thus far don’t offer you much room for text. If you have made or wish to make extensive notes on each slide, options three and four (Notes below Slides and Blank lines below Slides) provide a layout with the text below the slide miniature and leaves approximately 60 percent of the page free for notes.

Perhaps your main aim is for the audience to take away a summary of the content of the presentation. In this case you can choose the final option: Outline Only. This simply exports the text on each slide into Microsoft Word.

As is often the case when transferring data from one Microsoft Office application to another, you have the choice of activating the Paste Link option. This will create a link between the exported file and the original PowerPoint presentation, such that, if the presentation is modified, the exported Word file will also be updated.

About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Classes in London and throughout the UK.

Highlighting Text Using The Keyboard In Microsoft Word

Published
by
Dwight Davidson
on June 9, 2009
in Computer Training
. 0 Comments
by Dwight Davidson

As well as using the mouse, Microsoft Word 2007 contains a number of useful options for selecting text via the keyboard. Most of these options involve using the Shift key in conjunction with other keys. However, there are also some techniques which rely entirely on the keyboard.

Making discontiguous selections

Shift can also be used in conjunction with the cursor keys to highlight characters, words, lines or paragraph. To use these techniques, begin by using the cursor keys on your keyboard to position the cursor where you want your highlighting the start. To highlight character by character press the right or left arrow depending on the direction that you want to move in. To select line by line pressed the down arrow or up arrow depending on the required direction. To deselect some of the highlighted text, move the cursor in the opposite direction. To remove the highlight completely, press any cursor key without the Shift key held down.

Shift-click

A more well-known technique is click followed by Shift-click. To use this technique, click to mark the start of the area that needs to be highlighted. Next, hold down the Shift key and click to mark the point where you want the highlighting to end. All text between the two clicks will then be highlighted.

Using Shift and Control

The Shift key can also be used in conjunction with the Control key. For example, beginning at the start of the document, if you hold down Control and Shift and press the right arrow, you will select word by word instead of character by character. Similarly if you press Control, Shift and the down arrow, you select paragraph by paragraph.

Using Shift and Control

As well as using the cursor keys you can also use Home and End. For example, if the cursor is positioned in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the line; while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the line.

As well as using Shift, you can use Control-Shift. Control-Shift Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control-Shift end will select from the cursor position to the end of the document.

As well as using the cursor keys you can also use Home and End. For example, if the cursor is positioned in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the line; while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the line.

One final highlighting technique definitely worth mentioning is the use of the Control key in conjunction with the mouse. This enables you to make discontiguous selections: in other words, selection that have gaps. For example if we want to select just the headings in a particular document, you can drag across the first heading to select it; hold down the Control key and drag across each of the other headings. You will notice that the headings will be selected while the text between them is not. You can then change the format of your headings and none of the other text will affected.

About the Author:
The author is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft Word training courses in London and throughout the UK.
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