Web Object Thumbnail

One of the most flexible features of Articulate Presenter — from bringing a live Web site into your presentation to embedding video to launching an accompanying script — is the Web Object.

One of the complaints about the Web Object, however, is that when seen in the Thumbails view, it appears as a placeholder (the same thing you see in PowerPoint after inserting your Web Object):

There is a technique to get around this — to make the thumbnail image appear as a true representation of the Web Object. Here’s how to do it:

1. After you’ve published your presentation, go to the slide containing the Web Object.
2. Take a screenshot of the slide.
3. Create a new PowerPoint file and insert the screenshot (PowerPoint -> Insert -> Picture -> From File).
   NOTE: Do not resize the inserted screenshot in PowerPoint.

4. Publish this new presentation via Articulate.
5. Go to the output directory and look for this file:
   <output_directory>dataswftb1.swf

6. Copy tb1.swf into the same location of your original output, overwriting the file of the same name.
   NOTE: Be sure to change the number to correspond to your Web Object slide. For example, if your Web Object is on slide 3, change the file name to tb3.swf.

7. Re-launch your original presentation, view your Thumbnails, and you’ll see that the placeholder has been replaced with an accurate image of the slide.
   NOTE: Be sure to keep a copy of your new tb1.swf file on hand, so that if you need to re-publish your original file, you can easily overwrite it again with the updated version.

That’s it! Now your users will see a thumbnail-size version of your Web Object.