There is a “rule” in programming that states, or at least strongly suggests, that you should give your variables meaningful names. This “rule” should apply to your Captivate project as well and it shouldn’t apply only to the variables but to every nameable object in the project. Every variable, text caption, smart shape, image, web object, etc. should have a meaningful name but what is a meaningful name? When working in Captivate, as well as in coding, my definition of a meaningful name is a name that answers the question “What is this?”, in other words, if I look at just the name of the object I should know immediately what it is. For example, if I see an object with the name ”Slide_1_text” then I know the object is the text on slide one of the project. If I see a variable named “numberIncorrectAnswers” then I can assume that this variable is being used to track the number of answers the learner has answered incorrectly. If I had left the text on slide one with the default name “Text Caption 17” or I had named the variable “A” then I would have a difficult time determining what the objects were or what the did, in fact, if I were building an Advanced Action then I would probably need to exit the action and verify that I had the correct object.

While stopping to name every object may seem like it will slow you down it will not only speed up your building process but make both the building and maintaining of the eLearning course easier. Properly named objects will make building both Advanced and Shared Actions easier as you won’t need to stop to check the name of the object you want to show, or hide, or change the state of, you’ll know what they are because you took the time to name them. Issues will be easier to troubleshoot if your objects are named, for example, if you click a button and “Slide_1_Square” turns red instead of “Slide_1_Circle” the issue will be much easier to troubleshoot than if the objects were name ‘Smart Shape 17” and “Smart Shape 23”.  You’ll also find it easier to tweak (or fix issues) in the project six months or a year later if you don’t have to look to see what each object is or what each variable does.

Giving meaningful names throughout the project will also help other eLearning developers or authors work on the project. This is especially helpful if you are a member of a team where other authors or developers will be working on the eLearning Course. Meaningful names will also make it easier for another developer or author on your team to take over your project if something were to happen to you (the dreaded “hit by a bus” scenario).

Okay, so (hopefully) you realize you should be naming the objects in your eLearning project but how do you decide what to name your objects or variables? I use the “This is _______” method. If I’m having trouble naming an object or I’m not sure about the name I have chosen and then I place the name in the blank and read the sentence aloud. If I know what the object is from reading the sentence, then the name probably a good one.