What does it do?
The Enhanced Validate ToolBook File will locate potential problems with your ToolBook file and display a report to allow you to correct the problems before you publish to HTML. It is a feature enhanced version of the existing Validate ToolBook file provided by SumTotal systems (available through ToolBook’s Tools/Developers Exchange in ToolBook)
Background
While I was working for SumTotal Systems as ToolBook Alliance manager I wrote the original Validate ToolBook File (accessible through the Developers Exchange Tools in ToolBook). Denny and Jianli from the US ToolBook support team have since then done some additional work on the Tool. Recently I have been using it to validate some large projects and noticed that there were a few things that the current version does not validate, so I decided to add them to the Tool.
Enhanced or new Features compared to the Developers Exchange Version
- Ability to add to the startup system books in order to access to the tool from the Tools menu, rather than having to go through the Developers Exchange Menu
- Support for validating just the current page
- Display more detailed progress while validating
- Shows the duration of the Validation process (helpful if you have to run the tool several times in a large book)
In addition to the existing checks the original version does the enhanced version of the Tool also detects potential problems with:
- Animated GIF Placeholder
- Reusable Graphic Placeholder
- Flash and Media player activeX controls when used alone (i.e. not part of one of the ToolBook Media/Flash Players)
- Validation of Display Document actions
Finally
- Disabled off page object in report from the original (I find that it often clutters the report), sometime in the future I might add it back in and label it a “Warning” rather than an “error”
- Asym_Reset is no longer sent to each page (increases speed of the process)
Installing
Download the Enhanced Validate ToolBook File (Validate89.zip for ToolBook 2004 or Validate90.zip for ToolBook 9 from the
download page)
and unzip it. Then run the validateXX.tbk file.
Note: If you have already installed a previous version of the Enhanced Validate ToolBook File simply overwrite the existing validateXX.tbk located in the ToolBook product directory (typically C:\Program Files\ToolBook\Instructor 9)
A tool like this is not very useful as a standalone application, so if you click the text at the bottom where it says "Click here to permanently add to “Tools” menu" it will add an entry in the Tools menu. For details on what happens see Uninstalling. Note you can also use the tool as a local Developers Exchange Tool.
Uninstalling
What happens when the "Click here to permanently add to menu" is clicked is that the file copies itself to the ToolBook product directory (commonly C:\Program files\Click2learn\Instructor 2004) and add an entry in instructor.ini
[Startup options]
System Books=C:\PROGRA~1\CLICK2~1\INSTRU~2\validate89.tbk
This ensures that the book is loaded when you open ToolBook, and the Enhanced Validate ToolBook File Tool is accessible through the Tools menu.
To uninstall: remove the reference in instructor.ini, and delete the file validateXX.tbk in the ToolBook product directory.
License
It’s free - use at own risk.
Happy ToolBooking
Tomas Lund