If you’ve ever published a course to Articulate Online, one of the things you’ll notice is the thumbnail that is associated with your course. Essentially, it is a thumbnail of the first slide in your presentation. So, what happens if you use a Flash file or even a web object for your first slide? This happens:
That’s right! You get a thumbnail that doesn’t really represent your course at all. Wouldn’t you rather have a thumbnail that looks something like this?
To replace the thumbnail for your content in Articulate Online, you will need to use the following method:
- Publish your project locally to Articulate Online (note: the process is detailed on Articulate’s site if you are unfamiliar with it)
- When your course has finished publishing, click on the Open Folder button
- You should see a file with the .art6 file extension. Right click the file, choose rename, & change the extension from .art6 to .zip
- Using your favorite art program (MS Paint, Artweaver, or Photoshop), create a 163 (width) x 123 (height) image and save it as thumbnail.png
- Double-click the zip file that you renamed earlier and you should see the thumbnail.png file that is currently associated with your project
- Drag the new thumbnail.png file that you created into the folder & replace the file
- After replacing the file, go back to the .zip file and rename it back to .art6
- Finally, manually upload the file to your Articulate Online account
Once you’ve completed the above process, your content will look much more appealing:
If you’re having trouble manually editing your .art6 file, Dave Moxon covered this subject back in April of 2008. Please click here to see that article.
Although I haven’t tested it, you should be able to do the same thing to your Engage or Quizmaker content. Please comment if you have tried this on other types of content!
