Adobe Captivate: Overlay the TOC or Separate?

by Kevin Siegel, COTP, CTT It's easy to add a Table of Contents (TOC) to a Captivate project. Simply choose Project > Table of Contents to open the Skin Editor. Click Show TOC (put a check in the box) and the TOC appears on the preview (its contents are totally editable... a check mark next to the slide means the slide will appear on the TOC). By default, the TOC is set to Separate which means that it will appear outside of the main lesson area and make the overal window wider by a few hundred pixels. In the image below, you can see the TOC at the left of the lesson. The TOC can be positioned to the left or the right of the screen. The default position is left.

If you want to include a TOC in your lesson but you don't want the project width to be any wider than necessary, you can elect to Overlay the TOC (meaning it will be hidden by default and will appear only if the learner clicks a button).  To create an Overlay TOC, open the Skin Editor and from the bottom of the Editor, click the Settings button to open the TOC Settings dialog box.

At the top left of the dialog box, click Overlay and then click the OK button.

The TOC won't automatically appear onscreen for learners. Instead, learners will need to click an icon in the corner of the screen to open the TOC. That icon is shown in the first image below. The second image shows the open TOC along with an icon that will collapse the TOC. Alternatively, learners can click a TOC button on the playbar to show or hide the TOC (shown in the third image below).

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Looking for training on Adobe Captivate? Check out these two awesome classes.

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the US Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

Comments

[Mike Hunsberger]

In older versions of Captivate, the overplayed TOC was not 508 compliant. Has that changed in newer versions?