eLearning – Page 3 – The Logical Blog

September 13, 2023

Adobe Captivate 12 (2023): The Timeline Widget

In the spirit of learner engagement and interactivity, you're going to love the widgets you'll find in Adobe Captivate 2023 (also known as Captivate 12). Over the next couple of weeks, I'll show you how to use the widgets in a project.

First up: the Timeline widget.

Open or create a Captivate project and insert a blank slide.

From the icons at the left, click Add new widget.

Choose Timeline widget.

The widget is added to the slide with placeholder content.

On the Visual Properties panel, change the number of timeline objects by moving the Number of nodes slider to as few as 2 and to as many as 6.

Select a design:

Add or remove your block components:

And replace the placeholder objects with your own content.

Preview the project to see the results and interact with the widget.

If you want to see the Timeline widget in action, check out this video.

If you're looking for a step-by-step training workbook, Adobe Captivate 2023 training, or mentoring, we've got you covered.

August 21, 2023

eLearning and Copyright: Are You at Risk?

Online training is more popular than ever. With powerful development tools such as Articulate Storyline, Articulate Rise, TechSmith Camtasia, Adobe Captivate, and Lectora, it’s never been easier to create relevant, highly interactive, and visually stunning eLearning.

Regarding the visually stunning part of eLearning… adding compelling images and videos to your training is a great idea. But where are you going to get those assets? A quick search on the internet finds this great image of Mickey Mouse. Another search finds a cute cat video that will add the perfect amount of humor to your module. The online options are endless, and the assets are easy to download and import into your project.

You publish and upload the project to your web server or Learning Management System. Along with the kudos from your learners comes a cease-and-desist letter from the lawyers at Disney. Worse, that cat video gets you sued for significant money. Even worse? You have to pay the fine, and it's painful.

According to copyright.gov, “anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed.”

Let those numbers sink in for a moment… $30,000… $150,000…

As the boundaries between traditional and online education continue to blur, educators and institutions face unique challenges and opportunities to ensure that their eLearning content is effective and legally compliant. This course is designed to equip you with the knowledge necessary to navigate the complexities of copyright law within the context of eLearning, enabling you to confidently create, distribute, and use digital educational materials while respecting the rights of content creators.

Give us 90 minutes, and we've got you covered!

Learn more about copyright as it pertains to training and eLearning during this 90-minute, live, instructor-led course. Throughout the course, we will explore key copyright concepts such as the fundamentals, fair use and its application in eLearning, open educational resources, licensing models, and strategies for obtaining proper permissions. We will also delve into real-world scenarios and case studies, providing practical insights to inform your eLearning endeavors.

Who Should Attend?

eLearning developers
Technical communicators
Educators
Instructional designers
Training managers
Trainers
Administrators

August 9, 2023

Adobe Captivate 12: Update 12.1 Released Today

Adobe released an update to Captivate 12 today. Here's a link to download the update: https://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/help/captivate-downloads.html

According to Adobe, here's what's changed in the 12.1 update.

Captivate doesn't allow you to select any file on macOS while using the Open URL or file action.
Captivate behaves unexpectedly when you select the Text tab of Success or Failure caption of a click box in a simulation project.
A valid numeric input in an input field produces an error.
Added a retry state for a Drag and Drop interaction when the number of attempts exceeds one.
When you try to apply an image filter on a cropped image, the filter isn't applied as expected.
Captivate behaves unexpectedly while creating a project on macOS. This happens when Captivate is installed with one user account and another user tries to launch Captivate.
Captivate may behave unexpectedly on Windows if you select the following fonts in a text object.
- Lucida Bright Demibold
- Lucida Fax Demibold

If you need Adobe Captivate training, mentoring, or eLearning development, check out our vILT courses: https://www.iconlogic.com/instructor-led-training/software-title/captivate.html. And, yes, we are still offering training on Adobe Captivate 2019… now known as Adobe Captivate Classic.

August 1, 2023

Adobe Captivate 12: The Interface

With the recent release of the all-new Adobe Captivate 12, I'm beginning a series introducing you to some of my favorite features. This week, let's take a look at the new interface. If you're a veteran Captivate developer, you'll see that much has changed in this new interface, and many of the old standards have been removed (not changed or moved… removed entirely).

There are now two versions of Captivate that you can download from Adobe using one subscription: Adobe Captivate Classic (also known as Captivate 2019) and Adobe Captivate (also known as Captivate 12 and Captivate 2023). The two versions are very different, and we offer training and support for both. You can download both Adobe Captivate Classic and the new Adobe Captivate and have both on your computer at the same time, assuming different installation locations are defined when the applications are installed.

This article focuses on Captivate 12.

When you start Captivate 12, the first thing you'll see is the Home screen.

If you click the New Project button, you'll create a new blank project. Click the Open option and you can retrieve and open existing Captivate 12 projects. This brings me to a warning about using the new Captivate. There is no option for upgrading legacy Captivate projects to Captivate 12. If you elect to work with Captivate 12, do so with the understanding that you're creating new, responsive projects. The big thing about responsive projects is that you aren't asked to define a project's width and height as you create a new project. The Canvas size is fluid, and your content will automatically reflow to fit any screen size.

Adobe has indicated that as Captivate 12 evolves and matures, there will be a workflow for upgrading from legacy projects to the new version. The lack of an upgrade path appears to be the main reason that Adobe will continue to support Captivate Classic until 2027. I expect that it will take a few years to add features to Captivate 12 that are currently in Captivate Classic. For example, in Captivate 12, there aren't any slide masters. Nor is there a Library, virtual reality, or support for importing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

The new interface is very clean and modern-looking.

The Filmstrip is now simply the Slides panel.

At the far left is a column of tools that replaces the Captivate 2019 toolbar.

At the right, in place of the Properties inspector, Library, and Timing inspector, there's a cluster of icons that display Visual properties, Interactions, Animations, Audio settings, and Accessibility.

And at the bottom right are two easy-to-overlook icons: TOC and Playbar (which replaces the Skin Editor) and Project Properties.

One awesome feature of the new Captivate is the preview icons at the top of the window.

Using these icons, you can quickly see how your content will look as it reflows on various screen sizes (desktop, tablet, and mobile).

In the coming weeks, I'll show you the project creation process, how the many tools work, and how Captivate 12 compares to Captivate Classic/2019.

March 7, 2023

Adobe Captivate: Understand Project Cache and Save Some Cash

When I teach my Adobe Captivate Classic classes, we cover application Preferences fairly early. If you're on a PC, choose Edit > Preferences. If you're on a Mac, choose Adobe Captivate > Preferences. From the top of the Preferences, click General Settings.

You will see two options in the Default Locations area: Publish at and Project Cache.

The Publish At option allows you to specify where your projects are published. That makes sense. The less obvious feature is the role of Project Cache. According to Adobe, the Project Cache folder contains all of your projects' components until you click the Clear Cache button. The cached assets make the process of opening, saving, and working on a project faster.

Note: In the image above, I created a folder named Cache directly on my hard drive. You can create the Cache folder anywhere you like, provided the location is not a network resource. Do not delete your Cache folder (or click the Clear Cache button in the image above) unless you have a project backup. Without the contents of the Cache folder, the steps listed below to recover a corrupt project will not work.

Should your Captivate project become corrupt or get misplaced, and you have the backup file, change the name of the backup file to new_name.cptx and you're all set. If you don't have a project backup and the only version of your project refuses to open, the cached version of the project will come to your rescue. Assuming you know the location of your project cache folder, you should be able to resurrect a project by following the steps below (the xxx in the example below will be different on your system).

Special thanks to fellow Captivate developer Rod Ward, Director of Infosemantics, who had the misfortune (or fortune, depending on how you look at the world) of working with a Captivate project that refused to open. Rod used these steps and was able to get back in the game.

Find the project cached folder (for example, C:\Users\your name\Documents\Adobe Captivate Cached Projects\CPDxxxxx\db).
This is the default location of the cached project, and you can change this via the Global Preferences, as mentioned above.

The folder will contain the following:

A folder called Compressed_data. (This folder will contain several cpd files.)

A folder called Objects. There should be a file within the folder called objects.cpo. The size of this file should be greater than 0 kb.

A folder called uncompressed_data.

A file called audio.cpad.

A file called info.cpi.

A file called text.cptd.

A file called thumbnails.cpth.
Select the files named above and use them to create a zip file.
Note: There may be other folders and files in the db folder mentioned above. Be careful to not include any other files in the zip other than those listed above. According to Rod, "the other files that might be there seem to be files used in locking the project so that you cannot inadvertently edit two of them at the same time."
Change the extension of the zip file to cptx and the file should open in Captivate.
"Captivate saves one of these db folders each and every time you save a project file," said Rod. "If you don't have success with the first one you try (possibly because it is too corrupted), you can always try another one further down the list by looking at the time the folder was added."

Rod went on to say: "The naming structure of the folders provides no clue as to which CP project corresponds to which cached folder. If you happen to be working on several projects simultaneously, it can take a bit of digging to find the one that you want. You have to keep creating and opening these zips until you get lucky. This, of course, is not a problem if you know the exact time when you happened to be saving a particular project."

February 8, 2023September 25, 2025

Articulate Storyline 360: Indexing Scenes

When I teach my vILT Articulate Storyline 360 classes, we immediately tackle scene creation. As the project grows and more scenes are added, students quickly realize that the scene numbers can get out of numeric order. For instance, scene 6 might end up becoming the starting scene and being listed first in Story View. Scene 4 might be the next scene, followed by scenes 3, 5, 1, and 2.

In the example below, notice that the second scene is numbered 5, and the third scene is numbered 4.

Screenshot of Storyline 360 interface displaying an organized scene structure with numbered scenes and sub-scenes.

I’ve never been bothered by scenes that are out of numeric order. However, this erratic numbering scheme might bother some Storyline developers. If so, the Index tool allows you to quickly renumber scenes.

In the image below, I’ve selected the fifth scene.

A screenshot of Articulate Storyline displaying a scene index with scenes numbered 5, 4, 3, and 2, showing thumbnails and connections between them.

I want the selected scene to be treated as the second scene by Storyline and assigned the number 2.

On the Home tab of the Ribbon, Scenes group, I clicked the Index tool drop-down menu and selected 2.

Screenshot of the Articulate Storyline 360 Ribbon menu highlighting the Index tool in the Slides group with options to renumber scenes.

Remember, just before this, I selected the second scene. By choosing 2 from the Index menu, I’m telling Storyline to change scene number 5 to scene number 2.

Here is the reindexed Story View. Reindexing does not negatively affect any slide-to-slide jumps compared to cutting and pasting scenes.

A visual representation of a project in Articulate Storyline showing scenes arranged in a branching format with scene numbers 2, 5, 4, and 3, highlighting how scenes can be renumbered.

Using the same approach, I quickly re-indexed the remaining scenes.

Storyline's Story View showing reindexed scenes with numbers 2 to 5, including 'Quiz,' 'Meerkats,' 'Aviary,' and 'Big Cats' with respective sub-scenes.

Check out this short video to see the Index feature in action.

July 8, 2022

TECHSMITH CAMTASIA 2022: Cursor Path Creator

I'm hard at work on my new Camtasia book, "TechSmith Camtasia 2022: The Essentials." As I poke around the new features, I'm loving one that I just found: Cursor Path Creator.

If you create videos using Camtasia, the cursor in the resulting TREC files can be modified in the Camtasia Editor (you can add highlights, sounds, etc.). However, if you create a video demo in another recording tool and forget to turn on the mouse pointer, you're out of luck… until now.

Using the Cursor Path Creator in Camtasia 2022, you can now add a mouse and control its path even if the cursor wasn't in the original video.

Check out a recording I made of the process in the video below.

January 23, 2022

CenarioVR: The Essentials (Book and Training)

We are proud to offer a full-day training course on CenarioVR.

Learn to create awesome virtual reality projects complete with text, images, interactive hotspots, motion paths, timed events, actions, quizzes, and more!

This beginner CenarioVR course will introduce you to the core CenarioVR skills necessary to develop awesome virtual reality projects.

As your class begins, you’ll learn about the CenarioVR interface by importing and exploring a finished project. After exploring a bit, you’ll create a project from scratch. You’ll add scenes, 360-degree images, regular images, hotspots, and audio to a scenario.

Once you’re comfortable creating projects, it’s on to the cool stuff. Add panning jumps, actions, conditional actions, motion paths, quizzes, and more.

Finally, you’ll learn how to publish a finished project for the widest possible audience (you’ll learn to publish as both HTML5 and SCORM) so that your content can be consumed by learners on just about any device, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

The course includes a digital copy of our book, “CenarioVR: The Essentials.”

July 15, 2021

ISPRING SUITE 10: Now with Text to Speech

iSpring continues to improve its eLearning development suite of tools. The latest improvement is Text to Speech and it works really well.

To use the Text to Speech feature, first, add the voiceover script to the slide notes. (You'll be able to use this script along with the Text to Speech feature. No retyping, no extra work.)

Select the iSpring Suite 10 tab on the PowerPoint ribbon and click Manage Narration.

Click the Audio drop-down menu and choose Text to Speech.

From the lower left of the dialog box, click the Insert text from notes button.

The script you added to the slide notes earlier appears in the main area of the window.

Select the language and voice from the menus as appropriate. If you'd like, preview the voice by clicking the Preview voice button.

Click the Insert button, select the slide you'd like to receive the audio, and then click the Insert button again.

The audio appears on the Timeline. You can edit the audio clip as you would any other audio file. And you can preview the finished audio here as well.

If satisfied with the results, click Save & Close to return to the project.

***

If you'd like to learn more about iSpring Suite 10, check out our step-by-step workbook: iSpring Suite 10: The Essentials.

May 21, 2021

TECHSMITH CAMTASIA: Sharing Projects with Fellow Developers

If you work with other Camtasia developers, it’s likely that you will be asked to share your project with team members so they can edit the project. Sharing projects among Camtasia developers is not the same as using the Export menu to create output for a learner. To share Camtasia production files with other Camtasia developers, follow these steps:

Mac to Windows: If you want to share a Mac-based Camtasia project with someone who is using Camtasia 2021 for the PC, choose File > Export > Project for Windows.

Windows to Mac: If you want to share a PC-based project with someone who is using Camtasia 2021 for the Mac, choose File > Export > Project for Mac.

Share Projects Mac to Mac: Sharing a project with other Mac developers is simple. When saving the project, ensure that you select Create standalone project.

Send a team member the project file (the cmproj file), and you’re set. The cmproj file is a self-contained collection of all project assets. If team members have the same or newer version of Camtasia as you, they’ll be able to open and edit the project.

Share Projects PC to PC: When saving the Camtasia project, ensure that you select Create standalone project.

Send the resulting folder to the other Camtasia developer. The folder will likely contain several assets so zipping the project is suggested. Those steps follow.

The steps below are for PC users only. Mac users can save and close the project and then skip ahead to the next module which begins on page 115.

Choose File > Export > Zipped Project.
Browse to an appropriate Save destination.
Click the Save button

The resulting zip file contains the Camtasia project and all of the project’s assets. Assuming the recipient of the zip file has the same version of Camtasia as you, developers can extract the zipped contents, open, edit, and export the project as needed.

Looking for Camtasia training, check out these live, online TechSmith Camtasia classes.