Confused with optimum size and publishing

Question

It seems like it should be a fairly straightforward process to select a project size at the start of a Captivate project and then publish at the end and watching Adobe videos saying how easy it all is now to publish across platforms with HTML5 etc you would think so.
When I started my current project I selected 1024 x 768 as I have a large main screen, plus two smaller screens here at work. When I went to publish, I selected both swf and HTML5 and selected scalable HTML content. I then saved the .htm file to my web folder here at work and then viewed the new link. My default web browser is Firefox and I was horrified to see the movie appear as a tiny postage stamp size on the screen. Also when I tried it on my smartphone, clicking on the buttons caused the slides to jump too far ahead.
I then decided to re-save my project and re-size it to iPad landscape. I then published two different versions, the original 1024 x 768 version as swf with scalable HTML content and a second re-sized iPad version as HTML5 with no scalable HTML. Both versions worked fine on either pc (scaling nicely for the different sized screens I have) and also worked fine on my smartphone. However, in Firefox I still got the postage stamp sized movie.
I am now trying a new re-sized project as 995 x 627 and my intention is not to use scalable HTML content and publish it to both swf and HTML5 and see how that looks on everything.
My question  is if you were tasked to create a Captivate project that needs to look great on pcs, laptops, tablets and smartphones without having to use scroll bars to view all the content on each page, firstly what size would you choose for your project and which settings would you use when publishing (i.e. would you select scalable HTML)?

Answer 1

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all (no pun intended) size for Captivate trainings that will look perfect on multiple devices. If you need to have the training viewable on multiple devices then you should use the scalable options when publishing. Without scaling you’ll end up with scrollbars on devices that use varying resolutions and can’t fit all the content onscreen. The only way not making content scalable would be possible is if Captivate had a device aware function that allows the content to fit the screen, like you can code in Dreamweaver, but that would seriously increase your development time.
The Firefox problem has to do with a bit of code that Captivate uses in the html templates. Open the html file that’s generated with your published files and remove the text "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd" from the first line. Then when the file is opened in Firefox it won’t display the content really tiny. You can also remove this from your template files so it’s never included when you publish.