What is Captivate?
I have been trying to find out just what is Captivate and whenever I see the word Solutions more than once in the same sentence, I become overwhelmed. I am contemplating purchasing the Adobe "Technical Communication Suite” but can’t afford to buy something that isn't going to be the right set of tools for my application. My task is to build an On-Line-Training product and I need to have interactive quiz questions in the body of the study material and then a final test at the end of the lesson. Is the right tool for me?
What about "Frame Maker"? Is this a right tool for this application?
Thanks
Checker Tuttle
Hi there and welcome to our community
Expounding on what Rod offered.
Suppose you work in a call center and answer questions about how to use software. Maybe you have a guy named Bob that calls you every Monday morning because Bob always forgets how to insert a Table in Microsoft Word. Hey, stuff like this really does go on! (I used to work in a call center and one employee would always play Tetris between calls and when she got stuck with an issue she couldn't answer, she would always come ask me how to solve the call.)
Using Adobe Captivate, you can open Microsoft Word and use Adobe Captivate to record the series of steps you always tell Bob how to do. You then create a Flash output of that Captivate recording and copy it to a server. Then when Bob needs to be refreshed again on how to insert the table, he can click a link and watch the process unfold right in front of him.
Rod talked about eLearning. If you aren't currently a Captivate user and aren't sure what it does, I think it's likely you may be confused what eLearning even is. Basically, it's any type of learning one uses the computer to achieve. Anything from how to use computer applications to something sort of nebulous called "soft skills". Soft skills would be something like "Handling Difficult Customers" that a Sales trainer might teach the salespeople.
You ask about Framemaker. Basically, what Framemaker does is allow you to manipulate extremely large document sets. Perhaps the complete assembly instructions for an automobile or an airplane. You then take that huge database of textual and graphic images and create a printed document or PDF from it. These documents may have many thousands of pages. Based on what you posted, I really cannot fathom how Framemaker would help you in any way.
I tend to agree with Rod in that the eLearning Suite would seem more applicable than the Tech Comm Suite. However, I'll also add that I personally would find RoboHelp (also part of the Tech Comm Suite) to maybe help you with easily organizing and presenting the content. But that would only help if you aren't hosting your content within a Learning Management System (LMS) where you are able to track scores and stuff like that.
Cheers... Rick
Helpful and Handy Links
Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form
Adobe Certified Captivate Training
SorcerStone Blog
Captivate eBooks
Similar Messages
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What Adobe Captivate need's in it's the next update
I trying to publish my video to youyube.com. But when i try
publish it in captivate it can only publish it in 100 .swf files. I
tried converting the 100 .swf files into different video formats,
with multiple software, but thay can't convert it.
I try google searching for answers but there was none. I was
trying to covert the 100 ,swf files into any other video format,
then use Windows Movie Maker, to edit the video, but i can't, cause
theres no software that can convert .swf files. I know Captivate
can publish my project into .flv, but thats only if i have a Adobe
Acrobat Connect Pro server.
Adobe must update Captivate to include the following:
1) Be able to have the option to make just one .swf file
instead of 100 .swf files
2) Be able to publish your project into the following
formats: FLV, AVI, WMV, PowerPoint, MP4, 3GP, MPG, MOV, DivX, and
OGG.
3) Be able to have the option to make just one or multiple
files of any format in update 2).
4) Be able to publish the file(s) in the formats of update
2), not just to your Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro server, but also to
your computer, e-mail, and FTP.This thread was posted twice. Possibly a forum hiccup.
Please direct any replies to where it was originally asked.
You may do this by
Clicking
here. -
This question was posted in response to the following article: http://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/using/whats-new-captivate-6-patch.html
Why on earth is this only for subscription and Adobe Software Assurance customers???
I own eLearning suite 6.1; why I'm not getting the Captivate update that is compatible with Windows 8 if my suite was released after Windows 8 release??? -
What is "Publish To New Folder?"
Captivate's *Edit/Preferences/Global* preferences include
options for the user to review a confirmation dialog before the
software proceeds to execute a variety of user actions, mostly
actions that would delete an asset or change an important setting.
"Publish to New Folder" is one of those confirmation-optional
preferences. One customises Captivate either to require
confirmation before executing some underlying command or to proceed
with its execution unhindered.
But what is the underlying "Publish to New Folder" command?
What does it do? Where do I find it? There doesn't seem to be
documentation about it, or discussion of it in the user community.
Oddly, one would think that publishing to an *existing* folder
would be the more concerning action. entailing as it does the
possibility of files being overwritten. What possible harm,
necessitating verification, could possibly be done publishing
something to a brand new folder? And what does Captivate mean by
"publish" in this instance: Is it a reference to the limited menu
of export-as-SWF or as projector.EXE options, or does it refer to
some other export, save or archiving function?
Having been at considerable pains to create a Captivate
project which deploys multiple graphic and audio assets I now would
like to wrap them all up and deliver them efficiently to an
archive, a function most other multi-asset authoring platforms
allow one to do with a mouse click or two. (See PremierPro, for
example, although neither Flash nor FrameMaker is so
sophisticated.) Can this be accomplished by some hidden "Publish to
New Folder" command?
Thank you.Hi Ruth3rf0rd
Captivate 3 introduced an unwelcome feature that forces you
to create a folder named identically to your .SWF and ,HTM files
when creating your .SWF output. (Oddly enough, this doesn't happen
if publishing to .EXE).
Aside from simply naming the project what you want the folder
named, there isn't any underlying process you are missing. The
option you see in the preferences area simply turns the
intermediate dialog off and on. And you did mention that it could
theoretically be more dangerous to overwrite files. That option is
there as well.
Because I come from the RoboHelp HTML/Web Authoring
background, I find the whole notion of "Publishing" to be wrongly
named. For Captivate, the act of Publishing is taking the source
material and compiling it to produce the output format.
In the Web Development world, the act of Publishing is taking
content that has already been created from the source and copying
it to another location. Most often, a Web Server.
Hopefully this helps... Rick -
Captivate 4 - LMS Completion Status Updating
Hello,
We recently published Captivate 4 assessments to our LMS (Learn.com LearnCenter) that have a 3 attempt limit and require a score of 80% or greater to pass. We are finding that many will fail the first time, and when they pass the assessment on their second attempt the LMS gains the new higher % score but does not gain the "completed" status. Any ideas on what could be causing this?
Thank you,
ConnorIs the Captivate quiz set for multiple tries? I'd assume so...
If it's sending the updated score, it is likely sending the updated status...
But only way to be sure it to see what the Captivate lesson is actually sending.
If your LMS does not offer any way to 'trace' or otherwise see the actual lesson communication, perhaps try something like 'SCORM Cloud' (websearch) or the Reload Editor. I know the first, and perhaps the second, offer ways to see the actual communication between the lesson and the LMS.
(the official ADL Test Suite also offers this functionality but is more complicated to use, at least last time I tried it).
IF you can validate that the CP lesson is indeed sending the updated status to the LMS, but the LMS is not showing that updated status, then it's something to take up with your LMS vendor.
If CP is not sending that updated status...then it's a CP setting...somewhere...(I don't have any precise things to try, but the setting the quiz to allow retakes would be the first thing to look at).
HTH
Erik -
Does the padMail function still get called at the end of a quiz in Captivate-7?
Our current utility which captures the results via the padMail function, is no longer working.
Format of function I have been using up until now is;
padMail(strAddress, strSubject, strBody)Not sure what triggers Captivate to use them, but there are template files, in the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 7 x64\Templates\Publish:
email_attach.htm
email_body.htm
padMail functions are in these files. It looks like the first file has an active form and the second is hidden.
The function accepts the same arguments as in your post: padMail(strAddress, strSubject, strBody), but it looks like the arguments must be passed in to the function. -
Captivate 3 support for Open Document format?
Hi,
Does anyone know about support for Open Document Format in Captivate 3? (OpenOffice presentations)
Is it possible to save OpenOffice presentation in open document format or does it have to be saved as microsoft power point file?
What about Captivate 4? Any improvement?On the OpenOffice.org site, look under projects, and there's an Open Document Toolkit for Java. I've no idea of its status though.
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Help showing the pros of Captivate
HELP!!
Without getting into too much specifics, My company has been
using a developing tool that is pretty much becoming outdated for
quite some time for our WBT needs. The program is proprietary to
the LMS we belong to, and this may be the entire reason why we have
always used this tool. I recently created a prototype course using
Captivate, and i have been charged with researching capabilities,
clients, etc. to compare with what is used now.
Can anyone provide or point me in the direction of a list of
companies that use Captivate regularly? I have been researching
what Captivate offers, and I feel it is the best way to go, but
certain higher-ups need "facts".
Any help is incredibly appreciated!!IMO, rattling off a list of other companies that use
Captivate isn't
really a good way to sell the product...though surely it
depends on the
environment, culture, and folks involved. I wouldn't base a
purchase/use
decision simply on an 'everyone else does it' justification,
though it
may play a small part.
So, what does Captivate do that your current solution does
not? Why is
it 'outdated'? What specific features and gains does moving
to Captivate
offer, especially since a few licenses will incur a cost...
Erik
REroi wrote:
> HELP!!
> Without getting into too much specifics, My company has
been using a
> developing tool that is pretty much becoming outdated
for quite some time for
> our WBT needs. The program is proprietary to the LMS we
belong to, and this may
> be the entire reason why we have always used this tool.
I recently created a
> prototype course using Captivate, and i have been
charged with researching
> capabilities, clients, etc. to compare with what is used
now.
> Can anyone provide or point me in the direction of a
list of companies that
> use Captivate regularly? I have been researching what
Captivate offers, and I
> feel it is the best way to go, but certain higher-ups
need "facts".
> Any help is incredibly appreciated!!
>
Erik Lord
http://www.capemedia.net
Adobe Community Expert - Authorware
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/
http://www.awaretips.net -
samples, tips, products, faqs, and links!
*Search the A'ware newsgroup archives*
http://groups.google.com/group/macromedia.authorware -
I need to be working from home (Mac) and at the office (PC)... Creative Coud solved this problem for me, what about Captivate ?
Thanks for your help !You are allowed to install Captivate on two machines (e.g. office and home) as long as you do not try to use them both at the same time.
-
CP5 - W7 - Nested/Grouped objects - Not possible
Hi dear community,
I use Photoshop, Premiere, after effects, and many other adobe produts...
All of them have something in common, you can group or nest objects, vector based or pixel based media does not matter.
In Premiere, yoy can group a film a title and some effects into a cilp, and then use that clip as a object.
In Photoshop you can create folders under layers and use those to manage several objects at once.
But what about captivate? Even the "not to be mensioned here PowerPoint" can group objects.
Why is it so that within a company one does not reuse smart ideas and maby code?
Do not get me wrong, I love all the posibilities with captivate, but explode sometimes on the small unessesary to forget to develop things.
And to you who want to tell me about SHIFT, that is not what I am talking about
Thank you for reading!
// DanielHello,
Sorry for that, must have been tired. The link is in the main page of these CP-forums, but here you have it too:
Feature Request Form
Lilybiri -
Upgrading to 6 or 6.1?
The department I work for is starting the process of upgrading Captivate (we have 5.5 currently). Assuming that either one is an option, which version would people suggest, 6 or 6.1?
I've been following a few discussions about the two versions, and from what I can gather they seem to be at different places in terms of bug fixes. Obviously 6.1 will have some more features like drag-and-drop, but I'm personally more concerned about bugs. For example, I saw there was a JavaScript/SCORM/IE bug for which you can email Adobe to ask for a patch, but last time I checked the patch is only for 6. (An aside: emailing for a bug fix? It's strange Adobe can't just have a link on their website with some instructions...)
I don't really think there's a black and white answer for this, but I was curious to hear what other Captivate users have to say.Hi There,
Welcome to Adobe Forums.
Captivate 6.1 is the advance version of Captivate 6.0.1.240 with some new features.
Captivate 6.1 have been released with the fixes of the patch 6.0.1.240 (which has fixed the bugs of Captivate 6.0).
You can check the list of fixed bugs from here: http://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/kb/captivate-6-patch.html
You can check the new features of Captivate 6.1 from here: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2013/01/adobe-captivate-elearning-suite-subscription-has- its-advantages.html
I hope this will help you.
Thanks
Vikas -
IPad safari don't show loaded images until slide the screen
i have a problem in iPad Safari. when i use Javascript to append image to div using elm.appendChild(img) the images don't appear until the screen is touched. the same code works perfect on IE,Firefox,Chrome,and android browsers.i have uploaded video that shows the problem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBN9fThDik8is it related to the device ? or there some special code for loading images in iPad safari?or any solution ?
Hi there and welcome to the User Forums!
What you are looking for is a full-motion video recording.
Captivate 2 has full-motion available, but the product is designed
to use it for only brief periods - for capturing such things as
grabbing a scroll elevator, or a drag-n-drop of a file object. It
is definitely not designed for on-going, continuous video capture.
If you upgrade to Captivate 3 you will find expanded full-motion
capabilities.
Other alternatives include the use of software designed
specifically for creating AVI videos. One popular software package
for this is Camtasia, but there are hundreds available out there -
just "Google" for a string like "
create video".
Having said that, if you use Captivate as intended, the
action you describe can be captured easily, and with amazing
clarity and real-time appearance of your actual activity. This is
not really the place to conduct a complete seminar on the product,
but there are more than a half-dozen tutorials (created in
Captivate) accessible on the main user interface (UI) - look in the
right-hand column on that UI. The titles tell you what each
contain. There is also a sample movie or two that was included with
the install. You might find it helpful to open that and after
looking at the timeline and other features, use the Preview feature
to see what a Captivate movie looks like.
After looking at some of those resources, come on back here,
as you will probably have more specific questions we can help with.
Best of luck to you.
. -
Capitvate in Oil & gas industry?
Anyone have any expamples of capitvate being used in oil and gas industries? Boilers? Pipelines?
was wondering if this would be good for training as I am new to captivate and have not used it yet. Our company is thinking about using this in conjuction with an LMS but would like to see what benefit captivate would have.
ThanksCaptivate would be great for the oil and gas industry, especially with regards to safety. I work for a University in their Risk Management Department and Adobe Captivate has been tremendous for us. I can imagine all sorts of applications and I would encourage you to pursue using it, likely in conjunction with additions of other software like Adobe After Effects.
Adobe Captivate already has a lot of clout in the elearning world, so you would not have a problem using Captivate with your LMS, and it could potentially make training much easier for you. I've even bounced around the idea of using Captivate for employee competitions, setting up a trivia day where last-man-standing wins (which you can indeed score on Captivate), or setting up a Safety bingo system with Captivate. Lots of possibilities. -
We are just beginning to work with Captivate and trying to
test the 508 compliancy issues. Does anyone know of a website that
used Captivate that is 508 compliant that we can run some tests
on?Hello linwood,
Whilst I don't have any web sites I can point you to. Here is
information on what Adobe Captivate does to be Section 508
compliant.
What does Adobe Captivate do to be Section 508 compliant?
Selecting the 508 compliance option makes certain elements in
Adobe Captivate projects accessible or open to accessibility
technology. For example, if you select the 508 option and you have
filled in the project name and project description text boxes in
the Project Properties dialog box, a screen reader will read the
name and description when the Adobe Captivate SWF file is played.
The following Adobe Captivate elements are accessible when
the 508 compliance option is selected:
• Project name (derived from Project Properties)
• Project description (derived from Project Properties)
• Slide accessibility text
• Slide label (derived from Slide Properties)
• Buttons
Creating accessible projects 65
• Playback controls (function of each button is read by
screen readers)
• Password protection (if an Adobe Captivate SWF file
is password protected, the prompt for a
password is read by screen readers)
• Question slides (title, question, answers, button
text, and scoring report are read by screen
readers)
Note: Output generated with the Section 508 option will be
displayed with all supported browsers.
However, your output may not be Section 508 compliant unless
it is viewed with Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer is the only browser with support for MSAA
(Microsoft Active Accessibility).
Note: To access Flash content using a screen reader, users
need to have Flash Player 6 or later installed.
I hope this is of some use to you.
Regards,
Mark -
Auto Step functionality in Oracle Forms?
Hello,
I am testing Captivate for possibility to capture test
scenarios for testing in Oracle. I know Captivate has the ability
to create auto steps from Internet Explorer to automatically create
captions that contain text describing your actions.
Is this functionality available in Oracle Forms? I have
tested it many times and Captivate seems to only be able to create
auto steps from the browser and not create any from Oracle. It
still captures everything properly, but not the auto steps. We are
planning on printing these steps for ease of the user, and thus
would like to have the steps in writing as well.
This is what the Captivate Help file says about Auto Text:
"Use the AutoText Captions feature to automatically create captions
that contain text describing your actions. Customize the
appearance, size, orientation, position, and display speed of
captions, including font, size, color, and text formatting. Before
recording, choose the caption type and language, or create and
import your own caption style. Adobe Captivate 3 generates caption
text in many languages."
Thanks a lot.
-ZebWelcome to our community, Zeb
At first, you really bowled me a wobbly with the description
of "auto step functionality".
It's been my experience that Captivate's ability to properly
recognize elements of an application are pretty much hit and miss.
To be honest, I'm surprised that it does as well as it does. But
that's with normal desktop applications. Toss in something that's
browser based (as your situation seems to be) and I'm surprised it
works at all.
I'm sort of stabbing in the dark here, as I'm not an
application programmer. But I'd guess that what is happening is
Captivate is only sensing an object in the browser and it has no
idea as to how to interpret the fields and whatnot that make up the
object.
I know it's a nice feature when it works. However, I do hope
you are aware that you aren't limited to what Captivate gives you
with this. You are totally able to insert your own Text Captions at
any time on any slide by clicking Insert > Text Caption.
Cheers... Rick
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