Flypaper puts the power of Flash in the hands of those who don’t have time nor inclination to delve into ActionScript programming.  As part of Lectora Inspire, Flypaper for Lectora includes many resources for authors who desire the excitement and interactivity of Flash and need the timesaving and ease-of-use benefits. One other nice thing about working with Flypaper is that you get to keep control of your Flash elements. If you use a programmer or outsource the programming, it is more difficult and costly when you need to make edits.

I’m going to showcase some items I found in Flypaper that can quickly and easily be adapted for jazzing up eLearning courses.

To create this simple graphic, I used a template called “Flat Screen.” I chose it from the Flybrary, the media asset library in Flypaper, and dragged it onto the page. I was presented with an image gallery and dragged images into the project but you can browse and select them from the properties view of the gallery. I left the photos as items that can be chosen from the menu on the left but you can also set them to auto run and add timing. The curtains are a preprogrammed SWF that I found in the Flash SWF area of the Flybrary. I just dragged it onto the page and sized and positioned it over the top of the video screen. I also found the caption bubble in the components area.

This sample is an eLearning template in the Flybrary that is a drag and drop interactive exercise for knowledge checks. Once again, it was super easy to drag it onto a blank page and then drop in photos and add descriptive text for the exercise.

This is another sample of an eLearning template in the Flybrary. It is a fill-in-the-blank exercise. I noticed that the more familiar I got with the interface, the faster I could work in the program.

When you create a new animation using Flypaper, you will need to produce the animation to Flash. Drag and drop the produced SWF file directly into your title. If at a later time, you need to edit your SWF, right-click the animation within your Lectora course, and select Edit. Flypaper will automatically launch your project so you can begin making changes. Reproduce your animation when you’re done – the animation is automatically updated within your Lectora Inspire course.

If you want to try Flypapaper for Lectora yourself, download the free trial of Lectora Inspire here.

Linda Register is part of the marketing team at Trivantis. Her main responsibilities in the Marketing group are working on the Trivantis.com Web team, communications, planning and writing. Linda has a journalism degree from the University of Oregon.