Captivate – Page 7 – The Logical Blog

October 10, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Best Practices for Creating Compliant eLearning

by Kevin Siegel

A few years ago I was in Canada teaching Captivate for a large Toronto-based company. We were just getting ready to cover the accessible features found in Captivate when I was informed that I could skip the section because Canadians were not required to create accessible content.

Fast forward to a recent online Advanced Captivate class that included students from South America, Australia, and Canada.In speaking about accessibility with the class, it became apparent not only does the Canadian government now require compliant eLearning, but according to the Canadian students in class, the rules in Canada are often more stringent than those in the United States. I was also happy to learn that other counties, such as Australia, are also addressing accessibility when it comes to eLearning.

If compliant eLearning is a requirement for you, I would encourage you to review your local laws to familiarize yourself with as much information as possible. If you work in the United States, or create eLearning content for a U.S. company, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about Section 508 compliance online. If you are working with Canadian companies, you should familiarize yourself with the Canadian compliance laws. (Note: The Section 508 website may be down due to the U.S. Govt. shutdown. If so, you'll need to try accessing the site once the shutdown is over.)

What Does Captivate do to be Section 508 Compliant?

Selecting the Enable Accessibility option (Edit > Preferences > Publishing) makes certain elements in Adobe Captivate projects accessible or open to accessibility technology. For example, if you select the Enable Accessibility option and you have filled in the project name and project description text boxes in Project preferences, a screen reader will read the name and description when the Adobe Captivate SWF file is played.

The following Adobe Captivate elements are accessible when Enable Accessibility is selected:

Project name (derived from Project Properties)
Project description (derived from Project Properties)
Slide accessibility text
Slide label (derived from Slide Properties)
Buttons
Playback controls (The function of each button is read by screen readers)
Password protection (If an Adobe Captivate SWF file is password protected, the prompt for a password is read by screen readers)
Question slides (Title, question, answers, button text, and scoring report are read by screen readers)

Output generated with the Section 508 option is displayed by all supported browsers. However, your output may not be Section 508-compliant unless it is viewed with Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is the only browser with support for MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility).

Note: To access Flash files using a screen reader, users must have Flash Player 9 or later installed.

Tips for Creating 508-compliant Adobe Captivate SWF Files

While Adobe Captivate Section 508 output is compliant for navigation, make sure that other elements are also compliant in your project. Assistive software must be able to "read" elements on the screen to visually impaired users. Use these tips to design accessible projects.

In the Project preferences, write a meaningful name and description for your Adobe Captivate projects.
For users with hearing impairment, add text equivalents for audio elements. For example, when delivering narrative audio, it is important to provide captions at the same time. One option is to place a transparent caption in a fixed location on slides, then synchronize the text with the audio using the Timeline.
If your project contains visual multimedia, provide information about the multimedia for users with visual impairment. If a name and description are given for visual elements, Adobe Captivate can send the information to the user through the screen reader. Make sure that audio in your Adobe Captivate projects does not prevent users from hearing the screen reader.
Supply text for individual slides that screen readers can read.
Ensure that color is not the only means of conveying information. For example, if you use blue to indicate active links, also use bold, italics, underlining, or some other visual clue. In addition, make sure that foreground and background contrast sufficiently to make text readable by people with low vision or color blindness.
For users with either visual or mobility impairment, ensure that controls are device independent or accessible by keyboard.
Users with cognitive impairments often respond best to uncluttered design that is easily navigable.
If mouse movement is critical in your Adobe Captivate project, consider making the pointer twice its normal size for easier viewing.
Document methods of accessibility for users.
Avoid looping objects. When a screen reader encounters content meant for Flash Player, the screen reader notifies the user with audio, such as "Loading….load done." As content in a project changes, Flash Player sends an event to the screen reader notifying it of a change. In response, the screen reader returns to the top of the page and begins reading again. Therefore, a looping text animation on a slide, for example, can cause the screen reader to continually return to the top of the page.
If you are creating click boxes, you can make them more accessible by adding sound. The sound can play when users tab to the click box or hover over it. To add this accessibility feature, attach a sound file to the hint caption. (If you do not want the hint caption to appear on the slide, you can make the caption transparent and add no text.)
Accessibility in Adobe Captivate works better when all the slides have interactive content.

Source: Adobe, Creating Accessible Projects

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

October 1, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Replacing Modified Styles

by Kevin Siegel

During my advanced Adobe Captivate class, I stress the value in doing things faster and more efficiently within Captivate. Take formatting objects as an example. In the image below, there are several text captions positioned on a slide. The formatting of the captions is something less than consistent.

In the spirit of consistency, I'd like all of the captions in the image above to look the same. To get there, I'm going to apply the same object style on every object. As I select the captions, I discover, much to my horror, that the developer who gave me the project did not use five different object styles to format the captions as I had assumed. Instead, the developer selected each caption, one at a time, and then manually formatted each one using the formatting tools on the Properties panel. (You can easily determine that a style was overridden by selecting an object and, on the Properties panel, observing the plus sign to the left of the style's name.)

Because the captions on the slide have been manually formatted (and the Default Caption Style overridden), my mission to ensure object consistency has now been muddied. Before I can apply a consistent look to the slide objects, I first have to reset the style back to the Default Caption Style. That's a simple job–all I'll need to do is select a modified text caption and, on the Properties panel, Style area, click the Reset Style tool (shown below).

The selected text caption will revert to the style assigned to the caption, without any modifications. The problem is that I'll need to repeat these steps for every modified object. If a project has a significant number of objects with modifications, this would take a fair amount of time rendering the process inefficient.

There is a better, more efficient way…

On the Properties panel, Style area, select Replace modified styles (this option is deselected by default).

Select a slide caption that contains the formatting you would like to use project-wide. On the Properties panel, Style group, click the Save changes to Existing Style tool.

You'll be prompted to confirm the action by clicking the OK button.

Every modified caption will be reset and will now follow the formatting of the saved style. (Compare the image below with the first image above and you'll see that all of the text captions have taken on the appearance of the selected object.)

If you would like to see a demonstration of replacing modified styles across multiple slides, check out the video I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

September 25, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Pretest Actions

by Lori Smith

We recently introduced you to Captivate's Pretest feature. In this article, I'm going to follow-up with Pretests and teach you how to control a Pretest Advanced Action. Here's the scenario: your client or boss wants to ensure that all the learners know the material by passing a quiz. The boss doesn't care if the learner spends the time watching the individual slides that make up the lesson, only that learners are given a fair opportunity to pass the quiz.

You move forward and design an eLearning lesson that contains an introductory slide (slide 1), some pretest questions (slides 2 through 5), eLearning content slides (slides 6 through 50) and a final quiz (beginning on slide 51). If the learner is able to pass the Pretest right out of the gate, then you will not require the learner to review the course content. Instead, you will allow the learner to jump straight to the final quiz. However, if the learner fails the Pretest, the learner will be required to move through the course content before taking the final quiz.

While the scenario above sounds complicated to implement within Captivate, there is an action built within the Pretest that will get you started. Select any Pretest slide on the Filmstrip and take a look at the Action group on the Quiz Properties panel. Just below the Failure Levels drop-down menu you'll see an Edit Pretest Action button.

Edit Pretest Action button

Clicking the Edit Pretest Action button will open the Advanced Action window containing a basic advanced action.

Standard IF statement.

Let's take a look at what the action does. In the IF area, a System Variable named cpInfoQuizPretestScorePercentageis being checked to see if the learner's score is greater than 50. This means that if the learner gets over half of the points allocated in the pretest, he or she passes the pretest.

Take a look in the success and failure areas. Both are sending the learner to the very next slide (using the Go to Next Slideoption).

Standard Else statement.

In the images below, I have edited the Action so that it will use the Jump to Slide option. Should the learner score higher than 50, the Action will jump the learner directly to slide 51 (the quiz). Should the learner score 50 or lower, the ELSE segment of the Action sends the learner to the first content slide for the lesson (slide 6).

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

September 19, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Align the Mouse

by Kevin Siegel

If you have recorded a software demonstration using Adobe Captivate, you have likely run across the issue of the dreaded "jittery mouse."

Here's the scenario: you are working on a project with several slides. On slide 5, the mouse is moving from point A to point B. On slide 6, the mouse has clearly gotten to point B.

Back on slide 5, you decide to move the mouse position (you can easily drag the mouse anywhere you want on the slide). And that's when the "jittery mouse" will bite you.

On slide 6 of the project, you'll notice that the mouse is no longer in the correct slide position because you moved the mouse on slide 5. If you were to play the project (previewing 5 slides is ideal for this kind of test), you would clearly see the mouse "jump" from its new position on slide 5 to its old position on slide 6. In fact, the jump looks almost as if the mouse pointer on slide 6 received some kind of jolt.

To fix the problem, you could go to slide 6 and attempt to manually drag the mouse pointer into the same position that you established on slide 5. But this solution isn't ideal because the mouse position has to be identical to the position on the previous slide. It will probably take several attempts to get it right. What's a developer to do?

Go to slide 6 (this is where the mouse pointer is not in the desired slide position)
Select the mouse pointer and choose Modify > Mouse > Align to Previous Slide.

Bam! This is the perfect cure for the jittery mouse.

Note: You could have also gone to slide 5, right-clicked the mouse pointer and selected Align to Next Slide (or selected the command via Modify > Mouse).

If you would like to see a demonstration of aligning the mouse pointer with previous or next slides, check out the video I created on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

September 10, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Two-Bits for the Best Rate

by Kevin Siegel

You can easily record audio from within Captivate by choosing Audio > Record to. You can record audio directly to slide objects, a single slide, multiple slides, or the project background. Regardless of your choice, you'll find yourself in the Slide Audio dialog box.

After clicking the Device link in the Audio dialog box, the Audio Settings dialog box will open. This is where you have to make an important decision about your bitrate.

Captivate 5 bitrates

You have two choices in the Bitrate drop-down menu: Constant and Variable. Constant Bitrates (CBRs) produce smaller file sizes. By contrast, Variable Bitrates (VBRs) tend to produce audio with a higher, more consistent quality level than CBRs, but the VBR file sizes will be larger than CBRs. For that reason, most Captivate developers stick with Constant Bitrate.

Then you have to select from one of the four bitrate settings: CD, Near CD, Custom or FM. So many decisions… so little time. Bitrate is defined as the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. Using a higher bitrate setting, such as CD Bitrate (128 kbps), will result in higher quality audio but a larger published lesson.

If you decide to use a higher quality bitrate than FM Bitrate, you should spend time experimenting with the options to see which selection sounds best to you. As a general rule, the FM Bitrate is more than adequate for eLearning audio that will be played through typical computer speakers or headsets.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

September 4, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Add a Retake Quiz Button

by Kevin Siegel

I’ve had several students in my Captivate classes ask if it was possible to allow learners to retake a quiz. It’s not only possible, but the solution is very simple.

Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences. From the list of Categories at the left of the Preferences dialog box, select Settings. From the Settings area, select Show Score at the End of the Quiz. (This will add a Quiz Results slide to the project, which is where the Retake Quiz button will appear once enabled.)

Adobe Captivate: Show Score at the End of the Quiz

With the Preferences dialog box still open, select the Pass or Fail category. From the If Failing Grade area, select Show Retake Button and then click the OK button to close the Preferences dialog box.

Adobe Captivate: Show Retake Button.

The Quiz Results slide will now include a Retake Quiz button. You can size and position the button anywhere on the slide just like any other button.

Adobe Captivate: Retake Quiz Button.

When the learner takes the quiz and fails, clicking the Retake Quiz button will automatically reset the quiz score. In addition, the learner will be taken back to the beginning of the quiz.

If you would like to see a demonstration of adding a Retake Quiz button to a project, check out the video I posted to the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 29, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Pre-Test Before You Test

by Kevin Siegel

During one of my recent beginner Adobe Captivate classes, a student asked if it was possible to maintain two quizzes within a single Captivate project. She wanted to be able to give her learners a pretest made up of questions that would run independently of the regular quiz. While it is not possible to have two independent quizzes within a project, she was happy to learn that you can include a Pretest.

Choose Quiz > Pretest Question Slide and you'll be presented with pretty much the same Insert Questions dialog box that you will see when you insert standard Question Slides.

Adobe Captivate: Inserting Pretest Questions

Select the type of question you like, and the number of slides you want. In the image below, I've selected Multiple Choice and True/False and then set the number of each to one.

Adobe Captivate: Insert Questions dialog box.

Once the Pretest Question slides have been inserted within the project, they will behave just like standard Question Slides, with a few notable differences.

First, there will not be a Question Slide progress indicator on any of the Pretest Question slides. In the image below, you can see the progress indicator that's on the first standard Question Slide in my project. (I have two Question Slides and two Pretest Question Slides.)

When the learner takes the Pretest, the answers they submit will not be counted in the final quiz score. However, if you want to ensure a learner understands a concept before allowing them to take the quiz, you can set it up so that the score a learner gets on the Pretest triggers an Action (such as taking the learner back to the beginning of the lesson for more study).

On the Quiz Properties panel, you'll also notice that there is an Edit Pretest Action button for any selected Pretest Question slide. Clicking that button will open the Advanced Actions dialog box. If you're comfortable with Advanced Actions, you could create an Action that would kick in should the learner not perform well on the Pretest.

Adobe Captivate: Edit Pretest Question Action

Adobe Captivate: Pretest Questions Advanced Actions dialog box.

If you would like to see a demonstration of the Pretest feature, check out the video I posted to the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 22, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Drag and Drop Interactions

by Kevin Siegel

If you have always wanted to add drag and drop interactions within a Captivate project, but felt the technique was beyond your ability, think again. Adobe Captivate 7 not only allows you to add this kind of behavior, it's remarkably fast and easy (no programming required… I promise).

In the image below, I've created a Captivate slide with four Smart Shapes. My goal is to allow learners to drag the similar shapes on top of one another. If they succeed, they'll "pass." If not, they'll get a failure message. The darker shapes on the slide will each be a source; the lighter shapes will be targets. If you'd like to follow along, go ahead and create a similar slide (it shouldn't take more than a minute or so).

Adobe Captivate: Slide with Smart Shapes

To add the drag and drop interaction, choose Insert > Launch Drag and Drop Interaction Wizard.

Select each source object on the slide (one at a time) and click the plus sign to the right of the Add To Type drop-down menu. Give each source object a name and then click the OK button. When you are done naming the source objects, click the Next button to move to Step 2.

Adobe Captivate: Creating Sources to be dragged.

Step 2 of the wizard will require you to select and name the target objects. I created two targets (the lighter shapes shown in the first image above). After that, click the Next button to move to the last step.

Adobe Captivate: Creating drag targets.

The final step is to drag the source objects to the target objects (you can see me doing just that in the image below).

Adobe Captivate: Dragging one object over another

After clicking the Finish button, you're… well, finished. Preview the project and you'll be able to drag the source objects to the target objects. As I promised above, you didn't have to create a single line of code to get this to work… how cool is that?

If you would like to see a demonstration of Captivate's Drag and Drop feature, check out the video I posted to the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 13, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Grids ‘n Guides

by Kevin Siegel

When it comes to positioning items on a slide, you can always visit the Transform group on the Properties panel and control such object attributes as the location of a slide object, its size, and rotation.

However, if you prefer to control an object's slide placement without using the Transform panel, Adobe Captivate comes with a few other handy features that are often overlooked: Grids and Guides.

If you select the View menu you'll see four options of note: Show Grid, Snap to Grid, Snap to Object, and Show Drawing/Smart Guides.

Adobe Captivate: View menu

If you select Show Grid, little dots will appear on every slide. The dots, which are visual reference points for you to use on the slide, will not display in a published lesson. Using the grid, you can ensure objects are a specific distance from the top, bottom, left, or right of a slide. If you select Snap to Grid, an object will automatically snap to the little dots as you drag the object around the slide.

Adobe Captivate: Grids

By choosing Show Drawing/Smart Guides, you will see Smart Guides (green dashed lines) when you reposition, resize, or rotate an object. By using Smart Guides, which are enabled by default, you will be able to align objects with other nearby objects.

Adobe Captivate: Smart Guides

Note: Smart Guides do not appear when you try to reposition or resize objects using keyboard nudge controls. If you don't see the Smart Guides as you drag objects around the slide, try zooming closer to the slide (I've found that this often makes it easier to see and use the Smart Guides).

If you would like to see a demonstration of Grids and Smart Guides, check out this video on the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.

August 6, 2013

Adobe Captivate: Fastest Cleaned Prefs in the West

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe Captivate, like most computer programs, can behave poorly. I've found that when Captivate gets sluggish on my computer or crashes, it's because I've got too many applications running and not enough resources. In that instance, closing all non-essential applications solves the problem.

However, there are times when nothing I do seems to help improve Captivate's performance (not even a system reboot). In those rare instances, I've found that resetting all of Captivate's Preferences cures what ails Captivate. One way to reset the Preferences would be to find Captivate's Preferences file on your computer, throw it away, and then restart Captivate (which creates a new Preferences file). The problem is that the Preferences file is buried within your user credentials folder and is often hard to find.

If you need to reset Captivate's Preferences, you'll appreciate an obscure utility that ships with Captivate that will reset all of the Preferences for you.

Navigate to the folder where Captivate is installed on your computer and open the utils folder.

Adobe Captivate: Clean Preferences

You'll find two files of particular interest: CleanPreferencesMac and CleanPreferencesWin. Simply double-click the file appropriate for your operating system and BAM!… all of Captivate's application Preferences will be reset to the way they were the first day Captivate was installed on your computer.

For instance, in the image below I "accidentally" disabled all of my Confirmation Messages in Captivate.

Adobe Captivate: Confirmation Messages disabled.

Don't be jealous, but it's a well-established fact that I am the fastest clicker in the West (or the East for that matter). I could have enabled all of the Confirmation Messages in, what, 3.2 seconds. But by double-clicking CleanPreferencesWin, all of the dialog boxes were instantly reset. I'm fast, but I'm not that fast.

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? IconLogic offers multiple live, online Adobe Captivate classes each month including Introduction to Adobe Captivate and Advanced Adobe Captivate.