FrameMaker Digital Publishing Course

FrameMaker Digital Publishing Course ($600)

I’ve taken my absolute best FrameMaker digital publishing knowledge and content and turned it into an online course, with access to deep content in my learning management system, and weekly assignments to help you assess your existing FrameMaker publishing workflow and come up with something that you’ll truly enjoy using.

Students should have taken the FrameMaker Advanced Authoring course, or have equivalent experience.

I’ve developed over 20 years of FrameMaker best practices, I’ve written two FrameMaker reference books in the past 4 years, and I’ve created more video on Technical Communication Suite products than anyone else out there, including Adobe’s own team! 

Here is what we cover in this workshop:

Everything, and I mean everything, related to publishing FrameMaker content for use on screens and mobile devices. Scroll down to the next section for a more thorough list of topics in the course.

What’s the class format?

This online course walks you through cleaning up your document overrides and other things that complicate your digital output process. You’ll have four weeks of 24/7 access to course materials, recorded lessons, and assignments via my learning management system. You can expect 2-3 hours outside of the course materials to complete assignments and to modify your publishing environment.

The course includes permanent access to my FrameMaker Facebook group, where you can ask questions about digital publishing specifics.

Live sessions

As with my other courses, whenever there are four or more students in the course I do live weekly sessions complete with two-way screensharing and conference call.

In-depth projects

You’ll work on exercises and work-oriented projects that could never fit into a two or three day live class format.

Take what you need, when you need it

Core concepts are provided as video lessons so that you can catch up on missed work or review as needed.

I maintain a private Facebook group for questions and discussions with me and with fellow attendees.

Course Syllabus

INTRODUCTORY MODULE

No need for prep prior to this course! However, if you have existing FrameMaker content and an idea of your organization standards for publishing to the web, you’ll be a little ahead of the game for the first week.

No content? No problem! You can always use the excellent sample files provided with FrameMaker to experiment with the publishing process.

GETTING FAMILIAR WITH THE PUBLISH POD AND STYLE MAPPINGS

Everything starts with the Publish pod. This week you’ll learn how to produce the basic output types, and map existing styles to CSS equivalents.

• Map paragraph tags to CSS styles
• Manage autonumbering
• Create automatic topic breaks
• Map tables
• Work out cross-reference formats based on your content
• Set up software needed to process things like EPUB and Kindle output

After this lesson, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to separate your PDF (or print) formatting from your online output formatting.

CUSTOMIZING USER INTERFACE FOR YOUR OUTPUT, INTRO TO MOBILE APP PROCESSING

The look of your output, or the skin, is easy to customize. This allows you to more closely match your output to the web standards of your organization. Fortunately, the work done in Week 1 will allow you to focus on the colors and graphics associated with the output, and help identify additional content formatting needed to match your other web content.

• Match basic colors of text and graphics
• Change icons for common web functions (print, page back, etc.)
• Create simple mobile app for testing
• Set up PhoneGap account for mobile app output (first app is free with FrameMaker license)
• Set up accounts for Google and Apple distribution

By the end of this week, you will have a working mobile app that you can install on any Android device or emulator.

MOBILE APP PROCESSING

This week we focus on the things outside of FrameMaker needed to deliver mobile apps via the Apple and Google stores. There aren’t many bullet items here, but the process of creating the necessary files for provisioning your app will take considerable time and focus.

• Setting up required components and provisioning in your Apple Developer account (requires $99 annual fee to Apple)
• Setting up required components and provisioning in your Google Developer account

After this lesson, you’ll have everything you need to produce and distribute real mobile apps to your audience, either for free or via the paid app stores.

All students receive an EPUB of Matt Sullivan’s FrameMaker – Working with Content at the start of class.

About your instructor

Matt Sullivan has been using FrameMaker since the early 90’s. He has taught over one thousand FrameMaker authors and template designers to leverage the strength of the program and reduce time spent performing formatting and “desktop publishing” tasks. He is the author of the only FrameMaker reference books for FrameMaker 11, FrameMaker 2015, and FrameMaker 2017.

Matt spends his days developing online courses and running Tech Comm Tools, where he helps people with documentation workflows.

Matt holds Adobe training certifications for FrameMaker, Captivate, RoboHelp, Connect, and Presenter. He has also previously been certified in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and other applications.

Matt contracts with Adobe regularly to produce videos and deliver webinars. He also represents Adobe at various tech comm conferences throughout the year, including the STC Summit, LavaCon, and WritersUA.

Custom training and live training classes

All my courses can be delivered live (online or in person) and customized to fit your training needs.
For more information please contact Matt Sullivan