Over the past few weeks I've been writing about the hot new features you'll find in Adobe Captivate 8 such as the new, easier to use, interface and responsive projects. Those two features are arguably the top changes you'll see if you're upgrading from Captivate 5, 5.5, 6, or 7 to Captivate 8.
As I've become more and more comfortable using Adobe Captivate 8, it's the seemingly minor improvements to the program that have me the most excited. Take Image Buttons for example. You've always been able to insert image buttons in Captivate. For the past several years, the most common way to insert a button was to choose Insert > Standard Objects > Button. Alternatively, you could use a tool on the little-used Object Toolbar to insert a button. Finally, if you're a keyboard junkie, you could press [control] [shift] [b] on your keyboard to get the job done.
Captivate 8 offers a streamlined path to inserting a button. First of all, the ill-fated Object toolbar is gone. Since I never used it, I, for one, am not going to miss it. However, the Insert menu no longer includes a Standard Objects menu item. Say what? So if the Object toolbar is gone and there's no menu item for adding a button, does that mean the only way to insert a button onto a slide is to press [control] [shift] [b]? While you can still use the keyboard shortcut to insert a button, check out the top of the Captivate window. You'll see a new toolbar that essentially combines the old Main toolbar and the old Object toolbar into one, streamlined toolbar.
To add a button, find the Interactions drop-down menu on the new toolbar and choose Button.
A button will be added to the middle of the selected slide, just like previous versions of Captivate. Of course, I've never been fond of the standard text buttons available in Captivate. Instead, I either use
Smart Shapes as buttons, or I use Image buttons. Over the years, my main complaint about Captivate's image buttons was that the buttons that shipped with Captivate were, to put it kindly, terribly boring.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the buttons available in Captivate 8 are much, much better. Here's how you access the new image buttons and, along the way, set Image Buttons as the default when inserting buttons on a slide.
First, choose Edit > Object Style Manager. At the left side of the dialog box, select Button from the list of Standard Objects.
From the middle of the Object Style Manager dialog box, select Default Image Button Style.
From the top right of the dialog box, select Set as Default.
The next time you insert a button onto a slide, the button will use the Default Image Button Style. Next you'll specify which image will be used by the inserted image Button.
From the Button area, scroll down and review the images available for the Image Button. As I mentioned above, the list of available buttons in older versions of Captivate was very short, and very uninspiring. I'm sure that the enhanced images available in Captivate 8 won't make a graphic designer jump up and down with excitement. However, I'm neither a graphic designer nor an illustrator. I have to admit that I was excited to see the new images. In fact, I was so excited, one of my feet actually spasmed when I saw the improvements. (It was just one foot mind you, not both… let's not go crazy here.)
After selecting the image you like from the list of images, the final step is to simply click the OK button. The next time you insert a button via the Interactions drop-down menu, the button will be an Image Button, not a Text Button, and will be the button image you specified.
