Question: Captivate vs. SnagIt and FullShot
You mention on page 19 of your Captivate 3 book that you use third-party screen capture programs (SnagIt and FullShot) for backgrounds, whereas most people "elect to use Captivate to create the screen captures." You don’t really elaborate on this. Would you mind me asking why it is that you don’t just use Captivate?
Answer:
SnagIt and FullShot both include intense graphic tools to augment screen captures created with those applications (you can add callouts, shadows, arrows, etc.); Captivate does not have any drawing tools.
Both SnagIt and FullShot allow you to pull specific parts of the screen (such as a window, menu, button, dialog, screen, etc). Using SnagIt or FullShot you can elect to save your screen captures in various formats (BMP, JPG, etc). With Captivate, you are forced to capture everything within the red recording area on your screen. And the screen captures created in Captivate are intended to stay within Captivate (even though you can certainly copy and paste the backgrounds between applications).
Question: Captivate versus PowerPoint
Captivate seems to be a great alternative to PowerPoint for doing presentations. In your experience, are there any circumstances where PowerPoint still has an advantage over Captivate?
Answer:
While you can create wonderful scenario-based projects with Captivate, I would say that most people who use Captivate use it to create interactive software simulations or demonstrations. While you could mange much of the same Captivate effects using PowerPoint, Captivate "just feels right" for creating software simulations where I feel like I’m trying to put a square peg into a round hole trying to use PowerPoint. However, PowerPoint does contain some wonderful animation effects you cannot get with Captivate (animated bullets, master slides, etc.) PowerPoint sports a ton of drawing tools and AutoShapes. If you are creating a soft-skills presentation and do not intend to include quizzes, do not need SCORM compliance and do not intend to upload to an LMS, I would advise you to create that kind of project in PowerPoint and leave software simulations to Captivate.
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