I want to use captivate and I need a few questions answered first please.
1. Using Windows 10 will not having flash prevent me from publishing to HTML5 or from students being able to load the tutorial file if they dont have flash.
2. I want to create a lengthy but simple presentation with quizzes and content that can be sent as a file to students where they can load the tutorial and complete it on their pc, is this possible
3. how do I publish a simple test presentations to the computer so I can play the presentation as a test tutorial without SWL or flash
Thanks
tex
May I ask what the final approach was?
What it sounds like you are asking for is to be able to publish a self-contained app that users can play on their system as decentralized units, without a web server or LMS. I haven’t done this in an extraordinarily long time, but this is a capability that Captivate has. If you choose “Executable” in the Publish As: dropdown in your publish settings, It will generate an .exe file that can be played on a PC as a stand-alone app. Bear in mind there is no reporting or tracking possible with this approach.
My understanding of how this works is that the generated app does publish your content as a .swf –which we shouldn’t be doing anymore for any content that is distributed on the web– but that the app also contains a version of the Flash player, so no, your audience wouldn’t need to have Flash to play it, and you wouldn’t need Flash installed to publish it.
Important to note, though, that this is not publishing to HTML5, unless this has been updated, it is still using Flash technology. I’m not sure if that’s something you want to do. I don’t know enough to say it would be a security risk distributing it this way, but Flash Player in general is considered not safe, so it seems possible someone could exploit that with a solution like this. It’s not going to be future-proof, and there may already be features in Captivate that aren’t supported for SWF output. Also some systems won’t let you send .exe files, as that’s how a lot of malware gets in.
But it can be done.
EXE files are based on SWF-technology, they are no longer a valid option. Please, don’t confuse new users by proposing this as a possible solution. At this moment there is no standalone solution.
Same with publishing to an app (responsive project) using PhoneGap, because Adobe no longer support it.
@theetexan, if it wasn’t clear from my entire 3rd paragraph of caveats, this is not an ideal solution. Sorry if you found this confusing. Basically I don’t know enough about anyone else’s situation to pass judgement on if they should or shouldn’t do something. I was just answering the question of “can I.” Maybe only if you are truly desperate.
You just don’t see much demand for stand-alone courses these days, but it would certainly be easy enough for Adobe to re-purpose this functionality as HTML5 with a self-contained web server using Nodejs or something. Maybe they will do something like that in the future.
Short answer to your 3 questions:
- I have not published to SWF since about 4 years. You just have to keep in mind that some objects are incompatible with HTML5 output, use the HTML tracker for that purpose.
- HTML5 means that your eLearning course will be like a website. That means that it needs to be uploaded to a webserver or a LMS (if you want to track accounts and scores) and can be viewed using the URL to the site. Not a standalone ‘file’, that was only possible in the old days of SWF output.
Alternative would be to publish to MP4. which means passive video. But that is losing all interactivity (see may last paragraph) which would be a pity. Efficient learning means interactive learning where the learner gets control. - You could try to watch a published version locally, using localhost, but that is not good practice and some functionality may be lost in that case. However Captivate has a good ‘Preview HTML in Browser’ which allows you to see the future output after publishing.
Captivate is not a presentation tool, but an eLearning authoring tool. That is a big difference. Interactivity should be the king in Captivate, which is not the case for PPTs.
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