The Insider

If you are a passionate user of Captivate, and would like to help all those who need help with the software, this is your chance. We are inviting moderators who can work with comments posted on our help pages. We will provide you with all the ammo that you need for this task, including the required training. Plus, there are folks from the product team, me included, who are already registered as moderators.

Here's a mail from a happy Adobe moderator:

Thank you for the effort put in, For a small beginning there is huge potential to be realised.
You have broadened my user experience tenfold.
Have a good break, will be keeping an eye on things a I don't have a holiday at this time.

If you are interested, mail me at preran@gmail.com

Posted by Preran Kurnool at 07:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Now that we are done with the big ones, allow me to tell you about the rest. And don't blame me if you think some of them must have made it earlier. Remember, this is my blog, and these are my choices. And this is the only place in the whole world where I get to have my way. Oh! Who am I kidding?!

Design templates: Adobe Captivate comes with a set of in-built design templates that you could apply to a slide or a project. Better still, you can create your customized design template and apply it to a project or
project template.

AS3 support: More on this in the documentation. Suffice to say that users usin AS3 will find enough to smile about.

Re-worked menu: The menu structure and the preferences dialog box have been reworked to make them even more user-friendly. and to keep them in sync with other Adobe products.

Publish as AVI: You can now publish your Adobe Captivate project as an AVI file. As simple as that.

Support for right-click: Yes, I know. We have been praying for this all along, and however small it may look as a feature, we know how big this is for all of us. Keep grinning.

Image editing: Touch up your images using image-editing features like brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and a host of other finger-lickin good options. Remember me saying earlier about how Adobe Captivate is now more independent than ever before?

Text to speech functionality: Convert all that text in your slide notes and text captions to high quality speech at the click of a button, literally.

Flash CS3 and Flash CS4 support: Work with these versions of Flash seamlessly using your favorite Captivate-Flash workflows.

Batch editing of audio files using Soundbooth: You can now carry over all your audio files from the library to Soundbooth. When you save the files after batch-processsing them in Soundbooth, the changes are reflected in your Adobe Captivate project. `

Export to PDF: You can now export your SWF into a PDF file by enabling an option during publishing.

Single SWF publishing: Unless specified otherwise in the preferences box, Adobe Captivate generates a single SWF file. Come on, come on, don't tell me you did not want this one!

Apart from the host of goodies that we are now drooling over, Adobe Captivate now provides a host of options to optimize the file size of your project. Glitches with the FMR have been addressed as have some other itsy-bitsy pain points.

Like most of us here at Adobe would like to believe, Adobe Captivate 4 is HUGE. It is almost like we skipped a couple of releases to get here. And we are sure you will feel the same way too. The wait looks like it is almost over.

Posted by Preran Kurnool at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

This is the almost official talk on Adobe Captivate 4. For the past few months, I have been busy documenting the new features for this release, re-hauling the previous content, and generally trying to assuage all those people who have been wanting better content in the Help. When the product is out, I am hoping that most of those complaints about content will be addressed. If not, you can always tell me areas that need improvement. And with our new help system, you will not have to wait for the next release to see your comments addressed. The actual time might vary depending on the severity of the complaint, but I am hoping that I will get the corrections updated in a month's time at the latest.

I have been using the product for creating the Getting Started Tutorials, and am pretty much aware of the ecstasies and agonies that users could face when using Adobe Captivate 4. There are workarounds I have devised for myself as I am sure most of you will eventually, but if there is further help you need, feel free to ask. The development team is a few seconds walk from where I sit. And they are more than willing to lend an ear to our problems.

So much about the help. Getting down to Adobe Captivate 4, am I excited enough about the product to sell it to all of you? You bet! And that is not because I work for the company that makes it or that I earn a living writing for it. Adobe Captivate has some really really cool features that most of us have been waiting for. In its latest avatar, Adobe Captivate gets more self-sufficient and more independent. It does things that we always wanted it to do, and some more. In my blog, I will speak of things I am excited about, and I will leave it to you to come up with the not-so-thrilling ones. Some of them I already know but surprise me nevertheless.

Till the product is officially released, I might not be able to answer probing questions, but the day I get the signal, I can tell you almost anything, including the behind-the-scenes mania that went into this release.

Let me list down my favorite features in no particular order:

Better recording features: The recording interface not only looks better, it is also more intuitive, and gets you going in no time. In addition to all that recording offered before, you now have options for panning. When recording large screens, I cannot tell you enough about how much of a blessing this can be. Do go through the getting started tutorial and the help before you record. Like most beautiful things in life, not all the promised pleasures are immediately apparent.

Project templates: Create a project template by inserting placeholders for various types of objects and slides. Set preferences for the project and its skin and save the project as a template. Users creating a project can insert the required objects into the placeholders. In a collaborative environment where the designers work separately from people creating content, designers use templates to ensure consistency across projects. Content developers do not have to worry about the workflow of the project, the various standards involved, or creating a layout. All they have to do is follow instructions in the template and fill the required content into the relevant placeholders.

Commenting: You can now send Adobe Captivate projects for review much like in Adobe Acrobat. When the file to be reviewed is posted on a shared location, comments posted by reviewers are visible to all reviewers that are part of the review. The comment file can be opened in an application based on Adobe AIR.
Reviewers do not need to have Adobe Captivate installed to review the file. Reviewers without access to the shared network can export their comments to an XML file using the application. When the author imports the XML file, comments are displayed at the exact location where the reviewer added them.

Customizable widget: Create more compelling learning experiences by including widgets such as games, question types, and more. Widgets can be created in Adobe Flash Professional software, easily shared via Adobe Exchange, and customized to meet your content needs.

Enhanced PowerPoint workflow: Edit PowerPoint files directly within Adobe Captivate. The PowerPoint file can be referenced by the project, or embedded into it. Most of the PowerPoint features are retained after import.

Table of content and aggregator: Create a table of contents instantly and save it along with the skin as a theme. The table of contents helps users navigate easily through the project and track their progress. You can use the aggregator to combine multiple SWFs and SCOs. The SCO file can be directly published as a zip file and uploaded to an LMS.

Variables and Advanced Actions: Use variables to provide a customized learning environment using user-provided data. Advanced actions help you define action or a sequence of actions after the user completes entering the data.

In-line editing: At last, the answer to our prayers! You can edit text captions inline. The editing toolbar breaks itself free from the properties dialog box, and parades itself in full splendor on the toolbar. I always had a problem with superscripts in Adobe Captivate till a developer whispered the secret into my ears. The Ctrl+Shift+ "+" it is, he said in hushed tones without adding any disclaimers. And now that I have spread the word, or rather, the shortcut key, I am hoping not to be sued too much.

Drawing: The drawing toolbar helps you create some basic shapes in Adobe Captivate. You will not have to open a high-end graphic software application to create ordinary graphics.

For more on Adobe Captivate 4 features, keep coming to this blog. You will not be dissapointed.

Posted by Preran Kurnool at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)