Questions of the Week

Adobe Captivate 3 Question: Can I Make My Own LMS?

 

I am thinking about purchasing Captivate 3. I have ordered your books to learn about it. I can't afford a LMS system to run this on, however I have 20+ years experience programming and am an expert in ASP.net, Visual Studio, VB.net etc. Is there any way for me to get the file format that Captivate sends to a LMS and I just create my own simplified LMS system? If not, do you know if any open source ASP.net LMS software out there?

 

Answer:  

 

Excellent question. You can certainly create a project with Captivate, enable eLearning and publish a manifest. I suppose you could create an LMS that would work with the manifest. I am not a programmer; however, I cannot imagine that creating an LMS with the minimal features you need would be a particularly fast process. You might find that it is cheaper to rent an LMS (like the one we use at http://inquisiq.com) than trying to create your own. However, perhaps some of your fellow "skills & drills" readers have created a basic LMS and would care to share their stories.

Adobe Captivate 3 Question: Why Am I Only Seeing the Playbar? 

I am using Captivate 3. I published the project and gave the files to a co-worker to post on our company intranet. When accessed by our customers, the only thing that displays is the playbar. I have tried re-publishing the project several times. I also created a new project and imported all of the slides then published it again. When I insert a Captivate SWF file into RoboHelp, it works fine. When I generate an EXE, it works fine. My co-worker said that she copies the files to the Web server and links to the skin file from an HTML page. What are we doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

Answer:

 

The problem is likely in the link your co-worker is using to start the lesson. Point the link to the HTML file created when you published (your published assets should include at least two SWFs, one HTML and a JavaScript). Assuming everything is on the server, and in the same folder, the lesson should play after a customer clicks the link to the HTML file.

 

 

Adobe RoboHelp Question: Can I Receive User Feedback Reports?

 

Is it possible for RoboHelp to give us, or produce, statistics about the number of times our customers use the Help System? Is it possible to learn which topics they use and which they don't?  

 

Answer:

 

Yes and No. RoboHelp doesn't include the ability to generate reports that include user statistics, but RoboHelp Server does (RoboHelp Server is an enhancement to the standard RoboHelp package and costs more). You can learn more about RoboServer here.

 

Adobe Captivate Question: How Do I Stop the Lesson From Continuing When Linking?

 

I am working on an eLearning module and have both Back/Next buttons on the slide.  I have them paused after 3 seconds or so.  Within the slide I also have a click box over a URL to open our Web page and it is set to open in a new window.  What I am finding is that when the user clicks on the click box and opens the new page the original slide is no longer paused and advances on its own.  How can I make it stay paused until the user clicks Back/Next regardless of what else they are doing within the slide? 

 

Answer:

 

Show the Properties of the click box. To the right of the URL, there's a drop-down menu. Deselect Continue Playing Project and you'll be all set.

Adobe Captivate Question: Where Are My Asian Characters?

 

I just recorded a project using Captivate that was supposed to include Japanese. When I played the project back, I saw white boxes instead of Asian symbols. What did I do wrong?

 

Answer:

 

You don't have the Asian fonts installed on your computer (they come with Windows). The Asian symbols are there but will show up as white boxes until you install the fonts. If you need help installing the fonts, click here.

 

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Comments

[Thermos Cork]

Hi, I am having some issues with a 40 or so frame quiz built in Captivate 3 and running in Moodle.

The branching is:

incorrect answer?> go to next slide with .flv feedback, then jump to next question frame when video finishes.

correct answer?> jump to(over) video slide to the next question.

Scores and interactions are reporting fine, but some users/machines are having issues with the quiz jumping frames and crashing/freezing browser. I have tried everything including reducing .flv file sizes, captivate compression settings, custom scorm.htm publish files, frame rates, no resume data, preloader at 99%, etc...

If I "front load" all the video frames and have Captivate jump back and forth between frames, or any other order than question>video>question>video... Total Failure!

We are now testing the same branching, but using javascript to pop the video in to a new window. This seems to help, but one or two machines still freeze or skip. The experience is less intuitive as well. I'm on the verge of abandoning Captivate for this one and find something else(articulate?), or embark on a massive Flash project.

The project seems simple enough, but still the rare crash. I'm not sure if it is User, Captivate, or Moodle. Can you suggest and "rock solid" testing service/application, I've done some testing at scorm.com's "test track" and all seems fine.

Any Suggestions?,
Thanks