Master Pages and Templates
Tips and Best Practices
OutStart, Inc.
100 Colonial Center Parkway Suite 400
Lake Mary, Florida 32746 407.548.0444
© 2006 OutStart, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Wild Courses? Wrangle Your Courses Under Control With Master Pages!
Do your navigation buttons look like they are performing jumping jacks? Or did you forget to add a chapter title to a couple of pages? Would you like to add a Glossary button to your 60 page course – without having to add it to every page?
If you answered yes to any of the above, chances are that you are not using Master Pages in your Trainer course.
Master Pages are the means by which Content Developers and Instructional Designers can achieve that ever-important course “consistency”. Consistency – one of the differences between a nicely-presented course, and an exceptionally-presented course.
So what are some of the advantages of using Master Pages?
Create Once – Use Often!
Create a Master Page once, and apply it to as many pages as necessary. Here’s how: 1. Create a Master Pages Book, Chapter, and a hidden Master Page.
2. Decide on, or create the User Interface items, such as a background graphic and navigational buttons for your course.
3. Put them all together on the Master Page according to your placement preferences. 4. Configure the buttons for your navigational needs.
5. Add contextual information, such as company branding and course title.
6. Whenever creating a new page in your course, apply the Master page, and then just add your page content as usual.
Master Pages with a Purpose!
Get creative with your Master Pages! Create Master Pages that serve a purpose. The following items are some suggestions of specific-purpose Master Pages.
• Tutorial Master Page - such as the one pictured above. This would be a page that you would use for the majority of your tutorial pages.
• Test Master Page - with all elements needed for test pages. For example, you may only want to supply an exit button, or a next button, and limit other navigational items, depending on your needs.
• Basic Master Page - that allows for those times when your page needs are very specific. Typically, a Basic Master Page would contain no navigation buttons. For instance, it could be a hidden page that will jump back to the original source page when the Next button is clicked. Or it might be the Course Title page, which only needs a Next button. Having a Basic Master Page allows you to add only the elements you need after applying the Master Page.
• Section Master Pages – such as the one pictured below. The advantage of Section Master Pages is that you can add section titles and section indicators.
Easier Project Management
Do you lead a team-based course-development project and want to ensure that instructional User Interface integrity is maintained? Using Master Pages, it’s easy to lock-down a course look and feel without fear of accidental changes, as well as saving time at the story-board stage.
Create a series of Master Pages, and lock the pages. In that way, content developers can easily add the content elements without being able to edit Master Page elements, even on the Master Pages themselves.
Global Changes? Easy!
This is one of the best reasons for using Master Pages. When you make a change to a Master Page, all course pages using that Master will be instantly updated to reflect the change. The following items give examples of when you would use Master Pages to make global changes.
• New Look and Feel - Perhaps you’d like to give a new look to an older course. Simply change the
background graphic, buttons, title fonts, colors, etc on your Master Pages, and the whole course will have a brand-new look and feel.
• Repurposing - You might want to repurpose a course for a new customer or business unit. It might be as simple as changing out the “branding” on your Master Pages.
• Small Changes - Have you changed your mind about a Title font or even the name of your course? Easy – change it on your Master Pages and your whole course will be updated.
• Small Additions - Halfway though your development project, you decide you want to add audio with an audio button to each page, or a glossary with the applicable button. This would normally be a daunting task if you have to make changes to every page in your course. Not so if you are using Master Pages. Add the buttons once and they will be added to all of your pages.
Best of all, changes made to Master Pages of a course have no impact on non-master page elements. You can even change out the background image and not affect the page elements.
No “Element Bumping”!
It is so easy to “bump” content elements on a page. It happens time and time again, and often you don’t even notice. Perhaps you’ve clicked on a button to check the configuration settings, and unknowingly bumped it out of alignment by a few pixels. You may even accidentally click on a page element and bump it out of line just a little. If element-bumping goes unnoticed, your pages risk the “jumping” look that comes from inconsistent element placing.
When using Master Pages, it’s impossible to bump elements because they are locked for editing on all but the Master Page itself. This gives you a lot more freedom of movement.
The best of both worlds! Use Master Pages with Templates!
Creating global and page-level templates is a best practice in itself. Spending some time on template design and creation prior to course development allows you to define standards, consistency, and save a great deal of development time.
Combining the Trainer template functionality with the use of Master Pages allows you to use the Master Page benefits as discussed earlier, while at the same time having the ability to add editable page templates. Do some pre-course development by creating a good set of Master Page templates, along with pre-defined page layout templates.
Make the best of Trainer’s templates by creating template groups for two main uses:
• Global templates for use as Master Pages – Create a variety of pages for specific purposes as discussed on Page 5, pre-configuring button settings and other elements that will not change for that page type. Save them as templates and then use them for your Master Pages.
• Page-level templates – Create pre-defined element layouts and configurations which can be applied to individual pages as needed. These are not used as Master Pages, as the elements contained on them should be editable. Page-level templates can be simple layouts that include a few basic elements, or complex layouts that contain pre-configured elements such as web widgets or questions.
Combine the Templates and Master Pages
Once created, the two can be combined onto pages in two simple steps:
1. Select a Master Page that has had a Master Page template inserted, and then apply it to a course page as shown in the example below.
2. Apply a page-level template as shown in the example below, and you are ready to add the appropriate information to complete the page development.
Best Practices: Creating Master Pages and Templates
As a best practice, it is recommended that Master Pages and Templates always be used for courses created in Trainer. The following are suggestions of best practices for creating and using Master Pages and Templates. Master Pages/Global Templates:
• Create your Master Pages first, then save them to a new template group. The templates will be saved to use in other courses as required.
• The elements included on Master Pages are at the designer’s discretion, but at a minimum they should define the page background, navigation, and course titles.
• Master Pages should always be created in their own separate Book.
• Use a variety of Master Pages for each course. At a minimum, create Master Pages for the following: Standard Tutorial Pages (full navigation)
Test Pages (partial navigation)
No Navigation Pages (pages that do not have any navigational items on them for use as hidden, pop-up pages)
• Other suggestions for using Master Pages:
Section Pages (with section titles and visual indicators) Start Pages (no Previous button)
End Pages (no Next button)
• Ensure that any background image used on a Master Page does not use any more Page “real estate” than absolutely necessary.
• Background images should be the exact size of the Trainer page, as defined in your Course Properties.
• If using a background image, insert it as a Background Image and not just as an Image. If using the latter function, other page elements may disappear behind the Image.
• If applicable, use a company logo on the Background Image.
• Any text boxes used over a colored Background image should always have the background color set to transparent.
• Try to always use white as the content area of a background image. This is the easiest color to contrast other elements with, and it will help prevent having to use transparent .gifs more than necessary.
• Always include a Table of Contents button so that learners can quickly navigate to different chapters and pages within the course. Hidden chapters and pages will not appear in the Table of Contents.
• The following page elements are recommended for use on Master Pages: Background color or image
Course Title
Text box for Chapter Title Text box for Page Title
Navigational Images or panel including, Table of Contents button, Home button, Next button, Previous button, Exit button, Audio on/off button (if applicable), Glossary button (if applicable).
Page-Level Templates:
• Create some common page layouts that you know will be used often within the course.
• Ensure that page layouts fit within the bounds of the Master Page background interface image.
• Create pages such as those including questions, hot spots, and web widgets and pre-configure the elements to save page development time. For example, you may pre-configure feedback, scoring, page jumps, and display options of questions. Once inserted on the page, the developer will only need to input the question and answer text.
• Develop some image placeholders to signify the size and placement of images on a page.
• Create some more complex page layouts that are specific to the course, if there is need to use them regularly. For example, at the end of each chapter you may have pages that include procedural tables along with links for more information. Create this page once and save it as a page-level template.
In conclusion, it is possible to create entire storyboards using Master Pages and Templates. Used in conjunction with Trainer’s course template functionality and Comments Pane, it is possible to completely define your
For More Information
For more information on how to use and apply Master Pages, see the Creating Master Pages and Applying
Templates sections of the OutStart Trainer User Guide.
Note: This Best Practice document has been created for OutStart Trainer 2006: Revision 2 SP1 (10.0.1036). The ability to use page-layout templates with Master Pages was not available until this version. Please contact [email protected] for details if you need to upgrade your Trainer application.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ Rose Jorgensen
Senior Instructional Designer / Trainer Practitioner OutStart, Inc.
