The new Adobe Captivate 6 features some great news for Widget and Captivate Developers as some great new stuff has been added in the API. With Adobe Captivate 6, Widgets can now access items from the Captivate library, which opens up endless possibilities.
For example – how about importing your own button into a widget so this is used to trigger the widgets functionality? Or how about added a sound that is played when the widget performs its action? How about importing a range of images into a widget and make a super cool slide show in your project? There are many different possibilites for new and exiting widgets.
Another very relevant question is is if the widgets you purchased here on www.cpguru.com works. When Adobe Captivate 6 was released none of the widgets from my site worked. If you program your widgets using the standard Adobe Template then widgets that works in Adobe Captivate 5.5 should work in Adobe Captivate 6 without any problems. However, most of my Widgets are coded using a different Widget API as I don’t particularly like the standard Adobe API.
Adobe implemented some changes in Adobe Captivate 6 so I need to update all of my widgets. I am currently going through all of my widgets and updating them one by one. The biggest change, which have an effect on my widgets is that in earlier versions of Adobe Captivate all slides were loaded in memory once you started the project. In Adobe Captivate 6 only the slide that the user is currently viewing is loaded. Performance wise this approach is better, but if you have a widget that looks for data on an earlier or later slide that where the widget is located then it doesn’t work anymore ;o(
A couple of my widgets are also pushing the boundaries of the Captivate Widget API (and some of them have gone way past that boundary), which makes it more difficult to update them to work with Adobe Captivate 6.
So far the following widgets has been updated and are now working in Adobe Captivate 6:
Glossary Widget for Adobe Captivate
Email Reporting Widget for Adobe Captivate
Quiz Data Extension for Adobe Captivate
Hide Submit Button Widget for Adobe Captivate
Domain Lock Widget for Adobe Captivate
Save and Load Username Widgets
Intelligent Print Widget for Adobe Captivate
I am working on updating these widgets:
Bookmark Widget for Adobe Captivate (Actually this one does use the standard Adobe Widget API but does not work)
All the free widgets.
One important thing to mention – None of my widgets will work if you export to HTML5 from Adobe Captivate 6. They will only work with SWF output (and some of them with .exe and .app).
If you are an existing buyer you will receive an email with a download link to the updated widgets once they are ready.
/Michael
9 Comments
Wow. While Cp version 5 was a much-needed re-write, aside from that milestone, I’m truly amazed how piss poor Adobe’s Captivate developers are that they don’t understand how to gracefully deprecate functions/API changes, and based on the reviews coming in so far of Cp 6, how half-baked it is.
A shame. They had *the* platform for elearning…
Articulate is now neck and neck with Adobe in terms of feature checklist, and in fact with Storyline Articulate is way more polished. The one thing they are missing is the extensibility via an API (i.e., Widgets). I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what they are working on for the next version and, if they do, it’ll be game over for Adobe in the elearning space.
mark
http://www.elearninglive.com
Hi Mark,
Yeah it can be pretty “interesting” to be a widget developer. In this version they removed all Captivate system variables starting with “rd*” and it is no longer possible to access slide information through the MovieXML object anymore.
CP6 has it’s ups and downs. There are some things that I think are great and somethings that I absolutely hate. Themes is one of the things that I really don’t like at all, but thankfully it can be worked around. The HD recording is great though as are some other things.
I’ll write up my review of CP6 this coming week.
Now it’s back to testing widgets.. So far one widget (the Glossary Widget) seems to be possible to get to work in CP6. All other widgets are so far not co-operating..
Mark – After updating some more widgets I found out that the “rd*” variables are still available for widgets, but are not available in the Captivate GUI for developers.
Also – the widgets that I have that stay within the limits of the Adobe Widget API are pretty simple to update. It’s the widgets that is pushing the limits of the API that are giving me a hard time.
/Michael
A big thanks for the free updates to your previous widgets Michael! Very cool of you.
No problem Erick ;o)
Any update for the Bookmark widget for Adobe Captivate 6?
Hi Ermie,
No unfortunately not yet. It needs to be reprogrammed from scratch to support Captivate 6.x
/Michael
Can you offer a suggestion on fixing a timing issue in Captivate 6 where a widget is used?
A timing issue? What type of timing issue are you having?