Bookmark Widget for Adobe Captivate

The Bookmark / Resume Widget for Adobe Captivate allows a user to return to your course at their last exit point. It keeps track of this by using a Local Shared Object on the users PC.

If you are looking for the AS3 version of the component please click here.

Package contents:

The package contains three (3) separate componets.

One component for Adobe Captivate 2 & Adobe Captivate 3 projects. This component will only work for projects published as SWF. There is no support for EXE publishing.

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

One advanced component for Adobe Captivate 4. This component allows you to pass a variable from Captivate 4 through a standard text entry box. This will allow you to keep multiple bookmarks for individual users on a shared PC.

How does it work?

The Bookmark Component is an animation that you insert into Adobe Captivate which then keeps track of the users progress in your course/presentation and stores it in a shared object on the users computer. If a user exits your project before having viewed all of it then it will store the pagenumber and remember this the next time the users launces your project. The user will then be given a choice on whether to continue from where they left off or start over again. Once a user has viewed your course/project to the end it will automatically reset the bookmark.

This process is similar to what we normally do in LMS when we deploy Adobe Captivate content although the progress status is stored in the LMS database instead of on the users computer.

Requirements / Specifications:

The component works with Adobe Captivate 2, Adobe Captivate 3 and Adobe Captivate 4. It is built using ActionScript 2 so if you use it in Captivate 4 it needs to be an AS2 project. For Adobe Captivate 4 projects the component needs to be embedded into the project (this is the standard setting) – It will not work if you choose to “Externalize Animations”.

The component requires Flash Player 8 on the users computer as a minimum. Component has been tested with IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2 & Firefox 3.

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.

Demonstration

You can see a demonstration of it here. The demonstration consists of 5 slides. Each slide is displayed for 4 seconds. The first slide contains the bookmark swf, which is set to display for rest of project. Once you launch the demonstration it stores some data on your PC and records your progress. If you exit the demonstration before the last page and then return you will be asked if you want to continue or not. The last page of the demonstration resets the bookmark to zero again.

To see a demonstration of the component with the user defined input click here

Buy the component

Single User Licence  (US$ 35)

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)

 
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)

 
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 4?
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: I tried to insert this as a widget in Adobe Captivate 4 but I get a message saying “Not a valid widget”. What am I doing wrong?
Answer: Just insert he component as an Animation instead and then it will work. I named it “Bookmark Widget” before Adobe Captivate 4 was launched, so I was not aware that they had adopted this term.

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.

Question: I really need an AS3 version. Can you please make me one?
Answer: I would love to, but I am not really that well into AS3 yet. I have an AS3 version of the component on my agenda, but I can’t say when it will be ready.

Question: I also bought the DomainLock Widget and want to use both of them in the same project. Is that possible?
Answer: Yes that is possible. Place the DomainLock widget on the timeline first and then the Bookmark Widget afterwards.

Further information:

Read the original blog post and comments here: http://www.cpguru.com/2009/02/25/captivate-shared-object-bookmark/

Progress bar for Adobe Captivate

The Progress Bar for Adobe Captivate is an easy and simple way to illustrate a users progression in your project or course.

The component works with Adobe Captivate 3 and Adobe Captivate 4. It’s coded with ActionScript 2.0 so you cannot use this with Adobe Captivate 4 and AS3 projects.

What does it do?
The progress bar is a flash based component which you can load into your Adobe Captivate projects to show the user his/her current progress in the course/project. It is fully automatic and gives your users/learners a great indication of when the chapter/course they are doing is finished.

How does it work?
The progress bar works by using the Adobe Captivate system variables and retrieving data for current slide and total number of slides. The progress is illustrated graphically with a bar.

What can be customized?
The progress bar component can be customized in an external XML file. That means you don’t need Adobe Flash in order to edit it or for example change the colors. You also get the source fla file so if you have Adobe Flash and knowledge on how to use this program you can change every aspect of the file.

The progress bar works for projects with and without skins and borders but you need to define whether your project has a skin or not in the XML file.

In the XML file you can define the following things:

- Starting coordinates of the Progress bar
- Length of the Progress bar
- Thickness of the Progress bar
- Stroke color
- Progress bar color
- Whether or not you want the Progress bar to drop a shadow
- Starting coordinates for the two textboxes
- Font for the text
- Font size
- Font color
- Whether or not your Captivate project uses the Captivate skin/playback control

Two different Progress Bars are included. One is zero based and the other is not. You can see the difference in the preview above.

All actionscript in the flash files are commented in case you want to edit/change something. An exhaustive Help file is also included, which explains the XML parameters in detail as well as gives answers to the most common questions/problems.

The Progress Bar works in standalone projects published on the web or your company intranet as well in LMS environments.

Buy the Captivate Progress Bar
To buy please click this link: http://www.flashden.net/item/captivate-progress-bar-elearning/23921

The price is US$5.

Additional information:
You can read the original post and comments here: http://www.cpguru.com/2008/12/16/finally-you-can-buy-the-captivate-progress-bar/

Custom Preloader for Adobe Captivate

Are you tired of using the same old preloaders in your Adobe Captivate projects? Well here is a change – A fully customizable preloader with 9 different color schemes.

You can add your company logo and custom text so that it’s related to your particular project. You will get the source fla for this preloader so you can edit the component yourself. You need at least Adobe Flash 8.0 to edit the component.

Demonstation of the color schemes
Click here to see the different color schemes included in the download. The Adobe Photoshop PSD file is also included in the download so you can easily change the images/colors yourself.

Demonstration on how to change the graphics in Flash
Click here to see a Adobe Captivate presentation on how to change the graphics in Adobe Flash.

Buy the Custom Preloader for Adobe Captivate
Click here to buy the Captivate Custom Preloader (US$10)

You will recieve an email with the download link immediately after payment.

Pause Widget for Adobe Captivate 4

A user on the Adobe Captivate forums asked the following question:

When you don’t have any buttons on the screen, the movie advances from one slide to the other till the end.

However, I usually want the movie to pause at the end of each slide. Instead of placing (and configuring) a pause button on each slide, is there a feature available to globally configure such a pause action, e.g. a Widget that is displayed for rest of project?

I thought it was a good idea so I made a small widget that does exactly that. This widget pauses each slides 45 frames before it ends. The 45 frames is equivalent to 1.5 second before the slide timeline ends when you use the default 30 fps publishing settings in Captivate.

If you use the Adobe Captivate playbars then you can just insert this widget on your first page and set it to “display for rest of project” and all your slides will automatically be paused and await user interaction with the navigation buttons in the playbar.

Download
Download the widget below – the widget uses AS2 and Flash Player 9.

Corner Peel Navigation Widget for Adobe Captivate

A user on the Adobe Forum (http://forums.adobe.com/message/1895316) asked if it was possible to navigate in Adobe Captivate projects by using a page curl animation. I thought it was a funny idea so I sat down and made a little Corner Peel Navigation widget for Captivate.

Basically it will allow your users to navigate in your Adobe Captivate Projects by using a page curl / corner peel style navigation instead of just plain buttons or the standard playbar. The Corner Peel Widget for Adobe Captivate will work in Adobe Captivate 4 but also in Adobe Captivate 3 since it needs to be inserted as an animation. It should probably also work for Adobe Captivate 2.

Demonstration:

You can view a full size demonstration of it here: http://www.cpguru.com/demonstrations/captivateCornerPeel/cornerPeel.htm

Further information:

This widget is – at the moment – only for Adobe Captivate projects using Actionscript 2.0 (AS2).

If you like this widget then check out the other widgets I have on my site.

Download:

Below you can download the files to import into your Adobe Captivate project. The fla Flash source files (CS3 format) are also included in case you want to modify them as well as a small help file and a sample Adobe Captivate 4 project.

* This file has been downloaded more than 2600 times now here in february 2010 *

Corner Peel Navigation for Adobe Captivate

A user on the Adobe Forum (http://forums.adobe.com/message/1895316) asked if it was possible to navigate in Adobe Captivate projects by using a page curl animation. I thought it was a funny idea so I sat down and made a little Corner Peel Navigation widget for Captivate.

Basically it will allow your users to navigate in your Adobe Captivate Projects by using a page curl / corner peel style navigation instead of just plain buttons or the standard playbar. The Corner Peel Widget for Adobe Captivate will work in Adobe Captivate 4 but also in Adobe Captivate 3 since it needs to be inserted as an animation. It should probably also work for Adobe Captivate 2.

Demonstration:

You can view a full size demonstration of it here: http://www.cpguru.com/demonstrations/captivateCornerPeel/cornerPeel.htm

Further information:

This widget is – at the moment - only for Adobe Captivate projects using Actionscript 2.0 (AS2).

If you like this widget then check out the other widgets I have on my site.

Download:

Below you can download the files to import into your Adobe Captivate project. The fla Flash source files (CS3 format) are also included in case you want to modify them as well as a small help file and a sample Adobe Captivate 4 project.

* This file has been downloaded more than 3600 times now here in May 2010  *

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