Adobe Captivate: Save Your Skin

Skins that are added to an eLearning lesson serve a similar role to clothes. Depending on the clothes you wear, you can convey a certain impression about yourself. Bored with yourself? Perhaps a visit to your clothes closet will help change your attitude?

Captivate includes a Skin Editor–in essence, your project's closet. Using the Skin Editor, you can, among other things, control the look of a lesson's Playback Controls, add Borders and add a Table of Contents.

Many new Captivate developers have no problem finding the Skin Editor, where making changes to the way a skin looks is simple. However, once those changes are made, the original skin is modified. Should you select another skin down the road, the modifications are lost. Read on and learn how to keep those modifications permanently.

Change Skins

1. Choose Project > Skin Editor.

   There are three buttons at the top left of the Skin Editor: Playback Control, Borders and Table of Contents.
   

2. Select a Skin from the Skin drop-down menu.

   

Observe the preview at the right of the Skin Editor window. Among other things, notice the buttons that appear on the player, color of the Playbar and the Playbar's position on the slide.

Ensure the Playback Control button is selected and observe the left side of Skin Editor. This is where you can select such options as hiding the Playbar in a Quiz, the Playbar's slide position and the buttons that will display on the Playbar (Closed Captioning, Mute, etc).

Click the Position drop-down menu and notice that you can force the playbar to appear on the Top, Left, Bottom or Right of the slide. From the Layout drop-down menu, you can decide if you want the playbar to extend the width of the slide (Stretched) and to simply center horizontally.

The Difference Between a Skin and the Playbar

Many new Captivate developers confuse a Skin and a Playbar, often treating them as one and the same. A Skin plays a larger role in your project than a Playbar. A Skin is the big picture–it controls which Playbar is used, where the Playbar appears on the slide, the Playbar's Layout (Stretched, Left, Right or Centered), the buttons that appear on the Playbar, the borders that appear on the slide, and many other options. Compared to the options available to a Skin, the Playbar is a bit player.

Edit and Save a Skin

1. Select a Playbar from the Playbar list.

You'll notice that the Skin you selected is now using the Playbar you selected. In addition, the Skin name now includes the word Modified.

2. From the list of playback buttons (lower left of the dialog box), remove the check mark from Mute and Closed Captioning.



3. Click the Save tool to the right of the Skin's name and give your new skin any name you like.




From this point forward, your new skin will be available in the Skin drop-down menu for use in any new or existing Captivate project.

Note: If you'd like to see the process of editing and then saving a Skin via the Skin Editor, check out this video demonstration on our YouTube channel.