September 14, 2010

Advanced Captivate 5 Users Learn to Create Widgets

We had an amazing eSeminar last week as Tristan Ward (with a little back up from Rod Ward) taught me how to create Adobe Captivate 5 Widgets using the Widget Factory. A group of nearly 80 Advanced Adobe Captivate users looked on for vicarious instruction as Tristan taught me one step at a time how to download and install Widget Factory. We walked through associating the custom library with Flash Professional CS5, and learned how to reference the library using AS3 script in Flash.

I was amazed at how very rapidly I was able to create a widget, and grasp the fundamental concepts behind widget development. I can’t thank Tristan enough for the introductory lesson and I’m looking forward to continuing my learning about widgets.

In the short time allocated I was able to create a custom widget, including the ability to gather input from a user and pass that text input from the properties, to the stage preview, and the actual display of the widget, and back and forth between each. Tristan helped clarify the different ‘states’ of widgets, how widgets are NOT the same as plain flash animations, and explain why and how there are three different ‘types’ of widgets (static, interactive & question).

Want to watch the session? No problem. We recorded the whole thing here;http://bit.ly/aYnFah

Enjoy!

Posted by Allen Partridge12:08 AM
  • Shameer Ayyappan

    Hi Allen, is there nothing that can be done to fix the echo in the recording?

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  • Joe

    Wow, trying to watch that presentation is an exercise in frustration. Why does the audio restart in the middle and play in addition to the original audio feed? Connect seems nice in theory but examples like this aren’t helping sell it.

    • http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/ Allen Partridge

      Hey Joe,

      I’ve heard a few people with audio issues this week. One person found it was unique to Firefox – so switching browsers fixed it. I’m looking for the root cause as it seems to only happen to a few people, so if you could send your machine config / browser etc. it would be very helpful.

      Allen

  • mike

    Hey i just purchased a brand new macbook pro today…the best on the market…tried to watch this video and same audio problem..seems to be delayed at different times..i just installed a fresh copy of firefox aswell…hope this helps.

    • http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/ Allen Partridge

      Thanks Mike,

      It must be a Connect Firefox bug. I’m reporting it to the Connect team.

  • http://www.highlander.co.uk Andy

    Seems to all work fine in Firefox 5, and the sound was pretty clear too.

    Just thought I’d mention, Matthew is currently writing a series on Captivate widgets on the Highlander blog at http://www.highlander.co.uk/blog/2011/06/24/adobe-captivate-widgets-part-1/ for anybody who wants to read more on this.

  • http://twitter.com/texbob Bob Ugiansky

    I watched the video and everything worked great until we got to adding the extra two functions:

    override protected function enterPropertiesDialog ():void {
    textBox1.text = properties.widgetText;
    }
    override protected function enterRuntime ():void {
    textBox1.text = properties.widgetText;
    }

    These don’t work as expected, even if I load the sample fla/as files. I just get a blank box after entering text in the widget properties. If I comment out those two lines, it works (but of course not at runtime or when opening the properties dialog). However the sample cp/cptx files included with the video does work as expected. What could have changed since this was tutorial published? I’m using Flash 5.5 and Captivate 5. Great tutorial by the way!

    • http://www.facebook.com/allen.partridge Allen Partridge

      Bob – i’m forwarding your inquiry to the team to have a look -in case there has been a change. I’ll also cc Tristan to see if there are any changes in the Widget Factory that may account for the difference. – Thanks for your post.

  • Ben Meite

    Allen, I am experiencing the same events Bob described. I followed the instructions to the T. I wonder what went wrong. I am using flash 5.5 and Cp 5.5

  • Anonymous

    I went through the trouble of learning how to make widgets only to find out that they don’t live up to their promise. Yes they sound great at first, but at the end, they have limited functionality. I tried using widgets to expand the utility of short answer questions and they kinda work. Widgets don’t report to LMS through SCORM! So, what is the point!

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