Category: Captivate

by Kevin Siegel

Back in March I wrote an article about editing Captivate's RDL files to control much of the text and punctuation that will appear in a project's text captions before recording any of your lessons. That little trick will surely save any Captivate developer hours of work.

During one of my recent Advanced Captivate classes, a student asked if it was possible to make a copy of an RDL file, make changes (for instance, maybe have one RDL that featured end-of-sentence punctuation and one that didn't) and then have them both available within Captivate.

The answer was a resounding YES and I went about demonstrating how to do it for the entire class. First, I opened the default Captivate RDL file (CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl) using Notepad. I gave the file a new name (kevin_test_english.rdl) and then added end-of-sentence punctuation to several lines of text.

Then it came time for the big finale. I saved and closed the kevin_test_english.rdl file and started Captivate. I went to the Preferences dialog box (Edit menu for Windows users; Adobe Captivate menu for Mac users), selected the Recording category, selected the Generate Captions in menu and… and… the pesky RDL file was not in the menu.

So there I was, scratching my head and trying to figure out why my RDL file wasn't available in the menu. Thankfully, my classes are online and without video cameras so my students couldn't see me sitting there all slack-jawed. I honestly had no idea what I had missed and wondered if I was seeing some kind of bug. Mind you, I had performed this steps dozens of times over the years and the new RDL file always showed up in the menu.

And then of my students came to the rescue. Dave Previdi, a Business Systems Consultant with Wells Fargo, reminded me of a key step in the process that I had forgotten. The name you give to the RDL is critical. I had named mine kevin_test_english.rdl, which is all wrong. The name must be CaptureTextTemplates_name.rdl. I changed the RDL file name to CaptureTextTemplates_Kevin.rdl and all was well with the world (in the image below, you can see my Kevin file is available in the Generate Captions In drop-down menu). Rock on Dave!

by Kevin Siegel

Maybe I was imagining things… but I set a pesky text caption to a specific size. Later on, when I re-opened the slide, the caption was much smaller. I attributed the episode to drinking too much coffee.

But then it happened again!

I resized a text caption to a very, very specific size–no doubt this time. At some point I used the spell check feature (Project > Check Spelling). There was a typo flagged in that very same caption, which I naturally allowed Captivate to fix. And bam! The caption resized.

Has this happened to you? It's not a bug… it's not your caffeine intake… it's a feature… and one that I'm not very fond of. If you resize a text caption or button in Adobe Captivate, and then edit the object's text at all, the object will do you a favor and resize. If you're someone who doesn't appreciate this particular kind of "favor," here is how you disable the feature.

1. Display Captivate's Preferences (Edit menu for Windows users; Adobe Captivate menu for Mac users).

    

2. From the Global group, select Defaults.

    

3. From the General area, consider removing the check marks from Autosize Buttons, Autosize Captions and Calculate Caption Timing.

   

   With these three options disabled, Captivate will no longer resize your objects and change object timing on the Timeline. Careful though. From this point forward, it's possible that your captions can be too small and that the end of the text can get cut off. You'll need to ensure the captions are big enough to accommodate the text. On the other hand, you'll be able to return to your previous caffeine level. 

   Note: The General preferences you set above will not affect legacy projects. If you set the preferences prior to creating a project, all new projects will follow the preferences. The existing projects will need to be altered, one at a time. 

This question came in last week:

Question: I have a question about Adobe Captivate 5 and Articulate Presenter '09.   After adding Captivate 5 SWFs into Articulate Presenter, the SWFs do not play. Everything worked with our Captivate 4 SWFs. Do you know if there are compatibility issues?

Answer: The issue is with AS2 vs. AS3. Captivate 5 SWFs only publish in AS3. Articulate Presenter requires AS2. Review this article for details.

by Kevin Siegel

The common way to publish a completed Captivate eLearning video is as a SWF (small web file). When the publish process is complete, you will end up with three files: an HTML file (which is what your learner will need to open the lesson in a web browser), a JavaScript file (called standard.js) and the SWF containing your lesson. 

The three-file output is typical. But it is possible to publish your Captivate video so that the Skin, Widgets, FMR's and Animations are split apart from the SWF. Doing so would mean that you would need to keep track of more pieces when uploading the lesson to your web server. It would also mean that your lesson might not work correctly with your LMS. However, I have heard from more than one Captivate developer that they have been asked to do so to keep the size of the main SWF down; or maybe it is a requirement before uploading the video. Keep in mind that smaller files mean faster download times for your learners… which means they will be consuming your content faster.

If externalizing your project files is a requirement in your organization, here is how you do it.

1. Choose File > Publish Settings.

   The Captivate Preferences dialog box will open. By default, none of the project resources will be externalized, meaning you will end up with fewer, but larger output files.

    

    

2. Select the resource you'd like to externalize and click the OK button. 

    

3. Publish the lesson as a SWF. 

   If you open the folder containing your published files, you'll notice that three is no longer the magic number. You'll end up with three plus the number of resource files you requested. Keep in mind that when uploading your lesson to your web server, all of these files must be kept together, and in the same folder. Leave one of the resources behind, and the lesson will not play at all. 

    

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

by Lori Smith

Have you ever inserted a User variable into a Captivate text caption so that the lesson was personalized for your learner? Perhaps you added something like Ah, nice to meet you $$learner_name$$ and expected the variable ($$learner_name$$) to be replaced by text typed by the learner.

Upon previewing the project, there is a good chance that the resulting text caption will look something like the image below.

Ah, nice to meet you no name? As you can see, the learner's name did not appear in the text caption. Why? In truth, plenty of things can prevent variable text from appearing. Here are some things to watch for:

You will need to insert a Text Entry Box (TEB) somewhere in the project prior to the text caption. What many Captivate developers don't realize is that it's the TEB that allows the learner to type the information that the variable will collect. No TEB means no data.

After creating the TEB, you will need to remember to associate the TEB with a User variable. (You can do that via the Properties panel, General group).

If you typed the variable name in the text caption, triple-check for typos. It's easy to type the name wrong, and no alert dialog box will appear telling you about your error. In the end, the learner's name will simply fail to appear. Your best bet when inserting variables is to use the Insert Variable command on the Format group in the Properties panel. By inserting the variable, you eliminate any chance for a typographic error.

When you create a variable (Project > Variables), remember to include a Value. By including a Value, something will always appear in the Text Caption, even if the learner does not type the requested text into the TEB.

When you insert the variable, check the Maximum length value and ensure that it's NOT 0. If it is, nothing will appear in the caption, even if the learner does everything you ask.

Note: If you insert the same variable in multiple places, the length of the last one you insert will dictate how all instances of that variable will display. If that last variable had a Maximum length of 0 by mistake (as shown in the image above), all of the variables will now have a length of 0. In that case, none of information typed by your learner will appear in the text captions. Ouch! The problem is easy to fix. Simply insert the variable once more, this time using a proper Maximum length… no harm, no foul.

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About the Author: Lori Smith is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Captivate developer. Lori teaches our Adobe Captivate 5 Advanced Actions class.

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.