Boardmaker+Plus

Use this template: to create books in Boardmaker Plus! When you are finished, email your book to Yuichi Tamano for review. She will send it to Joe to post on accessiblebookcollection.org

Make sure you are using v6.1.3 or later of Boardmaker Plus. Go to the Start Menu->Mayer-Johnson->Check for Updates to get the latest version.

The following video tutorial shows how to edit the Book Template. It isn't specific to the Accessible Book Collection, but most of the steps are the same. Part 1: [] Part 2: []

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Here are the written instructions, which are also included with the board.

To Adapt a Book:


 * 1) Download the HTML version of the book from Accessible Book Collection's website, and extract the files to a folder on your computer.
 * 2) Open up the folder. You'll see a bunch of pictures, as well as one or two web-page files. Open the web-page file and you will see the web (HTML) version of the book.
 * 3) Minimize the webpage. We will need to come back to it when we start to edit the Boardmaker Plus book.
 * 4) Download the book template from the link at the top of this page. Extract all the files to a folder on your computer.
 * 5) **Make a copy of that folder.** You will need to edit the files inside the copy you made, not the original template folder. Rename the folder to be the name of the book.
 * 6) First edit the files named "Cover" and "Copyright". Do not change the names of these files. Copy and paste the text from the webpage version of the book into Boardmaker. Please include all copyright information, as well as the Accessible Book Collection rights notice that is included in the page. You can make the font smaller and put things on to the same line in order to fit everything.
 * 7) Look at the pages in the web-page version and decide which format from the template provided will be best format, and open up that file.
 * 8) Press the Escape Key to enter Design Mode (if not already in it).
 * 9) Go to the File Menu and select "Save As", and type in "page1".
 * 10) Edit your page. Copy and paste the text from the page into the text box in Boardmaker. Then drag the picture from the webpage into the picture box in Boardmaker.
 * 11) You should turn off the label setting, so that you don't a get a label along with the picture. To do this, open up your Symbol Finder, then click on the Toolbox button (it shows a hammer, saw, and wrench on it). Then check off the "No Label" option.
 * 12) Adjust the font size to the best font size for the amount of text that you have. Pick a larger font (24point or 30 point) if there is not much text on the page. If there is a lot of text, you may need 18 point or even 14 point).
 * 13) Re-size the text box and the picture box so that the picture box can be as large as possible without crowding the text.
 * 14) When you re-size the picture box, hold down the control-key in order to get the picture to automatically resize as you resize the box.
 * 15) When you've finished your page, click on the File Menu and pick "Save".
 * 16) Now you're ready to start the next page. Click on the File Menu and pick "Save As", and name the board "page2".
 * 17) Repeat steps 10-14 for each page of the book. Make sure to include the About the Author information.
 * 18) Boardmaker Plus will automatically know when there are no more page -- your last page will just be named "page15", for example, if your book has 15 pages.

To use a book, open up the file "Cover" and enter Use Mode from the Dynamic Boards menu. Press the "=" key to adjust the book settings, i.e. which navigation buttons are shown, auditory preview, or to switch into a slideshow mode (click anywhere on the screen to advance the page).

You can use the Microsoft Word templates to help you add the returns at the end of each line. They are formatted to the right width for the full-page width text-boxes at the corresponding font size.

For pages with long passages of text that the child will not need read aloud, i.e. the Copyright Text and About the Author pages, you can delete the Read Page button for that page. This will also prevent the page from being read aloud in SlideShow mode.