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You are here: Home / Elearning / My first stab at a custom Articulate Community Player

My first stab at a custom Articulate Community Player

May 17, 2010 By Kevin Thorn 9 Comments

Updated: May 21, 2010 – Lesson I: Making Your Own Custom Articulate Player


Actually, I started out with hopes of developing my own Articulate Engage Interaction. About half way into the SDK (Software Development Kit) documentation, I realized it was a bit over my head just yet. So I turned my attention to the building my own player instead.

Just about that time, I came across Dave Mozealous’ blog titled “How I created a custom Articulate Presenter skin in less than an hour.” First thought that came to mind was, “Yeah right, unless you’re a seasoned pro at programming!”  I’m not new to Flash or HTML, but Dave’s article along with supporting Screenr screencasts inspired me to give it a try. Not to mention the huge kudos for answering all my questions!

Following his directions…walla! My first custom skin!

[iframe http://learnnuggets.com/resources/skin/player.html 490 320]

At first glance, this can easily be done in Flash with simple buttons, but it’s a real-live-honest-to-goodness Articulate player published right from PowerPoint!  It’s nothing to write home to Mom about, but I am excited on several accounts:

  1. I did it!
  2. Anyone can do it!
  3. The possibilities are endless!

I’m a graphics guy so the literal term, “skin” to me is the exoskeleton or the outer graphical look and feel of the player. I can design a thousand skins, but I was more interested in the framework. The Player. The guts!

I know myself well enough to know that if I understand what’s going on under the hood – the code and how it all stitches together and communicates, the rest is gravy.

This is a VERY basic custom player. Many of the default Articulate player attributes and functions have been turned off. Ya’know…crawl, walk, then run. Now that I have the basic infrastructure in place, I’ll be using this player (v.1) as a foundation to build onto. Here is my unofficial plan (in no particular order):

  1. Seekbar
  2. Zoom toggle widget
  3. Menu
  4. Tab bar
  5. Tool bar
  6. Logo panel
  7. Audio volume slider

Not to rewrite Dave’s article, but I want to chronicle my own development process.  Stay tuned for a tutorial series on how I put mine together:

  • The tools and setting up the project
  • The skin: Designing and building the grapics
  • The coding: ActionScript and XML
  • The package and publishing: File management and the .artpkg file extension

Until then, give Dave’s article a try!

Updated: May 21, 2010 – Lesson I: Making Your Own Custom Articulate Player

Filed Under: Elearning, Tutorials Tagged With: articulate, tutorial

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About Kevin Thorn

Chief NuggetHead, Kevin Thorn is an award-winning eLearning designer with over 30 years’ experience in the training industry. Kevin earned a Technology Management degree in pursuit of an IT career. With a pencil in his pocket, his interest in technology mashed with his passion for visual design, he founded NuggetHead Studioz, LLC. The Studioz is a custom design & development company providing services in instructional design, storyboarding, eLearning development, Articulate Storyline training, illustration, graphic design, storytelling, cartooning and comics.

Comments

  1. Dave Mozealous says

    May 17, 2010 at 2:54 pm

    Kevin the skin looks fantastic! Way better looking than mine. Congrats on getting this finished and it was a pleasure helping you out on this.

    -Dave

    Reply
    • Kevin says

      May 17, 2010 at 3:07 pm

      Thanks Dave! If not for your patience with all my questions, I’d still be scratching my head. As for the way it looks – that stuff comes natural to me like coding is for you 🙂 Stay tuned…in the next series, I’m going to write a tutorial on how to build all the graphic assets used in this player. With your coding knowledge and some NuggetHead graphics, we should build a player with all the pieces and parts!

      Reply
  2. Jim DiSorbo says

    May 17, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    Hey, that is great. I look forward to your series.

    Reply
    • Kevin says

      May 17, 2010 at 9:50 pm

      Thanks Jim! I hope the series measures up and will be helpful for others to follow. Should have the first chapter up in a few days

      Reply
  3. onEnterFrame says

    May 17, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    Wow it looks great!
    Super job Kevin.

    Reply
    • Kevin says

      May 17, 2010 at 9:49 pm

      Thanks James! Studying on the seekbar now. Got any tips?

      Reply
  4. Jenise Cook says

    May 17, 2010 at 7:13 pm

    Wow, you two did a great collaboration job, and Kevin, kudos to you for diving in!

    I’m very impressed!

    @jenisecook

    Reply
    • Kevin says

      May 17, 2010 at 9:48 pm

      Thanks Jenise! I must admint it wasn’t much of a collaboration as it was student/teacher. Dave kick-started me with his article and then entertained a couple weeks worth of my questions 🙂

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Custom navigation - Articulate Community Forums says:
    May 21, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    […] – Word of Mouth Blog How I created a custom #Articulate Presenter skin in less than an hour My first stab at a custom Articulate Community Player | LearnNuggets __________________ Brian Batt Customer Support Engineer Articulate – Empowering Rapid E-Learning […]

    Reply

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