Category: eLearning

One of the more useful features of Captivate 2 has been the Library panel.

If you have been playing with the Library, you will have noticed by now that it offers you the ability to easily open images and sound files in your favorite editing application. This is a really cool feature. But it’s just a bit lacking. What if you have more than a single image editor you like to use? You can seemingly only choose a single editor. Or can you? 😉

One of the really useful features Microsoft Windows provides, is the ability to create shortcuts inside folders that point to other folder locations and applications. You can use this to your definite advantage with Captivate and the library. Notice that when you first try this, the Edit item is disabled on the context menu and in the toolbar. So your only option is choosing Edit With… The default location that opens is C:\Program Files. So my favorite trick is to create Windows shortcuts to my favorite image editing applications in this folder. I personally bounce between good old Windows Paint, SnagIt and Fireworks. So I’ve created Windows shortcuts to each of these items. I labeled the shortcuts as follows:

1. Paint
2. SnagIt
3. FireWorks

I labeled them this way so that they would naturally float to the top of the list when I view in Details mode. Next, copy the three shortcuts and visit each location where the applications are stored. Paste into each location. Then you will probably want to delete the shortcut that points to the application in the folder where you are. After all, it’s redundant.

From now on you will be able to choose Edit With and easily pick and choose the desired application!

by Rick Stone

Those of you who are putting off purchasing Captivate 2 until after your 30-day trial expires, beware. While the trial version of the software is fully- functioning, projects that you publish are not!

Say it aint so, Joe!

Sorry, it’s so. Open your project using the trial version of Captivate 2 and then choose Project > Preferences. On the Start and End tab, notice that Project expiration date is selected, and you cannot disable it. Any movies you publish will expire 30 days from the day the trial version of Captivate was installed on your computer (not 30 days from the day you published the project). Ouch!

Not to worry though. Movies you create with the 30-day trial of Captivate 2 do not expire, even after the trial period is over. If you purchase the software, you’ll be able to open the trial files and, if you check the Project expiration date, you’ll notice that the feature is off by default.

If you have HTML experience, you can take your published Captivate files and create links from your Web page to the published files. Of course, you’d need the HTML experience to proceed.

MenuBuilder offers a quick way to package your Captivate projects for distribution to your customers— without the need for HTML experience. Using MenuBuilder, which comes with Captivate, you can create a “home” page or “menu” that contains links to your Captivate projects or other links. The “home” page can serve as the gateway to your projects.

If you’ve purchased my Captivate workbooks, you already know how to create MenuBuilder projects. In that case, I won’t bore you with the details of how to create the projects. I will, however, provide two cautionary tales when working with MenuBuilder (the first tip is in my Captivate book, the second is not).

First, when creating a link to an item, make sure you select the Save file with project checkbox. If you fail to select this option, users clicking the link after you have published the project will following the absolute path to your project, such as C:\Captivate2Data\ MenuBuilderFiles\MenuBuilderExports instead of the CD or Web site where your movie are actually stored. With the Save file with project option selected, the link will instead become a local link.

Second, after publishing your MenuBuilder project as SWF files, check the target folders. I’m betting the folder will be missing a few files, mainly the skin .swf that gets published if you include a skin in your Captivate 2 movie; and the standard.js file that was discussed in last week’s newsletter. Without these two critical files, your movie will not play. The solution is a manual one, but it works. Find the skin .swf and .js files in the folder where you published your Captivate project prior to working on the MenuBuilder project. Copy the files and paste them into the MenuBuilder published project folder before uploading the published files to your Web server or, worse, burning the files to a CD.

So, you insert a text caption.

You edit it just so, select your font and caption style, and then click OK.

Then you spend a good chunk of time working on the Timeline getting the timing just perfect.

And off you go to the next slide, and the next, and the next. No problems.

You play the movie. It’s perfect.

But then you are asked to make a "few" editorial changes to the captions. "No problem," says you. You open a caption here and a caption there and happily make the changes.

You play the movie. And, and… it’s NOT perfect. Much to your horror you discover that the timing for your edited captions has mysteriously changed. The caption on slide 2 that was set for 8 seconds is down to 4. Huh? You added text. How on Earth could adding text decrease the time? Come to think of it, how come the time changed at all? You set it to 8 seconds, and that’s how it should stay.

You are not crazy. In its zeal, Captivate is trying to help you by always calculating the timing for your captions, even if you think you know better.

Want to turn that less than helpful feature off?

Choose Options > Calculate Caption Timing to turn the command OFF.

And that’ll take care of that.

No problem!

The Color Picker is a handy, yet overlooked new tool in Adobe Captivate 2. Using the Color Picker, you can pick up the color properties of just about anything on your computer.

For instance, you need to match the color of the text used in your Text Captions to a color in your logo. The problem is you’re not sure what "that color is" or how to recreate it. No problem, you can use the Color picker to "pick" the logo’s color for you.

Follow these steps to success:

1. Insert a new Text Caption or double-click an existing text caption to display the Text Caption properties
2. Select the text
3. Select either the Highlight Color or Font Color pick list (the black arrow to the right of either tool)

   The Pick color tool is the eyedropper located in the lower right of the color panel

4. Select the Pick color tool

   Your mouse pointer will now look like the Pick color tool. Anything you point to now will display its colors–at the pixel level.

5. Point to anything on your screen containing color
6. Click one time on the color you would like to pick

   The text you selected will magically be using the color you picked.

7. Click OK

When recording movies in Captivate, the easiest recording technique is to have Captivate pull the screen shots and create the captions for you. It’s a very cool, fast process. (You can find archived articles on this BLOG that discuss how to record Captivate movies.)

However, it won’t take you long to discover that Captivate has a bizarre way of describing events. For instance, an auto caption that instructs the user to select a command from a menu will say "Select the… menu item." I don’t know about you, but when I want to instruct a user to select a menu command, I say "Select the… command" not "menu item."

Another strange instruction would be for a user to click the Combo Box–otherwise known as a "Pick List" or "Drop Down List."

Of course you can edit a caption on the fly (by double-clicking the caption and displaying its properties). Or you can perform a "round- trip" using Microsoft Word, where you can edit the captions in a Word table and then import the changes back into Captivate. While not particularly difficult, both options can be labor intensive. (You can review an archived article about this on this BLOG.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if the auto captions automatically contained the descriptive phrases you wanted? No problem. You can quickly edit a Captivate support file that will force Captivate to use the event descriptions you want. Here’s how:

1. Open the folder containing Captivate (if Captivate 1, the location is typically C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Captivate; if Captivate 2, the location is typically C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 2)
2. You will see several files that end with the file-name extension of RDL. All you need to do is open the file with a text editor (such as NotePad) and edit the tags as you see fit. (Caution: It’s a good idea to backup the RDL file you are about to edit so that you can go back to it should things go badly.)
3. In this instance, I want to control any future English captions so I opened CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl
   
4. Then I scrolled down until I found the following line of text: Object Name="MenuItem" DefaultTemplate="Select the %s menu item"
   
5. I changed the tag so that it read: Object Name="MenuItem" DefaultTemplate="Select the %s command"

   Note that the only change I made was the phrase "menu item" became "command."

6. And Bam, that’s it. Save the text file and close it. Start Captivate and record a movie to test the results.

Publishing Flash files from Captivate has always been easy. All you have to do is select the Publish command, select Flash (SWF) from a list of publish options and Captivate creates two files: an HTML file and SWF. Your only worry was to ensure both of those files were kept together. As long as you posted both files on a Web server somewhere and kept the two files together, users who accessed the HTML file would get to enjoy the SWF. Simple.

But now there’s Captivate 2!

When you publish SWF movies in Captivate 2, you’ll quickly discover that, in addition to the two main files (the SWF and HTML files), there might be a second SWF file for any skin you created. (I’ll talk about Skins next week… boy are they cool).

There’s also a new JavaScript file (standard.js). Why is it important? If you’ve published movies within the last few months, you’ve probably run face first into the new security settings in Internet Explorer. You know, the annoying message that requires the user to acknowledge (by clicking) any SWF movie before the user can interact with your movie. It’s never been a big deal, but ranks as a nuisance because the user has to click twice on a button in your movie before the movie works. The JavaScript fixes that. In essence, it "tricks" Internet Explorer and acknowledges the SWF for your users. Very nice.

Last but not least, there are also some metadata files that make it easier to integrate your project into Adobe Connect Enterprise. If you allow Captivate to include the metadata, you might end up with larger than expected SWF files. The metadata files are not necessary if you do not plan to connect to Adobe Connect Enterprise. You can stop the metadata files from generating, and lower the size of your SWFs, by deselecting Publish Adobe Connect Enterprise metadata (via Project > Preferences).

I wouldn’t disagree with people who say that Captivate is a very easy program to learn and use. Compared with programs like Adobe PhotoShop, they’re right. Captivate is easy. In fact, you’ll have it pretty much figured out in two-days or less (that’s the time it should take you to finish my Captivate workbook).

However, there’s a whole development process you need to go through if you intend to produce effective CBTs. And Captivate mastery is only a small part of that process. Getting a handle on the CBT development process isn’t easy. It takes a lot of practice, experience, and above all, patience. I’ve outlined my CBT development process below. While this list is by no means complete, it will give you a nice overview. And I’ve included a power scale that demonstrates the skill level necessary to get the job done. The scale goes from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating a potentially difficult process.

Write It: If you’re not a writer, you’ll need someone to write the step-by-step instructions (also known as a script or storyboard) necessary to record the project in Captivate. You’ll typically find technical writers doing this kind of work. And I’d consider this the most important process. Without a good script, you don’t have a movie. Think I’m kidding? What do Battlefield Earth, Barb Wire, Godzilla, Heaven’s Gate, Popeye and Ishtar have in common? (Power Scale: 10)

Rehearse It: Take the completed script and go through it with the software you’ll be recording in front of you. Don’t skip any steps. You’ll be able to see if the steps you wrote are incomplete or inaccurate before you attempt to record the movie in Captivate. (Power Scale: 2)

Reset It: After rehearsing the steps, be sure to "undo" everything you did. Few things are more frustrating than recording your movie only to find a step you intend to demonstrate has already been performed. (Power Scale: 1)

Record It: If rehearsals went well, the recording process should as well. (Power Scale: 1)

Clean It: This is where you add all of the interactivity in Captivate including highlight boxes, captions, text entry fields, buttons, question slides, etc. If the project contains 70-80 slides and each slide needs your attention, you should budget 7- 10 hours to get the project perfected. (Power Scale: 8)

Publish It: While not a difficult task, if your project is large this could take a great deal of time. You cannot do any work in Captivate while your project is publishing. (Power Scale: 1)

Test It: This task isn’t difficult, but it could take time. If you find a problem, you’ve got to go back and clean it, publish it and re-test it. Some people argue that this step belongs above the Publish It process. I cannot argue with that logic. However, after testing the project, you’ll still need to Publish it and then, if working with a Learning Management System (LMS), upload it and test again. Maybe it should be Test It, Publish It, Test it. See how easy I am? (Power Scale: 2)

You can create a click box in Captivate that will automatically send an email to whatever email address you specify.

Here’s how

1. Choose Insert > Click Box or Insert > Button
2. Select the Click Box tab
3. Select Send email to from the On success area
4. Specify an email recipient in the Send e-mail to area

If a user clicks the click box or button, their email software (such as Outlook) will appear. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the user will have to fill in a Subject line and the body of the email before sending the email.

If you want to include a subject line and/or automatically fill in the body of the email, you can type the following:

someguy@someplace.com? subject=Captivate% 20Presentation&body=Body%20goes% 20here&cc=someotherguy@someplace.com

Provided your email client supports the tag, the email that is generated would have the following information pre-filled:

To: someguy@someplace.com

CC: someotherguy@someplace.com

Subject: Captivate Presentation

Body: Body goes here