Flare for the eLearning Professional

Flare is truly a dynamic software application, where it provides workflow efficiency for technical communicators and training professionals. It does not matter if you are creating an online Help system, or creating a learning and development (L&D) program, both disciplines can seamlessly use Flare. Key features to know about are single-source XML authoring, cascading stylesheets, responsive web design, and multi-channel publishing. You also have the capability to create, manage, and publish interactive eLearning courses.

Background

Flare is traditionally a technical communications tool, catering to those who develop documentation primarily for online Help. However, many groups within an organization use and distribute the same technical information. This might include technical writers, instructional designers, learning managers, training directors, and eLearning specialists.

Flare helps to leverage content, and in the process has also developed into an eLearning authoring tool. Flare is a bridge between technical communication and the L&D space. For example, documentation teams, support teams, and L&D teams can collaborate to reduce duplicated work, and deliver engaging materials—all from a single source.

Basic Steps When Authoring in Flare

When you break down the authoring process in Flare, you will discover that it can be quite simple. Following are the basic steps that you need to follow for creating and developing a project in Flare. Although Flare users sometimes need to produce completely different kinds of output from one another (e.g., a technical writer might need a quite large online Help system, whereas an eLearning professional could just need some short training courses), the same basic five steps are necessary for everyone.

1. Start Projects Create a project from scratch, or start a project by importing existing content from a variety of sources.

2. Author Add content and features, such as topics, text, a table of contents, cross-references, navigation, page layouts, and all of the other elements necessary to help your end users.
3. Design Through the use of features such as stylesheets, skins, page layouts, template pages, and more, you can design a look and feel for your output.
4. Develop Targets Decide the type(s) of output formats that you want to generate and develop targets accordingly to meet your needs.
5. Build and Distribute Output Generate output from a target, then make the files accessible to your end users.

Topics Relevant to eLearning

If you are interested in the L&D features for creating eLearning material, and you are using Flare for the first time—don’t get overwhelmed when you view the Help online. Flare has a lot of powerful features, but not all the topics in Help are needed for eLearning purposes.

To build an eLearning course, focus on the Learning and Development section. As you get more familiar with Flare, you can explore other features that might benefit your project and organization.

Relevant Topic	Recommended Links for More Information
Getting Started	To help you get started with Flare, and learn about its basic features, see Get Started and Getting Started Tutorial.
Workspace	To help you get to know the UI, see Interface and Files.
Project	To start a project, see Creating a Project. Note To quickly get started in creating a course, you can start a new project using the provided eLearning templates. When using a template, you can create a quiz, knowledge check, or a combination of both. The main components in the process are already in place for you. At a minimum, all you have to do is: 1. Create a project based on one of the eLearning templates. 2. Replace the eLearning content with your own. 3. Build the target.
Topics	To view and edit content in the XML Editor, see Creating Topics, Opening Topics, and XML Editor.
Single-Sourcing	To reuse content throughout your course, see Single-Sourcing.
Images	To use images in your eLearning course, see Images.
Lists	To work with a list, see Creating Numbered and Bulleted Lists.
Tables	To add tables into your course topics, see Tables.
Videos	To use multimedia in your course, such as videos, see Videos. Videos can also be added using an IFrame element. This is useful if a video or other external content (e.g., web page) is hosted remotely, and you want it to display dynamically in your output. See IFrames.
Table of Contents	To organize information for output, see Tables of Contents.
Styles	To control the look and feel of your content, see Styles and Stylesheets, Applying Styles to Content and Branding.
Skins	To control appearance of navigation and other elements that wrap around or are integrated with your online output, see Skins.
Targets	HTML5 is the main eLearning target. A target is the file that generates the actual output. To add targets to your project, see Adding Targets. For more information, see HTML5 Output. You can also generate a PDF target. In a printed version of the course, the content is not interactive. See PDF Output for a Course.
Build	To generate output, see Building and Publishing the Primary Target or Building and Publishing a Single Target.