PNG Advice to beginners in Captivate

Hi beginner,
I have ecountered some problems with PNG and transparency - background becomming black etc. Various effects adds to the confusion. It is in fact not a bug or a problem - but a behaviour that simply needs some attention (usability work) in my opinion.
I find that this is not such an "intuitively obvious" setting and I would like to share my experience since I have seen some posts on this subject. None, however, have referred to this detail as the cause of the problem.
I failed to notice the connection between the "Quality setting" in the "General" properties box. When you import an image on a slide (or Copy one from another slide) you need to make sure that the Quality setting on that particular slide is "High - (24 bit)". Captivate doesn't help you on this - or give you a warning - and if you miss this little detail, then the slide will not export/publish the way you expect. Viewing in Captivate works fine, but output is adjusted to this setting, causing 24-bit PNGs with transparency to look "corrupted" and you will no doubt spend time reimporting, saving etc. since the slide view works fine.
Don't - just don't miss the setting. It is one of those things you have to be aware of.
Kind regards,
Nick

Nick, great call on pointing this out.
I was freaking out about my PNGs with transparency until I finally figured this out as well.
One thing that helps is to select all the slides in the Filmstrip view and then apply the quality settings to all of them at once.
1. Right-click on one of the slides.
2. Select All Slides.
3. In the Properties Palette, under General, set to the quality to Optimized or High.
If you have lots of slides it will take a moment to churn through them.

Similar Messages

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.

Acrobat 9 + Captivate

Hello all, Would anyone care to advice about inserting a
Captivate SWF for (creating pdf documents) into Acrobat 9 with geo
referenced maps exported from Arcmap 9.3
Thx
HS

Hello There,
There is no issue as such with Captivate generated PDF opening in the reader version 9 and above. Can you please email me and I can check from my end. My mail is [email protected]
Thanks,
Vish

Using Captivate content on Saba

Is anyone out there using Captivate on Saba?
I am having real difficulty stopping content moving to
Transcript. I have set pass/fail, SCO mastery score etc in attempt
to stop it and at times it appears to work. Just now I had a look
at a piece we are developing on our test environment and on the
first attempt that reports a completion status of unsuccessful it
stays in enrollments, which is what we want; however on a second
unsuccessful attempt it goes to transcript with the status
unsuccessful.
Can anyone give me advice on settings on Captivate and Saba
that will stop this from happening? Although, the content still can
be launched from transcript and completed successfully, it is a
little confusing for the learner that sometimes it will stay in
enrollments and sometimes be found in transcript.
HELP PLEASE!
Thanks,
Ryan

Hi All,
After trying several combinations on reporting, we still
can't get the content to stay in current enrollment on Saba.
Has anybody out there had experience with Captivate and Saba?
We have pretty much resigned our selves to educating our
learns that if they don't complete the quiz on the first the
attempt, or if they fail the quiz they need to go to transcript to
find it and relaunch.
The only other option is to set on Saba offering level never
to move content to to transcript unless manually done so, which is
not really a great solution.
I would still be very grateful if somebody has something to
add here.
Regards,
Ryan

Creating eye catching appealing graphics in Captivate

Hello
I currently use Captivate 5.5 and have access to Captivate 6. I create online training tutorials for our organisations computer programs. I am eager to make these more visually appealing to the end user and am unsure which is the best program to be able to do this in.
I am wondering if Illustrator would be worth a try? However from what I can see online, in order to get Illustrator graphics into Captivate you need Photoshop as well? I do not have Illustrator or Photoshop though can probably get them.
Would anyone have any suggestions on a program I can use to create creative appealing graphics that can be used (or imported) into Captivate?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions I really appreciate it.

Though many of us have Photoshop or Fireworks or some other similar graphics editing software in the toolset, the truth is that none of these necessarily make more "appealing graphics" than others. The success or failure of the end result is entirely in the hands of the graphic artist or person using the application.
Rather than going out and spending a lot of dollars at the moment on software, I would suggest that you just start using PowerPoint to create simple graphics. It's actually a pretty fair tool in this area. Once you have created something that suits your project, you just group it, then right click on the graphic and choose Save As Graphic from the context menu. I usually use PNG format for importing into Captivate.
I like to follow Tom Kuhlman's blog (even though he's with Articulate) because he has lots of good practical tips about how to create e-learning.
Here's a recent post that might be applicable to your question:
http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/how-to-build-your-own-graphics-for-online-traini ng-courses/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RapidElearningBlog +%28The+Rapid+E-Learning+Blog%29

Video playback in Cp6

Has anyone had issues with video playback in 6? I have MP4 videos that continue to play after a user has navigated away from the page. This results in two audio tracks playing simultaneously. We have removed any direct video controls and have the videos autoplay when the user enters the slide. Further, I have removed the playbar, as it seemed that scrubbing the slide was affecting the video playback. We are using the CoolBlue skin and playback panel.
Any advice?
Jon

Hi there,
Captivate 6.0.1.240 is not tested on Windows 8, only the latest release that is 6.1.0.319 is tested on Windows 8.
Are you viewing your project from inside the zip?
To test it locally unzip that zipped folder and then play course and check whether there is any difference?
Thanks.

Where should I start learning

Hello!
I am very new to appdev. I am keen to develop in this field.
Where should I
begin!!! Please advice some beginners guide or pointer.
Reg
Dhananjey

Start with a solid foundation in HTML and CSS.
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Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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- Template Triage!
http://www.projectseven.com/go
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> Hello!
>
> I am very new to appdev. I am keen to develop in this
field. Where should
> I begin!!! Please advice some beginners guide or
pointer.
> Reg
> Dhananjey
>

Caching in hibernate

hi to everyone
How to implement caching in hibernate in development.
please give any one, with detailed description.
sham

Indeed. But for the most part the advice to beginners amounts to "turn it on" and that's well documented in the basic manual at hibernate.org in my opinion.
If the OP had a specific question I'd be sympathetic...
Oh well, it's raining; maybe I'm just in a grumpy mood.

Paralysis - voice control options?

Hi,
Hi,
Im hoping to receiving some advice and direction to support a friend.
A close friend was involved in a motorbike accident about 3 weeks ago. The positive news is that his recovery is progressing and while he will never have 100% mobility he will (one day) walk out of hospital.
As the boredom of hospital rooms has now set in, I have taken on the task and challenge of keeping him entertained when visitors are unable to attend the ward.
Specifically, the injuries have restricted movement in his arms with currently no movement in his hands/fingers and weight baring is a challenge in his legs. Eg He can move his arm (today's development which is extremely exciting) but unable to use his fingers to type, call a number or scratch his head.
As a passionate football fan I was hoping to utilize an iPad mini to provide entertainment throughout the football season and also on social media and general web browsing. However, I am struggling to find a suitable app that is able to be "voice activated" to unlock the iPad then engage the relevant app and follow speech patterns to make the required actions.
I was hoping for your advice on where I could source information to assist in utilizing the iPad to pass the hospital ward hours away while he works on rehab to get his movement back in his hands.
This is not something i have been exposed to before so your advice for beginners is appreciated.
Beachnova.

Thanks Zane W. The mouthstick will definitely work but unfortunately at this stage the other items wont be able to help. Im keen to get some direction on apps or who to go to, to find out more about apps that may help.
Thanks again for that link.

New to CS6 Dreamweaver, creating a "Responsive Website" having trouble getting fluid divs to behave

Trying to create a "Responsive Website" and I'm having trouble getting my fluid divs that I create to "break" their link from the "Boilerplate" .
I'm using a "Fluid Grid layout Div" to create a section that has a transparent background of rgba(0,0,0,0.3) and that's perfect, then I add two more "Fluid Grid layout Div's" inside the transparent one to create a 2-column part in the section and that's where the trouble is.
None of the "formatting" I've set for the text in my ID's or Classes are being used - just reverts to what's in the "Boilerplate" i.e. "p,h2,h3" and I can't get it to "break" it's link the "Boilerplate" so I can apply my formatting.
I have been able to select my formatting at times but it is ignored and uses what's in the "Boilerplate".
Kept trying different ways to get it to work and now I've so many of both the ID's and Class's that their not all showing up as an option to be able select them.
I'm missing something basic and after two days it still escapes me.
Please somebody, tell me what I'm missing.
Frustrated

FluidGrid Layouts are not easy to learn. You need a good grasp of fundamental RWD concepts including CSS Media Queries. Keep your layout simple and be patient. The first time I used FGLayouts, I had to start over 9 times before I got acceptable results.
Responsive Web Design
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/12/guidelines-for-responsive-web-design/
Introduction to CSS Media Queries
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/introducing-media-queries.html
CS6 Fluid Grid layouts (17 min video)
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-dreamweaver-cs6/using-fluid-grid-layouts/
Best advice for beginners:
Build Mobile Layout first. Everything else is based on this primary layout. Then build Tablet layout and finally Desktop. Don't worry about content. Just build the layout & save often during development.
DO NOT TAMPER with the boilerplate.css or FGLayout.css code. Even experts can break the layout in a hurry. Use a separate external style sheet for content and typography styles.
If you're using CS6 ver 12.0, you cannot nest divs inside other divs. Everything must be inside the .gridContainer like this:
<body>
    <div class="gridContainer">
          <div> </div>
          <div> </div>
          <div> </div>
    </div>
</body>
If you care to post a link to your online test page, we can take a look and possibly offer more suggestions.
Nancy O.

Converting a ResultSet to XML (mysql) - very slow - need some criticism

Preface:
I have some data being inserting into a mySQL table every 5 minutes. Currently, there are about 275 rows. Each row has 26 (TEXT) columns, the data in those columns is no longer than 10-15 characters.
I am using the following code to turn this data into XML which is then, through a servlet, output on a webserver. With 275 rows, this is taking around 3-4 minutes to generate the XML file. I am worried that in a week from now when the data is over 2,000 rows it will exponentially decrease in speed. Can someone give me a better route so this will run faster?
       String xml = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\n\n";
       String SQLCommand = "select * from "+getDataId()+";";
       try{
            Statement stmt;
            ResultSet rs;
           String url = "jdbc:mysql://"+getIBoxIp()+":"+getDbPort()+"/"+getDbName();
           Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(url,getDbUsername(), getDbPassword());
                stmt = con.createStatement(ResultSet.TYPE_SCROLL_INSENSITIVE, ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY);
                rs = stmt.executeQuery(SQLCommand);
                while(rs.next()){
                  xml += "\n<row>";
                  ResultSetMetaData md = rs.getMetaData();
                  for(int i = 1; i < md.getColumnCount() + 1; i++){
                       xml += "\n\t<" + md.getColumnName(i) + ">" + rs.getString(i) + "</" + md.getColumnName(i) + ">";
                  xml += "\n</row>\n";
                System.out.println("@@mysql> XMLSQLCommand > " + SQLCommand);
           con.close();
           return xml;
       }catch(Exception ex)
            System.out.println("@@mysql> SQLCommand Failed > " + SQLCommand + "\n@@mysql> Exception > " + ex.getMessage() + "");
            return xml;
       }Again, with 275 rows, I'm getting about 250 KB of data in the resulting XML file with a 3-5 minute parsing/generation time.
Thanks in advance!!!
Edited by: bergy on Sep 21, 2007 8:46 AM added code tags

No, it's a good question. The page I linked to does say
"Instead of XMLWriter, this driver uses David Megginson�s other public domain writer program, DataWriter..."
So yeah, trying to track down Megginson's code might not be such a good idea. But the sentence quoted does suggest what should be used instead: XMLWriter. Which implies that XMLWriter was mentioned somewhere earlier in the book.
So, following the "Prev" links to previous pages, eventually I found XMLWriter discussed a couple of pages earlier, where it says
"More specifically, I�m going to use David Megginson�s public domain com.megginson.sax.XMLWriter class."
I don't really find this very satisfactory as advice for beginners, so I somewhat regret doing that. It's a long time since I looked at that page myself. But it does have a link pointing to http://www.megginson.com/downloads/, where it is possible to download the Java version of XMLWriter. I'm not sure if the OP is comfortable with using downloaded software, but that download is the simplest possible Java download so it might be a good place to start.
You could recommend using a DOM strategy, and JDOM might be a good choice, but if you can just generate the XML straight from your input, it's a better strategy to do that rather than building a DOM tree in memory and then serializing it, in my opinion.

How many audio tracks exist?

I know with Camtasia you can have an audio background and a
voice over in the "foreground" - and I would like to do the same
somehow with Breeze/Connect. Any advice out there?

Captivate does this.
Jorma@RealEyes

How do you set a transparent background when adding an image?

I've added a block arrow image to a slide in Captivate 4. I enabled Transparent background and selected white as the color within the Image properties. This used to work when I added the same image in Captivate 3. However, in Captivate 4, when I publish, the image displays with a white background. Though it is transparent in priview mode and on the slide iteself when i have the project open. Any ideas on what else I could do to make the image background transparent?

Hi there
Transparent background should still work in Captivate 4 just as it did in Captivate 3.
There are a couple of reasons it may not do what you are expecting.
The background isn't truly the color it appears to be. For example, it may APPEAR to be solid white (or another color) but in reality it's hundreds of varying shades of the color. This happens a lot with JPEG images.
If the image is PNG format, I've seen Captivate become confused. Especially if the PNG already has a transparent background. So you may need to edit the image and save in a different format.
Cheers... Rick
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Is it possible to import a png sequence to be used as an animation into Captivate 7?

Knowing that png files come into Captivate quite well, I am wondering if it is possible to bring in a sequence of png files, that are an animation, without having to bring them in one at a time and lining them up on the timeline one after the other?
Thanks,
Dan

Thanks for your reply. However, I have tried going the route of animated gif files already with mixed results (more bad than good) and was hoping there was an easy way to drop in a sequence of png files, as I would imagine that they would all show.
But may I ask the settings (to save the files) you used for your animated gif files? The problem with mine was that the animations would not play (most of the time) when I would run the slides with the animations in IE and Safari. The animation looked fine in Captivate but as soon as I pushed them out to HTML5 animations would not play. I have been using Photoshop with the following settings in the image below:
Also, if you could let me know if you tested your course with any gif animations in IE or Safari and let me know your results, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks!!!

Captivate 5 - Inserted PNG images from Fireworks are pixelated

The PNG images I inserted from Fireworks are showing up pixelated when I play the file in a browser, but look fine while I'm working in Captivate. Any thoughts?
THANKS!
Birgit

Hello,
Did you try changing the publish quality? Because of the fact that CP when converting to SWF will still be doing some compression, I really would give that first of all a try.
PNG allows even partial transparency, and certainly its 24-bit version. That is one of the reasons that it is superior to JPEG (no transparency) and GIF (only 100% transparency). But I'm not really used to Fireworks, always using Photoshop for graphical assets.
Lilybiri

PNG Advice to beginners in Captivate

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