Captivate 2: Watch Those Support Files

Publishing Flash files from Captivate has always been easy. All you have to do is select the Publish command, select Flash (SWF) from a list of publish options and Captivate creates two files: an HTML file and SWF. Your only worry was to ensure both of those files were kept together. As long as you posted both files on a Web server somewhere and kept the two files together, users who accessed the HTML file would get to enjoy the SWF. Simple.

But now there’s Captivate 2!

When you publish SWF movies in Captivate 2, you’ll quickly discover that, in addition to the two main files (the SWF and HTML files), there might be a second SWF file for any skin you created. (I’ll talk about Skins next week… boy are they cool).

There’s also a new JavaScript file (standard.js). Why is it important? If you’ve published movies within the last few months, you’ve probably run face first into the new security settings in Internet Explorer. You know, the annoying message that requires the user to acknowledge (by clicking) any SWF movie before the user can interact with your movie. It’s never been a big deal, but ranks as a nuisance because the user has to click twice on a button in your movie before the movie works. The JavaScript fixes that. In essence, it "tricks" Internet Explorer and acknowledges the SWF for your users. Very nice.

Last but not least, there are also some metadata files that make it easier to integrate your project into Adobe Connect Enterprise. If you allow Captivate to include the metadata, you might end up with larger than expected SWF files. The metadata files are not necessary if you do not plan to connect to Adobe Connect Enterprise. You can stop the metadata files from generating, and lower the size of your SWFs, by deselecting Publish Adobe Connect Enterprise metadata (via Project > Preferences).