Mastering Adobe Captivate 8

Table of Contents

Mastering Adobe Captivate 8

Credits

Foreword

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewers

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Why subscribe?

Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with Adobe Captivate 8

Obtaining Captivate

The Captivate perpetual license

The Captivate subscription

Captivate in Technical Communication Suite

The first look at a typical production workflow

Step zero – the preproduction phase

Step one – capturing the slide

Step two – the editing phase

Step three – the publishing phase

Touring the Captivate interface

Using the advanced interface mode

Working with panels

Creating a new workspace

Extra credit

Renaming and deleting custom workspaces

Workspaces in normal mode

Exploring the sample applications

Experiencing the Encoder demonstration

Experiencing the Encoder simulation

Experiencing the Driving in Belgium sample application

Experiencing the Going Mobile responsive application

Experiencing the Encoder Video Demo

Discussing the sample apps scenario

Summary

Meet the community

Dr. Pooja Jaisingh

Bio

Contact details

2. Capturing the Slides

Choosing the right resolution for the project

Describing the problem

Resizing the project after the initial shooting

Downsizing the application during shooting

Using the panning feature of Captivate

Using the Scalable HTML Content feature

Using a Responsive Project

Conclusion

Recording the first project

Preparing the application to record

Rehearsing the scenario

Resetting the application

Recording the movie

Enabling access to assistive devices (Mac users only)

Preparing Captivate to record the sequence

And… action!

Previewing the rushes

The inner working of the Captivate capture engine

Understanding the FMR mode

Controlling Captivate during the shooting session

Exploring the preferences

Exploring the automatic recording modes

Exploring the recording settings

The Video Demo preferences pane

Recording the other versions of the project

Previewing the second rushes

Recording with System Audio

The Video Demo recording mode

Automatic and manual panning

Responsive capture

Rescaling a project

Summary

Meet the community

Anita Horsley

Contact details

3. Working with Standard Objects

Preparing your work

Working with the Properties panel

Exploring the objects of Captivate

Using the Text Caption object

Modifying the content of a Text Caption

Creating new Text Captions

Extra credit – adding Text Captions

Formatting a Text Caption

Resizing and moving Text Captions

Changing the Callout and the Caption Type

Character and paragraph formatting

The Highlight Box object

Working with the mouse

Understanding the mouse movements

Formatting the mouse object

Working with images

Inserting a slide from another project

Inserting an image on a slide

Using the image editing tools

Inserting a picture slide

Extra credit – working with characters

Working with Text Animations

Duplicating slides

Converting a Typing object into a Text Animation object

Working with Smart Shapes

Drawing a simple Smart Shape

Drawing additional Smart Shapes

Creating and saving your own Smart Shapes

Modifying a custom shape

Saving a custom shape

Using Smart Shapes as Highlight Boxes

Extra credit – replacing the remaining Highlight Boxes of the project.

Adding text inside Smart Shapes

The Equation editor

Working with Text Effects

Summary

Meet the community

Lieve Weymeis

Contact details

4. Working with Multimedia

Editing a Full Motion Recording

Inserting external animations into the project

Importing Flash animations

Importing HTML5 animations

Working with video

Working with audio

Adding audio to the objects

Adding background music to the entire project

Adding audio to the slides

Recording narration with Captivate

Setting up the sound system

Recording the narration

Importing an external sound clip

Using Text-to-Speech to generate narration

Installing the Captivate speech agents

Working with the Slide Notes panel

Converting text to speech

Using the Speech Management window

Editing a sound clip in Captivate

Using the Advanced Audio Management window

Adding Closed Captions to the slides

Viewing the Closed Captions

Closed captioning a video file

Extra credit – adding Closed Captions

Summary

Meet the community

Allen Partridge

Contact details

5. Working with the Timeline and Other Useful Tools

Preparing your work

Working with the Library

Importing external assets into the library

Reusing library items

Importing objects from another library

Deleting unused assets from the library

Laying out the objects on the slides

Using Smart Guides

Grouping objects

Using the Align toolbar

Selecting multiple objects

Extra credit – aligning and distributing the remaining objects

Putting it all together

Working with the Timeline

Using the Timeline to select objects

Using the Timeline to lock and unlock objects

Using the Timeline to show and hide objects

Using the Timeline to change the stacking order of the objects

Using the Timeline to set the timing of the objects

Tips and tricks for great syncing

Using the Sync with Playhead feature

Syncing and positioning

Extra credit – adjusting the timing of the other slides

Adding effects to objects

Combining effects

Extra credit – adding effects to images

Finishing touches

Summary

Meet the community

Kevin Siegel

Contact details

6. Working with Interactive Objects

Preparing your work

Working with Buttons

Formatting Buttons

Using Smart Shapes as Buttons

Branching with Buttons

Discovering the Rollover objects

Working with Rollover Captions

Working with Rollover Smart Shapes

Working with Rollover Images

Working with Rollover Slidelets

Inserting and formatting a Rollover Slidelet

Inserting objects in a Rollover Slidelet

Working with the Drag and Drop interaction

Using the Drag and Drop interaction wizard

Using the Drag and Drop panel

Using the Drag and Drop interaction for branching and navigation

Creating a simulation

Hiding the Mouse object

Replacing the video file and the project title

Using Find and Replace

Working with Click Boxes

Branching with Click Boxes

Working with feedback messages

Arranging slideless branching

Extra credit – adding the remaining Click Boxes

Working with Text Entry Boxes

Finishing touches

Summary

Meet the community

Joe Ganci

Contact details

7. Working with Styles, Master Slides, Themes, and Templates

Working with the Swatch Manager

Importing custom Swatches to the Swatches panel

Using custom colors

Extra credit – importing custom swatches

Working with Styles

Managing Styles with the Properties panel

Resetting a style

Creating new Styles

Applying Styles

Modifying a Style

Applying styles automatically

Extra credit – applying styles automatically

Extra credit – creating styles for another type of object

Working with the Object Style Manager

Renaming styles

Exporting a style

Importing a style

Creating a style in the Object Style Manager

Extra credit – exporting and importing styles

Working with Themes

Applying a Theme to an existing project

The elements of a Theme

The Master Slides

Creating slides based on Master Slides

Changing the Master Slide of an existing slide

Inserting a blank slide in a themed project

Styles

Creating a custom Theme

Customizing the Master Slides of the Theme

Customizing the Main Master Slide

Adding a Master Slide to the Theme

Adding Placeholders to the Master Slides

Applying the Master Slides to the Slides of the Project

Extra credit – creating the ending slide of the project

Modifying a Master Slide

Adding Styles to the Theme

Styling the titles

Placing the Master Slide objects on top

Extra credit – styling the remaining objects

Saving the styles in the Theme

Extra credit – applying the Theme to another project

Working with Templates

Creating a Template

Adding Placeholder Slides

Adding the last slides

Saving the Template

Creating a new Captivate project from a Template

Summary

Meet the community

Richard John Jenkins

Contact details

8. Producing a Video Demo

The Video Demo interface

The postproduction phase of a Video Demo project

Adding objects to a Video Demo project

Inserting images in a Video Demo project

Extra credit – inserting the end image of the Video Demo project

Inserting objects in a Video Demo project

Removing unwanted popups

Adding Pan & Zoom animation

Adding Transitions

Publishing a Video Demo project

Publishing to YouTube

Summary

Meet the community

Michael Lund

Contact details

9. Creating a Responsive Project

About Responsive Projects

Viewport size versus screen size

Understanding breakpoints

Setting up a Responsive Project

Adjusting the breakpoints

Adjusting the slide height

Applying a responsive theme

Testing a Responsive Project

Testing in the authoring environment

Testing in a browser

Testing with Adobe Edge Inspect

Installing Adobe Edge Inspect

Testing a Captivate project on your mobile devices

Adding content in a Responsive Project

Understanding the view hierarchy

Extra credit – adding text content in a Responsive Project

Relinking views

Extra credit – relinking text content

Excluding content from views

Excluding content from other views

Extra credit – creating the remaining arrows

Sizing and positioning content in a Responsive Project

Making images responsive

Creating responsive text

Pixel and percent positioning

Using Percent Relative positioning

Using Smart Position

Extra credit – smart positioning the other objects

Summary

Meet the community

Josh Cavalier

Contact details

10. Working with Quizzes

Introducing the quiz

Creating Question Slides

Inserting the first Question Slide

Using the Multiple Choice question

Understanding the basic question properties

Working with Partial Scoring

Branching with Question Slides

Finalizing the Question Slide

Using Smart Shapes as feedback messages

Importing Question Slides from a GIFT file

Working with Matching questions

Working with Short Answer questions

Working with True/False questions

Adding the remaining Question Slides

Working with Fill-In-The-Blank questions

Working with Hotspot questions

Working with Sequence questions

Creating surveys with Likert questions

Previewing the quiz

Creating a Pretest

Exploring the Quiz Preferences

Setting the passing score of a quiz

Working with Question Pools

Creating a Question Pool

Inserting questions in a Question Pool

Inserting random Question Slides in the main project

Styling the elements of the Question Slides

Reporting scores to an LMS

Understanding SCORM, AICC, and Tin Can

Enabling reporting in Captivate

Reporting options at the interaction level

Reporting the random Question Slides

Using a Drag and Drop interaction as a Question Slide

Using the other scorable objects

Setting up project-level reporting options

Creating a SCORM manifest file

Summary

Meet the community

Rod Ward

Tristan Ward

Contact details

11. Using Captivate with Other Applications

Integrating Captivate with PowerPoint

Converting an existing presentation to Captivate

Viewing the presentation in PowerPoint

Creating a Captivate project from a PowerPoint presentation

Round Tripping between Captivate and PowerPoint

Updating a linked PowerPoint presentation

Inserting a PowerPoint slide in a Captivate project

Localizing a Captivate project using Microsoft Word

Importing a Photoshop file into Captivate

Round Tripping between Captivate and Photoshop

Editing audio with Adobe Audition

Exporting to Flash Professional

Exporting the project to XML

Summary

Meet the community

Jim Leichliter

Contact details

12. Working with Variables, Advanced Actions, and Widgets

Working with variables

System and User Variables

Exploring System Variables

Generating text dynamically

Extra credit – generating a Quiz Results slide for the Pretest

Using User Variables

Creating a User Variable

Capturing values with Text Entry Boxes

Using user-defined variables to dynamically generate text

Working with Advanced Actions

Using Standard Actions

Automatically turning on Closed Captions with Advanced Actions

Extra credit – turning Closed Captions off

Using Conditional Actions

Creating the necessary variables

Assigning a score to each possible answer

Giving names to objects

Conditionally showing and hiding objects

Using a Conditional Action to implement branching with the Pretest

Using Shared Actions

Importing the necessary slides

Creating the necessary variables and naming the objects

Extra credit – creating the remaining variables

Creating the Shared Action

Saving the Shared Action

Using and reusing the Shared Action

Extra credit – reusing the Shared Action

Geolocation in Adobe Captivate

Inserting an extra slide

Detecting the location of the learner

Creating a custom Geolocation variable

Altering the content based on the learner's location

Working with Smart Learning Interactions

Working with the Accordion Interaction

Working with the Web Object Interaction

Extra credit – working with the Award of Excellence Interaction

Summary

Meet the community

Rick Zanotti

Contact details

13. Finishing Touches and Publishing

Finishing touches

Checking the spelling

Exploring the Start and End preferences

Using the project metadata and accessibility

Exploring other project preferences

Exporting project preferences

Customizing the project Skin

Customizing the Playback Controls bar

Working with Borders

Adding a Table of Contents

Applying the same Skin to other projects

Publishing a Captivate project

Publishing to Flash

Using the Scalable HTML content option

Publishing to HTML5

Using the HTML5 Tracker panel

Publishing the project in HTML5

Publishing a Responsive Project

Using Mobile Palette

Publishing a Responsive Project

Publishing an eLearning-enabled project

Hiding and showing slides

Publishing the SCORM package in HTML5

Extra credit – publishing the Flash version of the SCORM package

Working with the Multi SCO packager

Creating a SCORM package from the Video Demo project

Creating a single-course package from multiple SCOs

Publishing to PDF

Publishing as a standalone application

Publishing as an .mp4 video file

Publishing to YouTube

Publishing to Microsoft Word

Extra credit – publishing to Word

Publishing for devices

Summary

Meet the community

Kirsten Rourke

Contact details

Index

Mastering Adobe Captivate 8

Mastering Adobe Captivate 8

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: August 2012

Second edition: February 2014

Third edition: April 2015

Production reference: 1060415

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78439-830-9

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Cover image by Céline Frère

Credits

Author

Damien Bruyndonckx

Reviewers

Karen Drummey

Ruhul Islam Laskar

Commissioning Editor

Nadeem N. Bagban

Acquisition Editor

Harsha Bharwani

Content Development Editor

Rohit Kumar Singh

Technical Editors

Mrunmayee Patil

Shruti Rawool

Copy Editor

Roshni Banerjee

Project Coordinator

Mary Alex

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Kevin McGowan

Indexer

Rekha Nair

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

Foreword

In today's world, the use of devices across all areas of work, home, and travel has become a way of life. Users look at eLearning in the same way as they look at other sources of information, be it news, entertainment, or e-mail. Organizations, schools, and universities worldwide design learning strategies around changes in learner behavior. Also, the pace of transition from pure classroom training to blended or pure eLearning has never been faster. However, the budgets allocated to developing and delivering this content have not grown.

As we evolve through this phase to create more effective and engaging learning content, there is a need to maximize the utility of the tools available and use them productively to achieve our goals of content creation. The need to produce high-quality content without compromising the time taken to create it remains the paramount requirement.

Over the years, Adobe Captivate has established itself as the leading eLearning-authoring tool. Using Adobe Captivate, you'll be able to create everything in eLearning with little or no programming and deploy it across a variety of formats and locations. Adobe Captivate 8's responsive learning capability has been a game changer in eLearning.

To take the first step toward mastering Adobe Captivate, I recommend this wonderful book by Damien Bruyndonckx. Damien takes you through Adobe Captivate with an easy-to-understand, yet comprehensive, description of its features. The wealth of information and resources that Damien has acquired over the years of being an eLearning expert is now easily accessible in one book. Damien is well known in the Adobe community for his deep knowledge of our tools.

If you are an eLearning professional looking to upskill yourself or are aspiring to become one, this book will ensure that you gain expertise with Adobe Captivate and achieve your professional goals.

Happy learning!

Akshay Bharadwaj

Senior product manager

Adobe Captivate

About the Author

Damien Bruyndonckx has an interest in teaching that dates back to his original training as an elementary school teacher. He began his career in 1998, teaching French as a foreign language in two elementary public schools in Louisiana, USA. In 2001, he came back to Belgium, his home country, and began to work as an IT trainer. He soon acquired the title of Adobe Certified Instructor on various Adobe products, which allowed him to work for a large number of customers and Adobe-authorized training centers across Europe. In 2009, he went back to teaching in a school. He now works at IHECS (http://www.ihecs.be), a higher education school of communications, based in Brussels, where he teaches multimedia and serves as the eLearning coordinator of the school. Thanks to his work at IHECS, Damien became an Adobe Education Leader in November 2011. He also has his own company that provides Adobe Training and eLearning consultancy. Damien is the author of Adobe Captivate 7 for Mobile Learning, published in August 2013, and Mastering Adobe Captivate 7, published in February 2014, both by Packt Publishing. You will find him speaking at various Captivate and eLearning-related events around the world. He lives in Thuin, Belgium, with his girlfriend and his two children. Damien is a music lover and occasionally works as a sound and lighting technician in the entertainment industry. You can contact him on Twitter at @damienbkx and via his website at http://www.dbr-training.eu.

Acknowledgments

If you go to the About Adobe Captivate menu item, you will have a chance to see the names of the members of the Adobe Captivate product team. These are the men and women who work very hard on a daily basis to create the piece of software you are about to learn. Last October, I had a chance to meet some of them in Las Vegas during the Adobe Learning Summit. For the first time, I found out who the men and women behind Captivate were. I had a great time chatting and hanging around with them. In addition to being the greatest world-class professionals in their respective fields, they are a group of bright individuals with a great vision of what education should be. They have a real passion for the software product they build. I would like to dedicate this book to the entire Adobe Captivate product team in India. By giving us Captivate, you've made a tremendous contribution to education and changed the lives of thousands of people all around the world (including me).

I also want to thank the editorial team at Packt Publishing for helping me be an author for the fourth time. Special thanks to my long-time partner Harsha Bharwani (Harsha, this is the third book we've done together; can you imagine that?) and to Rohit Kumar Singh for the smooth ride all along this project.

Finally, I want to thank those who share my life on a daily basis. They have to cope with my very long working hours as I write these books. Their love and support played a prominent role in the making of this work. A special thanks to my sweet Céline for taking the most beautiful cover image in the world and for being part of my life for the past 6 years.

It is now time for you to jump headfirst into Mastering Adobe Captivate 8. I want to thank you for buying this book. I wish you a great reading experience and, above all, a lot of fun with Adobe Captivate.

About the Reviewers

Karen Drummey has been a learning and online marketing professional for over 25 years. She specializes in instructional design, presentations, and websites. She has worked in corporate, nonprofit environments as well as freelanced to share her expertise with small businesses, real estate, healthcare, and meteorology industries. Her course—Where's the Power? What's the Point?—teaches people how to create engaging presentations even if they don't have a designer's eye.

Ruhul Islam Laskar is a learning specialist by profession and technical evangelist by passion. He started his career as a system administrator. His interest in sharing knowledge soon made him a trainer. He holds industry experience in learning design and organizational development and has worked with different multinationals on training implementation. He believes, Training that enlightens the audience and content that excites the learner are essential factors for educational excellence. His interests lie in the latest authoring tools and delivery platforms to produce creative content for effective learning. In his leisure time, he practices still photography, likes to trek, and contributes to social learning.

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Preface

Adobe Captivate is the industry-leading solution for authoring highly interactive eLearning content that can be delivered on any device. With Adobe Captivate, you can capture onscreen action, enhance eLearning projects, insert SCORM and Tin Can-compliant quizzes, optimize content for multiscreen delivery, and publish the work in various formats (including Adobe Flash and HTML5) for easy deployment on virtually any desktop or mobile device.

Mastering Adobe Captivate 8 is a comprehensive step-by-step learning guide to creating SCORM-compliant demonstrations, simulations, and quizzes that can be experienced on any device. The sample projects demonstrate virtually every feature of Adobe Captivate, giving you the expertise you need to create and deploy your own professional quality eLearning courses.

This book will guide you through the creation of eLearning projects, including a Demonstration, a Simulation, a Video Demo, a Responsive Project, and a SCORM-compliant Quiz.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Adobe Captivate 8, introduces Captivate as an eLearning solution. It drives you through the tool icons and panels of the Captivate interface. At the end of this chapter, we will discuss the finished sample applications that we will build during the course of this book.

Chapter 2, Capturing the Slides, introduces the Captivate screen capture engine that allows you to capture the slides of your projects. You will also learn how to choose the right size for the projects you have to make.

Chapter 3, Working with Standard Objects, teaches you how to use the standard objects of Captivate to enhance the slides captured in the previous chapter. The standard objects discussed in this chapter include Text Captions, Highlight Boxes, Images, and Mouse Movements.

Chapter 4, Working with Multimedia, teaches you how to include and edit various types of multimedia elements in your eLearning projects. The tools covered in this chapter include the insertion of video and audio files in the project, the Captivate Text-To-Speech engine, and Close Captioning of the audio narration.

Chapter 5, Working with the Timeline and Other Useful Tools, covers various tools and features (such as the Alignment tools and Smart Guides) used to lay the objects out in the physical space of the slide. The use of the Timeline panel to synchronize the components of the project is also discussed in detail.

Chapter 6, Working with Interactive Objects, introduces the objects that bring interactivity to the project. These objects include the Rollover objects, the Drag and Drop interaction, Click Box, Text Entry Box and Button. These objects will be used to convert a demonstration into a simulation and to discuss Branching.

Chapter 7, Working with Styles, Master Slides, Themes, and Templates, focuses on the cosmetic aspects of your projects. You will learn how to ensure visual consistency both within a given project and across projects using Styles, Master Slides, Themes, and Templates.

Chapter 8, Producing a Video Demo, introduces the concept of Video Demo. This chapter covers the specifics of that type of project as compared to the regular Captivate projects used in previous chapters.

Chapter 9, Creating a Responsive Project, discusses the new Responsive project features of Captivate in detail. You will learn how to optimize your eLearning content for multiple desktop, tablet, and phone devices using responsive design techniques. You will also learn how to test a responsive project on your mobile devices using Adobe Edge Inspect.

Chapter 10, Working with Quizzes, discusses the powerful Quizzing engine of Captivate. You will import questions into your Captivate project using various techniques, review each and every question type of Captivate one by one, and integrate them into question pools to generate random quizzes. In the second part of this chapter, you will see how these interactions can be reported to a SCORM- or Tin Can-compliant LMS to easily track your student's performance.

Chapter 11, Using Captivate with Other Applications, explores the relationship between Captivate and other Adobe and third-party applications. First, you will convert a PowerPoint presentation into a Captivate project. You will then export some Captivate data to Microsoft Word in order to localize a Captivate project. You will also import an Adobe Photoshop file, edit audio with Adobe Audition, and export the project to Adobe Flash.

Chapter 12, Working with Variables, Advanced Actions, and Widgets, unleashes the true power of Captivate and explores Variables, Advanced Actions, Widgets, and Smart Learning Interactions. These features will help you design and develop highly interactive eLearning content that offers a unique experience to each and every learner.

Chapter 13, Finishing Touches and Publishing, explains the final steps of publishing. You will make your projects ready for publishing by modifying project-level options and preferences. One of these options is the Skin Editor that lets you customize the playback controls and the table of contents of your projects. In the second part of this chapter, you will make your projects available to the outside world by publishing them in various formats including Adobe Flash, HTML5, video, and PDF.