Captivate Menus

After working with flash animations like arrows, etc. -
whether importing them or modifying their size, positioning, etc.,
the Captivate 2.0 Menus go nuts. On clicking them, they appear for
a flash of a second and before a selection could be made, they
disappear. On re-starting Captivate, it works normally, but again
gets erratic after working with animations. I’ve tried
re-installing Captivate, but it didn’t help solve the
problem. This problem is there only with Captivate. While Captivate
has this problem, menus of other applications like MS-Word and
Outlook work fine at the same time.

Hi Mark
I'm totally confident Adobe are working to find a solution to
this. Particularly since others are encountering and also
reporting.
Of course I can't speak for others, but personally, as long
as I know a bit about what is going on and what to expect, it goes
a long way toward increasing my tolerance level. Yeah, I know it
shouldn't happen, but it's also pretty easy to just click one of
the folder items in the Library too. Before Adobe told me that
should correct things, I was closing and restarting Captivate!
Cheers... Rick

Similar Messages

Captivate menus disappear

I had looked through this forum and saw some old posts
regarding Captivate menus disappearing after a while working in the
software. This is happening to me right now and it is very
frustrating. In an earlier post, there were two troubleshooting
documents to link to but now the links do not work....
I am on version 2.0 build 1177.
Is this happening to anyone else? It is very frustrating to
have to close Captivate every 5-10 minutes to get the menus back.
Regards,
CJP

Hi all
If you are referring to the menus flashing and immediately
disappearing, the fix is to click any object over in the library
panel. Then they stabilize. This happens after you insert a flash
object on a slide.
Cheers... Rick

Animation Assets

Hi,
I am looking at increasing the number of animation assets to
use in captivate.
I have had very little luck finding any . . . i am looking
for animations to draw attention (like the orange push box that
comes with captivate).
Where can I find a library of elearning assets (including non
animated ones)
Thanks,
Matt

Hi. Long time reader, first time poster :)
I purchased something called the Enhancement Pack with lots
of elements for Captivate. You can insert most of the things -
buttons, images, sounds, etc. right from the standard Captivate
menus. I got it here:
http://www.kcwebplaza.com/captivate/enhancement_pack.html
I like
http://www.flashkit.com/, but
the only problem is you can't easily find many things that use the
same colors. For example, you find an red animated circle that's
perfect, but you might also need a green one. I can't develop in
Flash worth a hoot - so I'm stuck with what they've developed.
I've had decent luck finding animated .gif files just doing
google searches.
Good luck!
Mika

Captivate 7 - Not recording drop down menus

Hi - Last week I was able to record the movement of drop down menus and now it's skipping the movement. During play back nothing is showing as happening. My settings are Automatic / Demo / Automatic Panning. Thanks!

Hi
Have you modified AdobeCaptivate.ini?
I have added a HTML5 demo (published from CP7) which shows two runs of visiting drop down menus here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1796574/demo1.zip
In the first run, the entire navigation across all of the drop down menus got recorded.
In the second run, however, only the end points of the navigation got recorded.
This is to show that Captivate uses a set of heuristics to decide when to retain and when to throw away the in-between slides. A simple rule of thumb is, if the mouse landing click has a "good correlation" with the intermediate slides w.r.t x,y coordinates and the amount of screen changes that happened during the mouse navigations in-between, then the entire navigation is retained in the recording.
Cheers
Siva

Drop-down Menus in Captivate 3.0

We are developing a new training/certification course using
Adobe Captivate 3.0. How do we create a drop-down menu that easily
allows you to jump from one lesson to another? Also, we're
interested in creating a menu down the left-hand side using a
scroll bar. Is this possible, or do we need to use 'Next' and
'Previous' buttons to access more modules?
Thanks in advance for your help!!!

Hi Barry B and welcome to our community
I've never seen anything in Captivate that facilitates using
scroll bars. The closest I've seen is when inserting a FlashPaper
.SWF into a Captivate slide. But it's been my experience that only
a single FlashPaper .SWF will work. Others will fail.
One possibility is to use the Skin Menu. To create one of
these, you click Project * Skin * Menu tab. But it has its own
quirks. If you need to insert a new item near the top, you must
delete the bottom items until you reach where you want the insert
to occur. Then carefully re-add the former items. You are limited
in the amount of space you have to type text. Type too much and it
truncates and fails to display. Configure the font too large and it
gets cut off.
Hopefully something here was helpful to you... Rick

Create drop-down menus in Captivate 4

I need your help!
I need to create a dropdown menu in Captivate! It's supposed to be used in a simulation, not a quiz! Is it possible to create this in a Captivate simulation?
Thanks!

Hi there
Normally we pause slides by inserting a Click Box. You may configure them with no action if you like.
My own experience shows that the widget does set variables. But how they work is a bit on the iffy side. Perhaps another author will offer more insight on this aspect.
Cheers... Rick
Helpful and Handy Links
Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form
Adobe Certified Captivate Training
SorcerStone Blog
Captivate eBooks

Create menus to run projects (4-8 in a menu)

What feature in Captivate allows you to organize your
projects (SWFs) into a menu so users can step through the related
recordings one at a time (view, back, next). Please tell me it's
not Menu Builder. ;-)
I am evaluating Captivate 3 and am looking for something like
Camtasia Theater where you drop your projects into a menu builder,
sort them, title them, identify the links, and you are basically
done.
Surely there is has to be something like this for Captivate
projects. I've seen menus like this online using Captivate
projects, but they were definitely not made with Menu Builder. Is
there a 3rd party tool or other Adobe application that does this?
Captivate earns high marks for ease of use and generation of
recorded demos, but I don't want to get stuck creating clinky
website menus when a companion tool should do this in minutes with
polished results.
Thanks for any info.

The way I've been doing it is with hyperlinks in an HTML
page.
Here's what I do:
1) Publish your Captivate movies, and have Captivate produce
a HTML page for each movie.
2) Create a blank HTML page (i.e. in Dreamweaver).
3) Create a menu in the HTML page. Each menu item is a
hyperlink to each Capitvate HTML page.
4) Edit the style of the HTML page menu. I usually do all
edits in CSS, but you can use DHTML, images, etc.
I've created some menus that look really good using CSS,
borders, margins, backgrounds colors, etc. I've sometimes created a
<frameset> - so I do not have to reproduce the menu on each
page, and I load all the Captivate movies in one designated
frameset page.
You could also easily do this within Flash - and just link
Flash buttons to the Captivate HTML pages.
For navigation within one Captivate movie between slides - I
have a product called the .
Menu
Wizard.

Captivate 8 vs yosemite. Audio speech doesn't work neither on Captivate 7 nor Captivate 8. Is there any bug to fix this problem?

I'm having problems when using Captivate 7 and 8 - specially audio speech management.
As I use OSX Yosemite, I don't know why but it doesn't work properly.
Any bug or way to fix this problem?
Thanks in advance.

Captivate for yosemite is all around really buggy. I also cant get text to speech to work, but I am experiencing issues with what I call "windowing". When I attempted to maximize captivate 8 to my cinema display, menus and modal windows spawned by captivate often appear behind other windows. In addition, Captivate can't seem to figure out how to maximize to the available screen real estate.
These two things happen to be the most annoying bugs, but I have experienced many more:
1.Timeline is really wonky. I can't select multiple timeline items and move them without the timeline completely falling apart.
2. Selecting objects that are overlapping on the stage is terrrible
3. Altering the duration that an item should appear in the timeline often creates an extremely annoying bug where other timeline items will jump to an arbitrary spot. This creates a ton of re-work.
Adobe - Cap 8 is not ready for use in OSX Yosemite- please fix it!

Some questions about features of captivate

Hello,
since I am waiting some days now for a recall of the adobe office i ask here if some features are available within captivate:
- Is it possible to upscale a recorded session to the screen size. e.g. captured with 800*600, played with 1024*768? Same functionality like upscaling a video on youtube ...
- Is there a pause button? Can i pause the session (as the person who is using the finished module to learn something) and restart at the same point som days later? Even on another computer?
- I´ve seen multiple choice and dropdown. Are there any other types of question directly implemented in captivate? Like fill-in-the-blank text or drag & drop with pictures? Or anything else?
- What about accessibility? anything possible with the mouse also possible by shortcuts with the keyboard? Especially forward, backward, start, stop, pause, tab to the next input, ...
- Can the design of the controls customizable? We need all buttons with a corporate design ...
- How detailed are the recordings. Can i see a example for mouse overs and dropdowns somewhere? How much will this increase the file size of the final module?
- Is the an (optinal) print button on to print out any single page of the module?
Thank you very much for some short answers
Frank

Short answers, as requested:
- Is it possible to upscale a recorded session to the screen size. e.g. captured with 800*600, played with 1024*768? Same functionality like upscaling a video on youtube ...
YES. You can change the project size after capturing, however, you will likely notice some loss of crispness in the output. The best size to use for capturing is the one that you DO NOT need to alter afterward.
- Is there a pause button? Can i pause the session (as the person who is using the finished module to learn something) and restart at the same point som days later? Even on another computer?
YES and NO. You are referring to bookmarking. Captivate has a couple of options in this area. One is used when NOT using an LMS and the other is only possible when using SCORM and an LMS. If you are publishing your content to SCORM using a Learning Management System, then some LMSs may support being able to resume the content from another PC at a later date. You need to know more about your particular LMS for the full answer.
- I´ve seen multiple choice and dropdown. Are there any other types of question directly implemented in captivate? Like fill-in-the-blank text or drag & drop with pictures? Or anything else?
YES. There are seven different scorable quiz question types, plus non-scorable Likert questions, and you can also randomise questions via quiz pools. Drag and drop question slides are available via widgets from Infosemantics. Captivate 6.1 and 7, also have drag and drop capability.
- What about accessibility? anything possible with the mouse also possible by shortcuts with the keyboard? Especially forward, backward, start, stop, pause, tab to the next input, ...
YES and NO. Your question is too broad to answer. Not everything possible with a mouse is replicable with a keyboard because some keystrokes are already taken by the browser, and not all browsers behave the same way. Tabbing has been vastly improved in Cp7.
- Can the design of the controls customizable? We need all buttons with a corporate design ...
It depends on your definition of "buttons" and how you want them to look. For example, you can use a graphics editor to create your own image buttons, and Cp6 or Cp7 allows you to fill shape buttons with a graphic. Either of these can be added to slides. If you're talking about branding the playbar buttons, you'll need to pay an ActionScript or Flash guru to build you a custom playbar.
- How detailed are the recordings. Can i see a example for mouse overs and dropdowns somewhere? How much will this increase the file size of the final module?
Download the trial version, install it and play around with the screencapture functionality. You'll soon see what you can and cannot achieve. You can certainly capture mouseovers and dropdown menus in demo mode. Reproducing the behaviour of similar controls in Training or Assessment mode is a bit more involved.
- Is the an (optinal) print button on to print out any single page of the module?
NO. But you can create printable PDFs and link them to each page if you really want this.

How to record menus that display when mouse hovers

The software I am creating a training session for has
pull-down menus that display when the mouse clicks on them or when
the mouse hovers over them. I can only get Captivate to record the
menus when the mouse is clicked - and cannot determine how to
record the menus that display when the mouse hovers. Can anyone
offer any suggestions as to how to fully capture the displayed
software screens and menus? Thanks.

> Thanks. The Print Screen works just OK - although it is
a cumbersome and
> the
> timing is not as smooth as it could be. As I make a
series of training
> videos
> over time and many menus will be missed and more retakes
will be required.
>
You can change the timing yourself - just reduce the time the
slide catch
with print screen to a second or whatever works for you.
Steve
http://twitter.com/Stevehoward999
Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
European eLearning Summit - EeLS
Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
http://www.elearningsummit.eu

Captivate 6: Review mode

I have built a course in Captivate 6 which uses the following navigation:
As you can see, instead of using the built in next and back buttons, I've built my own, which contain the actions "go to next slide" and "go to previous slide". The reason I built my own buttons is that I wanted to hide each one on certain slides but not all (something which is not possible using the Captivate buttons). Also, I wanted to be able to control which slide next button navigated to so that I was able to use sub menus within my course.
The next button appears in the last few frames of each slide, ie only allowing the user to move on once they have viewed all the content (something which is vital). The back button appears from the first frame on each slide that it appears on.
The issue I am facing is that I want the user to freely navigate back and forward using my custom buttons, once they have accessed the content. For example, if the user has accessed Page 1, Page 2 and is now on Page 3, and for some reason wants to return to Page 2 - they press the back button to return to Page 2. They then decide, after being on Page 2 for a couple of seconds, that they want to return to Page 3 but can't move on because the next button only appears at the end of the slide.
Is there any way to get Captivate to recognise that the slide has already been accessed, and therefore make the next button show?
I know there is a site map which allows this functionality but my client requires a next and back button to be onscreen to make it as intuitive as possible. I also realise that I could accomplish this using Advanced Actions, but that means making the project far too complicated and opens up too much room for error.
So, basically, is there a way to get Captivate to register that a slide has been viewed and make the next button show WITHOUT having to apply Advanced Actions to each instance of the next button? (Is there a way to use the Masterslide to do this?)
Thanks in advance!

No. You would need to use Advanced Actions.

Is this possible in Captivate 3?...

I have Macromedia Captivate 1.0, and it doesn't do what we
need. I was wondering if upgrading to Captivate 3 would solve the
problem. Here's what I'd like to do...
I need to have a "menu screen" that would have, say, three
"tasks" to complete. The user would select one "task" and then they
could either watch a demo on it, or they could try it in "test
mode". If they pass it in "test mode" (by clicking in all the
correct spots), then Captivate will somehow mark it off (or put a
check next to it) or something on the main menu with the three
tasks. Once all three tasks have been "checked off" in Test Mode,
then Captivate will pass a "complete" variable to the LMS via
SCORM-compliance...
Can this be done with the latest Captivate? Or would other
tools be necessary in order to accomplish this? If Captivate 3
alone can handle this, is it a relatively painless process?
Thanks!!!

Sorry, what you're asking is not possible with Captivate and
probably never will be.
Captivate creates SCORM-compliant units (SCOs) and SCORM does
not allow SCOs to contain their own menu/navigation logic. All
navigation between files must be handled by the Learning Management
System so it knows which SCO is "in use" when scores are reported
back.
The "correct" procedure would be to create six separate SCOs
and mark the demo SCOs as "optional" in the LMS, and the tests
"required". The user then accesses all SCOs through the LMS
interface. Enable only completion reporting for the demos and full
score reporting for the tests and you'll be able to track
everything the user took to the full extent that your LMS supports.
Your only other alternative is to create three separate units
that have both demo and test in a single file. Add a button that
gives users the option to jump past the demo slides and go directly
to the test. Enable reporting for only the test items and have
Captivate report that score to the LMS. Then, the LMS can decide
whether to "check off" each unit as complete based on the user's
test score. Doing it this way doubles your Captivate file size
(generally a bad thing) and makes it much more work to determine
which users viewed the demo, hence the suggestion to treat
everything as separate files as SCORM's designers intended.
The main takeaway from all this is that SCORM doesn't care
what you do in a given file but it will promptly vomit on your
shoes if you try to jump to another SCO without it's knowing, so
custom menus are a no-no...

Captivate 2.0 Very Buggy After Import of SWF File (Flash 8)??

Where should I begin...
Issue 1
I just updated to Cap 2 and started using it. I have come
across a few very weird issues. Everyting works fine until I import
a swf file to the stage. After I import a swf file to the stage I
realize I made a mistake in the swf file. So I updated the swf in
Flash 8 and publish it. I then went into Cap 2 and tried to update
the file (which I noticed that the update button has been removed.)
When I go to import and import the updated file, it does not update
it. I had to close the program and reboot before it would recognize
the new file??? Sounds like a caching issue of some sorts, but very
buggy in my eyes.
Issue 2
So now I have the new file in... great! But when I try to use
one of the drop down menus from the top tool bar, the menu
disappears immeditly after I have clicked on it??? The only way to
get my menu's back is to close the program and reopen it.
Issue 3
I just recently found another problem... I was trying to work
with Cap 2 in its crazy state, and I pulled one of the bars on the
timeline torwards the end of the screen and the timeline
disappeard??? So I went to view and clicked timeline... no change.
Now I do not have a timeline??? I have tried running a reapir and I
even tried several different new projects with different swf files
to see if it was just that file and I have the same results.
Sorry so lengthly on my issues but this just sucks and I need
help!! Anybody got any ideas!??
Thank you!!

Hi SaSQuaCh69247,
Issue 1 :- Select the SWF file in library, right click, and
select update.
Issue 2 :- Actually it could be valid for Issue 1 also. It
seems like SWF file you are trying to import, does some action
like, importing another swf or connecting to server on the first
frame itself. Captivate will try to play the first frame of SWF
when you import them. Try creating a keyframe with the stop action
as the first frame in your SWF, and see if you still have the
issue.
Issue 3 :- The approach I am mentioning over here is
generally the last approach which I will take in such scenerios,
but since you have already experimented a little, so try this.
Go to C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application
Data\Adobe\Adobe Captivate
Rename captivate_v20.dat as captivate_v20_org.dat.
Restart Captivate Application.
thanks

Can't record selecting from menus

When recording an application in demonstration or custom
recording mode, Captivate 2 does not record selecting a menu option
from a menu on the menu bar. The drop-down menu is not recorded and
sometimes a slide is not captured when I selected a menu option.
Other times I can see the mouse click where I was selecting the
menu option but there is no menu visible.
Is there a workaround for this?

Hi KashiC
Let me guess. You are recording a Web Based application.
Right?
Do the menus get captured but are on the next slide?
If so, you simply need to supplement your auto captures with
occasional manual captures. Perhaps as follows:
Start the app and begin recording. Move slowly and listen for
the shutter sound. Where you tend to notice the shutter sound came
too fast and the screen wasn't fully "there" at the time it
occurred, press Print Screen to force a capture. Then move to the
next action.
Hopefully this helps... Rick

Captivate hangs after certain animations

I have been putting Captivate 2 through rigorous testing for
almost 3 weeks.
Problem #1: Multiple times after inserting an animation or
auto recording the movement of a window the Captivate File Edit
View etc. main menus will only quickly drop down and back up
without time to make a choice. The navigation bars will move, but
snap back to their original position unless you use the navigation
arrows. You can still save a project by clicking on the save icon,
but you must use the exit arrow or understant the Alt F C or Alt F
X key commands to close a project and exit the application. This
would be very scary to a novice user.
Problem #2: When recording in the Prt Scr Mode the
application refuses to record a screen if you do not frequently
press Prt Scr. Clicking other applications on the Window Task Bar
sometimes unlocks the loop, but frequently you must press the End
key and start recording again to get this Key function to work
correctly.
I have not lost and test work, but I have frequently been
forced to completely exit Captivate, wait several seconds and
restart Captivate to get these behaviors to stop.
Whats Up?
vbtester

vbtester, you really haven't made your problem very easy to
see. For #1 you might be saying that during recording, some
background captures that you want, are not being captured during
auto-record ... I'm guessing because somewhere in there you are
referring to the old-style keyboard commands to close a window
(ALT+F+C and so on) ... and I haven't a clue how that figures into
your problem.
If you are missing screen captures you need, try to get used
to using manual capture together with the auto-record feature.
Watch what you are getting (the icon will flash red on your system
bar each time a screen shot is taken) and if Captivate didn't get a
shot yoyu need, press the "PrtScr" key to manually get it.
YOur issue #2 sounds like you are doing what I suggested for
#1 and for some reason the "PrtScr" key isn't working properly. If
that is a problem, do one of two things:
Either change the manual record key to something else
(Options > Recording Options > Change Recording Keys (tab)
and see if that helps, OR ...
Go to Start > Run > (type) "msconfig" to open your
startup options dialog. It is possible that another application is
starting up with Windows, and is holding the "PrtScr" key hostage.
Disable that application and reboot to try again with Captivate.
Any of this helpful? If not, I might have misunderstood your
problems, so perhaps you could restate them in more descriptive
step-by-step format?? Thanks!
.

Captivate Menus

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