Captivate 4 Demonstration

Is the Captivate 4 demo
(https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a295153/newincp4/) available to
download? I'd like to run it on our internal LMS and track
attendance.

Hi Jeff
This is just one of the many frustrations you will encounter if you choose to use RoboHelp for Word to create web based output. This operation is dead simple in RoboHelp HTML.
Wish I had a better answer here. Unfortunately, I stopped using RoboHelp for Word last century when I moved into the wonderful wacky world of HTML.
Perhaps someone more familiar with RoboHelp for Word will pop in and advise whether it's possible to accomplish and if so, how it's done.
Cheers... Rick
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Similar Messages

Captivate Demonstrations & Simulations

Hi all,
Well, two weeks have gone by, and I'm 75% finished creating my first Captivate class! Now, I'm running into a little bit of a problem. I've recorded all my application screens (like in a movie), but I don't know if that's called a simulation or a demonstration. I've also done all the audio, and I've put in my quiz at the end. But now, I want to be able to add in interactivity, whereby the user has to do the clicking after just learning from my recordings and audio. Is that a simulation or a demonstration or something else? Can you give me some pointers on how to do this?
Also, to Rick, thank you so much for your book! It's great, and you have been a lifesaver!
Sincerely,
Terri

Thanks Lilybiri,
I really do appreciate your full and comprehensive answers. I simply followed your directions to terri 'steps to be done:' and I must admit that the course came together very quickly. I had of course already spent time developing it in the other software first, which was Authorware.
After a few failed attempts with Captivate, which I thought were perfomance issuses but as you explained to me last week had more to do with my inefficient use of CP objects. I recreated the project in Authorware. I've been Producing CBT/WBT courses for almost 20 yrs using Authorware and Director, I then had to get my head around Flash, all this time attempting to learn/handle SCORM and deliver the courses in multitude of emerging LMS. About 10 years ago I got more into Project Management leaving the development side behind.
In my current role, I was brought in to update a clients existing Authorware courses into my Flash Templates I had. This was all going swimmingly until they also asked me to create some new courses for them. I looked at captivate and saw the many wonderful claims that it made and was sold on it. Particularly, their claim to: 'Import Microsoft PowerPoint files into Adobe Captivate 5.5 (they made the same claim for 5) and magically transform presentations into interactive eLearning content deliverable virtually anywhere'. I thought that this would lend itself to allowing the Lawyers here acting as Learning Designers to create their storyboards effectively in some PowerPoint templates.
All my courses are Interactive training of softskills, so not much IT simulation, but I have struggled with CP logic. Do we really need to be so conservative when building files using CP objects? I'm not sure if it's our servers here or the web conection in general but has anyone else had issues with rollovers not appearing for quite a while, or radio buttons not populating instantly when clicked upon?
I once spent a whole weekend working with a client, who did not have an LMS setting up the alternative reporting, only for it to work once and then never again. After extensive research of this issue I discovered that Adobes Official response was that, 'this doesn't work for eveyone'.
I have seen other peoples examples of CP files and I am impressed but I can't seem to grasp the concept. It is now getting very pressing as I may have to cut my loisses and re-develop the whole course ,18 Modules, in my very dependable flash templates - easily two weeks work.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Regards,
Simpson

Interactive Captivate simulations not working correctly in Presenter

Hi,
I'm looking for a fix for what appears to be a bug with
importing interactive Captivate 2.0.0 (build 1177, originally a
trial verson) files into Presenter 6.0.432 (in PowerPoint 2000 SP-3
9.0.8952 on a Windows XP computer).
The course works fine when I publish the Presenter file to My
Computer, but doesn't work correctly when I publish to Adobe
Connect (hosted version). What happens is that the interactive
Captivate simulations are already done. (It seems like Presenter is
somehow completing the simulations before the end user gets to
those slides.)
Each course I've created is approximately 40 slides in length
with approximately eight Captivate demonstrations and eight
Captivate simulations spread out through the course. (A few slides
of content with voiceover, then a slide with a Captivate
demonstration, then a slide with a Captivate simulation slide, etc.
etc.)
Captivate Project Preferences are set to:
Advanced project compression
508 compliance
Compress compiled SWF file
Publish Adobe Connect Enterprise metadata
Captivate Publish settings are:
(unchecked) Export HTML
Flash Player 7
I tried switching the Flash Version to Flash Player 8, but it
didn't help at all, and instead caused an additional problem which
was that the text entry part of the interactive simulations stopped
working altogether.
I'm inclined to think this is a problem with the Connect
server (since the course runs fine when published to My Computer,
just not when published to Adobe Connect), but suppose it could be
a Captivate or Presenter issue. In any case, I'm open to whatever
gets it fixed.
Thanks,
Ruth

Thanks Art,
I tried it, but it didn't help.
Given TechNote #46b77621 (recommending people link to
Captivate files rather than embed them in Presenter), and the
problems I'm having, I'm starting to wonder if this is a known
problem.
If it is, it's a big one, as a major selling point of
Presenter has been that you can embed Captivate files within the
slides. Linking out to them would be a different experience for the
end-user (and not as nice).
Another problem is that the TechNote says text entries won't
work in Captivate files embedded in Presenter (I have had some
inconsistent issues with this). Serious feature problem if it's
true. (As I'm sure you know, it's a very common aspect of computer
training courses, which is what many people are using
Presenter/Captivate for.)
Hopefully this all gets sorted out sooner rather than later.
(Or you never know, perhaps, hopefully, there's just something I'm
missing. :))
Thanks,
Ruth

Captivate 2: Static text-box always part of e-learning: Possible?

Captivate 2: Does someone know if it is possible to have a
static text-"box" that always is shown e.g. under the e-learning
corse/demo? Where one can put in theoretic information without it
having to be placed over and hiding the demo/course itself.

Captivate will publish to the dimensions of your project. So
if your
project is 640x480, you'll have a 640x480 SWF after
publishing.
To make additional space below your Captivate demonstration,
I imagine
you could resize (say) a 640x480 file down to 640x400 file so
all the
screen elements are shrunk down (disproportionately in that
example
dimension), then resize the file back up to 640x480, which
might just
leave you with 80 pixels of blank space at the bottom.
Or, perhaps easier, just increase the size of your project
from the
sample 640x480 to 640x530 for an additional 50 pixels at the
bottom.
You would have to then still place the text box on each and
every screen
in Captivate though. There's no way to make one and have it
appear in
the same place for every slide in one slick move...that I
know of, anyway.
OR, if you don't care if the text box is actually within the
SWF file,
just put it in the HTML page which the SWF file is assumingly
embedded into?
Erik
avlund wrote:
> Does someone know if it is possible to have a static
text-"box" that always is
> shown e.g. under the e-learning corse/demo? Where one
can put in theoretic
> information without it having to be placed over and
hiding the demo/course
> itself.
>
Erik Lord
http://www.capemedia.net
Adobe Community Expert - Authorware
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/
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samples, tips, products, faqs, and links!
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*The Blankenship Caveat: Note that direct linking to http
content
through any Authorware icon will likely fail if a proxy
server is present!*

Text caption capture

Sinc
I have (on my previous computer) captured Captivate
demonstrations where Captivate automatically inserted captions. I'm
trying to create an interactive training simulation and it doesn't
matter what Options I select under the auto-capture, Captivate is
not automatically inserting any captions, rollover captions or
highlight boxes. I have a Dell Dimension 3100 with Windows XP,
Version 5.1 SP2. Does anyone have any ideas?

Hi dalemw and welcome to our community
I'm wondering if what you are seeing is possibly related to
the actual application being recorded. Perhaps Captivate simply
doesn't recognize some of the items in order to insert the Text
Caption. To test this, try opening Windows Notepad and record a
brief movie. See if it inserts captions there. If so, it's the
application you are recording and probably not Captivate.
Things to try:
Restart Captivate - Sometimes simply closing and restarting
Captivate does the trick.
Hunt and destroy the Captivate settings file - you can do
this by viewing the TechNote linked below:
Click here to view the
TechNote
Don't worry, Captivate easily rebuilds this file if it isn't
found. Oh yeah, you also want to be sure and Close Captivate before
doing this. No need to make it wander around your computer all bug
eyed wondering where the file went.
Cheers... Rick

Diable "open dialog box" on right mouse click so I can use l mouse to advance to next slide and r mouse click to "go back." How in PP 2010 for mac????

I do presentations in PP10. I am new to macair, and used to Windows. HOW DO I DISABLE THE "OPEN DIALOG BOX ON RIGHT CLICK"? I would like to use L mouse to advance slide, and R mouse to go back. The default is to use R mouse to open dialog box. I can disable this by unchecking the box in "advanced" on the PC. How do I do it with the Mac????
Thanks
hacmd

Hi Rod,
As originally stated in my opening post, the SWF is to be inserted into an Articulate '13 slide (what I called an aggregator originally - I tried not to bring them up since I don't want the chatter about "There's your problem - using Articulate"! ).
Recall that posting this published file to our LMS did not allow right-mouse click functionality as the flash player menu just gets in the way.
If I insert the captivate 6 files into Articulate as a Web Object (referencing the entire folder with html, htm and assets, and then posted to our LMS, and it DOES allow RM click operations in both IE and FF (although no sound on the Captivate slide in FF). But this is not what we want to do as this introduces 2 navigation controls (the Captivate one and the Articulate Player).
Why must anything be posted to a web server for this functionality to work?
I am able to go into the Captivate 6's published folder, and launch the Captivate demonstration by simply double clicking on the index.html file and this works great in both FF and IE after changing the security settings for flash.
Again - I can not believe I am the only one out there trying to use the right-mouse click feature to do a software simulation by embedding the Captivate SWF into an Articulate '13 project.

Item renderer

I have a theory that the user being able to use alphanumeric
keys to jump to items on a list(
List
control user interaction) is conflicting with my itemrenderer
editors.
Alphanumeric jumping seems to only happen directly after a
scrollbar or tab button has been used.
My itemrenderer editors register well except for when
keypresses trigger alphanumeric jumping. In these cases any edits
made in my itemrenderers do not register.
Does anyone know how I can prevent this alphanumeric jumping?
i'm not sure whether this description makes much sense, so to
help you out here's a link to where you should be able to replicate
the problem
here
and if you would like to look at the code, it's
here.
If you are struggling to replicate the problem, I've created
a captivate demonstration of the problem
here.
Regards
Craig

for anyone following this thread, the question of how to
remove alphanumeric jumping has been answered in another topic
here
thanks to xmritchie:
"Inside the itemRenderer add a listenter to your Input
control:
myInput.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, onKeyDown);
In the onKeyDown function do
event.stopImmediatePropagation();
This will stop it from bubbling up while you are typing.
"

Powerpoint Integration and Questionmark

Hello,
as a new user of captivate I hope somebody can help me out
with the integration of ppt into captivate.
Basically I have a ppt presentation in which I wish to
include a captivate demonstration. I followed the instructions
provided in the online documentation, which actually works fine.
Now I would like to produce a flash movie from this. I tried
to export this into Captivate (as I need to export this as a qml
file for later use in Questionmark Perception). The slide come
along nicely, yet the flash movie gets lost. (I also tried a
conversion to fash, and again the captivate demonstration
disappeared). What am I doing wrong, here?
Is there something that does the trick?
I would be grateful for any support!
Many thanks, la linea

Please refer to the link below which has the SAP standard delivered test scenarios -
https://websmp209.sap-ag.de/valuesapupdates
But this needs a SMP access.
Also mailed a copy to your id. pls check and confirm.
Hope this helps you.

Inserting a FLV file into CS5.5 project

Hello,
If anybody is able to help me with my question I would be forever grateful.
1. I use CS5.5 and I have published a captivate demonstration as a MP4 - then converted it to a FLV file using Adobe Media Encoder.
2. I have then inserted the FLV file into another captivate CS5.5 project and published the file as a flash file.
Problem - The FLV file plays when previewing in web browser, and also plays on a public file location. Problem occurs when I load the published file onto a web server I get a connection error when I get to the slide with the FLV file.
I am really stumped with this one. Has anybody any ideas?
Thanks
ali

Hi Rod,
Attached is a screen dump. I can understand why when I publish the final flash version to a web server that it does not recognise the path of the FLV file as it is on my local drive. However when I attempt to place the file name of the file sitting on the web server I get another error message (Refer to screen dump 2). Obviously I am missing something
I am missing here. Thanks ali

Drivers compatibility check

any one have an idea about how to check if any of installed drivers is not compatible ?

Hi
To verify that device drivers are compatible with Windows 7:
Choose Start > Control Panel.
Click System and Security (Windows 7) or System and Maintenance (Windows Vista), and then click Device Manager. In Windows 7, Device Manager is in the System section.
Click the plus sign (+) to the left of each device type.
If a device appears with a black exclamation mark (!) in a yellow circle, right-click that device and choose Properties from the menu.
Note the properties for the device:
Check the Device Status field: If the device isn't working properly, information in this field can help you troubleshoot the problem.
If the Properties dialog box has a Driver tab, click it. If the Driver tab doesn't indicate the driver provider, then click Driver Details. If Microsoft is the provider, then a generic driver is probably installed; contact the device manufacturer to obtain the most recent driver that they provide.
The Adobe Captivate demonstration below illustrates how to verify that device drivers are compatible with Windows Vista. For more information about viewing this demo, see "Viewing Adobe Captivate Demos in Knowledgebase Documents" (TechNote kb403894).
Let us know how it goes!
"I work for HP."
****Click the (purple thumbs up icon in the lower right corner of a post) to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
Regards
Manjunath

Training Videos - Adobe Technical Communication Suite, FrameMaker and RoboHelp

Adobe Senior Product Evangelist, RJ Jácquez, has created
three On Demand training videos to help customers get started with
Adobe Technical Communication Suite. Please see the details below-
NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical
Communication Suite: Part 1 (
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p29205929/)
In Part 1, you will learn about leveraging live and
interactive 3D models from virtual any CAD/CAM/CAE software in your
technical and instructional documents using the Adobe Technical
Communication Suite.
NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical
Communication Suite: Part 2 (
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p25426010/)
In Part 2, you will learn how to supplement your technical
and instructional design documents with engaging Adobe Captivate
demonstrations, simulations and quizzes in the Flash format using
the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.
NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical
Communication Suite: Part 3 (
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p13101233/)
In Part 3, you will learn about adding FrameMaker books and
documents in RoboHelp as live links and reusing FrameMaker content
for creating Online Help systems, Searchable Knowledge bases,
Performance Support systems and even Policies and Procedures. Just
like the first two, the exercise files are also included in case
you want to go over the integration features yourself.
Besides Adobe Technical Communication Suite, there are
training videos for Adobe FrameMaker 8 (
http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/framemaker/#tutorials)
and Adobe RoboHelp 7 (
http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/robohelp/#tutorials)
available on Adobe Help Resource Center.

Posting the links again -
NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical
Communication Suite: Part 1
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p29205929/
NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical
Communication Suite: Part 2
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p25426010/
NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical
Communication Suite: Part 3
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p13101233/

Adobe Captivate Help | Record video demonstrations

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/using/record-video-demonstrations.html

Hi Nirupama,
Before recording, choose the recording resolution as Youtube Widescreen HD and that should capture it in the right resolution.
And while publishing the recorded CPVC project, choose the HD resolution or customize the publishing quality settings -- Choose High Profile, and Encode using Bitrate, use the Highest possible Bitrate value. You are free to customize any othe value as well.
Thanks,
Anjaneai

Adobe Captivate 6 Demonstration Mode - Splitting Audio and Video

Hi, I have just recorded a conference call using the software demonstration mode. There was a little bit of discussion at the beginning that I wanted to edit out, so I opened edit audio and used the insert silence at the beginning. This deleted the 10 seconds of the audio but not the video and now the recording is off. How do I get these to match up? I tried adding time to the beginning of the audio in the edit mode, but that did not help. I apprecaite any help!

Hi,
Have you recording the demonstration in -- Automatic--Demo mode in Cp?
If that is the case it would have captured screen based upon keystores and mouse clicks. You can check your film strip and manually delete the irrelevant slides.
Regarding the audio, you could have selected the piece of audio you wished to remove and "deleted" that.
Thanks,
Anjaneai

Is Captivate 4 the right tool for my purposes?

This posting should not be misunderstood as bad mouthing Captivate 4. For the most part, I really appreciate Adobe products and have invested a significant amount of personal money into many Adobe products over the years.
My current role involves designing a course curriculum using Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Connect Pro. Unfortunately, I am becoming increasingly concerned that I may be using the wrong tool, at least, in regards to developing all parts of a lesson. Perhaps my workflow will improve if I develop the front facing portion of my lessons with Lectora, and use Captivate solely for creating software simulations?
Because I have already spent a lot of time building my first lessons, and I have a subscription to Adobe Connect Pro, I would rather solve the issues I listed, rather than start over.
My question is... are my issues based on my lack of knowledge with Captivate 4, or am I experiencing real issues with this product? If it is my lack of knowledge, please tell me how to solve my issues.
At this point, I would like to give kudos to Rick Stone (known as Captiv8r) for all his help as a hired consultant. I highly recommend his services. Without him, I probably would not have gone as far as I have with Captivate.
Please correct or comment on the followin…
Minor annoyances
-    Too easy to accidentally move objects. Double clicking on a small graphic or a text caption can easily cause it to move or change size slightly. No way to lock their position only (e.g. lock text position but still allow editing).
-    Text caption boxes mysterious maximize (vertically) from time to time.
-    Grouping of objects is not possible.
-    Previewing “From this slide – F8” does not take into account (or initialize) persistent graphics (or otherwise) on the first slide or template; this results in missing objects when doing a quick preview.
-    Item names/variables are unwieldy. I have a number of graphics which I re-use throughout a lesson. I want to give each of them common names, such as ico_jobaid, img_core_splash, etc. Unfortunately, I cannot use identical names throughout a lesson. Each page requires a unique name for every object. This results in an item name like ico_interactive.png (as it is named in the library), appearing as TImageItem681 and TImageItem680 (copied twice) on a slide.
This is common for every object and makes it difficult to control objects.
Major issues
-    Occasionally I insert a graphics that can’t be made visible.
-    .cp file size seems to continuously increase in size, despite removing unused resources.
-    Text bullet issues (ending bullets occasional show up as a larger size)
-    Roll-over slidlets do not work as intended in AS3 mode. I must preview or publish in AS2.
-    Recording Software Simulations!
Captivate 4 allows recording of simulations in up to four modes (Demonstration, Training, Assessment, and Custom). Unfortunately, it appears to record these simulations are separate and distinct recordings. This is a problem because call-outs and other edits must be repeated for each simulation. Other simulation tools record once and can be edited once for passive and/or interactive viewing.
-    Buttons! Multiple buttons/text captions on a slide.
If I want to place multiple buttons on a slide, I must follow these steps to make these buttons/captions work properly. This is an unreasonable amount of work in order to use buttons on a single slide.
Step 1 - Determine the frame value. Note: It seems that if the frame value is not included, the lesson will move to the next slide, after clicking one button. Another caveat is that adding or removing slides may change the correct frame value.
1. Click Insert from the top menu,
2. Select Standard Objects,
3. Select Text Caption,
4. Click the Insert Variable button,
5. Select System from the Variable Type pull-down menu,
6. Select rdinfoCurrentFrame from the Variables pull-down menu.
7. Position the text caption appropriately on the screen. You may need an appropriate pause inserted in order to see the value.
8. Click Preview and select Project from the pull-down menu (or Click F4),
9. Step through slide show to the slide where rdinfoCurrentFrame text variable was inserted and record the displayed value.
Step 2 – Insert Button control
1. Click Insert from the top menu,
2. Select Standard Objects,
3. Select Button,
4. Choose appropriate button and button options (skipping steps),
5. Click Ok,
6. Position button appropriately.
Step 3 – Setting up advanced actions.
1. Click Project from top menu,
2. Select Actions,
3. Click the Advanced Actions tab,
4. Click the Edit / Create Action Pull down menu and select Create a New Action…,
5. In the new action name: text box, type action name (i.e. but_core_console),
6. Double click twice on Add Statement (sometimes it doesn’t behave as it should),
    – this feature seems error prone.
7. Double click twice on Statement (in red),
8. Select Standard Action from pull-down list,
9. Select Show from pull-down list,
10. Select object name (text caption) you wish to show,
11. Repeat (if necessary),
12. Select hide and the element name you wish to hide and repeat as necessary,
13. Double click twice on Add Statement (sometimes it doesn’t behave as it should)
– this feature seems error prone.
14. Double click twice on Statement (in red),
15. As the last step, select Assignment from pull down list,
16. Select rdcmndGotoFrame from pull down list,
17. Select Value from pull-down list,
18. Enter the frame value (as determined Step 1),
19. Click Save.
For the next buttons,
1. Click the Duplicate button,
2. Edit the New action name: name appropriately,
3. Edit the information in the Advanced actions for the this action. (skipping steps)
4. Click Save.
Repeat as necessary!
Configuring buttons
1. Double click on first button,
2. In the section, “If the user clicks on the button”,
    click on “On success” pull-down menu and select, “Execute advanced action”.
3. Click the Action pull-down menu and select the appropriate named action.
Repeat as necessary.
-    Building buttons for several slides will create a large number of advance actions. Even though these advanced actions are only applicable to a single slide, they are viewable from any slide in a lesson. The number of actions (or advanced actions) quickly adds up in a complex lesson.
-    Cannot find a way to edit the default look (object positioning/object sizes) of a quiz. The only attribute that seems changeable is the font size.
Lock ups and crashes
-    Double clicking on a .cp file will often result in Captivate freezing at the start up screen.
-    Captivate crashes and sometimes predictably, especially where animations are inserted.
I am using both a Windows 7 64 bit and a Windows Vista 32 bit OS. I have tried the following options with seemingly no difference: RUN AS Admin, XP Compatibility mode
Examples from Windows Applications log:
The program AdobeCaptivate.exe version 4.0.1.1658 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Problem Reports and Solutions control panel. Process ID: 16f0 Start Time: 01ca623e805d8f30 Termination Time: 81
The program AdobeCaptivate.exe version 4.0.1.1658 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Problem Reports and Solutions control panel. Process ID: 1654 Start Time: 01ca622b67764380 Termination Time: 70

The only one that can answer that question is yourself ;o)
I wrote my comments and suggestions with red text here. My company uses Captivate to develop courses and so far we have been very happy with Captivate. Earlier we used Flash to develop courses, but the development time was very long so Captivate has allowed us to speed up the development process with 2-300%. We still use Flash quite a lot to build interactions etc. and import these into Captivate to add extra features.
We did look at a variety of tools when we wanted to find an alternative to Flash but at that time (we started with Captivate 2) we found that the best option was indeed Captivate. I regularly check up on competing products and there are some interesting alternatives available now but they are not as advanced as Captivate imho.
When that is said. Captivate is (and has always been) full of weird bugs and things that aren't working properly. This is extremely annoying but we have learned to work our way around most of them. It also seems that the stability of Captivate varies greatly from installation to installation. We are 8 people in my department all working with Captivate. Our computers are all the same and the OS is a corporate standard. Despite this some people here have some weird problems with Captivate that I never experience. I can't explain why it happens (and neither can they) but it could be the installation or it could be the way people work. An example is "missing/corrupt" Captivate files. We have always been working directly on a network drive. This is something that is often recommended against doing because it can cause corrupt Captivate files. The interesting thing is that I have never once experienced a corrupt Captivate file even though i have opened, worked on and saved many thousands of them from/to our network drive. One of my colleagues had around 20 occurences of corrupt Captivate files in the same timespan and from the same network drive.
The biggest problem in Captivate is the quiz module in my opinion. The quiz module is probably the most important when we talk about E-learning development tools and that is where Captivate is the weakest. You can't really customize your quizzes, there isn't enough different question types and interaction types, you can't use video but worst of all - it is unstable and buggy. Users can get stuck in a quiz without being able to move forward or backwars, the review quiz is buggy etc.
One thing I often see with Captivate developers is that they try and do everything in Captivate. While most things are possible to do in Captivate then it might no be the best solution. Some things can be created in Flash and imported into Captivate saving you tons of time and grief and in the end give you a much better end-product. I know that everyone doesn't have access to a Flash programmer, but then you can buy your way out of the problem.
If you are looking for a tool where you can have full control of everything in your courses then the only real solution is Adobe Flash. This will allow you to build the courses exactly as you please but it comes at a big price. It gets way more complex to create courses, which results in longer development times and updating your existing course becomes much more difficult and time consuming.
Minor annoyances
-    Too easy to accidentally move objects. Double clicking on a small graphic or a text caption can easily cause it to move or change size slightly. No way to lock their position only (e.g. lock text position but still allow editing).
Doesn't really bother me but I guess it's different from person to person. You could just click on the object in the timeline instead to avoid moving the object.
-    Text caption boxes mysterious maximize (vertically) from time to time.
I never experienced that.
-    Grouping of objects is not possible.
I agree that this could be handy on slides with many objects.
-    Previewing “From this slide – F8” does not take into account (or initialize) persistent graphics (or otherwise) on the first slide or template; this results in missing objects when doing a quick preview.
Yes but if Captivate was to take into account everything that happened earlier than previewing from this slide you might as well click preview project (F4).
-    Item names/variables are unwieldy. I have a number of graphics which I re-use throughout a lesson. I want to give each of them common names, such as ico_jobaid, img_core_splash, etc. Unfortunately, I cannot use identical names throughout a lesson. Each page requires a unique name for every object. This results in an item name like ico_interactive.png (as it is named in the library), appearing as TImageItem681 and TImageItem680 (copied twice) on a slide.
I think this is the same in any application.. The whole idea of naming objects is that they have a unique name to be identified and manipulate later. I do however agree that the default naming in Captivate sucks. If the resource is named ico_interactive.png in the library, then Captivate should name it slide1_ico_interactive.png as the object name. It would make it easier and quicker to identify the correct resources.
Major issues
-    Occasionally I insert a graphics that can’t be made visible.
I never experienced that with properly configured graphics. Sure you can have problems if you insert a CMYK image or a 300 dpi image, but if you use RGB 72dpi images then it works fine. (at least it always have for me).
-    .cp file size seems to continuously increase in size, despite removing unused resources.
True but I never really experienced this as a problem. In Captivate 3 it could really get out of hand, but in CP4 it's much better. Alternatively create a blank Captivate file with the same dimensions and copy/paste your slides into that. (Don't know how it will behave with all your advanced actions though).
-    Text bullet issues (ending bullets occasional show up as a larger size)
It is because you have a different font size on the last line of the caption. Just do a CTRL-A to select all the text and select the proper font size. Alternatively adjust the default font and size to what you want in Captivate to avoid this in the future.
-    Roll-over slidlets do not work as intended in AS3 mode. I must preview or publish in AS2.
Didn't know that - you should probably report it as a bug if you haven't done so already.
-    Recording Software Simulations!
Captivate 4 allows recording of simulations in up to four modes (Demonstration, Training, Assessment, and Custom). Unfortunately, it appears to record these simulations are separate and distinct recordings. This is a problem because call-outs and other edits must be repeated for each simulation. Other simulation tools record once and can be edited once for passive and/or interactive viewing.
Agree - this is rather annoying.
-    Buttons! Multiple buttons/text captions on a slide.
From what I understand you have a whole bunch of buttons on a slide and then when the user clicks on one it shows some text / image? If that is the case then yes it will be a tedious process to build all this. I don't know if it would be easy in any other applications though (surely most of the other Rapid E-learning tools won't even be able to do it). Perhaps it would be better to rethink the way you build the course. Can't you use rollover captions / images instead?
Another alternative is to build these "interactions" in Flash and then import them into Captivate. Basically you would need to build a couple of different templates where you would be able to reuse the Flash framework and only change images/text in Flash and then importo it into Captivate.
-    Cannot find a way to edit the default look (object positioning/object sizes) of a quiz. The only attribute that seems changeable is the font size.
This is a major handicap in Captivate and one of the reasons why we don't use Captivate quizzes in our courses. We build all our course in Captivate (and add Flash and other interactions) but we always use a Flash Quiz. The Captivate quiz is simply too ugly and unstable. We deploy courses to 35.000 people worldwide so stability is our number one priority and sadly Captivate quizzes don't offer that at this point.
Lock ups and crashes
-    Double clicking on a .cp file will often result in Captivate freezing at the start up screen.
I never had that problem. I use Win XP, Vista 64-bit and Win7 64-bit.
-    Captivate crashes and sometimes predictably, especially where animations are inserted.
I am using both a Windows 7 64 bit and a Windows Vista 32 bit OS. I have tried the following options with seemingly no difference: RUN AS Admin, XP Compatibility mode
My regular development PC runs Windows XP Pro. I never have any problems here. On Vista 64-bit I have a ton of problems, but Captivate didn't crash or lock up - it simply didn't perform the actions I wanted it to do. So far on Windows 7 I haven't encountered any crashes or problems. However there is no doubt that Captivate 4 was designed with Win XP in mind and Vista and Win7 are not native platforms for it.
/Michael
Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

Issues with using relative links in Captivate 8

Is anyone else having issues with using relative links in Captivate 8? These links all used to work in the previous version of Captivate. And I could have sworn this was fixed already once in Captivate 8 but it's popping up again for us. Here is the situation... We have courses that are made up of multiple lessons which as separate Captivate files. Within those lessons are buttons to link to external documents (which live in a shared document folder), demonstrations, etc. We use relative links because we post these to our amazon servers and we also sell them to clients where they can post them on their own web servers or in their LMS. SO we can't put in full paths for the links or we'd have to change them constantly. So an example is that the link for a button might be "../Document/nameofdoc.pdf" This would be going to a user guide or something that is posted in the "Document" folder that lives at the same level as the lesson's folder. But now, all of the sudden, none of our bazillion links is working. And I've tried buttons, hyperlinks, and even the old click box. Nothing works with relative links. And I did check the permissions on every file and folder on our Amazon server to verify nothing changed there as well. Any suggestions?

I have the same issue with relative links using Captivate 8. I am trying to load Captivate modules into an LMS using relative links to document files within the LMS. The links work fine during a site page test so not an issue in the LMS, but from the Captivate module they aren't working....
Help?

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