Adobe Captivate (2017 release) : Smart, Fast & Incredibly Flexible

The latest update to Adobe Captivate, Adobe’s industry leading eLearning authoring tool is packed with solid enhancements that will make virtually any eLearning developer smile, and the team at Adobe brings home another marvel – incredible levels of intuition and automation when it comes to creating fully responsive content for mobile devices. Adobe is revolutionizing eLearning authoring again with the introduction of Fluid Boxes, a technology that

Captivate 2017: Using the Customizable closed captions feature

Have you wanted to add closed captioning to your captivate projects to enhance audience reach or to provide options to users who cannot listen to audio files in some locations, but found that the placement of the captions interfered with design elements? One of the new features in Captivate 10 puts control of closed captioning in the hands of content designers by providing a customization tool set.  This short tutorial will step you through using the new feature. Go to […]

Pausing Timeline: Interactive Video Buttons

Intro When I posted the article about Pausing the Timeline (part of the sequence of articles about that most important panel), I promised to add some use cases to illustrate using pause and pausing points. Let us start with a  simple use case, based on a recent forum question in this thread: Interactive Video Buttons Use Case – description It is clear that the user is not aware of the difference between pausing the timeline by an interactive object (pausing point) and by […]

Common Accessibility Issues

Just wanted to put out some recurrent issues we’ve been running into and how we address them: Problem: Inaccessible screens in projects – When trying to use Inspect or other accessibility tools to check readability of objects inside a published Captivate project, the tool cannot get beyond reading the information associated with the slide level.  Current solution: This seems to be associated with publishing as a swf – either in combination (swf/html5) or swf only. We’re now only publishing as […]

Creative with Quizzing System Variables

Intro In my last post I mentioned that, based on the visits to my blog posts, Quizzes in Captivate seem to be one of the stumbling blocks for newbies. Most of the quizzing blog posts with focus on default quiz slides are already pretty old. More recently I have been talking about new features like Branch aware and Knowledge Check Slides. The most visited post on my blog will be updated in a near future, to accommodate recent changes in Captivate. The present […]

Three skills to acquire (Captivate newbies)

My personal view on the three stumbling blocks for developers starting to use Captivate: Timeline, Quiz and Themes. Each basic training should focus on them.

Using Smart Shapes in an Accessibility Enabled Project

First – Smart shapes cannot be used as buttons in a project that must meet accessibility standards. Smart shape buttons are not accessible using the tab/enter combination. While you may or may not be able to tab to the shape, selecting “enter” or the space bar will not trigger the button action.   Second – Smart shapes with text are not automatically read like a text caption. You must enter the text in the accessibility pop-up in order for the […]

Secrets of Video Demo Timeline (cpvc project)

Intro In a first article about timelines, I described the common features: timeline ruler, playhead, eye button, lock button, control panel and the tiny icons at the bottom of the second column of the Timeline panel. This post will explain the more specific features of the Timeline panel in a Video Demo project (cpvc file). The other posts are for cptx projects: similar to this post, Timeline features in cptx-projects understand basics of interactivity using pauses on the timeline  There […]

Caveat Auditor: The Role Of Critical Thinking In Modern Business Training

Critical thinking is a skill that, when absent, contributes to the rise of recent phenomena like runaway fake news stories or hacking of government and corporate computers, and costs companies dearly in law suits, fines, penalties, and failed projects. The skill of critical thinking in modern business is often described as desirable when asking employers what it is that they are looking for in new hires (Hart Research Associates, 2013). Employers lament the inability of new employees to think critically […]

Ideas l Tips l Examples

If you have struggled to find some Adobe Captivate examples for sources of inspiration, then feel free to check out my online portfolio.  It only makes sense that potential employers, hiring managers, fellow e.Learning professionals, coworkers, etc. want to see what you’re made of, then having some work examples seems like the obvious answer. I have been using Adobe Captivate since it’s initial launch back in 2004.  I know that dates me, but it should provide a bit of context […]

How and Why Pause Captivate’s Timeline?

Intro This is the fourth post in a sequence of 5. The first post introduced features of all timelines, the second is focused on the specific aspects of the Video Demo Timeline, the third on the aspects of the normal/responsive projects (cptx) both for master slides and normal slides. To understand this article – perhaps the most important – I recommend to  read at least the first and the third article as a preparation.  Both explain features of the Timeline in […]

How to Trigger Captivate Advanced Actions with Javascript

A lot of the work I do involves access to course variables, objects, and functions from outside via JavaScript. Some tools make it easier than others. One of the most common things I need to do is trigger a chain of actions to run when a variable is changed. For instance, I may want to lock all the navigation until the server reports that user may proceed. (Maybe they need to complete a task on the site before continuing.) In Adobe Captivate, […]