AS2 Email Widget for Adobe Captivate 4

This widget was created based on a request in the Adobe Forum – http://forums.adobe.com/thread/535691?tstart=0

This widget will allow you to send an email in the background to a predefined address. It will send an email once the widget is “played” on the Captivate timeline.

It will send an email with the subject “Mail sent from Captivate e-mail Widget” and it will send you the users name. (of course the user needs to enter his name in Captivate).

It relies on the widely available CGI / Perl script FormMail (www.formmail.com). This is a free open source script that is pre-installed on many webhosts.

If you don’t have this installed on your webserver you can install it yourself by following the instructions located here: http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html

The widget has two paramenters that needs to be set.

1. THe recipient email address. The default settings in the FormMail script dictates that this must be an email on the same domain as from the the script is exectuted. In other words – if I use the widget in an Adobe Captivate project located on my domain www.cpguru.com it can only send emails to xxx@cpguru.com.This functionality can be changed in the FormMail settings if needed so you can define more allowed domains to send email to.
2. The location of the FormMail script on your webserver. The location is usually something like http://www.domain.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl but that depends on how and where your Webhost installed it (if it’s preinstalled) or where you installed it yourself. Also keep in mind that cpguru.com and www.cpguru.com are technically two separate domains so make sure you have the correct path for your own domain.

How to use the Email Widget for Adobe Captivate:

First of all ensure that you have FormMail installed on your Webserver and that it is working.

The only requirements that the widget have is the two parameters mentioned above and a variable called v_email that needs to be set in Captivate.

Process in Captivate:

1. Create a user defined variable called v_email
2. Create a Text Entry Box and associate the v_email variable with that.
3. Insert the widget in Captivate anywhere after the Text Entry Box.
4. Define the two parameters in the Widget Parameters Tab
5. That’s it.

Now you will receive an email everytime someone accesses your Captivate course. The email will contain the following information:

Below is the result of your feedback form.  It was submitted by

 () on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 10:37:38

—————————————————————————

userID: Michael

—————————————————————————

In case you do not recieve an email then chances are that the error is with the FormMail script (or the link to the location of the script). I cannot provide support on anything FormMail related so I recommend that you look at http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html where everything in regards to the FormMail script is described in detail. 

Download the Email Widget:

Here is the link to download the widget.

The download package also contains a sample Captivate project. The FormMail script is not supplied due to license restrictions, but you can download it yourself for free on http://www.formmail.com/

Please note – the widget is supplied as is. The widget worked flawlessly in all my tests, but this is no guarantee that it will work for you.

E-learning eSeminars from Adobe

I just saw this announcement in the Adobe Captivate forum and thought I would share it here on the blog: 

I wanted to say hello and let you all know that we (Adobe) will be hosting a series of eLearning eSeminars beginning next week, for both beginners and more advanced users of Captivate and the eLearning Suite.  These sessions will generally be held every two weeks (on alternating Wednesdays, skipping the winter shutdown at the end of December) and will aim to provide basic information about eLearning and Captivate in the basic session, and to provide a forum and resource to advanced users through the advanced eSeminars. The advanced sessions specifically will focus on a wide variety of relevant topics, with the ambition of providing a sound resource worthy of recurring attendance. I hope many of you will be able to join me as we launch this new series, and I hope you as a community find the seminars a valuable resource.I will generally mix theory and practical demonstration in these events. Though generally speaking the emphasis will be on use of the tools to achieve sound professional results. If you would like to join us, click the pertinant link below, and then register for the event to get the connection details.

 
BASIC: Meeting Educational Objectives with 21st Century E-Learning Development & Management Tools >> http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1566499&loc=en_us

 
ADVANCED:  21st Century Digital Literacy Skills; Tools for the next generation >> http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1566510&loc=en_us

 
- Allen

 
Dr. Allen Partridge,

Product Evangelist, Adobe eLearning Suite, Captivate & Shockwave

Adobe Systems, Inc.

Source: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/536331?tstart=0

Blog maintenance

I did some much needed maintenance on my site tonight. My webhost have been having some problems with their delivery speed of pages the last couple of days and the database on this site was getting massive so I thought it would be a good idea to clean up the database a bit. One of the tables had 176.000 entries so that one was getting out of hand ;o)

Well I cleaned up the databases and I also disabled user registration once again. It seems like 99.5% of the people actually registering are either Russian or Chinese spammers anyway and since there is no real benefit for users to register I might as well turn it off.

I also upgraded the site to the latest version of WordPress and removed a couple of plugins and optimized all the database tables. All in all it should make the site load a bit quicker.

Next project for the site will be to get a new layout since I’m getting a bit tired of the current one. This is a major project though so I don’t think it will happen before early 2010.

/Michael

Warning! Flash player 10.1 and Adobe Captivate 4

Just a little heads up. Seems like the Flash Player 10.1  (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/), which is currently released as a beta version is incompatible with Adobe Captivate 4.

I installed the FP 10.1 beta to check out the new enhancements in regards to streaming multimedia content, but after I installed it I can’t start Adobe Captivate 4 anymore. I get a notice when I start Adobe Captivate 4 that “The Flash Player for Microsoft Internet Explorer, is not installed or its an older version”.

The only way to get Captivate to work again is to remove the FP 10.1 beta from your system and install the FP 10.0.32.18 version again.

Update: I recieved a couple of email from other Captivate users who tried the FP 10.1 beta and asked how to uninstall it again. Here is how to do that:

1. Visit this page http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html and download the uninstall tool.

2. Install the regular FP 10.0.32.18 again from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer or download one of the older versions from here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/142/tn_14266.html

/Michael

AS2 Loader Widget for Adobe Captivate 4

I have recently had quite a lot of issues with Captivate 4 SWFs imported into other Captivate 4 SWFs. In a lot of cases it seems like the imported animations start playing even though they could be on slide 10 of the “master project”. When you launch the “Master project” you could also hear a lot of weird clicking going on making the whole project unstable.

I have tried everything possible to fix these projects-gone-bad but it seems like there is no solution once it’s screwed up. I even used the general lifesaver of copying all slides from my project to a blank project in order to remove any weird behaviour stuck behind the scenes, but that didn’t work either.

Due to this I have now created this Loader Widget for Adobe Captivate 4. Basically you insert the widget on a slide and you define the filename that it should load in the widget parameters. The advantage of using this Loader Widget is that loaded animations are separated from the main Captivate SWF by the Flash loader layer. Another benefit is that your animation will not be loaded until the user opens the actual slide, which means that you wont get any occurences of fully played animations when you reach slide 10 of your project. Finally if you need to change anything in the external animation there is no need to open the Master project again – just update the external file and that’s it.

Buy the Loader Widget for Adobe Captivate (US$10):

NB. The widget will not work in Adobe Captivate projects published to Adobe Connect Pro due to limitations in Connect Pro.

NB! The widget will not work with Adobe Captivate projects published as EXE files!

Two new Adobe Captivate Widgets soon to be released

I have finally finished the work and extensive testing of some new widgets for Adobe Captivate. The only thing remaining is to write up the help documentation and also create some screencasts for one of the widgets.

The Loader Widget for Adobe Captivate (AS2 & AS3) will allow you to load external SWFs into Captivate “on-demand”. Basically this means that they will load at run-time when Captivate reaches the slide with the loader widget. This will help you avoid a lot of problems with embedded SWFs – especially if you are embedding Captivate SWFs into a main Captivate project.

The Persistent Data Widget for Adobe Captivate (AS2 only at this time) will allow you to share data between individual Adobe Captivate SWFs. This can be used for many different things and I am working on a sample project right now to demonstrate some of the capabilities.

/Michael

Adobe Captivate 4 Quiz Widgets (AS3)

The developer team behind Adobe Captivate posted some widgets on their blog a while ago. These widgets can be used to manipulate the way that your quizzes behave and look.

 The widgets should be inserted on your first slide and set to “display for rest of project”

Read the full post and instructions here: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/09/widgets_to_streamline_your_qui.html

Download Widget to hide the skip button

Download Widget to hide the clear and submit button

The widgets are AS3 widgets so you can only use them in Adobe Captivate AS3 projects.

/Michael

AS2 Domain Lock Widget for Adobe Captivate updated

Yesterday I finished the update of the AS2 Domain Lock widget. You are now able to define up to three separate domains as authorized domains. This can be useful if you have multiple domains from where you want to allow your content to be played from.

Another feature is that I have included a feature where you can select if you want to have the widget open a link for you if your content is played from a non-authorized domain. If you tick the link checkbox then the widget will open up your first listed authorized domain in a new window.

I also added a function to take small and capital letters into account when you enter your domain names in the Widget.

Existing buyers will recieve the updated Widget via mail any second now.

For more information about or to buy the AS2 Domain Lock widget click here.

For more information about or to buy the AS3 Domain Lock Widget click here.

Sneak peak of Adobe Captivate for Mac

RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe, just posted a sneak peak of the upcoming Adobe Captivate for Mac on his blog.

Check out the post here: http://blogs.adobe.com/rjacquez/2009/11/a_sneak_peek_of_adobe_captivat.html

or the videopresentation of Adobe Captivate for Mac here: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p55601646/

RJ is also a very active Twitter user and announced that he will be giving away a free copy of Adobe Captivate for Mac (when it becomes available) once he reaches 2.000 followers. He will randomly pick one of the followers that will recieve the gift. So.. If you aren’t already then start following RJ on Twitter at @rjacquez

/Michael

Twitter Widget for Adobe Captivate

I read in the updates from Adobe Learning Summit that they were working on a Twitter Widget for Adobe Captivate and plan to release it in a few weeks.

I have been messing around with the same idea for a while now and have managed to get my 5 tweets into Captivate now.

Here is a preview of what I have so far: http://www.cpguru.com/demonstrations/twitterWidget/twitterTest.htm

Right now it’s just a mockup without any fancy desing but I have just been testing the waters.

The biggest issues that I have encountered are the crossdomain policy and the need for a PHP file to parse the XML into something Flash can use.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Adobe will create their Twitter Widget.

/Michael