Now that we know a bit more about the Captivate interface, we will take a look at the sample applications that we will build together during the course of this book. These applications have been designed to showcase almost every single feature of Captivate. Use them as a reference if there is something unclear during one of the exercises.
The first application that we will explore is a typical Captivate project. It uses the screen capture engine of Captivate to create a screenshots-based movie. Perform the following steps to view a project:
1. Use the File | Open menu item to open the
final/encoderDemo.cptxfile situated in your exercises folder.2. The file opens as a separate tab in the Captivate interface.
3. In the Main Options toolbar, right next to the slide navigator, click on the Preview icon.
4. In the drop-down list, choose the Project item to preview the entire project as shown in the following screenshot:
Take a closer look at the Preview icon (as shown in the previous screenshot). It will be one of the icons we'll use the most during the course of this book. It has five options to control which part of the project we want to preview. Note that each of these options is associated with a keyboard shortcut that depends on the system you work on (Mac or Windows). The options are the following:
Play Slide: This option will play the current slide in the Captivate Interface. It is the only Preview option that does not open the Preview pane. Consequently, this preview option is not able to render all the features of Captivate. Previewing a single slide is a good option to quickly test the timings of the objects.
Project: When choosing this option, Captivate generates a temporary flash file and plays the entire project in the Preview pane.
From this Slide: Captivate opens the Preview pane and plays the project from the currently selected slide to the end. This option generates a temporary Flash file, so every single feature of Captivate is supported in this preview mode.
Next 5 slides: Captivate opens the Preview pane to play a temporary flash file containing five slides starting from the currently selected slide. It is a great option to quickly test a specific sequence in the movie.
In Web Browser: Captivate generates a temporary flash file as well as a temporary HTML file. It then plays the entire project in the default browser. Using this preview option, you will see the project in a context very close to the one that will be used by your learners.
HTML5 output in Web Browser: When using this option, the project is published in HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and images. It is then played in the default web browser. HTML5 publishing is a brand new feature of Captivate 6 and not every single Captivate feature is supported in HTML5. So it is important to test your projects in HTML5 in addition to testing them in Flash.
Note
Floating and Modal panels
In Captivate, a panel can be floating or docked. When a panel floats, the tools and switches situated on other panels are still active. But when the Preview panel is open, only the buttons of that panel are active, while the tools of the other panels are not active anymore. The Preview pane is said to be a Modal floating panel, because it disables every tool situated on other panels. Also, notice that the Preview panel cannot be docked.
In this case, we clicked on the Preview Project option. Captivate generates a temporary Flash file and opens it in the Preview pane. Follow the onscreen instructions to go through the project. This puts you in the same situation as a learner viewing the eLearning course for the first time.
This project begins with a Pretest of three questions. The Pretest is made to check if the student really needs to take this particular training. If the student fails the pretest, he/she has to take the entire course, but if the Pretest is a success, the student can choose to skip the course or to take it anyway. The pretest feature is one of the new features of Captivate 6. To fully understand this feature, it is necessary to take the course twice. Try to answer the questions of the Pretest correctly the first time and incorrectly the second time and see how you experience the project in both situations.
The second part of this first sample application (after the Pretest) is known as a Demonstration. As the name suggests, a demonstration is used to demonstrate something to the learner. Consequently, the learner is passive and simply watches whatever is going on in the Captivate movie. In a Demonstration, the mouse object is shown. It moves and clicks automatically.
This particular demonstration features some of the most popular Captivate tools. You have seen Text Captions, Highlight Boxes, a Zoom Area, and so on. You have also experienced sound in the Captivate demonstration as well as the ability to close-caption the sound-enabled slides, but the most amazing thing featured in this demonstration is probably the ability to insert video files in the Captivate slides.
We will now open another sample application. Actually, it is not a real other application, but another version of the Encoder Demonstration we experienced in the previous topic. Perform the following steps to open the application and to view it:
1. Use the File | Open menu item to open the
final/encoderSim.cptxfile situated in your exercise folder.2. Once the file is open, click on the Preview icon in the main toolbar and choose to preview the entire project.
3. The Preview pane opens and the Encoder Simulation starts to play.
When the animation reaches slide number 4, the play head stops moving, and waits for the learner to do an action. This is the main difference between a Demonstration and a Simulation.
In Captivate, a Simulation is a project in which the learner is active. In a simulation, the mouse object is hidden, as the learner will use his/her own mouse to click around the screen in order to progress towards the end of the movie. The very fact that the user is active implies a whole new level of complexity: the learner can perform either the right or the wrong action. In each case, the application must react accordingly. This concept is known as branching, that is, each student experiences the application based on his/her actions.
4. Follow the onscreen instructions and try to perform the right actions. The application has been set up to give you two chances to perform each action correctly.
When you are through, close the Preview pane.
In order to experience the branching concept hands-on, preview the entire movie again, but this time, give yourself a break and perform the wrong actions at each and every step of the simulation (don't worry, it is not graded!). You should see that the application reacts differently and shows you things that were not shown when the right actions were performed! That's branching in action!
This particular simulation features pretty much the same Captivate objects as the demonstration we experienced earlier. Only the mouse had to be replaced by the interactive objects of Captivate. An interactive object is an object that has the ability to stop the play head and wait for the learner to interact with the movie. Each of the interactive objects of Captivate can implement the branching concept.
The Media Encoder Demonstration and the Media Encoder Simulation are both based on screenshots. To create these sample applications, the first two steps of the production process described earlier have been used:
In step one (the capture phase), the actions have been performed for real in the real Adobe Media Encoder as they were recorded by Captivate behind the scenes.
In step two (the post-production phase), the movie has been edited in Captivate. Sound and closed captions were added, video was imported, the title and ending slides were created, the timing was adjusted, and so on. We even imported a slide created in Microsoft PowerPoint!
Step three (the publishing phase) has not been performed (yet) on these files.
We will now open and preview the third sample application. Normally it should already be open in Captivate as a tab in the main area. Click on the file tab to make it the active file, as shown in the following screenshot:
If the file is not open, use the File | open menu item to open the final/drivingInBe.cptx file situated in the exercises folder you downloaded from the Web.
When the file is open and active, use the Preview icon to preview the entire project. Follow the onscreen instructions as a student would do when viewing this project for the first time. When done, close the Preview pane, then, use the Preview icon again to preview the entire project a second time. Answer the question differently from the first time. You will have yet another experience of the branching concept.
This third sample application is very different from the previous projects we have seen. It is not really a demonstration, nor a simulation. It is none of it and a bit of both at the same time. As you can see, the borderline between a demonstration and a simulation is sometimes very difficult to spot!
When it comes to sound, this movie makes use of the Text-to-Speech engine of Captivate. Text-to-Speech is a great alternative to quickly create the sound clips you need, but the quality of the speech is not as good as when a real human being speaks in front of a good old microphone!
This application is not based on screenshots and does not teach software related skills. Instead, each slide has been created one by one, right in Captivate or imported from an existing PowerPoint presentation.
This application is also much more sophisticated than the Encoder applications. Advanced actions and Variables are used throughout the project to power the dynamic features, such as the name of the student appearing in a Text Caption. It also features the certificate Widget on the last slide (only if you pass the quiz!) and uses the new collection of Characters to spice up the training with a human touch! But the most impressive feature of this particular project is probably the Quiz, one of the biggest and most appreciated tools of Captivate.
The project contains eight question slides. Four of these are stored in a question pool. Each time the project is viewed, three questions are asked to the student, while a fourth one is randomly chosen from the question pool. That's why, the second time you previewed the application, you did not experience the very same quiz as compared to the first time.
Video Demo is a brand new feature of Captivate 6. A Video Demo generates a .mp4 video file that can be uploaded to online services such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Daily Motion for playback on any device (including iPad, iPhone, and other Internet-enabled mobile devices). Perform the following steps to view a Video Demo project:
1. Use the File | Open menu item to open the
final/encoderVideo.cpvcfile situated in your exercises folder.First of all notice that a Video Demo project does not use the same
.cptxfile extension as a regular Captivate project. It uses the.cpvcfile extension. For us, it is the first indication that this project is not going to behave as the other ones we have experienced so far.In addition to a specific file extension, Video Demo projects also have their specific Captivate Interface, as shown in the following screenshot:
In the previous screenshot, notice the absence of the Filmstrip. A Video Demo project is not based on slides. It actually is a big video file, so the Filmstrip makes no sense in a Video Demo project.
In a video file, branching is not possible. The file can only be experienced from start to finish in the order defined by the teacher. To use proper words, we said that a video file proposes a linear experience to the learner while the branch-aware projects we experienced earlier, propose a non-linear experience. Consequently, no quiz is possible in a Video Demo project and the Quiz Properties panel has been removed as well.
2. Take some time to inspect the rest of the interface. Try to spot the other differences between the regular Captivate interface and the interface used for Video Demos.
3. When you are ready, click on the Preview icon
Surprise! Only two options are available in the Preview icon!
5. Watch the whole movie as if you were viewing it on YouTube!
6. When the movie is finished, click on the Edit button situated at the bottom right corner of the screen to return to the Video Demo editing interface.
7. Use the File | Close All menu item to close every open file. If prompted to save the changes, make sure you do not save the changes to these files.
After viewing these four sample applications, you should have a pretty good idea of the tools and general capabilities of Captivate. Before moving on, let's summarize what we have learned from these movies:
Captivate is able to capture the actions you do on your computer and turn them into slides using a sophisticated capture engine based on screenshots.
A Demonstration is a project in which the learner is passive and simply watches the onscreen actions
A Simulation is a project in which the user is active.
PowerPoint slides can be imported into Captivate and converted to Captivate slides.
Sound and video can be imported in Captivate. The application also features a Text-to-Speech engine and closed captioning.
Question Slides can be created in Captivate. These question slides can be stored in Question Pools to create random quizzes.
Other objects that can be included in a Captivate project are the Text Caption, the Highlight Box, and the Zoom Area, among others.
Captivate supports interactive objects. An interactive object is able to stop the play head and wait for the user to interact with the movie.
Captivate 6 introduces the Video Demo project type. A Video Demo is not based on screenshots, but is a big video file instead.
Video Demo projects use the
.cpvcfile extension and have a specific user interface.