Five tricks to make your authoring life easier

There are a number of time-saving features built into our authoring platform - but even our most-seasoned users probably don't know them all! 

Save a few clicks by just dragging and dropping media asset files onto an empty Placeholder on a page.

You can drag files from your desktop, your hard drive or a server location.

This process still opens up the Media Properties panel so you can added a description, keywords and other data.

It’s a definite time-saver, and so convenient!

You can also use copy/paste to add images to any authoring page.

Maybe you have images in a PowerPoint file. Or you’ve done a Google image search and found something.

Just use Ctrl-C on Windows or Command-C on a Mac to copy the image from the source location.

Back on your authoring page, use Ctrl-V on Windows or Command-V on a Mac to start the paste process. The stage will show you all the places where you can paste the image – just select the location to finish the paste.

Did you know you can drag a Test Question out of the Test Question folder and it will switch to a Practice Question?

And it goes both ways – drag a Practice Question onto the Test Question folder and it’ll be changed to a Test Question and added to the folder.

You’ve probably had a time when you needed some placeholder text for working with a design or layout.

You probably grabbed some text from a document or did a Google search for the classic lorem ipsum text.

Here’s a quick trick you can use next time to generate lorem ipsum text right within a Text element on your Page.

When editing a text element, just type “=lorem (3s)” to generate three sentences of lorem ipsum. (Don’t type the quotation marks.) No need to hit the enter key – the auto-text is triggered as you complete the closing parenthesis.

How much text do you need for your design?

Type “=lorem (5w)” to generate five words. Or, type “=lorem (4p)” to generate four paragraphs.

And if you haven’t guessed, you can use any numeric value you need or want.

This is a great feature for doing rough design work, prototyping a page, creating a template for others to use or even for basic storyboarding.

This is really handy for those times when you want to repeat the same action across several same-level containers.

For example, maybe you want to adjust background colours for several Groups on the same page.

The “normal” way to do this would be to select an element in the first Group then select the Group on the Page Control Bar (bread crumb) and change the background colour. Then do that again for the next Group, and again for the next.

Or, you could select the first element then double-select the Group on the Page Control Bar. The bar will change from black to blue, and now when you select a different element on the page the bar will automatically be focussed on the Group level, and you’ll see the Selection Control Bar pre-set to the related options.

The key is to use two single clicks: click, pause, click again.

To release the Page Control Bar from this mode, just select the container level once more. The bar will switch back from blue to black.

We hope you find these tips helpful!