Tutorial: Adobe Captivate 5 – Adaptive menu based on score

Yes another great tutorial from Lilybiri  in the Adobe Community Publishing.

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a custom course menu in Adobe Captivate 5 that will adapt to scores achieved in a pre-test. Imagine that you have a large course with several chapters. In the beginning you could ask the user some questions to find out which areas they already know and which areas they need to go through. This tutorial will show you how to do that.

In addition to Advanced Actions and variables you will also get an insight into using the new Effects feature in Adobe Captivate 5.

You can access the tutorial by following this link.

You can follow Lilybiri on Twitter here.

Tutorial: Adobe Captivate 5 – creating tests with multiple scores

Another great tutorial from Lilybiri  in the Adobe Community Publishing.

This tutorial will show you how to create a test that can score on multiple parameters. It involves using variables, advanced actions and creating your own “question slides”.

You can access the tutorial by following this link.

You can follow Lilybiri on Twitter here.

Tutorial: Adobe Captivate 5 – Using Advanced Actions to show conclusions based on different scores

Lilybiri have created a great tutorial in the Adobe Community Publishing.

The Tutorial shows you how to create an Advanced Action that can show different conclusions based on multiple scores in an Adobe Captivate 5 environment. The tutorial gives you a great overview of Advanced Actions and the new editor in Adobe Captivate 5. The tutorial also include sample files.

You find the tutorial by following this link.

You can follow Lilybiri on Twitter here.

Bookmark / Resume Widget for Adobe Captivate 5

I have now finished porting the Bookmark / Resume widget to Adobe Captivate 5. In reality I didn’t have to change much from the AS3 version of the Widget for Adobe Captivate 4, but I decided to take advantage of the new Widget API in Adobe Captivate 5.

There are some great features in the new API that allow you to track events much more efficiently than with the API for Adobe Captivate 4.The AS3 Widget for Adobe Captivate 5 will therefore not use as many resources as the Captivate 4 widget.

Special offer:

Everyone that have purchased the original AS3 Bookmark / Resume Widget for Adobe Captivate 4 previously will recieve a free upgrade. You should have recieved an email with information and a download link.

Everyone that have purchased the original AS2 Bookmark / Resume Widget for Adobe Captivate 3 & 4 previously will recieve a 50% discount on the new Bookmark / Resume Widget for Adobe Captivate 5. You should have recieved an email with information about how to get the discount. The 50% discount will be valid for the next 30 days.

Everyone else will recieve a 20% discount on the widget for the remaining part of July since I had a great day today.

What will the Bookmark Widget for Adobe Captivate 5 do:

The Bookmark / Resume Widget for Adobe Captivate 5 allows a user to return to your course from where they left off the last time. It keeps track of this by using a Local Shared Object on the users PC. It will work for projects published to SWF or EXE. It will work for projects run locally on a machine or projects delivered online through regular webpages, intranet and LMS’.

When a user returns to your course / project they will be prompted and asked if they want to resume or not. The bookmark will automatically be reset once a user reaches the last slide of your project. 

Demonstration:

Click here to see a demonstration of the Bookmark / Resume Widget in action.

Limitations:

Please note that you should not use this component in Captivate files that contain quiz questions in the middle of your project. While it would be possible to store a users answers to questions it is not possible to inject these back into Captivate. Therefore if you have a project with quiz questions the bookmark component will only remember the location of their last visit – not if they answered any questions. Resuming a project past a bunch of questions will set them as skipped in Captivate and will almost certainly result in the user failing your quiz. The bookmark component is only suitable for project that contain regular content or non-scorable objects.

Requirements:

The Bookmark / Resume Widget for Adobe Captivate 5 requires Captivate 5 and that you publish to Flash Player 9.0

Package contents:

The download package contains two (2) Widgets.

One Widget for Adobe Captivate 5. This Widget will work for projects published as SWF and EXE.

One Widget for Adobe Captivate 4. This Widget will work for projects published as SWF and EXE.

The download package also contains a help document.

Buy the component

Single User Licence (US$ 35) – Special offer US$ 28

Discount Code:

The single user licence grants you, the Purchaser, a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to make use of and display the product that you acquire but limited to either your own personal use or for projects within the company where you are employeed.

You are allowed to use the product as many times as you like for personal use or for projects within your company / organization. However, if you use this product in a one of your projects with the intent of resale to a client outside of your company / organization you are required to repurchase the product the appropriate number of times or purchase an enterprise license.

Multiple User Licence (US$ 175) – Special offer US$ 140

Discount Code:

The multiple user licence grants you and any number of employees of your company / organization, a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to make use of and display the product that you have acquired to either your own personal use or for projects within your own company.

You are allowed to use the product as many times as you like for personal use or for projects within your own company / organization. However, if you use this product in a one of your projects with the intent of resale to a client outside of your company / organization you are required to repurchase the product the appropriate number of times or purchase an enterprise license.

Enterprise License (US$ 500) – Special offer US$ 400

Discount Code:

The Enterprise Licence grants you and any number of employees of your company / organization, a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to make use of and display the product that you have acquired to either your own personal use, for projects within the your company or for projects with the intent of resale to external customers without limitations.

You will recieve a download link by email immediately after payment.

Customizations:

If you buy the component I offer a free change of the text in the component. If you want to change the design to match your corporate ID I can do this for a US$ 15 fee. If you purchase the Multiple User License or the Enterprise License any design modifications are free.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Question: When I insert the component in Adobe Captivate all I get is a blank box. Is that normal?
Answer: Yes that is perfectly normal. In Edit view in Adobe Captivate all you get is a blank box. However, once you publish your project it will work just fine.

Question: What’s all this license stuff. I just want to use it in my projects?
Answer: The license stuff is actually pretty simple. If you want to use this component in your projects (personal or professionally) then in 90% of the cases you just need to buy the Single User License. This license can be used by you in any number of projects for any number of users. The projects can be personal or for the company where you work. However, the projects need to be used internally in the company where you work. You cannot add this component to a course / project that you intend to resale to an external client. In that case you would need to re-purchase the Single User License again per external project.

The Multiple User License is just like above, but here all your developers in your company can use it. What if you are only 3 developers? Well then just buy 3 x Single User Licenses. If you are more than 5 people that needs to use it then the Multiple User License is cheaper for you.

The Enterprise License gives you the right to use the component in all your courses – internal or external, resale or giveaways you name it. I can even modify the component with your own Corporate ID & Brand if you want that.

Question: We have a shared computer but people login to the computer/domain with their own user details. Will the bookmark be stored for each user?
Answer: Yes if your users logon to a computer with a unique sign-on then the bookmark will be stored for each user individually.

Question: Are we able to change the text in the component ourselves?
Answer: No not at this time. However, I offer a free customization service for text alterations. If you purchase the component just send me a mail afterwards with the new text you want to have added.

Question: I really would like to change the design of the component so it has my company logo and corporate identity. Is it possible to change that?
Answer: Yes it’s possible. I charge a fee of US$15 to do the design modifications for you. I need the relevant graphics as well as a mock-up of how you would like the final result to look like.

Question: Can I use this component together with the TOC in Adobe Captivate 5?
Answer: Yes as long as you disable the “Self Paced Learning” option in the TOC settings then it will work just fine.

Question: Can I use this component in a course delivered through an LMS?
Answer: Yes that is no problem at all. However, if you published the SCORM package directly from Captivate then you need to be sure that “Never send resume data” is deselected first in the Reporting settings.

Question: What if I buy it and it doesn’t work. Can I get a refund?
Answer: No if you purchase the product you can’t get a refund. The component has been tested extensively on all types of systems, browsers etc. without any issues. However, I can provide you with a test version of the bookmark component if you are worried about it not working. Send me an email and I will send you a demo version of the component back by email.

Corner Peel Navigation Widget for Adobe Captivate 5

I originally created the Corner Peel Navigation Widget for Adobe Captivate 4 for fun but it turned out to be extremely popular. Actually it has been downloaded more than 4.000 times from my site so far so I decided to update it so it will work with Adobe Captivate 5.

In reality it is not a widget but a Flash animation, but it will work just as well.

The download package contains the FLA files and two published SWF’s. Insert the SWF’s in your project as animations and set them to display for rest of project. Once the user hovers over the corners they will animate similar to what you see in Flash based magazines. Clicking on the corner will navigate to the next or previous slide respectively.

The demonstration below is from Adobe Captivate 4 but it will work just like this in Adobe Captivate 5 as well.

Enjoy!

/Michael

Adobe Captivate 5 system variables

Adobe Captivate 5 gives you access to the same system variables as with Adobe Captivate 4 as well as three new ones. These variables allows the Captivate developer to add extra functionality to their projects. The system variables in Adobe Captivate 5 have been assigned to some different groups than in Captivate 4 so here is a new updated list of the available variables and their function.

The layout of this site isn’t handling tables very well so the complete list of Adobe Captivate 5 system variables and examples of how to use in Adobe Flash can be downloaded as a PDF at the bottom of this post.

The System Variables in Adobe Captivate 5 are divided into different groups:

MovieControl lists variables for events that control the movie like pause, resume, previous, next slide, and so on.

MovieInformation lists variables related to the movie such as variables for the current slide, current frame, and so on.

MovieMetaData lists variables that provide information about the project such as project name, author, and company.

SystemInformation lists variables that can be picked up from your computer such as current date and current time.

Quizzing lists variables related to quizzing, such as the variables that capture the number of attempts and the percentage of questions answered correctly.

MovieControl Variables:

These variables can be manipulated through Advanced Actions, Flash animations and Widgets.

MovieInformation variables:

These variables can be accessed from Advanced Actions, Flash animations, Widgets and can be inserted in Text Captions to display their value.

MovieMetaData variables:

These variables can be accessed from Advanced Actions, Flash animations, Widgets and can be inserted in Text Captions to display their value.

SystemInformation variables:

These variables can be accessed from Advanced Actions, Flash animations, Widgets and can be inserted in Text Captions to display their value.

Quizzing variables:

These variables can be accessed from Advanced Actions, Flash animations, Widgets and can be inserted in Text Captions to display their value.

Accessing variables in Adobe Captivate 5:

The majority of the variables can be used in Text Captions to display their value. They can also be used in Advanced Actions to perform an action based on the value of the variable. From Advanced Actions it is also possible to manipulate the Movie Control variables.

Accessing variables from Flash in Adobe Captivate 5:

In Adobe Captivate 5 the runtime structure have been changed  a bit so you now have to access the “root” through a proxy. Furthermore Adobe Captivate 5 only uses ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) so the way you access variables are a bit different from Captivate 4.

In short this is how you can access variables from a Flash Animation inserted into Adobe Captivate 5:

For example this would pause your Adobe Captivate SWF:

I haven’t tested all the variables with Adobe Captivate 5 yet. In Adobe Captivate 4 some of the variables were not accessible on the main root. They were contained within a movieclip called “movie”. I’m not sure if this is the case here but I will update the post once I have confirmed it.

You can download the list of variables as a handy PDF file here:

Adobe Captivate 5 – Project Cache!

The new version of Adobe Captivate 5 features something called “Project Cache”. Basically the cache contains a lot of small files that will allow you to open your existing Captivate projects quicker and I’m sure they also help out on the new incremental publish functionality in Captivate 5.

However there are some issues that you should be aware of in regards to the Project Cache.

Everytime you open up a new project a new cache directory is created. If you – like me – work on multiple files and projects at the same time you will quickly find out that the cache has grown to be extremely big. The majority of the courses I work on consists of multiple chapters so one project can easily be comprised of ten separate Captivate files. This amounts to a lot of cache files. I checked my Cache folder size after working with Adobe Captivate 5 for five normal work days and it was a whopping 1.2 GB.

Therefore it is good practise to delete your Project Cache regularly in order to avoid wasted harddrive space.

Another aspect of such a large Project Cache is that it is stored in the “My Documents” folder on your computer. If you are working on a corporate network then chances are high that your “My Documents” folder is part of a roaming profile that is stored remotely on a server. If your Project Cache is very big then this is transfered and stored / retrieved on a server everytime you log on and off your computer.

In my particular case our Corporate Network have a storage restriction of 100MB for My Documents and if I exceed that limit I cannot save anything until I have deleted some files. Since Adobe Captivate 5 stores in the My Documents folder per default it takes about 5-6 hours of working before the limit is reached and Adobe Captivate will then crash. Worst of all is that I am not able to open up Captivate again before I have deleted enough files to get under the magical 100MB again.

The solution is of course to change the path for storing projects and Project Cache in Adobe Captivate 5. I have created a directory directly on my C:\ drive called AdobeContent.

The \\cphn0018 indicates that this is a network storage location:

Changing the default locations to a non-network location:

In theory you could keep your Project Cache files on your local harddrive until you run out of space. Most harddrives today have a lot of space and most likely you wouldn’t experience any problems for next year or so. However, filling up your harddrive with obsolete data is a bad idea ;o)

I did hear a rumour that it is possible to re-create a corrupt Captivate 5 file based on the data in the Project Cache, but I’m not sure if it’s true or not. Luckily I haven’t yet experienced a corrupt file in Adobe Captivate 5 yet (and only 1 in Adobe Captivate 4) and if you have the “Generate Project Backup” enabled you should be covered.

Edit: Here is updated information on how to recreate a project from the Project Cache files: http://iconlogic.blogs.com/weblog/2010/07/adobe-captivate-5-cached-projects-can-save-you-some-cash.html - Thank you Lieve for the link.

Adobe Captivate 5 widgets

Just a quick note to let you know that I am currently updating the bookmark widget to work with Adobe Captivate 5. The new widget API in Adobe Captivate 5 gives some better possibilities in regards to managing events and lowering the resource usage.

I expect to have the new Bookmark Widget for Adobe Captivate 5 ready by the end of this week.

/Michael

AS3 JumbledWord widget for Adobe Captivate

Yves over at http://blog.flash-factor.com/ created an AS3 version of the JumbledWord Widget that ships with Adobe Captivate 4. The AS3 version is much better than the AS2 version so if you like to use learning games in your projects then I recommend that you go and grab it for free.

 The AS3 widget can be downloaded here: http://blog.flash-factor.com/jumbledword-widget-as3-version/

Thank you Yves for making this available ;o)

Adobe Captivate 5: First production project

I have been using Adobe Captivate 5 in a real-life production project now for the last couple of weeks. I’m about half-way finished and thought I would post my findings and impression so far.

Using Adobe Captivate 5 for real:

I have been in the Beta test group for Adobe Captivate 5 and been through many different releases so I am pretty well aquainted with the new user interface and functions. However testing a software product in a beta test process is different from actually using it in a real-life project.

The first week I didn’t feel as productive as when I am using Adobe Captivate 5 because I had to get used to working in the new environment. I had to look for objects, buttons etc. since they are totally different from Adobe Captivate 4. However, after a week or so I feel pretty much at home in the Adobe Captivate 5 environment and my production speed have picked up. The properties panel makes it really easy to modify parameters quickly and is a big time saver.

Recording simulations with Adobe Captivate 5:

The project I am working on requires a lot of recordings of a web-service. The recordings went really well and seem to work better than with Adobe Captivate 4.

Recording sound with Adobe Captivate 5:

Prior to Adobe Captivate 5 I never used Adobe Captivate to record sound since I felt it sounded a bit off. You would also get a slight hissing sound that I didnt’ like. Instead I used Audacity to record my sound and imported it into my project afterwards. However the sound recording works alot better in Adobe Captivate 5. The hissing sound seem to be gone and the sound quality is more natural. I had to record a few pieces of speech in this course and I could just record them directly in Adobe Captivate 5 in a quality I was happy with.

Effects in Adobe Captivate 5:

One of the biggest time-savers so far is the Effects feature in Adobe Captivate 5. The ability to make objects move saved me tons of time since I didn’t have to open Flash and create animations all the time. It will also make it much easier to update the project later on. Read more about Effects in Adobe Captivate here and here.

Other observations:

It’s much easier to work with Advanced Actions due to the new editor. This also saves time. Another great thing is the Master Slide concept and the Style Manager that allows you to define custom styles easily for your captions etc.

The ability to have multiple Captivate files open in the same application and switch between the chapters is really great. Earlier you had to have multiple instances of Adobe Captivate 4 open in order to switch back and forth between chapters. This new MDI approach is alot easier.

I will post a new update once the project is completed

Buy Adobe Captivate 5 here on the Adobe website