Screens and blocks

The Slide view shows each screen exactly as learners will see it: the course’s own player draws it. There you retouch by hand what your AI wrote, or build things yourself. The zoom menu offers Phone width to see the screen on a phone, and Fit to window to come back.

Screens and chapters

In the list on the left, a click shows a screen; a double-click renames it. Drag a screen to move it, into another chapter too. Right-click offers Open, New screen after, Duplicate, Move up, Move down and Delete; New screen in this chapter adds one at the end of a chapter. When the course has layouts, a new screen asks Which layout?: Simple screen (blocks stacked vertically) or one of the course’s layouts.

With nothing selected on the canvas, Properties shows the screen: its Title; Completed (as soon as it is viewed, after its activities or by an event) and Counts towards progress; on the Course plan row, the plan items it covers (at least one); its Layout, Style and Background; its Steps and Events.

Retouching text

Double-click a text on the canvas (or press Enter when its block is selected): an editor opens over it. You have bold (⌘B), italic (⌘I), links (⌘K) and lists; what you paste from a word processor is cleaned up. Confirm by clicking elsewhere, or with Enter (⌘Enter in a paragraph); Escape leaves without changing anything. Text that holds a table or a centred formula is edited in Markdown (Edit Markdown).

Some text comes from the approved course plan: Properties says so. Rewording it changes the plan, which marks it until its next version. Text the client wants verbatim can only be unlocked in the course plan.

A block’s properties

Select a block: Properties shows everything you can set, in words: its texts, its choices, its options, its Width (Full, Wide, Half, and Edge to edge for the blocks that allow it), its Step, its Style, its Events and its Accessibility. A block that has several presentations offers them first, under Presentation. For a question: the question text, the answers and the feedback for each (why a feedback per option is worth writing).

Adding a block

The toolbar adds a block after the selected block (or at the end of the screen, or of the layer on display):

• Text: a paragraph, a title, a lesson introduction, a callout, a statement, a divider, an equation, a quote, a persona;
• Media: an image, a gallery, two images to compare, a video or an audio file from your computer;
• Layout: a stack of contents that follow each other in the same place, columns, a “Do / Don’t”;
• Interaction: an accordion, tabs, flip cards, steps, a timeline, a scrolling figure, an interactive image, a guided tour, a character, a dialogue, a decision, a button;
• Questions: a question (also with picture answers or on a picture), a numeric question, a fill-in-the-blanks text, an exercise to match, categorize or put in order, a reflection, a scale, the results;
• Charts: figures, a ranking, a trend, a share, a process, a diagram (see below);
• Course blocks: blocks specific to this course, when it has some.

Each entry is one specific thing you have in mind, with no indentation and no submenu; the variants beside the preview are only styles of it, and the inspector then offers every presentation of the block. Entries marked with an ellipsis (Image…, Gallery…, Scrolling…) ask for your files first. All of it, with Transform into… and the Opening screen layout, is in starter blocks.

Each tool opens its family, with a preview of each entry as it will appear on your screen. The + between two blocks, right-clicking a block or the screen, or a block’s … menu offer every block, with a search field; in a paragraph, type / and its name. The new block’s first text is selected: just type over it. A branching dialogue has its own page: dialogues. Recall and drag-and-drop Questions are in starter blocks.

Charts and diagrams

An Elabora chart says one thing. Its title is the sentence it proves, the Takeaway (“Most incidents start with an email” rather than “Incidents by origin”); Highlighted picks the item that carries the idea: it takes the accent colour and the others fade back. Here is why: one chart, one idea. When a chart carries the slide, its takeaway is the slide’s title: turn off Show the title in the screen’s settings (the menu and screen readers keep it), and leave Context empty unless it says what neither the title nor the chart does, such as what is counted.

• Key figures, Bars, Part of a whole, Trend, Proportion (“1 in 10”), Before and after, Funnel (or pyramid), Process, Cycle, Matrix, Milestones and Diagram (a flowchart, a mind map, a sequence, written in Mermaid).
• They animate once, when they come on screen, and answer the pointer, touch and the arrow keys; a table of their data is read by screen readers.
• On a narrated screen, each item can come when the voice names it, the others fading back while it speaks: ask your AI (“bring each bar in when the voice mentions it”), or see the chart follows the voice.
• Trend can let learners predict: they draw the line they expect, then see the real one. It is not scored unless you decide so (predict, then reveal).
• For what no block draws (two series, a map, a log scale), your AI writes a custom object following the same rules.

Moving, copying, deleting

Once a block is selected: drag it on the canvas (a line shows where it will go), or use ⌥↑ and ⌥↓; ⌘D duplicates it; ⌘C then ⌘V paste it after the selected block, on any screen; Move to another screen… sends it to the end of another screen; ⌫ deletes it. Each gesture is one step that ⌘Z undoes.

Images, video and audio

• Replacing an image: in Properties, Replace…, or drop the file on the field, or straight onto the image on the canvas. Elabora then asks you to check its alternative text: does it still describe what the new image shows?
• Adding: drop an image, a video or an audio file elsewhere on the canvas; it comes in as a new block after the one under the pointer.
• Elabora converts the file for the web with the ffmpeg it brings.
• A video or audio file: the inspector says what it lacks. Captions come from a WebVTT (.vtt) or SubRip (.srt) file: choose it, or drop it on the field or on the video. Add the Transcript. Loop is for silent animations; Decorative for what carries no information.

Custom objects and course blocks

A custom object (a 3D simulation, a small game…) has its Object settings, chosen by its author, its Accessibility (the Spoken description screen readers read) and its Object text, which you can reword. To change its code, ask your AI. A block specific to the course turns into ordinary blocks with Convert to simple blocks, in its menu. Developers will find the details in Free-object contract and Components.

From one screen to the next

A 3D scene or an image that comes back on the next screen can carry on instead of appearing again, as a morph transition between two slides does. Select it on the second screen and turn on Continues from the previous screen in Properties: a custom object keeps running and moves to its new settings (another camera, another mode) without loading again; an image glides from its place. Transition sets how long it takes: Quick, Normal or Slow. It is one step that ⌘Z undoes. The canvas and Preview show the transition as learners will see it.

Nothing else moves: the rest of the screen changes as usual, and when learners ask for less motion the transition becomes a clean cut. The scene keeps one state from one screen to the next: what learners did in it is waiting when they come back. What the object does during the transition (the camera turning, its controls changing) is up to its code: ask your AI, for example “during the transition to the explanation, bring the camera down to the cut-away view”.

Search and replace

⌘F (or the magnifier) opens Search the course: results by screen, each with what surrounds it; a click opens the place. Replace with, then Replace for one result or Replace all, in one step that ⌘Z undoes. Aa matches case. Approved course plan text is not searched here: edit it in the course plan.