Captivate 6 quizzes - html 5 for mobiles

Question

Everything is naturally displayed much smaller on, say, an iPhone. During creation of a quiz, to help matters, it's easy enough to increase the size of the text and, with some faffing about, to arrange greater space between the lines within a question, but I can see no way of increasing the size of the default answer button alongside those questions which have one (true/false and multiple choice) for the user to hit. It's fine with a mouse but very difficult with a finger.
Given that Adobe have gone to great lengths to show how Captivate output can be reproduced on mobiles, has any thought been given to what the user would actually press in the absence of a mouse? A tiny circle to select a quiz answer isn't exactly helpful. Or am I missing something?
Thanks.
Shaun

Answer 1

OK, Allen, let me come back to you on all of this, as I've been working on an iPad and iPhone for many hours solid now, so I know what I'm up against.
With Captivate, I'm simply looking at quizzes at present, as I've already been able to produce coursework for the larger-screened mobiles via their standard browser. As there's no Flash involved, I was able to do this via a standard web design program. Many more people will own and carry a phone than an iPad, so the hardware is in place without additional cost to the employer, so I think it's sensible to cater for that captive audience, who spend so much time noodling about on their mobiles. In fact, I thought that's what Adobe's marketing for Captivate 6 was all about - tapping into the ready availability of mobiles and user expectations for feature-rich applications.
But I digress; it's quizzing I'm trying to accomplish and I'm sitting here puzzled as to your confirming there's been resizing to suit tiny touch issues. Why then the fixed, tiny radio button and checkbox? Those two alone will cause the majority of problems, as they are the main means of interface for the available question types.
Furthermore, if I use a sequence question with, say, three or four answers, which the user has to drag into a correct order, I can't put distance between each answer in order to help a finger tip avoid hitting the wrong line of text. Inelegant carriage returns were the only thing I could come up with to add space, but this only half solves the problem and shouldn't be necessary. Is this an HTML5 limitation or perhaps a bug? Despite them being hampered by too small a checkbox, I see that multiple choice answers can be separated by moving them anywhere within the overall frame holding all answers. If I try that with sequential answers, they all move together as one, so I can't add any distance between them.
Given these issues as to things being too small and too close together, I did think that the inherent configurability of hot spots was my only answer, but I now find they don't work properly either. Firstly, the bullseye itself, like the checkboxes and radio buttons, is too small, and would be much easier to see if it were enlarged. However, far worse is the outcome of using this question type on the iPad and iPhone.
Using my  iPad 4, if I tap an answer which has a hot spot surrounding the text, the pulsating bullseye jumps out of the hot spot right to the top of the page. It does this each and every time and I've reuploaded and changed things about, but it repeatedly does the same thing.
Conversely, when I use an iPhone, the bullseye stays within the hot spot, but then when I tap the same hot spot again to deselect, another bullseye appears rather than the original disappearing. I can make pretty patterns with lots of bullseyes if I keep on doing this!
So with all of these issues, I'm really short on options now, which brings me to your observations as to question types. For my traditional Flash output for PCs and laptops, I've always included some matching questions, so it's a shame this question type is unsupported, as I do know that users find it quite fun.
I also regularly use the two question types you mention where the user has to enter text, simply because they are the ones where the answer isn't somewhere on the page, so the user has to really think hard before answering. I'm surprised at your conclusion that quiz-setters at large don't see this as particularly important.
All in all, Allen, I've just started a one month trial of Captivate 6, and by the end of that I would like to be clearer as to whether I should upgrade or give it a miss because my expectations are too high. I totally agree about the minefield we're in when it comes to cross-browser support, and the mobile aspects seem to be exacerbating the issues faced. However, if I could get HTML5 output to work properly on both an iPad and an iPhone that would be half the battle, as so many people seem to have either or both. I had hoped this was the answer to Apple's obstinate refusal to support Flash, but I seem to be faced with a variety of shortcomings, and due to this being something of a brave new world, it's not clear to me whether what I've identified are bugs and/or design shortcomings within Captivate, or the limitations which HTML5 currently imposes. After many hours of frustration, I suspect it's a bit of everything!
Thanks for listening.
Shaun