IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (Music plays.)
| | 00:03 | Hello,there. My name is Tim Plummer,
Jr. and I'm here to show you how to use
| | 00:07 | Adobe Captivate 4 and its
multifaceted screen capture tools to its fullest
| | 00:11 | potential. This title, Adobe Captivate
4 Essential Training, has been created
| | 00:16 | from my ten years of experience
as a presenter and an educator.
| | 00:20 | In these lessons I'll show you how to
import your content from a variety of
| | 00:23 | sources as well as the various ways to
publish your projects. I'll share with
| | 00:27 | you both the tactical information
you'll need to get in and create good looking
| | 00:31 | projects for whatever your needs
may be, plus I'll add strategies that I've
| | 00:36 | discovered along the way while
creating my own projects using Captivate.
| | 00:39 | As we continue to look for ways
to both increase the impact of our
| | 00:43 | communications and squeeze everything
we can from the dollars that we spend
| | 00:46 | delivering our message, Captivate
offers some exciting new ways to achieve both goals.
| | 00:51 | As we'll see when we go over
the tutorials, there are many uses for
| | 00:55 | Captivate that jump way beyond its
initial incarnation as a software simulator.
| | 00:59 | So grab the mouse and let's get started.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library or if
| | 00:04 | you're watching this tutorial on a disk,
you have access to the exercise files
| | 00:08 | used throughout this title.
The exercise files are found here in the
| | 00:11 | Exercise_files folder and I've put the
folder on my desktop, but you can put it
| | 00:16 | wherever you'd like.
| | 00:17 | If you are a monthly subscriber or an
annual subscriber to lynda.com, you don't
| | 00:21 | have access to the exercise files, but
you can follow along with your own work.
| | 00:25 | So let's get started.
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1. Understanding CaptivateIntroducing Captivate| 00:00 | So before I get started showing you
how to do things with Captivate, how to
| | 00:04 | build stuff and how to construct
things, it's probably a good idea for me to
| | 00:07 | give you sense of what Captivate actually does.
| | 00:10 | It's a really robust program and it
kind of falls into some interesting niches.
| | 00:15 | It's probably more capable than you're
thinking. It's a tool that allows you to
| | 00:19 | create self-running presentations,
software simulations, and tests.
| | 00:23 | Now most of the people that use
Captivate build things like e-learning projects
| | 00:27 | that are delivered via the web, because
Captivate creates a project that uses
| | 00:32 | Adobe's Flash platform as a delivery technology.
| | 00:34 | However, it's also a tool for a variety
of other things that are Flash based as well.
| | 00:39 | For example, it can create
things like web banners, marketing
| | 00:43 | presentations, slideshows, branching
content, podcasts, and screen casts.
| | 00:49 | Typically, anything that requires some
kind of engaging interactive content.
| | 00:53 | Now another way that I describe
Captivate to people who've never used it before
| | 00:57 | is I say that it's Flash for the rest
of us. It certainly can't do all of what
| | 01:01 | Flash can do, but it can do many of
those things and it can do them a lot more
| | 01:05 | easily than the Flash CS4
application that Adobe creates.
| | 01:10 | So it's a tool that allows you to
create these projects easily, but it's also a
| | 01:15 | tool that has a lot of its own power
and through the rest of the lessons that
| | 01:18 | we're going to cover here, I'm going to
show you that power and unlock the ways
| | 01:22 | that you can use Captivate to create
highly engaging interactive content.
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| Exploring presentations| 00:00 | One of the most obvious uses for
Captivate is to create a self-running basic
| | 00:04 | presentation. However, in situations
where you're creating a self-running
| | 00:08 | presentation, it's important to give
the user the control over the playing of
| | 00:12 | the presentation so that if they
need to stop and consider something that
| | 00:15 | you're showing them, they have the
ability to do that. Then they can go ahead
| | 00:18 | and move from there.
| | 00:20 | So what we have here is exactly that.
It's an example that I created in
| | 00:23 | Captivate. It's sort of a self-
running resume. The first slide is just some
| | 00:27 | basic information. When I click on the
Next button, you'll see there is some
| | 00:32 | animation. Things appear over some time.
That gives the user to ability to look
| | 00:36 | at things and to see things and to see
the information as it builds. Then of
| | 00:40 | course the presentation stops giving
user the ability to truly consider the
| | 00:44 | information you provided them and then
go ahead and click the Next button when
| | 00:47 | it's convenient for them.
| | 00:49 | There are some other basic animations
that I've provided here in this slide,
| | 00:54 | but as a presentation that's self-
running in this imaginary example, we have
| | 00:58 | some photography that I want to show.
Captivate also allows me to produce a
| | 01:02 | self-running slideshow without that
interaction, because of course that might
| | 01:06 | be important too. So I'll go ahead and
click on See examples. Then this is just
| | 01:11 | a standard slideshow of some
photography that I took for my resume.
| | 01:15 | Once the slideshow is complete then it
will go to the final slide in the set,
| | 01:20 | giving the person watching
presentation the ability to again see the contact
| | 01:24 | information and I've even built in a
little button here that if I were to click
| | 01:27 | on it, would open up an
email client pre-addressed to
| | 01:30 | tim_plumer@timplumer.com.
| | 01:32 | Now the one thing that I didn't do
for this presentation so that I could
| | 01:35 | describe it to you without
conflict is I didn't do a voiceover, which
| | 01:39 | Captivate certainly allows and we're
going to spend some time on that in one of
| | 01:43 | the upcoming chapters.
| | 01:45 | A basic self-running presentation.
This presentation uses Adobe Flash as its
| | 01:50 | technology and it is something that you
can deliver via the web or in a number
| | 01:54 | of different ways that
we'll cover in later chapters.
| | 01:57 | Its name is pretty accurate. It's a
product that allows you to create something
| | 02:01 | that is more captivating than just a
standard linear movie or something that
| | 02:05 | has no interactivity in it whatsoever,
and it allows you to build things in like
| | 02:10 | transitions, animations, and the
kinds of things that tend to get someone's
| | 02:14 | attention when you're trying to
present to them some basic information.
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| Introducing simulating software| 00:00 | The second thing that I want to show
you that Captivate is really good at is
| | 00:03 | software simulations. Basically, I'm
going to record a software product in
| | 00:09 | action and then use it for things
like marketing demonstrations or training
| | 00:13 | videos so that someone can learn
how to use a particular product.
| | 00:16 | Captivate does it in somewhat of a
unique way and we'll cover that in an
| | 00:20 | upcoming chapter. I'm going to go over
completely how you can create these things.
| | 00:23 | Now one of the advantages that
Captivate offers for creating software
| | 00:27 | simulations is that it does it in
somewhat of a unique way that builds things
| | 00:31 | together in a very modular fashion
as opposed to just creating a movie of
| | 00:36 | something happening on screen.
| | 00:38 | Here we have an example of this and
let me go ahead and show you this.
| | 00:42 | First off, this is a standard presentation
technique. I have some information to
| | 00:45 | deliver. I'm going to click on Next
Slide and the software simulation itself
| | 00:50 | will begin. It's important to note
that when I do this, the user doesn't have
| | 00:54 | to have, in this case
Photoshop, on their system.
| | 00:58 | Captivate will allow you to build
in little captions that allow you to
| | 01:02 | understand what's happening and
then at the end there is a little bit of
| | 01:05 | information about what you should do.
So if you need to show someone how to use
| | 01:09 | some software, Captivate allows that
with a software simulations capabilities
| | 01:13 | and the nice thing is that you don't
have to have Photoshop. In fact, all you
| | 01:17 | have to have is the free Adobe Flash
Player to be able to watch any of these.
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| Understanding e-learning with quizzes| 00:00 | After you've shown somebody some
information using a presentation that you've
| | 00:03 | created in Captivate or maybe you've
created a software simulation, you may
| | 00:07 | want to know whether or not they acquired
the information you hoped that they would.
| | 00:10 | That's one of things that
Captivate allows you to do very, very well.
| | 00:14 | To create a test, to find out if the user
understood the material that you presented them.
| | 00:18 | So in this example, I've actually
built that. We have a Making the Sale
| | 00:22 | presentation and we'll go ahead and
get started. We are going to deliver some
| | 00:27 | basic information and then once the
basic information has been delivered,
| | 00:30 | we are going to ask the user to tell me
what they thought. So, Who should speak the most?
| | 00:35 | You, Both, Them.
| | 00:37 | The premise here is, of course, that
I have already provided them a lot of
| | 00:40 | information about who should be speaking.
And if they click on that you should
| | 00:44 | speak the most, well that's incorrect.
So that's going to take them to a slide
| | 00:48 | that will allow them to rethink it
and they can click on Retry, and that
| | 00:52 | basically brings them back to the
beginning of the presentation. They would go
| | 00:56 | through the material they are
supposed to learn and then once they've gone
| | 00:58 | through there, they will
come to the same quiz again.
| | 01:01 | In other words, a quiz can find out if
they learned anything and if they have not
| | 01:05 | learned something, well, then they
can be asked to re-cover the material.
| | 01:09 | Now in this quiz I've actually built
another type of questioning and to get to that,
| | 01:14 | we'll answer this question correctly.
They should be speaking the most.
| | 01:18 | Now they are going to actually be
exposed to a formal quiz that Captivate
| | 01:22 | allows me to build. What should you
do before you meet with the client?
| | 01:25 | Well, you choose an answer. So I'm
just going to randomly pick an answer here
| | 01:29 | and click Submit. You get immediate
feedback and that's something that
| | 01:32 | Captivate allows you to create in a
quiz that the answer was correct. They can
| | 01:36 | click anywhere or press the Y key to
continue. I'll just go ahead and click.
| | 01:42 | Then we've got another question.
I'm going to answer this one.
| | 01:45 | Now I'm answering this one incorrectly on
purpose. We'll click Submit. Oh, shucks.
| | 01:50 | We got it incorrect. Again,
some immediate feedback.
| | 01:52 | Now I'm going to click one more time
here and show you that the quiz isn't just
| | 01:56 | designed so that it can kind of walk
you through material one more time, but
| | 02:00 | it's actually collecting information inside
the project and that information can be reported.
| | 02:05 | In this case, I've actually built this
project simply that if I were to click
| | 02:08 | Continue, I would force me to go back
to the beginning, start over, relearn the
| | 02:12 | material, and then hopefully get the
quiz correct. If I get the quiz correct,
| | 02:16 | in this Preview mode, I can actually
jump ahead of slide to show you that,
| | 02:19 | you can be taken to a slide that says
"Excellent Work!" And then I'll back up to
| | 02:23 | show you that there is a slide that says,
"You did not pass, let's go back and
| | 02:28 | try again." And this slide will actually
take you to the beginning of the presentation.
| | 02:34 | So Captivate allows you to not only
present some information and make it very
| | 02:38 | engaging, but then ask the student to
prove that they learn the information and
| | 02:44 | that is one of the more important
aspects of this tool. I refer to this tool
| | 02:48 | frequently as 'Flash for the rest of us.'
Creating this in Flash would require
| | 02:52 | some pretty significant Flash chops.
Creating in Captivate, as you will see in
| | 02:56 | later lessons, is actually quite easy
to do, which allows you to do focus on the
| | 03:00 | process of designing your quiz, not
necessarily the technology for designing your quiz.
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2. Getting StartedStarting Captivate| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to start
Captivate from scratch. It's not running
| | 00:04 | at all, because I want to talk to you
a little bit about how Captivate works
| | 00:08 | and then we'll start our little tour so
that you can get right in and start working.
| | 00:11 | I've got Captivate right here in my
Start menu. I can click it. Captivate is
| | 00:19 | going to launch a welcome screen that
I'm always going to see when I start the
| | 00:23 | product. Captivate will want to
start with a welcome screen that you can
| | 00:26 | dismiss by simply selecting Don't show
again, but frankly it's so useful I like
| | 00:31 | to leave it there, because it's kind of
giving you a heads up or head start on
| | 00:35 | the project that you want to create.
| | 00:37 | If you have any recent projects that
you're working on, you can simply select
| | 00:40 | them from here or if you want to open a
new project that you've been working on
| | 00:44 | you can click on the Open button, or
if you starting up a new project you can
| | 00:48 | go ahead and start one by clicking on
any one of the options here. Plus, there
| | 00:53 | is a variety of information that
Captivate can give you about itself from the
| | 00:57 | tutorials over here or even if you
would like to go online, you can find out
| | 01:00 | more from Adobe about how Captivate works.
| | 01:03 | Now I want to point one thing out that
can be a little bit confusing when you
| | 01:07 | first start working with a product
like Captivate. Let me go back to the
| | 01:10 | Start menu and I'm going to
choose Captivate one more time.
| | 01:13 | Captivate actually launches different
instances of itself every time you start
| | 01:17 | or launch Captivate. So you can have
multiple projects open at the same time.
| | 01:22 | In fact, you can actually use
Captivate to create a presentation about
| | 01:26 | Captivate and that's one of the
reasons that Captivate allows you to have
| | 01:29 | multiple instances often at the same time.
| | 01:31 | So from here, all we need to do is
choose what kind of project we want to work with
| | 01:35 | or open a new project and begin.
What we are going to do is open an actual
| | 01:39 | project that I've created for you and
start to take a look at the interface.
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| Exploring Captivate's interface| 00:00 | Now before you can role up your
sleeves and start creating a presentation,
| | 00:04 | we'll want to orient ourselves to the
interface that Captivate has to offer for
| | 00:08 | creating things. And for that we'll
just go ahead and create a blank project
| | 00:11 | from scratch. I'll click on Blank
Project, select a screen size, I'm just going
| | 00:17 | to choose 640x480 and click OK.
| | 00:19 | Captivate automatically opens up into
one of its three views and I'll cover
| | 00:24 | those in just a second, but with all of
the views you have some basic tools and
| | 00:29 | some basic interface objects that I
would like to point out so that you can see
| | 00:32 | how Captivate works.
| | 00:34 | First off, like any other application
there are of course menu items and those
| | 00:38 | are group logically based on what the
menu has to offer. There are also some
| | 00:42 | buttons just under the menus that are
valuable, because they kind of represent
| | 00:46 | the things that you do frequently
and you really don't want to have to go
| | 00:49 | hunting in a menu to find them.
As an example, the preview.
| | 00:53 | Now we are going to take a look at
the preview frequently throughout these lessons,
| | 00:57 | but this is where you would
go to actually preview your project.
| | 01:00 | Of course, there are others that
represent things that you might frequently do.
| | 01:04 | On the side here, you'll notice that
there are some panels and oftentimes when
| | 01:10 | you working in a presentation tool,
it's nice to devote all of the screen space
| | 01:14 | that you have to the presentation as
opposed to investing it for things like
| | 01:18 | buttons that you might want to click.
| | 01:20 | What's nice about Captivate is that
you can kind of have your cake and eat it too.
| | 01:23 | If you look here in the dividing
line between this set of tasks and the
| | 01:29 | main work area, there is a little
gray area that I can click and that will
| | 01:33 | quickly hide those buttons for times
that I don't need them and then of course
| | 01:36 | I can reveal them for times that I might.
| | 01:39 | Now this concept is pervasive
throughout Captivate and you'll see it in a few
| | 01:42 | different places. Of course, I can do
the something down here at the bottom in
| | 01:46 | this view as well, and that's pretty
convenient. We are going to spend some
| | 01:50 | specific time looking at each of the
different view options that Captivate has
| | 01:53 | to offer, but I wanted to point out
that there is a pull-down menu that allows
| | 01:57 | you to get to them up here in the
upper right. And you can choose from the
| | 02:02 | Storyboard, the Edit and the Branching
View by simply selecting which of the
| | 02:07 | views that you want.
| | 02:09 | Now this is the Storyboard View and
in the rest of the lessons for this chapter,
| | 02:13 | we are going to take a look
at each of these views specifically so
| | 02:15 | that I can show you the tools that
they have to offer and help you to
| | 02:18 | understand how you might use them.
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| Using the storyboard| 00:00 | If you've ever used Microsoft's
PowerPoint, then the Storyboard View should be
| | 00:04 | something that's familiar. And as the
first of the views that I'm going to
| | 00:08 | cover, it allows you to work with the overall
project from sort of 50,000 foot standpoint.
| | 00:14 | Imagine that you have printed out your
slides and laid them on a table. Well,
| | 00:18 | one of the first things that you might
want to be able to do, for example, is
| | 00:21 | grab a slide and reorder it. So I'm
going to take this one, which is slide C,
| | 00:25 | and just change it. So now it's right
after slide A. In fact, I can do this
| | 00:29 | with multiple slides by Shift+Selecting
and then dragging the entire group of slides.
| | 00:36 | There are other project level things
that I can do from the Storyboard View.
| | 00:40 | For example, if there is a slide in
the mix that I just don't like, I can
| | 00:43 | select it and I can delete it. Now
Captivate is frequently going to show you a
| | 00:48 | little dialog box to ask you to stop
and thing about what you are doing.
| | 00:52 | And if these dialog boxes become cumbersome
or annoying, you can always ask them not
| | 00:56 | to appear again. I actually like them
because as in the heat of the moment,
| | 01:01 | I tend to get a little bit sloppy and
sometimes I do things that maybe I
| | 01:04 | shouldn't have done like,
for example, delete a slide.
| | 01:06 | So I'm going to leave that there. And
I'm actually not going to delete this
| | 01:09 | slide, because maybe what I really
want to do is just hide the slide.
| | 01:13 | For example, if I have a presentation
that has some slides in it, and it's an
| | 01:17 | overall deck that I use for a larger
presentation, but I want to create a
| | 01:21 | subversion or a mini version of that,
it's convenient to be able to simply
| | 01:25 | select a slide as I have
done here and then click Hide.
| | 01:29 | When I publish this presentation, the
slide won't be visible. Yet I won't have
| | 01:32 | to create two copies of Captivate
projects in order to have this. In other
| | 01:37 | words, I can very quickly repurpose a
presentation by hiding or, if I want to,
| | 01:41 | showing the slide within my deck.
| | 01:44 | And then the final thing that I might
want to do speaking repurposing is if I
| | 01:47 | have several slides that I want to copy
or duplicate, I can Shift+Select them,
| | 01:53 | I can copy them, and then I'll click
the slide after which the new ones are
| | 01:58 | going to appear, and I'll choose Paste.
| | 02:02 | But I'm actually going to undo that,
because there is a quicker way.
| | 02:06 | If I'm comfortable with Captivate, and I hope
you will be as a result of watching all
| | 02:10 | of these lessons, I know that I can
Shift+Select the slides that I want and I
| | 02:15 | can right-click on them. In fact, in
many places in Captivate I can right-click
| | 02:19 | on things to operate on them, and
it's a little bit more efficient to
| | 02:22 | right-click and then choose Copy
slide and then I'll just paste the slides.
| | 02:30 | Or if I'm a real power user, I'll go
ahead and undo that. What I'll do is I'll
| | 02:37 | Shift+Select the slides that I like
and simply duplicate the slides.
| | 02:42 | And of course as an extreme power user,
I'm going to learn the Ctrl+D key command.
| | 02:48 | It's something that I use frequently
within Captivate, because Captivate allows
| | 02:52 | me to reuse work very, very quickly
as opposed to reinventing the wheel.
| | 02:57 | So by selecting a slide or two or even
a larger group of slides, holding the
| | 03:01 | Ctrl key down and typing D, I have
repurposed a lot of work very quickly.
| | 03:05 | Then of course I can go ahead and
update whatever content I need to.
| | 03:08 | So that's the Storyboard View, it's a
very convenient way if you'd to work at
| | 03:11 | your project at the project level.
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| Using the Edit view| 00:00 | When you first open a file in Captivate,
you are going to go to the Storyboard View,
| | 00:04 | but most of the work that you do
in Captivate is going to be done in the
| | 00:08 | Edit View, and you can get there by
choosing Edit View from the pull-down menu,
| | 00:12 | and there, you are in Edit View.
| | 00:14 | However, there is the faster way. I'm
going to go back to Storyboard View and
| | 00:18 | if I want to edit a particular slide,
all I need to do is double-click that
| | 00:22 | slide and Captivate will take me
into the Edit View for that slide.
| | 00:26 | Now the Edit View has a variety of
different tools, and there are many.
| | 00:30 | Depending on the kinds of things that
you might want to do with your project,
| | 00:33 | you may use any of, or all of, or none
of them. The good news is that if there
| | 00:37 | are tools that you don't want to use
that are visible, you can hide them to
| | 00:41 | make more screen space for your slide.
It makes it easier to see what you are doing.
| | 00:45 | We are not going to use the Library for
those lessons, nor are we going to use
| | 00:48 | the Timeline. So I'm going to hide them
by clicking on this little gray bar and
| | 00:53 | that hides the entire panel set and
we'll click on this little gray bar and
| | 00:57 | that will hide that entire panel set,
and now I'm using more of my screen for
| | 01:01 | the slide which is easier on my eyes
and makes it more convenient for the work
| | 01:05 | that I'm trying to do.
| | 01:06 | One of the more useful panels that you
are going to use is the Filmstrip panel.
| | 01:11 | It's a kin to PowerPoint's Outline
panel and it allows you to see all of the
| | 01:15 | slides in your project in one place
while you are in Edit View. If for no other
| | 01:19 | reason than because you can click to
jump from slide to slide, this is an
| | 01:23 | incredibly useful panel. Because, for
example, I might want to capture or copy
| | 01:27 | something from this slide and then I
can paste it on to another slide in my
| | 01:32 | project. Again, it makes it
easy to reuse things that way.
| | 01:35 | There is also a set of tools that I'll
use to add things to my slide, and those
| | 01:39 | tools are over here. We are going to
cover those and some detail in a future
| | 01:43 | lesson, so I'm not going to focus on
that aspect of the toolbar. But I do want
| | 01:47 | to point out that this configuration
is something that the people who built
| | 01:51 | Captivate thought it was a good starting point.
| | 01:54 | You may disagree, and you can configure
Captivate to work however you want to.
| | 01:58 | For example, I would like to move the
Filmstrips so that it's not vertical and
| | 02:02 | to the left, but that is horizontal
and above my slide. That's just the way I
| | 02:07 | prefer to work. I can do that by simply
grabbing these little dimples here, and
| | 02:12 | then I'm going to drag and all I need
to do is drag the Filmstrip up and above
| | 02:17 | my slide and there I've reconfigured
the interface to be the way I would like
| | 02:20 | it to be for this particular project.
| | 02:23 | The same is true of the tools. In fact,
I can grab these tools and if I'm used
| | 02:28 | to using other graphics products, I
might be familiar with the fact that I can
| | 02:31 | use a floating palette for my tools. I
actually like the way Captivate used to
| | 02:36 | be in previous versions. So what I'm
going to do is grab the toolbar and drag
| | 02:40 | it down here to the bottom and dock
it at the bottom of the interface.
| | 02:46 | You can set Captivate up to be anyway
that you like it to be. In fact, if there
| | 02:50 | are tools that you are not seeing that
you think you would like to be able to
| | 02:52 | use, you can even reveal those by
selecting them from the Window menu, and
| | 02:57 | there are a variety of tools
that we'll cover in other lessons.
| | 03:00 | Once you've configured Captivate to
work the way you like it, you can go ahead
| | 03:05 | and just close your project. The next
time you open any project in Captivate in
| | 03:08 | the Edit View, you'll find all of your
tools right in the place you left them
| | 03:12 | so that you can begin working right away.
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| Using the Branching view| 00:00 | In this lesson we are going to look at
the Branching View, but before I show
| | 00:03 | you that, I need to help you to
understand what a branched presentation does.
| | 00:08 | So what I have here is a presentation
that the user can select from among the
| | 00:11 | three options that I have. In this case,
we'll choose Illustrator, and it will
| | 00:15 | provide some Illustrator content and then
take them to the end of the presentation.
| | 00:21 | Now I'm going to go ahead and close
the preview, and show you that the
| | 00:25 | Storyboard View doesn't really tell
that story. In the Storyboard View it looks
| | 00:29 | like this is a presentation that will
display some Photoshop information, some
| | 00:33 | Illustrator information, some Flash
information, and then take you to the end.
| | 00:37 | It's the Branching View that you can
use to understand that this presentation
| | 00:40 | has a little bit of a different
structure. So to get to the Branching View,
| | 00:44 | I'll choose it from the menu, and now
we can see there is a different structure
| | 00:48 | than just slide by slide by slide by slide.
| | 00:51 | What the Branching View allows me to do
is first off assess that structure.
| | 00:55 | So what I have is on an initial slide
that allows me to go to the Photoshop
| | 01:00 | content, or the Illustrator content,
or the Flash content. But beyond just
| | 01:06 | assessing that the structure exists I
can also troubleshoot and fix problems
| | 01:11 | with the structure of a presentation.
| | 01:13 | What I've discovered is that this
presentation doesn't actually do what it is
| | 01:17 | supposed to at the end of the Flash
content. It's suppose to just take me from
| | 01:21 | the Flash content to the end of the
presentation and for from strange reason
| | 01:25 | it's actually taking me from the end
of the Flash to the beginning of the
| | 01:29 | Illustrator content. And I can actually see
that because this is the outgoing link, right here.
| | 01:34 | We are going to cover branching, and
how to create interactivity, and how to
| | 01:38 | work with all of these tools in some
more detail, but just to show you that
| | 01:42 | I can correct a problem here,
I'm going to show you how to do it.
| | 01:46 | I've selected this option here, which
is right now set to go to the beginning
| | 01:50 | of the Illustrator content and to
adjust it, I'm going to come over here to the
| | 01:54 | Properties panel, simply tell it to go
to the presentation end, click Apply and
| | 01:59 | now my structure looks the way that I
would expect it, each of the separate
| | 02:03 | options are isolated and they all drive you
to that end slide which is what I would expect.
| | 02:09 | So the Branching View is a great
tool for assessing the structure of a
| | 02:13 | presentation, troubleshooting that
structure, and then correcting any problems
| | 02:17 | that the troubleshooting might highlight.
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| Setting preferences| 00:00 | As with any other application,
Captivate has a set of preferences and in this movie
| | 00:04 | I want to show you a couple of
these preferences can make your life a lot
| | 00:08 | easier by giving you a
head start on your projects.
| | 00:11 | First of all, I'll point out that if
you choose Edit > Preferences now with
| | 00:15 | nothing open, you will only see a
limited set of preferences and they are not
| | 00:19 | generally that helpful. So I'm actually
going to cancel this and show you that
| | 00:24 | you can edit the preferences with a
blank project open and it doesn't matter
| | 00:28 | what the project is. I'm just going to
choose a Blank Project, I'll leave the
| | 00:31 | default size set and I'll just click OK.
| | 00:34 | Now when I select Edit > Preferences,
I have a set of preferences that is
| | 00:40 | little more robust. I'm going to start
with the Global Preferences. Now these
| | 00:44 | are just application preferences and
I'm really not going to focus on them
| | 00:47 | because frankly you can set them
however you want them to, but I'll point out
| | 00:51 | one thing. I did talk about dialog
boxes that were warnings that will appear
| | 00:55 | and you may decide that you don't want them to
appear and then realize that they are helpful.
| | 01:00 | If you want to bring a dialog box back
that you've told no longer to appear,
| | 01:03 | you can always click on Confirmation
messages and you can tell Captivate which
| | 01:08 | ones to either bring back if you have
dispensed with them or which ones you just
| | 01:13 | don't ever want to see right from the
get go. So for example, if I don't ever
| | 01:17 | want to see the Remove audio warning,
I'll go ahead and turn that off.
| | 01:21 | This will allow me to hit the Delete key to
remove audio from my project, which may
| | 01:25 | or may not be a good thing.
| | 01:26 | I wanted to show you where you could
turn those back on if you have turned them off.
| | 01:29 | And then we'll click OK. The
next set of preferences are under the
| | 01:33 | Defaults, under Global and this is
where you basically tell Captivate how you
| | 01:38 | want your projects to be setup from the scratch.
| | 01:40 | For example, if your corporate colors
are light blue, well then you may want
| | 01:45 | all of your background colors to be that
light blue. So I'll just go ahead and choose that.
| | 01:50 | Now anytime I create a project in
Captivate, blank or otherwise, it's going to
| | 01:53 | create the background color of the
project as blue. We are going to learn in
| | 01:57 | later lessons how we can override that,
how we can add to that or whatever we
| | 02:00 | need to but for starters, it's a good
idea to set your projects up the way that
| | 02:04 | you want them to work in the first place.
| | 02:06 | And you will see that there are many,
many options for example, Fade in and
| | 02:10 | Fade out. Well you don't know what that
means but in later lessons I'll explain
| | 02:14 | how you can have objects Fade in and
Fade out and if you are changing that
| | 02:19 | frequently over and over and over again,
for every single object, well then
| | 02:22 | you might want to come into your
Preferences and set, for example, the things Fade
| | 02:26 | in only but do not Fade out. Of course,
it's a preference. So it's something
| | 02:30 | that you can choose, but I wanted to
point out where that was because it will
| | 02:33 | give you that leg-up that I mentioned.
| | 02:35 | The final thing that I want to point
out is under Project there are some
| | 02:38 | specific settings for projects and
this isn't necessarily related to the
| | 02:43 | content of the project. For example,
in this case, if you are going to build
| | 02:47 | projects, you may want to build
information into them so that someone who takes
| | 02:51 | this project from you and begins to work
with it can understand that you are the author.
| | 02:54 | So I'm going to go ahead
and type my Author Name.
| | 02:59 | Anytime I create a project, it's going
to have that author information and then of course,
| | 03:03 | I can add Company, E-mail,
Website and other information, for example,
| | 03:07 | Copyright. If I don't want you to be
able to pick this information up and use
| | 03:10 | it for yourself, well then I can
indicate that it is copyrighted information.
| | 03:14 | Of course it's a good idea to
actually copyright things that say you are
| | 03:17 | copyrighted but you can go
ahead and add that tag there.
| | 03:21 | And then the final thing that I
wanted to talk about with respect to
| | 03:24 | preferences is Start and End and this
is because this is one of those things
| | 03:28 | that people ask me all the time about
how to fix in Captivate. The Start and
| | 03:32 | the End of a project can Fade in and/
or Fade out and as we are going to see
| | 03:36 | when we talk about the Timeline, that
could have an effect on the timing of things.
| | 03:40 | If things are fading in and the
project fades in, it may seem like an awfully
| | 03:44 | long fade in. So I can tell the
project to or not to fade in on the first slide.
| | 03:50 | And I can do the same thing at
the last slide. It's truly a preference,
| | 03:55 | but I wanted to point it out because
it's one of those preferences that it's
| | 03:58 | not really clear exactly where you
would find that and so that's why I wanted
| | 04:01 | to point it out that it's here in Preferences.
With the project open, choose Start and End.
| | 04:06 | The rest of the preferences are either
specific to the task, for example there
| | 04:10 | are preferences for Recording, there
are preferences to working with quizzes
| | 04:14 | and we'll cover those when we
actually get into those particular aspects of
| | 04:18 | working with Captivate, or they are
truly preferences that depend on the project
| | 04:22 | you are working on. For example,
your Flash size and quality. Well, that
| | 04:26 | depends on what you have in the project.
| | 04:28 | So I'm not going to go into those in
detail here. I wanted to show you how you
| | 04:32 | can set yourself up to begin working by
setting your defaults, and setting some
| | 04:37 | of your Start and End preferences. Once
you are done, click OK and from now on,
| | 04:43 | every project that you create will
start out with blue background slides.
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|
|
3. Creating a Basic PresentationStarting from scratch| 00:00 | In this lesson, as well as the rest
of the lessons for this chapter, we are
| | 00:03 | going to go ahead and create
a presentation from scratch.
| | 00:07 | So we'll start with a blank project
and the first decision that we'll need to
| | 00:11 | make is how big will the project be.
I'm going to select the Size from the
| | 00:16 | pull-down menu. I'm actually going to
choose the default that was here but if
| | 00:20 | the size that I'm looking for isn't
represented by the choices here, I can
| | 00:23 | always enter a custom size
into the dialog boxes here.
| | 00:27 | Once I click OK, I've begun the
process of creating a presentation.
| | 00:32 | I'm in Storyboard view and it's here that
I want to take a look at the basic unit of
| | 00:37 | our presentation and that's the slide.
One of the things that I need to edit
| | 00:40 | about the slide are its overall
properties and I can access those properties
| | 00:44 | right here in the Storyboard view
from this link here, or I'll hit Cancel.
| | 00:49 | If I double-click on the slide to jump
over into Edit view, I can also edit the
| | 00:53 | Slide Properties from this link here
or what's really nice about Captivate is
| | 00:58 | that if you double-click on just about
anything, you can dig into that thing's
| | 01:01 | properties. I just double-clicked on
the slide itself and because there was
| | 01:05 | nothing on the slide, it
brought up the Slide Properties.
| | 01:09 | Now from here I'm going to go ahead and
edit the basic properties of the slide
| | 01:13 | to set it up so that it looks the way
that I want it to. And the first thing
| | 01:16 | that I need to add is a Label. I can't
stress enough how important it is that
| | 01:23 | you label your slides with some type
of descriptive information so that when
| | 01:27 | you are working with the project,
you can tell what a slide is by simply
| | 01:30 | looking at its label. That way, you
won't have to go into the slide and
| | 01:33 | actually examine its contents to
understand what it's supposed to do.
| | 01:36 | Now the next thing that I'm going to
do is override the project's Default
| | 01:40 | Background color. In many cases, for a
presentation, you will want one slide to
| | 01:44 | standout and you can do that by simply
selecting a different Background color
| | 01:48 | than the project's Default. In this
case, I'm going to choose a green color.
| | 01:52 | Nothing is changed on the slide itself
behind the dialog box and it won't until
| | 01:56 | I click OK. So I'll go ahead and do
that and there, I've set the background
| | 02:00 | color for the slide. At this point,
I'm underway. I can go ahead and add
| | 02:04 | objects to this slide to continue
working on it but this is my basic unit.
| | 02:08 | If I wanted to create a presentation
that actually use this color consistently
| | 02:13 | throughout, bear in mind that instead
of simply duplicating the slide over and
| | 02:17 | over again, it's probably more
efficient for me to come over to the Edit menu,
| | 02:21 | select the Preferences and reset the
Preference for the Global > Defaults, so
| | 02:26 | that the background color of every new slide
that I create matches the color that I want.
| | 02:31 | I point that out because I see a lot
of people when working with Captivate,
| | 02:35 | coloring a slide and then duplicating
it as a way to create new slides, which
| | 02:39 | is not quite as efficient as being
able to simply choose Insert > Blank Slide
| | 02:44 | or Shift+Ctrl+J. Because I have already
set the Background Default to match the
| | 02:49 | color that I want every new slide that
I create, matches that color. Of course,
| | 02:53 | I still need to come in to the Slide's
Properties and edit its Label and I can
| | 03:01 | go ahead and do so.
| | 03:04 | So that's the basic of starting out
the process of working with the Slide's
| | 03:07 | Properties. Now I'll click on
Properties one more time because I know there was
| | 03:11 | a lot of stuff in here that I didn't
really cover and that's because these
| | 03:14 | properties relate to things that
we'll learn about in later chapters, for
| | 03:18 | example, Slide Timing and Transitions
and Quality of the information that's
| | 03:22 | presented on the slide.
| | 03:23 | We will go ahead and take a look at
that later, but for now, we are done with
| | 03:27 | this particular project, so we'll click
OK and as with any project that you are
| | 03:31 | working on in Captivate, it's a good
idea to go ahead and save your project to
| | 03:34 | make sure that you don't
lose any work that you've done.
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| Setting a background image| 00:00 | In this lesson, we are going to make
slide 1 look like slide 2 and before we do that,
| | 00:05 | let's just have a quick look at slide 2.
| | 00:06 | In this slide, I have a Background
color and a Background image in place.
| | 00:13 | The image is something that I imported into
the Captivate slide and that's what I'm
| | 00:16 | going to show you how to do.
| | 00:18 | So we'll go ahead to slide 1 and I'm
going to click on Slide Properties and the
| | 00:22 | first thing that I'm going to do is
change the background image. So I'll go
| | 00:25 | ahead and click Change background image.
And I'm going to click on Import.
| | 00:29 | Now you can see that there are options
from the Library here that's what Captivate
| | 00:34 | is offering, to select an image from the library.
| | 00:36 | We haven't talked about Libraries, we
are not going to use them for this lesson
| | 00:39 | so I'm going to go ahead and import
something assuming that I don't have it in
| | 00:42 | my library. We'll click on Import
and I have this image of a woman.
| | 00:53 | Captivate supports the use of a variety of
different image file types, anything from JPEG
| | 00:58 | to Windows Metafiles to PNG files.
This actually happens to be a PNG file.
| | 01:03 | So we'll click on Open and we'll click OK.
| | 01:10 | Now there is a couple of things about
this image that are important to realize.
| | 01:13 | First off, this image is already the
correct size for the presentation. Whoever
| | 01:19 | created the image, in this case, I
created it for myself, but if you're having
| | 01:21 | someone else create it for you, it's
important to know the dimensions of your
| | 01:24 | presentation so you can direct the
person creating the images for you.
| | 01:28 | This also happens to be an image with
some transparency in it. All of the area
| | 01:33 | that you see as white here is
transparent. This happens to be a PNG file, which
| | 01:37 | can have transparent pixels. And I used
this for this example because I wanted
| | 01:43 | to show you how you can mix and
match the color of your presentation with
| | 01:47 | images that you use for your
presentation. Let me show you what I mean.
| | 01:50 | I am going to go ahead and select Slide
Properties and I'm going to change the
| | 01:55 | color of the Background for this slide
to green to match slide 2 that we are
| | 02:00 | going to recreate here. We'll click OK
and there the background image is green.
| | 02:05 | So if I use a pixel based file that
offers transparency in those pixels, for
| | 02:11 | example, a PNG file. Then I can go
ahead and mix and match the color of the
| | 02:15 | Background of the slide with an image
that I have put on the slide to create
| | 02:19 | the effect that I'm looking for. At
this point now, I basically have a
| | 02:23 | background that I can either
duplicate by duplicating the slide or I can
| | 02:27 | recreate each time if I want to.
| | 02:30 | In later chapters we are actually
going to learn how to create a design
| | 02:32 | template that would allow us to
essentially set this up as a master file but
| | 02:36 | for now, the quickest way to go ahead
and duplicate this would simply be to
| | 02:40 | select my slide that I have created and
to either right-click on it and choose
| | 02:44 | Duplicate Slide or hit Ctrl+D and
then from there I can go ahead and add my content.
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| Adding text| 00:00 | In this lesson, we are going to add
the most basic object that we can to a
| | 00:03 | slide in Captivate, and that's the
text caption. In Captivate, a text caption
| | 00:08 | is any text that you want to add to a
slide. What we are going to do is we are
| | 00:13 | going to recreate Slide 2 here on Slide 1.
| | 00:16 | So to get started, I'll double-click on
Slide 2 and we'll jump into Edit mode,
| | 00:20 | and let's do a quick little survey of
what we have, so we can see where we are
| | 00:23 | headed. This is a caption, it has
some text in it, it's styled a particular way,
| | 00:27 | but there is no graphic
treatment around the text.
| | 00:31 | In this caption, there is a graphic
treatment around the text and that's done
| | 00:34 | to help the text stand out against the
background. We'll go over to Slide 1 and
| | 00:39 | we'll use the Text Caption tool,
which can be found on the Object toolbar.
| | 00:44 | When I click the Text Caption tool,
it will bring up the new Text Caption
| | 00:48 | dialog box and before we continue, I
just want to hit Cancel. I'm going to show
| | 00:52 | you that if for some reason, your
toolbar is not visible, you can always get
| | 00:56 | your toolbar back by selecting
Window > Toolbars and then Object. Mine is
| | 01:02 | visible, so we'll go ahead and click
on the Caption tool and we are underway.
| | 01:06 | Fortunately, Captivate has a very long
memory. Anything that I have done in the
| | 01:11 | dialog box for captions or pretty much
anything else, Captivate will remember
| | 01:15 | and that means it's a lot more
convenient for another slide, where I want to
| | 01:19 | use text that looks like the
slides previous that I have created.
| | 01:22 | In this case here, I have some text
that is Arial, 24 pt, so that's close.
| | 01:28 | We'll drag and select over it.
Obviously I need to edit the content, so I'm
| | 01:31 | going to go ahead and do that. Now the
type is correct, I'm not sure if this
| | 01:38 | looks right. I think it might, but to
find out, I can either click OK or better
| | 01:43 | yet, I can click Apply which will put
the caption onto the slide and allow me
| | 01:47 | to see it at least somewhat in context and I
can see that the type is a little bit too small.
| | 01:52 | So to fix that, I'll drag and select
the type and then I'll edit its size, and
| | 01:57 | an important note here; if you want to
edit the size of some text in the New
| | 02:02 | Text Caption dialog box, make sure
that you drag and select it. If you don't,
| | 02:06 | for example, if I left my insertion
cursor here and change the Size of the
| | 02:10 | type, it wouldn't apply to the
type because it's not selected.
| | 02:13 | So that's just a little note for you
there. We'll go ahead and drag and select
| | 02:16 | the type. I'll change its Size and
we'll make it larger, and then we'll click
| | 02:22 | Apply and you can see that it is
larger in context and that should be just
| | 02:28 | about right. So I'm going to click OK,
and then the final step is simply to
| | 02:32 | move the object by clicking-and-dragging on the
object and I'll place it where it needs to be.
| | 02:37 | Now for the second caption, I'm
going to go ahead and return to the Text
| | 02:41 | Caption tool here, and this Text
Caption doesn't want to be Arial, 24 pt.
| | 02:47 | In fact, none of the type wants to be the
same size and formatting that I used in
| | 02:52 | the previous caption. I'm actually
going to leave it. We'll go ahead and type
| | 02:56 | in here because I want to show you
how you can edit it after the fact, but
| | 03:00 | there is another step that we need to take.
| | 03:01 | So, first off, let's go ahead and
get our text in place. There, for our
| | 03:12 | imaginary sales presentation, we want
to make the sale about them and not you,
| | 03:16 | good advice for a sales person. I'll
click Apply and I'll see that it's not
| | 03:21 | treated graphically the way that I want
it to be. I want it to be in a gray box
| | 03:25 | and for that I'm going to choose a different
Caption type than the previous Text Caption used.
| | 03:30 | The previous one used a Caption type
called Transparent. There are many, many
| | 03:36 | of options that are built right into
Captivate that I can use. Fortunately
| | 03:40 | though, as I mentioned, Captivate has
a long memory and because of that long
| | 03:43 | memory, I can choose a type that I had
used previously because anything I had
| | 03:48 | used in previous sessions is
going to appear above that line.
| | 03:51 | These are all the ones that are built-
in. These are all the ones that I have
| | 03:54 | been using previously. This halo type
is one that I want, so we'll click Apply
| | 04:00 | and I can see that it looks correct
with the exception of the formatting for
| | 04:04 | the text. I'm going to click OK
because I want to show you that if you have
| | 04:09 | text in a caption on a Captivate slide
and you want to edit it, you can always
| | 04:14 | right-click on it and choose Properties and get
to the Caption dialog box, but you don't need to.
| | 04:20 | If you double-click on your caption,
you can edit the content of the caption,
| | 04:24 | which I don't need to do here, or you
can edit the formatting by looking up at
| | 04:28 | the Formatting toolbar, which will appear
when you've double-clicked on the caption.
| | 04:32 | So we are going to change the typeface
to Trebuchet MS, which is the typeface
| | 04:36 | that I want for this presentation. And
we'll make it a little bit smaller so
| | 04:42 | that it fits in there. We'll go with 12 pt,
and we are not going to make it bold, there.
| | 04:50 | The only thing I need to do is to
relocate this box. So we'll go ahead and
| | 04:54 | relocate it and size it the way that
I want by grabbing the corner handles,
| | 05:04 | and there you have it. That's all there
is to adding text to a slide using the Caption tool.
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| Aligning and distributing objects| 00:00 | Creating a clean professional
presentation will make a world of difference when
| | 00:04 | you show it to others. If the elements
on your slides are aligned and evenly
| | 00:08 | spaced, then your presentation will
have more impact because sloppiness is
| | 00:12 | distracting, and it really drags the
user's attention away from the content
| | 00:16 | that you are trying to deliver.
| | 00:17 | Fortunately, Captivate has a variety of
tools that you can use to create a nice
| | 00:22 | tight, aligned presentation or slides
within a presentation, and that's what we
| | 00:27 | are going to take a look at in this lesson.
| | 00:29 | The slide that we are driving towards
here is actually what we have on Slide 2.
| | 00:32 | We'll double-click on that and you can
see that we have got some objects, these
| | 00:36 | are all Text Captions, this object has
a specific distance from the side and
| | 00:40 | top, these objects are all aligned
and evenly spaced, and the text in this
| | 00:45 | green object sits at the
top of the Text Caption.
| | 00:48 | To recreate that, we'll go over to
Slide 1, and we'll start working with the
| | 00:52 | content that's already there. Let's
start with the top caption. Whenever you
| | 00:57 | select an object in Captivate, if you
look at the top here, you will see that
| | 01:00 | you have the ability to precisely
locate that object on the slide. In this
| | 01:05 | case, I want all of my objects that are
at the top of the slide to be 20 pixels
| | 01:09 | from the left-hand side.
| | 01:11 | So I'll drag and select 50, replace it
with 20, and then this caption is now
| | 01:17 | precisely 20 pixels from the left-hand
side of the slide, and I can do the same
| | 01:21 | with the top. I want it to be, maybe
10 pixels down, there. By knowing that,
| | 01:26 | anytime I create a slide and I have an
object that's at the top of the slide,
| | 01:30 | whether it's a text caption or
anything else, I can know how to position that
| | 01:34 | object so that it's going to give my
entire presentation a nice tight, look and feel.
| | 01:39 | And let's draw our attention to this
caption here. In this caption, I have an
| | 01:43 | alignment issue with the type in the
caption. If I double-click on this phrase
| | 01:48 | here, it's sitting in the middle of
the caption and really the effect that I
| | 01:52 | want is for this to be a sort of a
header. So what I'm going to do is I'm going
| | 01:55 | to reset the Vertical
alignment for the text in the caption.
| | 01:59 | By double-clicking on it, I have gone
into Caption Editing mode, and all I need
| | 02:02 | to do is come up here to the Align
Text Top button. Click that, and now the
| | 02:07 | text in that caption is aligned
vertically. The final thing that I need to do
| | 02:11 | is to work on these captions here.
| | 02:13 | This caption is actually sitting
underneath the green caption that I wanted to
| | 02:17 | sit on top of, and that's an order
issue that I can adjust very quickly.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to right-click on it and
choose Order and I want to bring it to the
| | 02:25 | front. If there were several items
and I just wanted to adjust the stacking
| | 02:29 | order, I could do that by selecting
Bring Forward, Send Backwards, or whatever,
| | 02:32 | but in this case I'm going to bring it
all the way to the front and there we go.
| | 02:35 | Now I'm going to eyeball this. I'm just
kind of bring it into place because the
| | 02:39 | first step that I need to take is to
actually duplicate this item, and very
| | 02:43 | much like duplicating slides, to
duplicate an object, I can right-click on it
| | 02:47 | and choose Duplicate, or I can use
good old Ctrl+D, hold the Ctrl key down,
| | 02:53 | type a D, type another D, and
there I have got three of these things.
| | 02:57 | To make them so that they lineup
correctly though, I'm going to eyeball them,
| | 03:01 | and my problem here is that they are
just not aligned. In fact, they are not
| | 03:07 | even distributed correctly and I could
have spent a lot of time trying to line
| | 03:10 | them up, but that's not going to be
very useful. Instead what I'm going to do
| | 03:14 | is I'm going to select the bottom one,
I'm going to Shift+Select the next one
| | 03:19 | and then the third one, and I selected
in that order because I wanted to show
| | 03:23 | you that the order in which
you select your objects matters.
| | 03:26 | I selected the first one its handles
are light. The next ones have darker
| | 03:30 | handles, which indicates that when I
apply an alignment to these objects.
| | 03:34 | The objects will align to that first object.
So for example, if I wanted to align
| | 03:39 | these to the right, they would all line
up to the right-hand side of this object.
| | 03:43 | So to provide my alignment, I'm going
to use the Alignment toolbar and again,
| | 03:48 | the Alignment toolbar like any other,
if it's not visible, you can always get
| | 03:51 | it by selecting Window > Toolbars, in
this case, Alignment. It is visible, so
| | 03:58 | I'm just going to go ahead and use it
but I'm going to adjust it because I like
| | 04:01 | it to be right over here, right
underneath my slide. I use Alignment all the
| | 04:06 | time in Captivate and so I
like to have it nice and handy.
| | 04:09 | As I said, I'm going to align these.
I'm actually just going to align these
| | 04:11 | Center. So all I need to do is click on
the Align Center button and bang! They
| | 04:16 | are all centered. In fact, if I wanted
to align these to the green object, and
| | 04:22 | center everything, I'm just going to
hold the Shift key down and click on the
| | 04:25 | green caption and align everything on
Center, and now everything is aligned
| | 04:29 | nicely, however they are
not distributed correctly.
| | 04:32 | There is a different amount of space
among the three different objects.
| | 04:36 | To fix that, I'm going to use Distribute.
I'll Shift+Select my objects. Instead of
| | 04:41 | using the Alignment Options that
Captivate has to offer, I'm going to use
| | 04:45 | Distribute, in this case, Distribute
Vertically. And by clicking that, what
| | 04:49 | Captivate has done is it has inserted
the same amount of space among all of
| | 04:54 | these objects and now everything
is aligned and distributed nicely.
| | 04:59 | The final step is for me just to
drag and select over the entire set and I
| | 05:03 | can move everything around at once,
once I have it aligned so that I can place
| | 05:08 | it precisely where I want it to be.
And if your goal is to create a nice
| | 05:14 | professional tight looking
presentation then the Alignment and Distribution
| | 05:18 | features in Captivate are going to
be tools that you are going to use frequently.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding shapes| 00:00 | Oftentimes with the slide that you're
creating in Captivate, you want to add
| | 00:04 | some graphic elements to that slide
for a couple of different reasons.
| | 00:07 | One, you may want to draw attention to
a content object on the slide by putting
| | 00:12 | a graphic element around it that
draws the reader's attention to it. Also
| | 00:16 | you may want to add a graphic element
that indicates some type of consistency.
| | 00:21 | To show you what I mean, let's take a
look at the finished version in this
| | 00:24 | project. What I have here is a circle
and a line that always indicates at the
| | 00:29 | top of the slide when there is a
header, and again that's just a bit of a
| | 00:33 | graphical consistency so that the user
whenever they see that knows that this
| | 00:37 | some information that is header information.
| | 00:40 | And down here we have a rectangle
or actually a pair of rectangles that
| | 00:43 | encircles some textual content and that
provides a little bit of a callout to
| | 00:48 | that textual content so that the
user can more quickly access it.
| | 00:51 | To add these graphic elements to a
slide, we are going to use Captivate's
| | 00:55 | drawing objects. And what we are
going to do is recreate this look on this
| | 01:00 | unfinished version of the slide. As
with any other toolbar, if the toolbar that
| | 01:04 | you are looking for is not available,
you can't find it, you can always access
| | 01:08 | it by selecting Window > Toolbars, in
this case I want the Drawing objects.
| | 01:12 | The Drawing objects appear up here.
Remember that if you want to move them around
| | 01:15 | you can. I'm going to leave them
because I like them to be right there.
| | 01:18 | That's a good consistent
place for me to look for them.
| | 01:21 | Before we actually create any new
objects, I want to do a little survey of the
| | 01:25 | objects that we have here so that you
can understand what your objects can be.
| | 01:29 | In this case, I have one rectangle
underneath another rectangle, all of which
| | 01:33 | sit underneath this text
content or these text captions.
| | 01:38 | If I select this first rectangle and
double-click it, just like with any other
| | 01:42 | object in Captivate, when you double-
click an object, you are going to look at
| | 01:45 | its dialog box for its options. And
the options that I have here are, for
| | 01:50 | example, Stroke color and Fill color.
| | 01:53 | Now in this case I have the Stroke set
to a minimum amount and it's the same
| | 01:57 | color as the Fill. So basically what I
have is a solid rectangle. If I want to
| | 02:02 | change that for some reason, I can go
ahead and change that right here.
| | 02:05 | I can set perhaps the Fill color to be some
sort of green. And to test it out, I can
| | 02:11 | always click Apply and see how I like
it. Now, that's not really going to mix
| | 02:15 | with the presentation colors that I
have so far. So I'm actually going to
| | 02:19 | change that back to black,
click Apply and then click OK.
| | 02:25 | Now this object here is a little bit
different, so if I double-click on it
| | 02:28 | we can take a look at it and it has a Stroke
color and a Stroke width in this case of 4 pixels.
| | 02:33 | The Fill color is a little bit
different. And we are going to see how
| | 02:37 | to add a Fill color in a moment when we
create an object, but if you wanted to
| | 02:41 | change a Fill color you could do so right
here just as with the previous rectangle.
| | 02:46 | To an object on the slide, you can
make adjustments by simply double-clicking
| | 02:49 | it and working with its options. But
what we need to do is to create some new
| | 02:53 | objects from the scratch. We are going to
build that graphic that's up here in the top right.
| | 02:58 | To do that, we'll select the Line tool,
and the Line tool is very basic.
| | 03:03 | It creates a line. Now I'll click and
I'll drag, now one of the things about the
| | 03:07 | Line tool is that if I click and drag,
I can create a line at any angle that I want.
| | 03:12 | But it will be more professional
if I create a nice straight horizontal line,
| | 03:18 | and instead of having to
eyeball it, what I'm going to do is hold the
| | 03:21 | Shift key down, and when I do,
Captivate will constrain that line along the
| | 03:25 | horizontal. In fact it will actually
constrain it along any 45-degree angle
| | 03:30 | that I like. So in this case, we'll go
ahead and constrain it horizontally and let go.
| | 03:35 | The defaults were set so that the line
was automatically black. If I wanted to
| | 03:40 | change it as I'm creating an object,
I can actually change it right here on the
| | 03:44 | Drawing toolbar. We are going to use
this in just a moment to change the color
| | 03:48 | of a different object, in this case the
circle object which we are going to add
| | 03:52 | to the mix. I'll select the circle
object and go ahead and add a circle.
| | 03:57 | Now the object on the toolbar is
actually called the Oval object and that's
| | 04:01 | because it's not going to create a
circle unless I tell it to. To force it into
| | 04:05 | creating a circle, I'm going to
hold the Shift Key down and that will
| | 04:08 | constrain it into a perfect circle.
| | 04:11 | Once I get the circle that I like,
I can go ahead and let go. And I get just
| | 04:16 | like with any other object on this
slide, an object with handles that will
| | 04:20 | allow me to resize it. So if I want
to make it an oval I can or if while
| | 04:25 | dragging it I want to
constrain it, I can constrain it.
| | 04:30 | What's happening here is that it's
not actually constraining to a circle.
| | 04:34 | I created the oval on purpose. Captivate
thinks well, you probably want to keep
| | 04:38 | that oval. All I'm doing is
enlarging the oval without distorting it.
| | 04:41 | So I'm actually going to delete that.
Get the Oval tool back, hold the Shift
| | 04:51 | key down, create my circle and then
let's go ahead and position it. I need to
| | 04:57 | adjust the center fill of this object
because I don't want it to be black.
| | 05:00 | I want it to be green. And it's tempting
to just double-click on it and set the
| | 05:05 | Fill transparency to 100. But when I
click Apply look what happens.
| | 05:10 | The Fill transparency allows me to see
through the object and I can see that this line
| | 05:15 | is overlapping the circle. It's not
perfectly aligned. And I could set the line
| | 05:20 | so that it perfectly aligns but that's
actually little more work than I need to do.
| | 05:24 | What I'd really rather do is go ahead
and set the Fill transparency back to 0
| | 05:28 | and choose a Fill color that matches
the background of the slide. And to do that,
| | 05:33 | I can either know the hex value
of the color, know which swatch I choose here,
| | 05:39 | or easier, I can just grab this
little eyedropper and pick a color, click Apply,
| | 05:45 | and then I'm good to go.
| | 05:48 | Then the final thing that I need to do
this object is set the Stroke width to
| | 05:51 | match the line. So we'll just go ahead
and beat that up to 4. Click Apply
| | 05:57 | and OK and there I have my object on
the screen. If I need to adjust it a
| | 06:02 | little bit, all I need to do is click
and drag to select the whole thing.
| | 06:08 | Move it to where I want it to be, and
there. I've used the drawing objects in
| | 06:12 | Captivate to create some basic, but
effective objects on the screen to help
| | 06:16 | draw my reader's attention to the
various content objects on the screen and to
| | 06:20 | provide some visual consistency.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding images| 00:00 | Although you can create many effective
graphic elements with Captivate alone,
| | 00:04 | you'll frequently need to bring in
elements from an external image editing
| | 00:07 | tool, such as Adobe Photoshop. And in this
lesson that's exactly what we are going to do.
| | 00:12 | What I have here are three slides, the
third of which is already finished and
| | 00:16 | we'll double-click on it to take a
look at it. What I have done as I have
| | 00:19 | brought in a picture of this woman to
add it to the slide to add some visual
| | 00:22 | appeal. This is the woman who is
actually suppose to be presenting this
| | 00:26 | information and so I wanted to add that to the
slide, just to add some richness to the experience.
| | 00:31 | This is an object sitting on the slide
just like any other. When I select it,
| | 00:36 | it has handles and those handles will
allow me to resize it and to move it.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to undo that because I don't want
that done to this slide. What I do want
| | 00:47 | to do is go to slide 1 and we are
going to go ahead and bring this same image
| | 00:52 | onto this slide to show you how it's done.
| | 00:54 | On the Object toolbar, there is a
tool called Image. When I click it, it
| | 00:59 | reveals the Open dialog box, which I
can select the file that I want. In this
| | 01:03 | case I'm going to select Woman_01. Note
before I click Open, Captivate can work
| | 01:08 | with a variety of different file
formats here, so you are not stuck with just
| | 01:11 | JPEG or GIF or one or two others.
| | 01:14 | Once I have it selected click Open,
Captivate will bring it onto the stage and
| | 01:18 | drop it into place. From here if I
wanted to edit the object, I could by
| | 01:23 | dragging its handles around etcetera.
But I want to point something out.
| | 01:26 | I don't need to. This object was
created ahead of time to match this
| | 01:30 | presentation. The presentation is 640
pixels wide by 480 pixels high. So is the
| | 01:37 | image and that's why it fits nicely into place.
| | 01:41 | If you don't happen to have access to
a graphic designer who can do this for
| | 01:44 | you or if you are not someone who can
actually do this work in Photoshop for
| | 01:47 | yourself, it's important to note that
you can edit an object once you brought
| | 01:52 | it into Captivate. If it's too small,
you can scale it up, although I want to
| | 01:56 | caution you. If you are scaling pixel
-based images, photographs up inside
| | 02:01 | Captivate, it won't take too long before
they will start to look blurry and not so good.
| | 02:05 | But there is another issue that we
need to consider and that is, what if the
| | 02:08 | file is too large? So let's go ahead
to slide 2 and I'm going to do the same
| | 02:13 | thing, I'm going to bring an image into
the slide, click Open. Captivate knows
| | 02:19 | that this image is too large and it's
asking me to deal with that issue now and
| | 02:24 | really I have two options, one I can
crop the image. When I click the Crop
| | 02:28 | button, this Crop Area here tells me
the size of the slide in relationship to
| | 02:32 | my image. So I can crop it by
moving the Crop Area around.
| | 02:37 | Now if I click OK, what it will do is
it will just lop off those piece of the
| | 02:43 | image that don't fit within the Crop
Area and that's not what I want for this
| | 02:46 | image, although that's often
appropriate for the work that you are doing.
| | 02:49 | What I want to do instead is have
Captivate resize the image; in this case it's
| | 02:54 | going to scale it down, so that it
fits on my slide. If I want, I can take
| | 02:59 | control of this by zooming in and out,
although frankly, I'm just going to let
| | 03:03 | Captivate choose best fit because
once it does, I'm going to get the effect
| | 03:08 | that I like, click OK, and
my image is on the slide.
| | 03:14 | There is one last thing that I might
want to do to an image that I have added
| | 03:17 | to my slide. I don't want to be able
to access this; I need to protect this
| | 03:21 | image from me. As I'm working on the
slide, I might accidentally grab it.
| | 03:24 | I might accidentally resize it. Those
are all things that I want to prevent.
| | 03:28 | One way to do that is to right-click
on this image and choose Merge into
| | 03:33 | Background and when I select Merge
into Background, it's going to become no
| | 03:38 | longer an object that I can edit,
but a background image for the slide.
| | 03:42 | And that's convenient because now there
is nothing that I can do to this image.
| | 03:46 | It's the background for the slide.
| | 03:49 | It turns out that I can actually
merge any object to the background of the
| | 03:52 | slide but most frequently, it's with a
graphic image that I want to do that and
| | 03:56 | that's why I showed you that there.
| | 03:58 | So bringing images into Captivate is a
very easy process. As long as you have
| | 04:02 | an image that you can work with,
you can simply import it to the stage.
| | 04:05 | You have some options for resizing it,
once you do and by doing so you can add some
| | 04:10 | nice extra visual appeal to your
presentations to take it that one step further.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Duplicating images| 00:00 | In Captivate, there are many, many,
many ways for you to reuse your work and
| | 00:06 | when I'm working on Captivate projects,
I tend to be a pack rat. I tend to save
| | 00:09 | everything and reuse as much as I can
because it saves me time. And in this lesson,
| | 00:14 | we are going to take a look at a real
quick way that you can do just exactly that.
| | 00:18 | What I have here is a slide that I have
build. It uses text captions, it has an
| | 00:22 | image in it and there are some drawing
objects on the slide, and frankly, every
| | 00:27 | slide from here on out wants to look
this exact same way except that it's going
| | 00:31 | to have different textual content.
| | 00:33 | So let's take a look and what I'm going
to do is create an entire presentation
| | 00:39 | by simply duplicating this work and
then updating the content. So you can see
| | 00:44 | that I have Making the Sale, some
drawing objects. That's going to be
| | 00:48 | consistent throughout. I don't want to
change that. The rectangular box around
| | 00:52 | these captions is not going to change
and frankly this image of this woman is
| | 00:56 | not going to change. This is
actually the background image.
| | 00:59 | To build out this presentation and
just change the content is a very simple
| | 01:03 | matter. All I'm going to do is simply
duplicate the slide, again Ctrl+D is your
| | 01:08 | friend, and I'll hit Ctrl+D one more
just to create a third slide. All I need
| | 01:14 | to do now is just double-click on
slide 2, label it, remember you always want
| | 01:21 | to label your slides even when you are
creating template presentations because
| | 01:25 | it will be very helpful for you
to be able to identify a slide.
| | 01:29 | Remember you always want to label your
slides. It's a good practice to get into
| | 01:33 | because it will help you quickly
identify one slide from another. I'll click OK
| | 01:39 | and now with this slide visible, all I
need to do is come in here and update
| | 01:42 | the content. I'll double-click on this
text caption and we'll change this to
| | 01:46 | say Tip #1, click anywhere to deselect
it, double-click on this text caption,
| | 02:01 | and type the tip that you are
offering in this case, Listen, do not speak.
| | 02:06 | But as you can see that was much, much
faster than trying to recreate the slide
| | 02:11 | from scratch somehow. All I needed to
do is hit Ctrl+D, make a couple of edits
| | 02:15 | and I can build an entire slide's
contents in the matter of the amount of time
| | 02:20 | that takes me to type in the content
versus starting from scratch and trying to
| | 02:24 | rebuild the entire look and
feel of this slide each time.
| | 02:28 | It's kind of a simple thing to remind
you about but I see and off a lot of
| | 02:32 | people working with Captivate, doing
just the exact opposite of this and trying
| | 02:35 | to recreate things when in fact they
can go ahead and use work that they have
| | 02:39 | already done before.
| | 02:41 | So be a pack rat. Save your work at
any moment that you think that that's
| | 02:44 | something that you can copy and
paste or duplicate to take advantage of.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing and previewing your project| 00:00 | Once you have completed a presentation,
or you think you have completed the
| | 00:03 | presentation, it's a good idea to
preview it. In that way you can see how it's
| | 00:06 | actually going to work once you have
published it. We are going to get into
| | 00:10 | publishing in some detail in an
upcoming chapter. But almost every time you
| | 00:14 | make a change to a presentation, you
will want to have a look at it and see how
| | 00:18 | it's working. Captivate gives a
Preview tool that allows you to do that.
| | 00:23 | It's right up here among the buttons.
Simply select the Preview and you have some
| | 00:27 | options and I want to talk just
briefly about them before I trigger the one
| | 00:30 | that I almost always use and that one
is Project. In other words, I like to
| | 00:35 | look at the whole project sort of in context.
| | 00:38 | Sometimes the effect of changing one
little thing on a slider can actually
| | 00:42 | ripple throughout the project and so
it's a good idea to review the whole
| | 00:46 | project as you go. Now that's not
always reasonable and that's why you can do
| | 00:50 | things like, for example, preview the
next five slides or preview from this
| | 00:56 | slide and if you want you can
also preview it in a web browser.
| | 00:59 | The reason you might want to do that
is because what you are building here is
| | 01:02 | actually going to be a Flash and in
most cases Flash is going to be delivered
| | 01:06 | inside a web browser via the web. But the
quickest and simplest thing to do is to choose Project.
| | 01:12 | You can also hit F4 but I'll go ahead
and use my mouse just for demonstration
| | 01:16 | purposes and Captivate will actually
build the project as if you are publishing
| | 01:21 | it and I want to pause it here for just
a second because there is not just the
| | 01:27 | project itself to consider, there is also the
interface that Captivate is going to build for you.
| | 01:33 | Now there are a number of different
things that you may want to preview.
| | 01:36 | You may want to preview timing, you may
want to preview content, anything about the
| | 01:41 | project that you are concerned with,
well you are going to want to have a good
| | 01:43 | look at it and sometimes that means
previewing over and over and over again.
| | 01:47 | And so when you choose to preview the
project, whether or not these interface
| | 01:51 | options are available to you down here,
you can actually stop, start, back up.
| | 01:56 | In fact, I'm just going to back up to
the beginning using these buttons right
| | 02:03 | here. We'll go ahead and pause it one more time.
| | 02:06 | Now one of the things that I'm looking
for is slide timings. If I go ahead and
| | 02:10 | click Play, I can see that the slides
are appearing and disappearing awfully
| | 02:15 | quickly and that's an example of the
kind of thing that you want to look for
| | 02:19 | during the preview. How is the person
that you hope will get this information
| | 02:23 | going to experience this? You know what
all of that content says. So it may be
| | 02:27 | difficult for you to be a completely
objective client when doing the preview
| | 02:32 | but you at least want to do it. Then
you might bring a friend and take a look
| | 02:35 | at it and see how it works
as far as they are concerned.
| | 02:38 | Captivate has a review process
built into it for the purpose of really
| | 02:43 | tightening things down but every step
of the way, if you choose the preview, as
| | 02:48 | a way to go ahead and examine your
project, what that will do is help you to
| | 02:51 | iron up the problems before you show
it to somebody else so that by the time
| | 02:55 | you do get to somebody else,
it's really a much faster process.
| | 02:58 | The only other thing that I wanted to
say here with respect to preview is that
| | 03:01 | when you are looking in a particular
slide you can actually choose to play this
| | 03:06 | slide. And frankly, it's not something
I use frequently if at all because the
| | 03:11 | other preview options actually publish
the file creating the Flash that will be
| | 03:17 | created when you publish the file later
on. When you choose Play the slide, it
| | 03:21 | actually simply plays right on the
screen and it might be useful for some
| | 03:26 | things but frankly, I actually like to
see it in context and so it's much more
| | 03:31 | common for me to choose either Project
from this slide, which is another option
| | 03:35 | that appears when you are looking at an
individual slide, the next five slides
| | 03:39 | or in a web browser.
| | 03:40 | No matter which of these you choose
it is a best practice to preview every
| | 03:44 | single time you make a major change and
really give your project the eagle eye
| | 03:48 | as you go. The investment that you will
make there will save you huge dividends
| | 03:53 | and time in the back-end when you don't
have to make big changes, and specially
| | 03:57 | considering the fact that if you
catch a problem now and you intend to
| | 04:00 | duplicate the slide, you are not
going to duplicate that problem within the
| | 04:04 | next 15-20-25 slides that you might be
making for you presentation. As I said,
| | 04:10 | preview often and you will be happy you did.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Using External AssetsImporting Photoshop files| 00:00 | Adobe Photoshop is one of the most well-
known and flexible image editing tools
| | 00:04 | in the market. And because it's
created by the same company that creates
| | 00:08 | Captivate, Adobe, Captivate gives
you the ability to use Photoshop files
| | 00:12 | directly. Of course, you can take a
Photoshop file and convert it to a JPEG or
| | 00:16 | a PNG or one of the other file
formats that Captivate supports.
| | 00:19 | But Photoshop files are very, very
flexible files because of the way that they
| | 00:24 | are constructed. And what Captivate
allows you to do is to import a Photoshop
| | 00:28 | file directly and leverage that
flexibility while you are building your
| | 00:32 | project. In this lesson, we are going
to take a look at that by importing a
| | 00:35 | Photoshop file, and using it to create a
slide that looks very similar to this one.
| | 00:40 | What I have here is an example of a
presentation that was created for the
| | 00:44 | purpose of building a resume. And I
actually created the graphic look for the
| | 00:49 | resume, inside Adobe Photoshop
because of its flexibility and its ease of
| | 00:53 | working with images. I want to leverage
that inside Captivate and so, the first
| | 00:57 | thing that I'm going to do is create
a new slide and then we'll import a
| | 01:00 | Photoshop file on to it,
to show you how it works.
| | 01:02 | I am going to right-click over here
and simply choose Insert Blank Slide.
| | 01:08 | Onto this blank slide I want to import
a Photoshop file. So we'll choose File >
| | 01:13 | Import > Photoshop File.
| | 01:15 | Now, I have this Photoshop file that
I created 01 background and I'll click
| | 01:20 | Open. And the Import function allows
me to leverage the structure of that
| | 01:24 | Photoshop file in a couple of interesting ways.
| | 01:27 | First of, I can see that there are
several different layers. The layer in
| | 01:32 | Photoshop makes it easy to adjust the
file based on your needs. For example,
| | 01:37 | because each of these objects is on a
separate layer, it's like having them on
| | 01:40 | a clear plastic sheet, and I can
overlay them on top of each other to build up
| | 01:44 | an image. But if there is a particular
layer that I don't want to bring in, for
| | 01:49 | example, the word Resume,
I could simply turn it off.
| | 01:52 | Now I'm going to turn it on because I
want to show you how you can delete it if
| | 01:55 | you do happen to bring it in. But if
you know what the layers contain, you may
| | 01:59 | or may not want all of the information
inside the Photoshop file to become a
| | 02:02 | part of your Captivate project, so you don't
have to, and that actually reminds of something.
| | 02:07 | If you are going to have someone
create a Photoshop file for you, or you are
| | 02:11 | going to create your own Photoshop file,
it's important in Photoshop to name
| | 02:15 | your layers, because each layer name
appears in Captivate, and it's a useful
| | 02:19 | tool for deciding what you want and might
not want as a part of your Captivate project.
| | 02:24 | In Photoshop if you don't name your
layers you have a default name, layer 1,
| | 02:27 | layer 2, layer 3 or whatever, and
that's not very helpful. Although you do get
| | 02:31 | a small thumbnail that might help to
determine what's on the layer, you can see
| | 02:35 | that the thumbnails are small enough
that you really can't tell what's there.
| | 02:38 | Naming the layers is important, so
if you are building your own Photoshop
| | 02:41 | files, or you are having someone else
do it, it's a best practice to make sure
| | 02:45 | that those layers are named with a
descriptive name so that you can tell what they are.
| | 02:48 | Once you have seen the layers and you
know what the layers are, then you want
| | 02:52 | to make some decisions over here. For
example, if I want to bring the file in
| | 02:56 | as a Flattened Image, I can do so. That
kind of defeats the purpose of bringing
| | 03:00 | in a layer Photoshop file. So I'm
going to keep the layers as it is.
| | 03:03 | In Photoshop, it's possible to
determine which layers are on and off by
| | 03:07 | default, and you can create
something called a layer comp. If those exist
| | 03:11 | inside your file, you can use this pull-
down menu to choose from among them.
| | 03:15 | In this case, I have no layer comps. So I'm just
going to turn the layers on and off manually.
| | 03:20 | Then last but not least you can Scale
according to stage size. I've built this
| | 03:25 | Photoshop file to match the stage
size that I was creating in my Captivate
| | 03:28 | project 640x480, so there is no reason
to do so. However, if my Photoshop file
| | 03:33 | were larger or smaller, I could select
this and Captivate would automatically
| | 03:36 | scale the image up or down to fit my project.
| | 03:39 | It's probably a good idea if you know
that you are going to create a Photoshop
| | 03:42 | file for Captivate to build it at the
right size, but if you don't do that or
| | 03:47 | you can't do that, then
Captivate offers you some help.
| | 03:49 | So at this point we'll just simply
click OK, Captivate will import all of the
| | 03:53 | layers into the Captivate project and
they will come in as separate objects,
| | 03:58 | and this makes it flexible inside
Captivate to work with them. Because for
| | 04:02 | example this Resume layer, which
probably I shouldn't have brought in anyway
| | 04:06 | because it's really representing a
placeholder for some text that I'm going to
| | 04:09 | add directly in Captivate as a caption.
But I left it in here so that I could
| | 04:14 | show you every object inside
Captivate now is something that I can select,
| | 04:18 | right-click and delete, or I can hit
the Delete key. And that's part of the
| | 04:25 | advantage of using a layered file. Each
of these objects is something separate.
| | 04:29 | So if I change my mind or I want to
change the size of one of these objects,
| | 04:33 | I can certainly do so by selecting it and
then treating it like any other object
| | 04:37 | that you created in Captivate or
any other object that you brought into
| | 04:40 | Captivate, it's just that you are able
to bring it in as one large group that
| | 04:44 | was already pre-designed as a
Photoshop file and with the single click of a
| | 04:48 | button, I have my entire layout created.
| | 04:51 | Now, at this point all I need to do to
finish this slide is to add the content
| | 04:54 | that I want to add within Captivate,
the captions, and the lines and whatnot,
| | 04:59 | and I have got a nice slide background
all pre-designed and ready to go.
| | 05:03 | And then at that point, I can duplicate
this over and over again, and I have an
| | 05:06 | entire presentation that was designed
using the effective design tools that
| | 05:10 | Photoshop has to offer, and the
ease with which I can turn those into a
| | 05:13 | presentation using Captivate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating slideshows with images| 00:00 | In previous lessons I have shown you
how you can add images to your slide
| | 00:04 | directly. We are going to take a
little bit of a different approach to that
| | 00:07 | process because what I want to do is
add to this resume a series of photographs
| | 00:12 | that I have taken to
indicate my interest in photography.
| | 00:15 | So if we take a look at slide 2, you
can see that I have got other interest
| | 00:18 | listed here and during this presentation, I
want to show you some of that photography.
| | 00:22 | To do that, I'm going to select Insert
and I'm going to choose Other Slide(s) >
| | 00:28 | Image Slide. I have a series of
photographs here and as with any other image
| | 00:33 | that I bring into Photoshop, there are
a variety of different choices that I
| | 00:36 | have for file format, in this case
these are JPEG files. Go ahead and select
| | 00:41 | them and I'm just going to
select them all and choose Open.
| | 00:45 | Not all of these slides are the right
size for this presentation; in fact, this
| | 00:51 | one is 1280x960. This presentation is
640x480. So something needs to happen different.
| | 00:57 | In this case, I'm going to choose Crop
and what I'm going to do is work through
| | 01:01 | these to crop these images and I can
resize the Crop Area so that the 640 x 480
| | 01:09 | image that I bring in is exactly
what I would like it to be on the slide.
| | 01:15 | Click on Next. Continue with the same
process. This image isn't Landscape.
| | 01:22 | It's Portrait but it's no problem. It's
the same process, so I'll just crop it and
| | 01:26 | we'll go ahead and except the default
crop there, same thing. And if I knew
| | 01:31 | that all of the images were set
similarly and there was a sailboat in the
| | 01:35 | middle of them, I could
simply apply the crop to all.
| | 01:37 | I don't actually want to look through
and make sure that they are all what I
| | 01:41 | want. For example, this is one I'm
actually going to Fit to Stage because I
| | 01:44 | like it as it is. I don't want to crop
it. Same with this one and then one last
| | 01:49 | image to crop and I'm good to go.
| | 01:52 | Now at this point, I'll just simply
click OK. Captivate is going to go ahead
| | 01:56 | and import a series of slides and
drop them in essentially to create a
| | 02:08 | slideshow for me and that's all there is to it.
| | 02:13 | These images are actually backgrounds
on the slides, so you can see that if I
| | 02:16 | attempt to drag and select or change
the image, there's really no way that I
| | 02:21 | can do that. That's because as a
background, it's not an object that I can
| | 02:25 | select on the slide. In fact, if I
click on Slide Properties, I can see that it
| | 02:29 | has a background image and if I want to
I can change that background image, but
| | 02:33 | I'm not going to do that here.
I'll go ahead and cancel it.
| | 02:36 | So, if you have a series of images and
you want to make a slide show from those
| | 02:39 | images, you can actually do so with the
click of a button using Adobe Captivate
| | 02:43 | and the images that you want to show.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding animations| 00:00 | I often refer to Captivate as Flash for
rest of us because it gives me a lot of
| | 00:04 | capability that the Flash authoring
tool gives but it makes it easier for a
| | 00:09 | person like me to access that
capability. With that ease does come some
| | 00:13 | restrictions so there are certainly
things that I do with the Flash authoring tool,
| | 00:17 | another of Adobe's tools,
that I can't do with Captivate.
| | 00:21 | Well the good news is that I can have
my cake and eat it too. Because Captivate
| | 00:26 | allows me to bring a project that I
create in Flash into Captivate and use it
| | 00:31 | along with my Captivate project and
that allows me to create a more engaging
| | 00:35 | experience for my audience that's designed
to capture their attention and then keep it.
| | 00:40 | In this lesson what we are going to do
is just that. We are going to bring a
| | 00:43 | Flash created project into Captivate
and use it as what Captivate calls an
| | 00:48 | animation and that animation is
designed to make the static objects that I can
| | 00:53 | create in Captivate set off against a
much more interesting animation, in this
| | 00:58 | case I'm going to use as the background,
so that it does just what I describe.
| | 01:02 | It captures the attention of the
audience and then keeps them in front of the
| | 01:05 | computer so that they can get the
information that I'm trying to deliver.
| | 01:07 | So to get started, we are in Storyboard
View now. I'm going to double-click on
| | 01:11 | the slide to jump over into Edit
View and what I have here is a static
| | 01:15 | Captivate slide. There is some
background graphics. That's the brown graphic
| | 01:20 | here with the gradient etcetera. There
are some objects that I have placed on
| | 01:24 | top of those background graphics.
What I'm going to do is create a brand new slide
| | 01:28 | that uses an animation instead of
the background graphics and then we'll
| | 01:33 | grab these exact objects and place them on top of
the new animation so that we can see how they look.
| | 01:38 | First I need to create a new blank slide,
so I'm just going to right click here
| | 01:41 | in the Filmstrip, choose Insert >
Blank Slide. I could go down go down to the
| | 01:46 | toolbar and click on the Animation
button and that would open up the Animation
| | 01:50 | dialog box and allow me to bring in my
animation. But I'm going to show you a
| | 01:53 | little bit of quicker way to insert
something on to a slide and that is to
| | 01:58 | right-click on the slide and notice
that I have an Insert contextual menu that
| | 02:02 | I can use in this case to insert an
animation. It's the same as using the
| | 02:06 | toolbar; it's just a little bit faster
end. I like to use efficiency where I can
| | 02:10 | because it saves me time.
| | 02:12 | The type of file that I'm going to
insert is a SWF file. That is a Flash SWF file,
| | 02:17 | which is a published file from a
Flash project. Notice that I can use an
| | 02:21 | animated GIF, an AVI movie file or a Flash
authoring file called a FLA (flaw) or F-L-A file.
| | 02:27 | And by the way if you are someone
who is experimenting with or starting
| | 02:32 | to use Flash or even a Flash guru and
you want I've provided you the source FLA
| | 02:37 | file that you can play with, but
what I'm going to import for this
| | 02:41 | demonstration is the published SWF file.
| | 02:44 | So we'll click Open. This is a warning
that Captivate gives me and it has to do
| | 02:48 | with ActionScript 3 versus
ActionScript 2. What's that? ActionScript is a
| | 02:54 | scripting language that Adobe uses
to provide interactivity inside Flash.
| | 02:59 | And under the hood Captivate uses
ActionScript in order to allow you to create some
| | 03:04 | of the things that Captivate can do.
| | 03:06 | However Captivate defaults to using
ActionScript 2, which is an older version
| | 03:10 | of ActionScript. Flash CS4, the
current shipping version of the Adobe Flash
| | 03:15 | authoring tool, uses ActionScript 3 by
default. And there are differences enough
| | 03:20 | that if you were to mix and match you
might create some issues for yourself.
| | 03:24 | What I'm going to do is click No
and I'm going to go up to the Project
| | 03:28 | Preferences by selecting Edit >
Preferences and then I want the Publish
| | 03:33 | Settings Preference under Project.
And notice that the ActionScript version
| | 03:37 | here says AS2. Well, that was my default.
I'm going to set it to AS3 because I know
| | 03:43 | that project that I'm bringing in uses AS3.
| | 03:47 | I also know that I'm not using any
other animations or I haven't yet built any
| | 03:51 | other animations into this file. So
this warning doesn't concern me. If I had a
| | 03:57 | file that I had already created with
lots of animations in it and I know or
| | 04:01 | I think that I might have used
ActionScript 2, well then I might need to consider
| | 04:05 | whether I want to bring this file in.
Perhaps it would be better strategy to go
| | 04:09 | back to Flash, create an ActionScript
2 project and then bring that in.
| | 04:13 | That whole discussion is something for a
different lesson but I just wanted you to
| | 04:17 | be aware that there can be a mix and match
issue here and that's why I wanted to bring this up.
| | 04:22 | So we'll click OK. I'm going to click
OK again. Now I'm going to do the same
| | 04:26 | thing I did before. I'm going to select
Insert > Animation, choose my Flash SWF file,
| | 04:33 | then click Open. No warning
this time because everything is okay.
| | 04:39 | There is some basic information about
the Flash file and you can see that there
| | 04:43 | is a preview that will continue to loop
and play to show me what the animation
| | 04:47 | looks like and there are some settings
about this that we need to consider and
| | 04:51 | that we are considering these settings
for the first time using this,
| | 04:54 | we're going to talk about them in some
detail in the Timeline chapter, but they are
| | 04:58 | important for this in really any animation.
| | 05:00 | So I'm going to bring it up now.
When I click on the Options for the New
| | 05:04 | Animation dialog box, two of the
options for this particular object and in fact
| | 05:09 | for any animation are kind of
important to consider. Actually they are very
| | 05:12 | important to consider and
that's why we are doing it.
| | 05:14 | First I've the Display For. What this
says is how long does this animation display.
| | 05:20 | Because an animation for
example in this case is only 3.2 seconds long.
| | 05:25 | Well if my slide was longer than
that, then I want to make sure that the
| | 05:29 | animation plays for the
entire time the slide exists.
| | 05:32 | So what I'm going to do is say play for
rest of slide. What that means is that
| | 05:38 | for the entire time the slide exists
that animation will be on the stage.
| | 05:42 | Now again we haven't really talked about
the Timeline. We are going to talk in some
| | 05:45 | detail about the Timeline but this is a
setting that you need to consider for animations.
| | 05:50 | The other setting that you need to
consider is whether or not you want the
| | 05:52 | animation to loop. Now if we go back
here to the preview you can see that what
| | 05:56 | I'm building here is the background
image for the slide. And I really don't
| | 06:02 | want that to Loop. I want it to play
once and then stop which is how the SWF
| | 06:06 | file is setup. So I'm going to tell it
not to loop by leaving this deselected.
| | 06:11 | If I had an object that I wanted to
loop, well I could certainly go ahead and
| | 06:14 | select Loop and allow it do so. We'll
click OK because that's going to place
| | 06:19 | the animation on the slide and now we
can go ahead and preview this to see how
| | 06:23 | it looks. So I'm going to select Preview and
I'm actually going to preview from this slide.
| | 06:32 | And there we go. We'll close the
preview. That is an animation build.
| | 06:37 | The only other two things that I might
need to do to the slide will be to add the
| | 06:40 | Captivate created objects on top of it
and that something that's very simple to do.
| | 06:44 | I'm going to select the previous
slide. Here these are all of my objects.
| | 06:48 | I'm just going to put my cursor in the
upper right corner click-and-drag and
| | 06:52 | I have all of the objects on the slide
selected, I'll choose Edit > Copy and come
| | 07:00 | over here and choose Edit and Paste
Object because that's what I have loaded in
| | 07:04 | the Clipboard. And now I have got some
objects sitting on top of the animation
| | 07:09 | and if we go ahead and
preview now, there we go.
| | 07:16 | What we have as a slide that builds,
the animation builds under it, then the
| | 07:20 | objects build on top of it. And it's
a lot more interesting visually then a
| | 07:26 | slide that is just static slide that
just kind of sits there. Now there is
| | 07:29 | quick point that I want to make
about this and that is that you can get a
| | 07:32 | little bit overdone with animation. If
everything on your slide moves around a lot,
| | 07:38 | don't forget your goal, which is to
display some information and allow the
| | 07:42 | user to see that information. However,
the animation starting at the beginning
| | 07:46 | is a way to grab the users' attention
and keep them there for the content that
| | 07:50 | you actually want to show them. And
because the Flash authoring tool or
| | 07:54 | animated GIFs or movies or whatever
you might want for your animation can do
| | 07:59 | just about anything to create
movement and interest on your slide,
| | 08:03 | you can leverage that inside Captivate, again
which allows you to have your cake and eat it too.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting video| 00:00 | Much of what you intend to present,
you can create right inside Captivate using
| | 00:03 | the objects that Captivate offers.
However there may be the need to bring in
| | 00:07 | information from an external resource.
In previous lessons we've talked about
| | 00:11 | how to do that with Flash information.
| | 00:13 | In this lessons I'm going to show
you how to use a movie file with your
| | 00:17 | Captivate project. To get started here
we have a file that I'm going to open
| | 00:21 | into Edit View. So we are in the Storyboard
View. I'll just double-click to jump over.
| | 00:24 | What I want to do is insert a movie
file right on to the slide. Everything else
| | 00:29 | is all set up and was build by either
using Captivate or by importing some
| | 00:33 | graphics. I'll go ahead and right-
click on this slide, I'm going to choose
| | 00:37 | Insert and I'm going to choose Flash Video.
| | 00:40 | Flash video is video with the FLV file
format. It's a video file format that
| | 00:45 | Adobe created that is widely used on
the Internet because of its high quality
| | 00:49 | and low bandwidth requirements.
We're going to use it because Captivate creates
| | 00:53 | Flash and can use the Flash Video file directly.
| | 00:57 | If you don't have Flash Video, you'll
need to acquire something like the Adobe
| | 01:01 | Media Encoder, which comes with the
Adobe Flash authoring tool which allows you
| | 01:05 | to create Flash movies directly.
Another option would be Adobe Premiere Pro or
| | 01:10 | another video editing tool
that can create FLV directly.
| | 01:13 | There are many of them out there. I'll
choose Flash Video. I'm going to click
| | 01:18 | on Browse and I have provided you a
Flash Video file here. Now this file is
| | 01:23 | actually representative of the kind
of thing that you might want to through
| | 01:25 | into your presentation.
| | 01:27 | It's a web cam video of myself,
introducing myself for this imaginary resume
| | 01:32 | file that we're working on here.
So we'll click on Open. One of the first
| | 01:36 | things that you'll need to
consider is the width and height.
| | 01:39 | If your movie is not smaller than
your file, then you're obviously going to
| | 01:44 | need to make it smaller. You'll
probably want to constrain the proportion so
| | 01:47 | that you don't stretch the video to
make it wider than it is supposed to be or
| | 01:51 | taller or whatever, which would
create a distorted look on the stage.
| | 01:55 | If for some reason when you select the
file link it doesn't understand or know
| | 01:58 | the size the right away, you can always
click on Detect Size and it'll fill those
| | 02:02 | values in here for you. Now, this
movie does happen to be smaller because
| | 02:05 | I created it as a file that was smaller than
the slides that I was using in my presentation.
| | 02:10 | One of the nice things about
Captivate is that it allows me to do something
| | 02:14 | like this with ease. I'm going to add
what's called a skin to the file and
| | 02:18 | I'm going to choose a little bit of a
different one here. In this case I'm going to
| | 02:21 | choose this skin option called Clear Skin.
| | 02:24 | What the skin does is it provides
a set of player controls for the movie.
| | 02:29 | If I were a Flash user, I know then I could
program these things so that they work
| | 02:33 | on top of movies and combine them in
Flash. Captivate does this work for me
| | 02:37 | automatically, making it a lot easier
for me to work with a Flash video file
| | 02:41 | then if I would have to create these on my own.
| | 02:43 | There is one other setting that we
definitely need to consider. I'm going to
| | 02:47 | jump over to Options. I want the
slide to stop until the video is over.
| | 02:53 | In other words if I have a slide that's
designed to show for say 6 seconds and my
| | 02:58 | video is 7 and half seconds and I don't
tell the slide to pause until the video ends,
| | 03:02 | then I might end up with a slide
that goes by before the video is finished.
| | 03:07 | So whatever message I'm trying to
deliver in the video might not get fully heard.
| | 03:10 | Then the final option that I want
to consider is whether or not I want
| | 03:15 | the file to Auto play, then
Auto rewind once it's played.
| | 03:19 | Now Auto rewind isn't going to loop,
it's actually just going to jump the file
| | 03:22 | to the beginning so that I can play
it again. I really don't want that to
| | 03:26 | happen. I'm going to let the user
choose if they want to play the movie.
| | 03:30 | I'm going to let the user use the skin to
rewind the file so that I can show you
| | 03:35 | how that's done and show you what
options you can give to your user.
| | 03:38 | So we'll click OK and right now it
just looks like a gray box. I'll go ahead
| | 03:43 | and position the gray box to the place
that I want it to be and to see the movie
| | 03:49 | we'll go ahead and preview. So I'm
going to choose Preview > Project.
| | 03:56 | (Movie: Hi there!
My name is Tim Plumer and I'd like--)
| | 03:59 | Now, I'm going to pause that because I
want to bring the volume down a little bit.
| | 04:02 | Apparently I was a little bit
aggressive when I was speaking to my web cam,
| | 04:06 | when I created this video. That's
part of what I wanted to show you.
| | 04:09 | This set of controls here allows the
user to control the movie completely.
| | 04:13 | They can turn the sound on and off,
they can change the volume for themselves,
| | 04:17 | they can stop, pause and
start the movie if they want to.
| | 04:21 | (Movie: Welcome to my resume. In here--)
| | 04:24 | Which makes it very easy to work
with video inside a Captivate project.
| | 04:28 | Now video could be very engaging and
add a significant amount to an otherwise
| | 04:32 | static presentation. The ease with
which Captivate allows you to drop a video in
| | 04:36 | and basically set it up so that it
could become a part of your presentation
| | 04:40 | makes this one of the more
powerful features of the product.
| | 04:44 | Close the preview and in sum, if you
want to use video with your projects,
| | 04:48 | feel free to do so. They're easy to use,
they're easy to put into place and they are
| | 04:52 | easy to configure so that you
user can control them very nicely.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing PowerPoint presentations| 00:00 | In this lesson, we are going to take a
little bit of a different approach to
| | 00:02 | bringing in an external
asset into our Captivate project.
| | 00:05 | We are going to start with an
absolutely blank project and we are going to
| | 00:09 | bring in a PowerPoint file because
Captivate offers an interesting capability
| | 00:14 | in conjunction with
PowerPoint that can be very useful.
| | 00:17 | So I'll start from a PowerPoint slide
and I'm starting from PowerPoint slide
| | 00:22 | set because PowerPoint is a very, very
popular presentation software product.
| | 00:27 | Most people during anything with the
presentations use it at least at some point.
| | 00:31 | What Captivate can do to them is it
can create a link to the PowerPoint file
| | 00:36 | and by choosing Linked here in the
dialog box, what Captivate is actually going
| | 00:40 | to do is refer to that external
resource looking for any changes and when there
| | 00:46 | are changes noted, Captivate can
update the Captivate project from the
| | 00:50 | PowerPoint slide set and that can be
very useful if you have a project that
| | 00:54 | either needs some small changes made
to them or is a project that's used over
| | 00:58 | and over and over again and gets
updated in the PowerPoint and you want to
| | 01:01 | create a Captivate project based on that.
| | 01:04 | The Captivate project can stay up-to-
date with your PowerPoint project.
| | 01:07 | Before we actually commit to this,
there are a couple of things to consider.
| | 01:11 | Your Width and Height. That's just the
matter of how big the Captivate project is
| | 01:15 | going to based on the PowerPoint
project and if you decide that you want it to
| | 01:18 | be smaller or larger, do you want to
maintain the aspect ratio. In most cases,
| | 01:22 | you don't want to do that
otherwise you will see distortion.
| | 01:24 | When the PowerPoint project comes
in to Captivate, how do you want the
| | 01:28 | Captivate project to work? Do you want
it to work as an automatic self-running
| | 01:32 | presentation, in that case, you can
choose Automatically for your Advance
| | 01:36 | slide, otherwise you can choose On
mouse click, which means that the user will
| | 01:41 | have to actually click on the slide
to go from slide to slide to slide.
| | 01:44 | Either one is up to you. I'm going to
use On mouse click because I want the
| | 01:47 | user to have some control over the
presentation. We'll click OK. Captivate will
| | 01:52 | convert the PowerPoint slides to
Captivate slides and now I have a three slide
| | 01:58 | Captivate presentation to
match my PowerPoint presentation.
| | 02:01 | I am going to double-click on this
first slide here because I want to show you
| | 02:04 | the integration between the two
products and how Captivate can leverage the
| | 02:09 | PowerPoint file that it's referring to
directly. I have noticed the there is a
| | 02:13 | mistake on the slide. My name is Tim
Plumer, Jr., not Tim Plumer and though
| | 02:17 | I love my dad, I'm not my dad,
so I want to update that.
| | 02:21 | What I'm going to do is select the
Edit PPT pull-down here and I'm gong to
| | 02:25 | choose to edit not just the slide,
which I can do individually, I want to edit
| | 02:29 | the entire presentation because we are
actually going to make two edits to the PowerPoint.
| | 02:33 | The first edit is simply to fix the
spelling of my name. We are going to add a
| | 02:37 | comma JR period, and there, that's the
correct way to represent my name, but
| | 02:44 | the other change that I want to make
is a little bit more drastic change.
| | 02:48 | In that I want to use PowerPoint
to go ahead and add a new slide.
| | 02:51 | So we'll add a Title and Content slide,
drag it to the end using PowerPoint's
| | 02:58 | tools and we'll just add some content
here so that we'll have some content in
| | 03:04 | the slide. Once I have completed my
edits to the PowerPoint, all I need to do
| | 03:09 | is select Save PPT. That will save it.
Go back to Captivate, allow me to add
| | 03:14 | the new slide to the Captivate project
and if we go back to Storyboard View,
| | 03:21 | you will see that now I have a four
-slide, not a three-slide project.
| | 03:26 | It's probably not a best practice to be
kind of bouncing back and forth between
| | 03:30 | Captivate and PowerPoint because
there are things that you can do to the
| | 03:33 | PowerPoint slide set that might have a
drastic effect on the Captivate project
| | 03:37 | that you have built.
| | 03:37 | For example, if you add a lot of
animations suddenly to a slide that you have
| | 03:41 | also added animations in Captivate too,
you are going to see some conflict
| | 03:44 | there. So it's best to get both the
PowerPoint and the Captivate projects
| | 03:48 | finished and use this as a way to: a:
tweak small mistakes or b: use it as a
| | 03:53 | way to update the data from a
PowerPoint file that updates kind of in place
| | 03:58 | without having a large effect on
the structure of either document.
| | 04:02 | So this is another way that Captivate
allows you to kind of have your cake and
| | 04:05 | eat it too. You can use the power
that PowerPoint has to offer or the
| | 04:08 | convenience that you have projects
created already in PowerPoint. Bring them
| | 04:13 | into Captivate, use Captivate to take
them even further and then keep them both
| | 04:17 | up-to-date at the same time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Taking advantage of libraries| 00:00 | Captivate is capable of bringing in a
variety of different objects for use in a
| | 00:04 | project and you can end up especially
with a larger project with many, many,
| | 00:09 | many different bits and pieces and
parts. One of the philosophies that I have
| | 00:13 | with Captivate is to try and reuse
everything or anything that is possibly
| | 00:17 | reusable. Fortunately Captivate has a
specific method for doing so that is
| | 00:22 | really powerful and to wrap up this
chapter, I want to show you that because
| | 00:26 | it's a great way for to be able to
access and use assets that you've used with
| | 00:32 | other projects, to create
something completely from scratch.
| | 00:36 | So I'm going to go ahead and just
create a Blank Project and the Size I'm going
| | 00:40 | to choose a different size that we've
been using in previous projects because I
| | 00:43 | want to make a point here when we get
the project open. This is going to be
| | 00:47 | 1024 X 768 a very large
project I'm going to click OK.
| | 00:51 | I've got a slide on the stage, it's
in the Storyboard View, I'm going to go
| | 00:55 | ahead and open up so that I can edit it
and we'll zoom to Best Fit so that see
| | 01:00 | the entire slide on the screen. My
Library in Captivate when I don't have
| | 01:05 | anything in the project, it's
completely empty, every time I add an object to
| | 01:10 | my Captivate project it's going to
populate the Library with that object that's
| | 01:14 | useful in a variety of different ways,
but one of the ways that it's useful is
| | 01:18 | that any Captivate project can become
an External Library. And if I want to
| | 01:24 | that Library into a new project so
that I can use the assets that I've used
| | 01:28 | with that previous project in my new
project I can go ahead and do that.
| | 01:32 | To do that I'll simply select Open
Library and Captivate has a long memory, if
| | 01:36 | you've opened any libraries recently
Captivate is going to remember and give
| | 01:40 | you access to them from pull down menu
right here. I'm actually going to choose
| | 01:43 | Open Library because I do want that
particular library file but I just want to
| | 01:47 | show you that you can surf around
for Captivate file that you have.
| | 01:51 | Now I'm going to open a library file
that I created and named a library_file,
| | 01:56 | but frankly this could literally any
Captivate project that I had previously
| | 02:00 | created. So we'll click on Open and I'm
going to collapse the Library for this
| | 02:04 | new project, which is empty so that
I can show you the Library from this
| | 02:08 | project that I just opened. And
anything that I used in that project is
| | 02:13 | something that's available for me as
an asset that I can use in this Library.
| | 02:17 | I have a variety of images, some of
which are used as simple images on the
| | 02:21 | slides. Some of the images are used as
backgrounds in the previous project and
| | 02:26 | there is really no distinction because
frankly all I need to do to use any of
| | 02:29 | these things is drag them out on to
the stage. I want to drag the Animation
| | 02:36 | that I have created out on to
stage; I can go ahead and do so.
| | 02:40 | So the Library is not just a place to
store items but it's actually a place
| | 02:43 | from which I can grab items and lay
them onto my stage. There is one exception
| | 02:48 | and that is the PowerPoint file here.
This is the PowerPoint file that I used
| | 02:52 | with that project that I opened as a
Library and I really can't drag it out and
| | 02:56 | use it in any fashion but what I can do
that's handy is that I can Export this.
| | 03:01 | So the Captivate project not only
allows me to store things that I can use with
| | 03:05 | Captivate but it allows me to store
things that I might want to use otherwise.
| | 03:09 | So if I wanted to do something with
this PowerPoint, I could right-click on it
| | 03:13 | choose Export and then just save it as
a PowerPoint file and then use it with
| | 03:17 | this Captivate project as I like. The final
thing that I wanted to point out was Project Size.
| | 03:23 | When you start mixing and matching
library items from one project into another
| | 03:27 | project, notice that this item is much
smaller than the Captivate file. Well it
| | 03:33 | is something that I can if I want to
expand the size of and the Aspect Ratio of
| | 03:40 | this slide happens to match the Aspect
Ratio of this object. But you need to
| | 03:44 | consider is that going to have an
effect on the quality of the object that I
| | 03:48 | have placed on the slide. That's
especially true of image files.
| | 03:51 | If I expand image files to make them
larger, they can get very blurry, very,
| | 03:56 | very quickly. And so that something
that you need to consider when you are
| | 04:00 | building a Captivate project and even
tend to use that assets that were in
| | 04:03 | another project. It might be a good
idea just to have a look at that project to
| | 04:06 | find out what the size of that project
was. And a very quick way to do that is
| | 04:11 | simply to select Project, click on
Rescale and you can tell the Size of the
| | 04:16 | file by just simply looking at the
values that are in these Width and Height
| | 04:19 | text boxes right here.
| | 04:21 | If it's appropriate you can scale your
project down to match your assets but if
| | 04:24 | it's not appropriate just note that by
scaling things up you may have a quality
| | 04:28 | issue on your hand and it's something
that you'll definitely want to preview.
| | 04:31 | Otherwise working with Libraries is
an incredibly convenient way for you to
| | 04:34 | store assets and then reuse
them from one project to another.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Animating with the TimelineTouring the Timeline| 00:00 | If you've never worked with the
Timeline before in any other application,
| | 00:03 | Captivate is actually very good place
to start. What the Timeline in Captivate
| | 00:08 | does is it determines when an object
is going to be visible on the stage.
| | 00:13 | If you think about what Captivate is
designed to do, it's designed to create
| | 00:17 | self-running demonstrations, presentations,
e-learning content. And because of that
| | 00:22 | objects may need to appear and
disappear on the stage at varying time to
| | 00:26 | help make a point. What we've here is
a project that we are going to look in
| | 00:31 | this lesson, so that I can introduce
to the Timeline and show you how the
| | 00:34 | Timeline's interface is designed to
allow you to work with time when you are
| | 00:38 | creating a project.
| | 00:40 | So the first thing to do is to
actually expose the Timeline. Now it's hidden
| | 00:43 | right now, but it could be found here
at the bottom, this little gray bar if I
| | 00:46 | click it, which allows me to open up the
Timeline so that I can see its interface.
| | 00:51 | The Timeline in Captivate is no
different than any other Timeline that you
| | 00:54 | might work in a movie editing tool or
some other time-based animation tool.
| | 00:59 | There is a time indicator and the
further to the right you'll go the longer
| | 01:04 | the time goes. There is a set of what are
called layers and each layer represents
| | 01:10 | an object on the stage.
| | 01:11 | So if I click on the Illustrator object
here, I can see that there is some sort
| | 01:16 | of object on the stage represented
by that on the Timeline. There is also
| | 01:20 | what's called the Current Time
Indicator which is this little slider that
| | 01:24 | you can drag from left to right to show
you which objects are going to appear at
| | 01:29 | what time on the slide. When I'm not
using the Current Timeline Indicator to
| | 01:34 | scrub the Timeline, and I just leave it alone,
| | 01:37 | Captivate shows me all of the Objects
as if they are visible during the entire
| | 01:41 | length of the time the slide appears,
but that's not necessarily the case, and
| | 01:45 | the CTI or the Current Time
Indicator allows me to get a sense of that by
| | 01:49 | dragging it from left to right.
| | 01:53 | Now the other thing that's important
to consider here is the stacking order.
| | 01:57 | The stacking order of objects on
Timeline actually represents the stacking
| | 02:01 | order of objects on the slide. And I
can see that I have got this Illustrator
| | 02:06 | selected here but I can't see anything
and that's not because it happens to be
| | 02:10 | the same color as this Rectangle.
It's actually sitting underneath the
| | 02:13 | Rectangle. And the good news is that
the Timeline among its many features gives me
| | 02:18 | the ability to restack the order of things.
| | 02:20 | So this object I'm going to click and
I'm going to drag straight up, and what
| | 02:27 | that does is it changes the stacking
order. So now that object is on top of the
| | 02:30 | rectangle that was obscuring it. And so
I can see it. In fact what I need to do
| | 02:35 | is reorder all of these objects
because these objects relate to one another.
| | 02:39 | So for example if I click on this
object it's the red rectangle that is related
| | 02:43 | to this Flash text here and because
I really want to have it appear and
| | 02:49 | although it's somewhat of an a static
thing for my Timeline, I want this object
| | 02:54 | to be near the object that it
relates to in the stacking order. I've just
| | 02:58 | dragged it straight up so
that they are all together.
| | 03:01 | Now what I have are set of objects that
appear in one second intervals through
| | 03:06 | the life of the slide and by the way,
the life of the slide is something I can
| | 03:11 | determine by looking here at this
bottom most object. This is the slide and
| | 03:15 | it tells me that the side's life
is set to be for 7.2 seconds.
| | 03:20 | Now in upcoming lessons I'll show you
how to adjust all of this stuff but for
| | 03:23 | now I just wanted you to see that was
a quick way to determine how long the
| | 03:27 | slide was designed to display for.
| | 03:29 | There are two other things that
you can do with the Timeline that are
| | 03:32 | important. One I can determine the
visibility and locking of objects.
| | 03:37 | Often times when I working in Captivate
I might accidentally grab an object and move it
| | 03:41 | and then I have to select Edit >
Undo and get it back into place or even worse
| | 03:47 | try to move it back into place manually.
| | 03:50 | So to prevent that what I can do is
come down here and lock an item. In fact
| | 03:54 | I'm going to lock all of the items on
this slide. Something I can do with the
| | 04:00 | click of a single button if I want to
lock everything and now I have basically
| | 04:04 | produce the set of items that I can
no longer edit on the slide. It's not
| | 04:09 | really a time related issue but it's
something that the Timeline offers and
| | 04:12 | it's very powerful.
| | 04:13 | I can also hide things from the slide
on the Timeline. This is a convenience
| | 04:19 | factor for editing only. If you hide
something it will publish when you publish
| | 04:25 | the presentation. Let me say that again.
If you hide something, it will publish
| | 04:31 | when you publish that presentation.
| | 04:33 | So don't think of this as a way to
hide items that you don't want to publish.
| | 04:37 | It's just there to hide things while you design
the slides so that they don't get in your way.
| | 04:41 | The final thing about the interface of
the Timeline that I wanted to point out
| | 04:44 | was that this is a very short slide.
And it can be difficult to get in here and
| | 04:48 | maneuver if I'm trying to edit something
about these individual objects on the Timeline.
| | 04:54 | Well you don't have to live with the
scale that Captivate offers out of the box
| | 04:59 | or by default. What I'm going to do is
come over here and choose Medium for the Size
| | 05:04 | and what that does is it kind of
stretches things out a little bit which
| | 05:07 | gives me a little bit more room to maneuver.
| | 05:10 | And if I have a lot of objects on my
slide I can also set the objects to be
| | 05:14 | Short, which mean that they will be a
little bit thinner so I can see more of them.
| | 05:18 | Of course if I have many, many,
many objects I can always grab the top of
| | 05:22 | the Timeline and drag it straight up.
| | 05:24 | Now what I'm doing is I'm sacrificing
the ability to see what's happening on my slide,
| | 05:28 | but I may need that if I have a
very complex slide and they are many,
| | 05:32 | many objects on the slide that I'm
trying to edit. So the Timeline offers a lot
| | 05:36 | of functionality that I use even if
I'm editing for time but especially when
| | 05:40 | I am and frankly it's a window that I
have visible pretty much all of the time
| | 05:44 | then I am working in Captivate. And I
think that if you are doing anything with
| | 05:47 | Captivate that's any more
complicated then a static slide, you will too.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting timing| 00:00 | One of the reasons that Captivate
gives you the ability to edit the timing of
| | 00:03 | objects and to animate them is because
it allows you to create a little bit of
| | 00:07 | movement in the beginning of a
presentation which would draw the user's
| | 00:10 | attention to it. And it's a very easy
process to take a set of objects that
| | 00:15 | you've placed on to a slide and
animate them using the Timeline.
| | 00:19 | In this movie that's where we are
going to see how to do. You can see that I
| | 00:22 | have a slide with three objects that
are just colored background objects.
| | 00:26 | These are simple drawing objects. And
then three text objects that sit on top of those.
| | 00:32 | And what I want to do is animate them,
so that they appear in sequence
| | 00:36 | to create a visual effect that
again draws the user's attention to it.
| | 00:40 | To get started I'm going to go ahead
down to the Timeline and I'm going to
| | 00:43 | adjust the way the Timeline looks.
By default the Timeline is set to View
| | 00:48 | Normal and in this particular project
right now I only have the slide set to be
| | 00:53 | visible for a single second. So I'm
going to select Medium. In fact I can even
| | 00:58 | go ahead and select Large so that I can
see my objects a little bit more easily
| | 01:03 | on my Timeline. And if I need to I can adjust
the Timeline upward so I can see everything.
| | 01:08 | The first thing that I need to do is
make the slide live long enough to contain
| | 01:13 | a complete build because what I'm going
to have is each of these six objects is
| | 01:17 | going to appear after a second. I need at
least six seconds of slide time for this to work.
| | 01:23 | So what I'm going to do is grab the end
of the slide and drag it to the right.
| | 01:29 | That makes the slide live for six
seconds. Notice that everything else is
| | 01:35 | dragged down also. And if I grab my
Current Time Indicator over here,
| | 01:39 | nothing animates. Well, that's because
everything lives for the entire six seconds.
| | 01:45 | The appearance of something is
determined by this object on the Timeline and
| | 01:50 | all I need to do is grab the left
hand side of this item and drag it to the right.
| | 01:56 | So for example I want this to
only live for a half of second. If I grab
| | 02:02 | my Current Time Indicator, you can see
that during this entire stretch of five
| | 02:07 | and half seconds the word Flash does not appear.
| | 02:11 | Next I'm going to go ahead and grab my
Rectangle and we'll set this so that
| | 02:15 | it appears after four and half seconds,
do the same with this object and you can
| | 02:23 | see I'm creating a stacked look in my
objects on the Timeline which means that
| | 02:28 | each object is going to appear in
this case one second after the other.
| | 02:34 | And I can go ahead and test this manually.
And everything looks pretty good.
| | 02:41 | So let's go ahead and preview this
because it's always a good idea especially
| | 02:45 | with animating to preview things. So
we'll just go ahead and preview the Project.
| | 02:49 | And here we go, each colored
box appears, each piece of text appears.
| | 02:56 | And then at the end the entire slide
fades out. That's really all there is to
| | 03:01 | animating things. There is, however,
one more thing that I want to show you that
| | 03:05 | you can do because right now these
objects are set, so that if I increase the
| | 03:09 | length of the slide's life the end
time of the object also kind of goes along
| | 03:15 | with it and that's because
each of these object is set
| | 03:18 | so that however long the slide lives
once the object appears it's stays on the stage.
| | 03:23 | That's very convenient but it's
something that I might not want. And all
| | 03:26 | I need to do to fix that is literally
grab that object in the middle and drag
| | 03:30 | it somewhere else in the Timeline.
| | 03:32 | So if I want the words Flash, Photoshop
and Illustrator to appear and then disappear,
| | 03:37 | I can actually grab those
objects, drag them to the beginning.
| | 03:41 | We'll grab each of them here and I can do
the same to the end time for the object
| | 03:49 | that I did to the beginning time.
Meaning that I can grab it and visually drag it,
| | 03:54 | so that they all align and now
what I have is a project with three words
| | 03:59 | that will appear and then disappear,
as the box is built in behind them.
| | 04:07 | So working with objects on the time
line is really a visual process,
| | 04:11 | though I can certainly do it numerically
because the Timeline offers me numbers with
| | 04:15 | which I can go ahead and align things
time wise. I can also do things very
| | 04:18 | visually so that if I know that I want
them to be on stage a little bit longer.
| | 04:21 | I can simply grab the end point, and
then grab the end point of the other.
| | 04:26 | And notice that Captivate produces that
sort of blue box. Well, that makes it very
| | 04:30 | convenient to align the timings of
objects. And you can see that I can do that
| | 04:37 | with any object, so I can create timings
that match the design sense that I'm trying to achieve.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting timing precisely| 00:00 | In this lesson, we're going to take a
deeper look into the timing of objects
| | 00:04 | and we're going to use the timeline
in a little bit of a different way.
| | 00:07 | The timeline is a great visual tool for
editing the start and stop times of an
| | 00:11 | object and you can align the starts and the
stops of objects very nicely using your eyeball.
| | 00:16 | However, sometimes you need to do that
by the numbers and you can, although
| | 00:21 | it's not actually going to happen
directly on the timeline. For starters,
| | 00:25 | I need to edit these objects which
are the Flash objects here for this
| | 00:29 | presentation and I want to make it so
that they all start at a specific time
| | 00:34 | and I can do this visually but since I
know the exact start and stop time,
| | 00:40 | it might be easier, especially on a
timeline that has many, many items to simply
| | 00:44 | double-click on the object itself,
select the Options from its dialog box and
| | 00:49 | then determine the Display for and
Appear after settings numerically.
| | 00:54 | In this case here, I know that I want
this object which is the Flash icon to
| | 00:59 | appear after five seconds. So I'm
going to go ahead and type in 5 seconds and
| | 01:04 | instead of having it display for a
specific time, I want to have it Display for
| | 01:09 | the rest of slide. What that's going to
do is that's going to start the object
| | 01:13 | at exactly five seconds and then no
matter how long the slide is, it's going to
| | 01:16 | display for the entire rest of the
slide and we'll click Apply and you can see
| | 01:21 | the update actually happen
right on the timeline. Click OK.
| | 01:25 | We'll do the same thing to the Flash
text, only except instead of 5 seconds
| | 01:29 | we'll do 4 seconds. So we'll double-
click on this object. Now this is a Caption
| | 01:34 | object, it's not an image object like
the Flash icon was. No problem.
| | 01:38 | Same concept. I'm going to have it appear
after 4 seconds and appear for the rest of
| | 01:43 | the slide, which it's already doing.
So I'll go ahead and Apply that and then
| | 01:47 | last but not least we'll do
same thing to the rectangle.
| | 01:50 | I'll double click on it. Now notice
that I just double clicked on right on the
| | 01:54 | timeline. I can double-click on it up
here or I can right click on it up here
| | 01:57 | and choose its Properties but if I
know that this is the object that I'm
| | 02:01 | working on and I can select it
right here in the timeline. I can simply
| | 02:03 | double-click and it opens up the dialog
box that allows me in this case to set
| | 02:07 | the Appear after value to 3 seconds
and again, I want this one to appear for
| | 02:11 | the rest of slide. And then I'll click OK.
| | 02:14 | What I've just done is I set these
objects so that they start at a specific
| | 02:18 | time and instead of having them end at
a specific time, I have had them end at
| | 02:22 | the end of the slide. However, some of
the objects the Illustrator icon and the
| | 02:28 | Photoshop icon I can see aren't set.
So that they'll end at the same time the
| | 02:33 | slide ends, and I need to correct that.
The good news is that I can actually
| | 02:36 | select multiple objects up here on the
stage, right click on them and choose
| | 02:42 | Properties, select Options and notice that
my Display for setting is blank right here.
| | 02:48 | That means that they are set
differently and I want to set them consistently to
| | 02:52 | end with the slide by selecting rest
of slide. Click on Apply and click OK.
| | 02:58 | Bear in mind, rest of slide has a
specific meaning and that's good, because
| | 03:01 | what I can do is grab the slide itself
and say, hey slide you don't live much
| | 03:06 | longer or you live a lot longer and
every object is going to stay on stage for
| | 03:11 | the entire time that the slide lives.
| | 03:14 | Setting things to work numerically is
not only something that you can do for an
| | 03:18 | object. Configuring object's timeline
numerically is not only something you can
| | 03:22 | do for objects, you can do them for the
slide itself. Although I can certainly
| | 03:26 | do this visually by dragging the
slides lengths on the timeline here.
| | 03:30 | I can also click on Slide Properties.
And determine that the Display Time for the slide
| | 03:35 | is a specific amount of time.
| | 03:37 | So if instead of 6 seconds I want it
to be displayed for 5.5 seconds I could
| | 03:42 | type that in, click OK and then that
would determine the exact length of the
| | 03:47 | slide. And the final thing that I want
to show you with respect to setting time
| | 03:51 | numerically is the Preference. I'm
going to select Edit > Preferences and under
| | 03:57 | my Defaults I can determine the Slide
duration of any new slide that's created
| | 04:02 | in my project shall be X number of seconds.
| | 04:05 | That's pretty handy because I feel a
lot of people spend time adding slides to
| | 04:09 | their presentation and then adjusting
the time to a consistent say 5 or 10
| | 04:13 | seconds or whatever. Well if you know
that you're going to do that for each
| | 04:16 | slide, stop a moment, go to your
Preferences, set your Defaults so that any new
| | 04:20 | slide will be generated at the amount
of time that you need. That will save you
| | 04:24 | a little bit of time actually could be
a lot of time over the long haul if you
| | 04:27 | are adding a lot of slides to your projects.
| | 04:30 | So setting things numerically can be
especially effective when you have a lot
| | 04:33 | of objects on your slide and it can be
a little tricky to get in here and grab
| | 04:37 | these things, so that you're getting a
hold of them just right. If you need to
| | 04:42 | be able to set things to happen at a
specific time it can be more convenient to
| | 04:45 | simply double-click on the object, select
Options and then adjust its time numerically.
| | 04:51 | Of course, at the end of any of
these processes you'll definitely want to
| | 04:54 | select Preview > Project because
you'll always want to check to see how the
| | 04:58 | timings work. And what I can see by
doing that is that I actually added too
| | 05:07 | much time in between the objects. So
I'm going to go ahead and just quickly
| | 05:11 | correct those. And we'll preview it
one last time and there my project is complete.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding transitions to objects| 00:00 | Transitions are something that can give
your presentation a very nice, polished
| | 00:04 | appeal, if you're using the timeline
to have objects appear and disappear.
| | 00:09 | If you don't use transitions things tend
to just pop on to the stage and then pop
| | 00:13 | off the stage and it can be actually
somewhat jarring which drags the user's
| | 00:17 | attention away from the actual
content that you want to deliver.
| | 00:21 | Captivate offers the ability to work
with transitions per object so that you
| | 00:25 | can create that nice, smooth look,
however you want it to work, but to give
| | 00:30 | your presentation that smooth polish.
In this lesson, we're going to look at
| | 00:34 | transitions not only as a way to give
your presentation the smooth polish that
| | 00:38 | I described, but also to help you avoid some
of the pitfalls that transitions have to offer.
| | 00:44 | In fact, let's take a look at one
of those right now. I have got a
| | 00:47 | presentation. You can see by the
timeline that there are several objects that
| | 00:51 | are slided to appear after about half
second intervals and so those are all
| | 00:56 | nice and smoothly evened out.
| | 00:57 | However, when I choose Preview and
preview the Project, watch what happens to
| | 01:03 | the last object that appears. It stays
on stage, even though the slide is done.
| | 01:09 | The way I have set this up I want
everything to actually disappear before we
| | 01:12 | move on to the next slide. Why is
that happening? It's happening because of
| | 01:16 | transitions. Let's go ahead and close
the preview and what I'm going to do is
| | 01:20 | double-click on this and
we'll take a look at its options.
| | 01:23 | However, before I do that let's just
make a quick note down here that during
| | 01:27 | the last half a second of the
presentation, the Flash object doesn't fill that
| | 01:33 | entire time. In other words, this
object isn't on the stage for even a full
| | 01:37 | half a second. We double-click on this,
select the Options from the dialog box
| | 01:43 | for the object, select the Options tab
in the dialog box for the object, you'll
| | 01:47 | see that I have my Timing
and I have my Transition.
| | 01:51 | The effect of the transition is to
fade in and fade out. It's to Fade In for
| | 01:56 | half a second and Fade Out for half a
second. Well, now wait a minute, if we do
| | 02:01 | the math here this object needs at
least a full second to be complete on the
| | 02:06 | stage. If I don't give it that full
second then it can't complete its fade in
| | 02:10 | and out before the slide stops and
that's why that object just kind of sits
| | 02:14 | there when the slide ends. It hasn't
completed its fade in and fade out transition.
| | 02:19 | So to fix this I can do one of two
things. I can either change the Fade In and
| | 02:23 | Fade Out timing. I can turn the Fade in
and Fade out off. So maybe I'll have it
| | 02:28 | Fade in only or the best strategy is
actually to leave the Fade in and fade out
| | 02:33 | because I like it. Click OK and then
extend the length of the slide to give
| | 02:38 | myself enough time for
this object to do its thing.
| | 02:42 | So I'm actually going to go all the way
out to full 5 seconds. I'm going to set
| | 02:46 | the Flash icon so that it starts at 4
seconds. Now this object will fade in and
| | 02:52 | out for the entire life that it has
on the stage. Let's see how that looks.
| | 02:56 | We'll preview this. Select Project.
| | 03:04 | So the Flash icon arguably isn't on stage
| | 03:07 | for very long. So what I'm going to do
is actually extend the slide to be a 6
| | 03:11 | second slide and that will allow the
Flash icon to live on the stage for a full
| | 03:16 | second before it begins its fade out process.
| | 03:19 | So transitions are very easy to use
and very easy to work with. You just have
| | 03:23 | to understand that they are going to
have an impact on how long an object needs
| | 03:27 | to be on the stage. If I want an object
to be fully visible and readable for a
| | 03:31 | whole second then I need the object to
be on stage for two seconds if I have a
| | 03:37 | half second of fade in and
a half second of fade out.
| | 03:42 | There are three objects on the stage
that don't have a fade in or fade out at
| | 03:45 | all. Let me double-click on the
Captions here and show you that I have set
| | 03:49 | these to have No transitions at all.
They kind of pop into being and then they
| | 03:53 | quickly disappear when the slide is
through and so for these I'm actually going
| | 03:57 | to set them to Fade out only for that
same amount of time that everything else
| | 04:02 | is fading out which is a half a second.
| | 04:05 | But the reason that I set them not to
fade in and to fade out is that text on
| | 04:09 | the screen needs to be there and
readable for enough time for your user to
| | 04:13 | actually digest it and so when
you're using transitions it's certainly
| | 04:17 | appropriate to use them with text. But
you definitely need to think about how
| | 04:20 | long is that object going to be on
stage for. In this case, we'll go ahead and
| | 04:24 | preview this and you'll see the
difference between the words Photoshop,
| | 04:28 | Illustrator and Flash.
| | 04:34 | Flash faded out with everything else,
Photoshop and Illustrator popped out of
| | 04:37 | existence and that's the difference
between having something fade and having
| | 04:40 | something not fade. There is one more
set of transitions to consider and that
| | 04:46 | is the transition at the start and at
the end of your entire presentation.
| | 04:50 | Those are controlled from your
Preferences. So if you select Edit >
| | 04:54 | Preferences, we're looking for the
Project Preferences Start and End.
| | 04:59 | And what I want to do is either have
the project fade in on the first slide or
| | 05:04 | not and fade out on the last slide or
not. Your decision that you make here is
| | 05:09 | completely up to you. However, what you
need to think about is if you're going
| | 05:13 | to have a fade in and a fade out. You
want to make sure that there is enough
| | 05:16 | sort of dead time at the end and the
beginning of your slide, so that objects
| | 05:20 | aren't fading in that you expect people to be
able to either interact with or read or whatever.
| | 05:26 | So it's actually a pretty good idea to
have a fade in and a fade out, but you
| | 05:29 | just need to account for that. There
aren't numerical settings for these.
| | 05:32 | So you should plan on those being about a
half second of fade in and about a half
| | 05:37 | second of fade out. If you do that and
you build that into your presentation
| | 05:40 | then you'll have a nice polished
appeal at the start and end of your
| | 05:43 | presentation along with the nice
polished appeal that the fades give you for
| | 05:48 | the objects that you place on your
stage. The entire thing is going to look a
| | 05:51 | little bit smoother than if you were
just to have things kind of appearing,
| | 05:54 | disappearing, appearing, disappearing,
because that becomes distracting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating text| 00:00 | In this lesson, we are going to take a
look at an animation tool that Captivate
| | 00:03 | gives you to allow you to produce a
little bit more pizzazz than just having
| | 00:07 | things appear and disappear. And it
can be a very effective for doing things
| | 00:11 | like drawing the user's attention
to a specific place on a slide or just
| | 00:15 | adding a little bit of visual appeal
to the beginning of our presentation to
| | 00:18 | get the user excited over
what they are about to see.
| | 00:20 | To get started with this, I'm just
simply going to click on the Insert > Text
| | 00:26 | Animation tool. What we are doing is we
are leveraging Flash inside Captivate,
| | 00:32 | and there is a little engine here
that allows me to apply a Flash effect to
| | 00:36 | some text without having to use the
Flash authoring tool that Adobe offers to
| | 00:41 | build it. Certainly I could do so if I
wanted something that is not available
| | 00:45 | here for the Text Animation, but I
just need a quick simple effect,
| | 00:48 | so I'm going to use Captivate to provide it.
| | 00:51 | Now the effect that I choose is among
many and you can see that there are a
| | 00:56 | number of them from which to choose.
I'm actually going to stick with this
| | 00:59 | Artdeco Effect and when I select an
effect, I can see the preview of it right
| | 01:03 | here in the screen. The text that I
want to use is not Sample Text; I'm going
| | 01:07 | to say Adobe Applications, because
I'm creating a slide to produce some
| | 01:14 | training for Adobe Applications. And if
I don't like to typeface, I can always
| | 01:18 | click Change font. I'm using Arial,
Bold and perhaps I want to choose something
| | 01:24 | a little bit more graphically interesting.
| | 01:27 | So I'm going to choose Myriad Pro, Bold,
and click OK. Once I'm done with that,
| | 01:37 | I'll click Apply. And I can see at
least the look of the text unanimated on the
| | 01:42 | slide, and that just gives me the
ability to do something like, for example,
| | 01:47 | increase the Font Size, if the Font
Size is small, perhaps I want to go to 55
| | 01:52 | points. There, that's nice and large.
We'll click OK and then I can move the
| | 01:58 | object around. So what I want to do is
place it right there in among the icons.
| | 02:03 | Nothing is happening. In fact, even if
I scrub the timeline. Well, I can kind
| | 02:07 | of see that something is going to
happen there, but that's not a really good
| | 02:10 | representation of what that effect is
supposed to do. So, let's go ahead and preview that.
| | 02:21 | This object, like any other on the
Timeline has a beginning and an end and
| | 02:26 | right now the way this is set is that
that object starts immediately and only
| | 02:31 | plays for about three seconds, meaning
that it's completely done before all of
| | 02:35 | the icons have loaded in. I want this
to actually appear after all the icons
| | 02:39 | have loaded in. So I can just grab it
on the timeline and, if I set my Timeline
| | 02:45 | to Normal, it's easier to see. I'll set
the Timeline to Short. It allows me to
| | 02:52 | see everything in the stack there.
| | 02:53 | I am just going to extend the life of
the slide out to, accommodate the effect
| | 02:58 | that I'm trying to achieve with the
text, so that there is the plenty of time
| | 03:02 | for it to exist on the stage. We'll
set it, so that it appears after five
| | 03:07 | seconds. And because I want the text
to stay on the stage, no matter how long
| | 03:10 | the slide lives. I'm going to double-
click on this and choose from among its
| | 03:14 | Options that I want it to display for
the rest of the slide. We'll click OK.
| | 03:18 | I can extend or decrease the length of
the slide. We'll make it be 9 seconds.
| | 03:25 | We'll go ahead back to
Preview and we'll see how it looks.
| | 03:36 | And there you go. I'll close the preview.
I just want to throw a little bit of
| | 03:38 | caution into the mix here. These
animated text effects could be very effective,
| | 03:42 | because they do draw your attention to
them. But you certainly don't want every
| | 03:46 | bit of text that you have on a slide
or every slide to have an animation like
| | 03:50 | this because it does become distracting
to the content that you trying to deliver.
| | 03:54 | It's a great tool for drawing the
user's attention to the slide, prepping them
| | 03:59 | for what's going to come next and
then providing them some more static
| | 04:02 | information in the follow-up slides
and then maybe punctuate it with another
| | 04:06 | text animations somewhere along the
line to liven things up. But either way,
| | 04:10 | there are some very good effects that
you can take advantage of there so
| | 04:12 | I recommend that you experiment with them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Zooming for emphasis| 00:00 | In this lesson, we're going to take a
look at another time-based tool that
| | 00:04 | Captivate gives you, and it's used for
something a little bit different than
| | 00:08 | just adding pizzazz. It's actually
used for calling out information that you
| | 00:12 | want the user to see and pay more attention to.
| | 00:15 | What I have here is a project with a
slide, and it's actually a screen shot
| | 00:20 | that I took of an interface of some
software, in this case, it's Adobe's
| | 00:23 | Photoshop. What I want to do is call
out the Adjustments panel. And I want to
| | 00:28 | do it in such a way that the user sees
that the Adjustments tab here is of some
| | 00:33 | importance. And for that, I'm going
to use something called a Zoom Area.
| | 00:38 | Now a Zoom Area is something I can
simply insert by choosing Insert > Standard
| | 00:43 | Objects > Zoom Area. Or if I like, I
can choose it from the toolbar down here
| | 00:50 | at the bottom. Either way, it brings up
the Zoom Area dialog box and I can set
| | 00:55 | the Frame color for the Zoom Area and
the Fill color. These aren't exactly
| | 00:59 | obvious right now what they are, so I'm
going to go ahead and just click on OK,
| | 01:03 | and then you'll see what these two
things are, and we can adjust them.
| | 01:07 | This is the Zoom Destination Area. What
the Zoom Destination Area determines is
| | 01:12 | what from the Zoom Area becomes zoomed
in on. In other words, it's sort of like
| | 01:18 | taking the magnifying glass to an area
of an image that you have on your slide
| | 01:22 | and highlighting it in
the Zoom Destination Area.
| | 01:24 | What I need to do is move the Zoom Area
itself over the Adjustments tab, which
| | 01:30 | is what I want to focus on, and notice
that as I'm moving it around, you can
| | 01:33 | see in the Zoom Destination Area that
I have the effect of that magnifying
| | 01:38 | glass. So we'll settle this in nicely.
And now this is a little bit tricky but
| | 01:45 | if you want the Zoom Area the Zoom
Destination Area to match proportionally,
| | 01:50 | you just have to drag them out and
resize them so that they're proportional.
| | 01:56 | What I've just done is I've
created essentially a zoom-in on the word
| | 02:00 | Adjustments from the panel. There's
one more thing that I want to do and that
| | 02:04 | is the Zoom Area itself. If I double-
click on it, it has its own Frame color
| | 02:09 | and Fill color that I want to work with
and instead of this green which really
| | 02:12 | doesn't match my interface at all, I'm
going to set this to be blue, which kind
| | 02:16 | of matches the color of Photoshop.
| | 02:18 | The Fill color, I don't want it to be
a 50% gray, which is what I have it set
| | 02:22 | to now, I'm going to use that same
blue, only except I'm going to set the
| | 02:27 | Transparency to be about 70%
transparent. And I can click on Apply and see it
| | 02:32 | there on my screen. We'll click OK and
I just this in the place to make sure
| | 02:39 | that it's perfectly centered
on top of the word Adjustments.
| | 02:43 | To see what this does, let's actually
preview the slides so that you can see
| | 02:46 | the effect that we're achieving here.
Preview the Project and see how the word
| | 02:51 | Adjustments grows out and then sits
there. That is a way of highlighting or
| | 02:57 | calling attention to something on
your slide that you want someone to pay
| | 03:01 | attention to and it's particularly
effective where I'm showing the software
| | 03:04 | interface and I want you to see a
particular part of that interface. Now it is
| | 03:08 | the case that by zooming-in I created
kind of a blur inside the Zoom Area but
| | 03:13 | that's because I'm taking some pixels
and that's something that you're going to
| | 03:17 | see but it's worth the lack of quality
to draw the user's attention to this.
| | 03:21 | There's another aspect of this that
relates the Timeline that I want to point
| | 03:25 | out. How long do you want the word
Adjustments to grow from this area out to
| | 03:29 | this area? That's something that you
can determine down here in the Timeline.
| | 03:34 | Expand the Timeline up a little bit
so we can see it and we'll set it from
| | 03:38 | short to long, so that there is a
little bit more space here that I can see,
| | 03:42 | because what I'm looking for is that
little tiny line right there. What that
| | 03:46 | little tiny line says is the Zoom Area
is going to grow for the period of one
| | 03:52 | and about a half seconds and then it's
just going to sit there after that.
| | 03:56 | So I can adjust that visually by grabbing
the Zoom Area and I have to work to
| | 04:02 | position my cursor just right, and I
can see that it's positioned right when
| | 04:06 | the cursor changes, as it's down here.
| | 04:08 | Now I click and drag and what I'm
dragging is not the length of time or the
| | 04:13 | place that the Zoom Area is visible on
the Timeline, I'm actually dragging the
| | 04:17 | amount of time the zoom will build for.
So I'm going o set that to be just
| | 04:21 | about exactly 4 seconds and then from
there it just sits there beyond that.
| | 04:26 | If I want to configure it, so that
that goes away after a certain amount of
| | 04:29 | time, I can do that. Frankly, all of
the stuff is going to be easier to achieve
| | 04:33 | by double-clicking on the Zoom Area
in the Timeline, selecting Options and
| | 04:37 | using numbers to make this happen. I
don't want this to display for the rest of
| | 04:41 | the slide. I want it to display for a
specific amount of time. The slide is
| | 04:45 | about a seven second slide.
| | 04:47 | So I'm going to have this Display for
about 6 seconds and I'm going to have it
| | 04:54 | fade out but I'm going to have it fade
out a little bit more quickly than half
| | 04:57 | a second, I've it fade out over 3/10 of
a second and I'm going to have the zoom
| | 05:02 | box start to appear after zero seconds
right away, but I want it to zoom not
| | 05:07 | for a 4 seconds but for 3.5 seconds.
And I can set that numerically. Click on
| | 05:13 | OK and then we'll preview the project.
| | 05:20 | It starts to zoom immediately, it
stays on screen for a few seconds and then
| | 05:24 | disappears and then the rest of the
slide disappears afterwards. And then if I
| | 05:28 | want because I have set this so that
it only appears for a specific amount of
| | 05:31 | time, I can lengthen the slide to
appear for ten seconds to give myself some
| | 05:36 | room to do something after I've pointed out
the Adjustments tab in the Adjustments panel.
| | 05:42 | We'll preview that one more time, and
there you go. It zooms out for the 3.5
| | 05:49 | seconds. It stays on stage for another
three seconds, for a total of six, and then
| | 05:53 | the rest of the slide stays visible so
that I can make whatever point that I
| | 05:56 | need to by using the Zoom Area.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Adding AudioAdding background audio| 00:00 | In this lesson, we are going to
start the process of adding audio to our
| | 00:03 | presentations and one of the easiest
things that you can do in Captivate is to
| | 00:07 | provide a little background music.
| | 00:09 | So for example, I have a little
slideshow here of some Photoshop samples that I
| | 00:13 | have created,and to get you in the
mood to like them, I'm going to put a
| | 00:16 | little bit of nice music in the background.
| | 00:19 | To do that, I'm going to select Audio
> Background Audio. I could record a
| | 00:25 | little bit of voiceover here, but
really this isn't the best place to do
| | 00:28 | voiceovers. What I want to do is just
add a little music to the background and
| | 00:32 | for that I'm going to click on Import.
| | 00:35 | Captivate actually ships with a variety
of items that you can use right out of
| | 00:39 | the box. So if you don't have some
music that you want to add to your
| | 00:42 | presentation, let me show you the
path that you can use to find the samples
| | 00:47 | that Captivate provides.
| | 00:49 | So I'll start here on the Desktop.
I'm going to open up the Computer and I'm
| | 00:52 | going to go on to the Local Disk.
Normally, this is where programs are stored,
| | 00:56 | so that's why I'm going to this place.
I'm looking in Program Files for the
| | 01:01 | Adobe folder, and in there I'm
looking for the Captivate folder.
| | 01:05 | Now there are a bunch of folders in
here and the one that I want is the Gallery folder.
| | 01:09 | Among the gallery items are
a variety of different things like
| | 01:14 | TextAnimation files, and Widgets, and
things that I can use. What I'm looking
| | 01:17 | for are Sounds and specifically, I'm
going to use this Loop Acoustic sound.
| | 01:24 | And we'll just click Open.
| | 01:28 | I want to loop the audio. I want to
stop the audio at the end of the project,
| | 01:34 | and if I'm going to do voiceovers
for this project, I want to lower the
| | 01:38 | background audio volume on slides with audio.
| | 01:41 | Now in this case, I'm going to add
that voiceover for this presentation but I
| | 01:45 | just wanted to show you that that
option exists, because it actually can be
| | 01:48 | quite nice to have a little music in
the background. When you add a little
| | 01:51 | voiceover, it hushes the music a
little bit and then brings the music back
| | 01:55 | once you are done speaking. But at this
point, I'm done. I have actually added
| | 01:59 | the audio to my file and all I need to
do to see it or to hear it is to preview it.
| | 02:04 | So we'll go ahead and preview this project.
| | 02:08 | (Music playing. Folksy acoustic guitar.)
| | 02:17 | I am going to go ahead and close the
preview because I want to add one more
| | 02:21 | little bit of intrigue if you will, and
that is to add some transitions to all
| | 02:27 | of the slides because if it's a
slideshow, I want it to be a little of a
| | 02:30 | transition effect there.
| | 02:31 | So I have selected all of the slides.
I'm simply going to choose Properties and
| | 02:36 | choose my Transition, which will
apply now to all of the slides I have
| | 02:39 | selected. We'll use this Pixel Dissolve,
click OK, preview it one more time.
| | 02:47 | (Music playing. Folksy acoustic guitar.)
| | 03:03 | And there you see I created a
slideshow with a little bit of background audio
| | 03:07 | that will continuously loop until the
project ends, and then I can distribute my work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding audio to an object| 00:00 | Another way to use audio is to draw
your audience's attention to an object on
| | 00:04 | the screen when it appears. For this
we are going to use Object Audio in
| | 00:08 | Captivate and to do that we'll simply
start by double clicking on this file here.
| | 00:13 | This is a lesson about Photoshop,
so when the Photoshop icon appears,
| | 00:17 | I want just a little audio flair to
again draw the user's attention to the fact
| | 00:22 | that this is a Photoshop presentation.
| | 00:24 | To do that, I'll simply double-click
on this object and among the options in
| | 00:29 | the dialog box is the Audio tab. Again,
I could record some audio, so if I
| | 00:33 | wanted to say something to the user I
could. In this case, I'm just going to go
| | 00:36 | ahead and import some audio and I'm
looking in a folder full of audio that
| | 00:40 | Captivate provided for me.
| | 00:42 | If I click on this here, you can see
the path to that folder is on your
| | 00:45 | computer in the Local C drive, which is
where most program files typically go.
| | 00:51 | In the Program Files folder, you will
find an Adobe folder. In that you'll look
| | 00:55 | for the Captivate folder. In there,
there's a Gallery folder and among the
| | 00:58 | Gallery items there are some sounds.
That's what we're looking at here.
| | 01:02 | I'm using this because it's
convenient. There are sounds that are already
| | 01:05 | provided for me. What I want is this
Mouse Click Soft option. However,
| | 01:10 | if I have a sound effect that I want to
use of my own, I can use any wave or MP3 file
| | 01:15 | and I can get it from just about
anywhere. I just need to make sure that
| | 01:19 | it's not a copyrighted sound. It's
something that I have the rights to use.
| | 01:24 | So we'll just choose the Mouse Click Soft
and click Open and that's all there's to it.
| | 01:28 | We'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to add one more sound to an
object. In this case, I'm going to add a
| | 01:34 | sound to the text. I'm going to
select its Properties and among the Text
| | 01:40 | Caption properties is also an Audio tab.
I'm going to Import again. In this case
| | 01:45 | I'll import something a little bit
louder. I'll do this Electronic Bounce.
| | 01:49 | Click Open. Click OK.
| | 01:52 | Part of the reason for doing this
twice within the same project is because
| | 01:55 | I want to differentiate that if
you're using sound to draw attention to
| | 01:59 | something, it's a good idea to be
consistent about the way that you draw
| | 02:03 | attention to things. So for example,
if I were to add a new caption, I'll go
| | 02:07 | ahead and take the Caption tool.
We'll add some text and before I even commit
| | 02:17 | to this I'm going to come over here
to the Audio tab and I want to show you
| | 02:20 | that because I've already used that
Electronic Bounce once, I can click on the
| | 02:24 | Library here and I can choose
that directly from the Library.
| | 02:28 | That's a convenient way to use
Captivate to re-purpose things.
| | 02:31 | We'll click OK. We'll move this down
here so that any time I show some caption
| | 02:35 | text in this manner, I can very
quickly add the same sound to it and that
| | 02:39 | provides a consistency to the user so
that when they hear that sound they know
| | 02:43 | to pay attention to a specific part of
the screen or a specific type of content
| | 02:47 | or however you want to use it. It's
actually a pretty effective way to the draw
| | 02:50 | the user's attention to something.
| | 02:52 | So let's go ahead and preview this.
We'll Preview > Project.
| | 02:58 | (Click! Mouse click noise.)
| | 02:59 | There's the click for the Photoshop icon.
| | 03:03 | (Chiiirp!)
| | 03:06 | And there's the Electronic
Bounce for the text. Granted,
| | 03:09 | that's a little bit shrill. I might
choose something a little bit easier on the ears
| | 03:13 | but you get the point. You can add
a sound to an object and by doing so it
| | 03:17 | will allow you to draw the user back
to the screen, if their attention has
| | 03:20 | drifted a little bit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recording and adding voiceovers| 00:00 | One of the best things that you can do
to your Captivate project to make sure
| | 00:03 | that people understand the information that
you are trying to deliver is to add a voiceover.
| | 00:08 | Among all of the things that Captivate
can do to a presentation to add pizzazz
| | 00:13 | and to get the audience's attention,
the voiceover is the one thing that you
| | 00:18 | can use not only to get their attention,
but to keep it and to ensure that they
| | 00:22 | are able to understand what you are
trying to tell them. Captivate makes it
| | 00:25 | very easy for you to produce a
voiceover for your presentation.
| | 00:29 | All you need to do is simply speak
while you're pretending to deliver the
| | 00:33 | presentation. There's a couple of steps
that you'll want to take to set things
| | 00:36 | up and then we'll go ahead in this lesson and
create a voiceover to show you how it's done.
| | 00:42 | But before we do that, I'm going to
double-click on this slide and this slide
| | 00:46 | is a slide about which I want to say
something specific and if I click on the
| | 00:50 | Slides Properties, you can see that
there's a Notes button here and if I click
| | 00:54 | that you can see that I have loaded
some notes into the slide. This is very
| | 00:59 | similar to the process of doing
the same thing with PowerPoint.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to speak these words and for
these training recordings, I have the
| | 01:07 | advantage of a talented set of
editors who can edit out any of the little
| | 01:11 | mistakes that I make while speaking.
But when I'm doing an e-learning recording
| | 01:15 | I may not be able to afford the luxury
of that set of editors and I need to get
| | 01:19 | it right the first time. The one best
thing that I can do for myself to ensure
| | 01:24 | that I'm going to get it right or at
least I'm more likely to get to it right
| | 01:27 | the first time is to write out a script,
edit it, say it, become comfortable
| | 01:32 | with it and then copy and
paste it into the slide's notes.
| | 01:36 | Now I wrote this in Microsoft Word,
copied the lines for each slide and pasted
| | 01:40 | them in. When I click OK, Captivate
will provide those for me as a script while
| | 01:45 | I'm doing my recording. So we'll click
OK. Rest of the process is simple.
| | 01:51 | All I'm going to do is select Audio >
Record. Okay, so I'm about to begin my
| | 01:56 | recording but before I can actually
start the recording I need to make sure
| | 01:59 | that Captivate is listening to the right thing.
| | 02:03 | Now right now Captivate is set up to
listen to this Realtek Digital Input and
| | 02:06 | I happen to know that right now isn't
connected. So if I were to try and record
| | 02:10 | something, Captivate wouldn't hear
anything. So I'm going to click on this link
| | 02:14 | right here which will take me directly
to the Captivate Audio Settings dialog box
| | 02:18 | where I can choose the correct
input. In this case, it's just the
| | 02:22 | Microphone and we'll click OK to do that.
| | 02:27 | To work through this recording all I'm
going to do is read the script in each slide.
| | 02:31 | These are the Slide Notes that I
was talking about. And then simply click
| | 02:35 | on this button to move from slide to
slide to slide. I'm just going to pretend
| | 02:40 | that I'm presenting to a live
audience and try and keep it as natural and
| | 02:43 | comfortable as possible. So we'll go
ahead and begin the recording and before I
| | 02:48 | can actually start, Captivate really
wants to make sure that it's hearing
| | 02:51 | something. It doesn't want me go
through all this work for no reason.
| | 02:54 | So it's going to establish to make
sure that the microphone is working correctly.
| | 02:58 | And calibrating. The input level worked,
you can there was some activity there.
| | 03:03 | I have got a green light. I'm good to go.
| | 03:08 | In this presentation, I'm going to
show you how to use effective Photoshop
| | 03:12 | technique. Specifically, I'm going
to show you how to convert this color
| | 03:17 | photograph into a black and white
photograph. To create a black and white photo,
| | 03:23 | we're going to use
adjustment layers in Photoshop.
| | 03:28 | Here's a photograph before the
adjustment layer has been applied.
| | 03:33 | Here's the photograph after we have applied
the adjustment layer and here we---
| | 03:39 | (Hrmmph. Author clears his throat.)
| | 03:42 | And here we see the finished result.
| | 03:47 | And there, once I finish the
recording I'll notice one thing
| | 03:50 | right away. Captivate has placed a
little speaker icon in the lower right of
| | 03:55 | all of these slide thumbnails. That's
my indication that each of these slides,
| | 03:59 | now has a voiceover attached to it or
at least some audio attached to it and
| | 04:04 | I can click on these and perform some
functions directly. For example, if I
| | 04:07 | wanted to edit the audio here or remove it,
I could. I don't, so I'll just click over here.
| | 04:13 | Let's go ahead and preview this and
we'll preview the entire project.
| | 04:20 | (Audio Recording: Go.)
| | 04:23 | (Audio Recording: In this presentation, I'm going to
show you how to use effective Photoshop technique.)
| | 04:29 | (Audio Recording: Specifically, I'm going
to show you how to convert this color photograph--)
| | 04:33 | Now I'm going to stop the
preview here. Normally I would listen to
| | 04:36 | the entire thing all the way through,
just listening to see if there was
| | 04:38 | anything about it that I wanted to touch up.
| | 04:40 | In later lessons, I'm going to show
you how you can use the Editing tool in
| | 04:44 | Captivate to clean up things. Like for
example, at the beginning of this slide
| | 04:47 | I said the word "go". Well I was
discussing what I was about to do and I started
| | 04:53 | the recording perhaps a little
bit too soon. That's not a problem.
| | 04:56 | Captivate will allow me to edit that out.
| | 04:58 | The other problem that I noticed is
something that I can fix right now and that
| | 05:02 | was that there was a brief pause
between this slide and this slide. And to see
| | 05:07 | what caused that I'm going to click
on the slide 1 and we'll open up the
| | 05:10 | timeline and I'll show you first off
that the audio appears on the timeline as
| | 05:15 | an object. In fact, it appears
underneath the slide and I can right-click on it
| | 05:19 | and export it and edit it and work on
it that way, but all I want to do is just
| | 05:24 | remove that little gap of sound
which is represented right here.
| | 05:27 | This was a result of the fact that I
had set this slide to be a little more
| | 05:31 | than 8 seconds and the audio for this
slide wasn't that long. So Captivate just
| | 05:36 | filled in the gap with nothing. To fix
that, I can either grab the audio and
| | 05:40 | move it a little bit to the left to
sync it up or I can leave the audio in
| | 05:45 | place and grab the end of the slide
and back it up to the audio. I can't make
| | 05:51 | the slide shorter than the audio for
the slide. The only way to do that would
| | 05:55 | be to remove the audio and then shorten
the slide or perhaps edit the audio and
| | 05:59 | then I can shorten the slide. And to edit the
audio, I would actually have to make it shorter.
| | 06:04 | But after those small fixes, I have a
nicely recorded audio voiceover with my
| | 06:08 | slide that I can publish. There's one
more thing that I can do though and this
| | 06:12 | is kind of neat. When I record audio
into slides using Captivate, Captivate
| | 06:17 | adds the audio to the library as a set of
separate files, one for each slide that I recorded.
| | 06:23 | This is really useful because what
this means is that if there's a particular
| | 06:26 | audio file in here that sounds just
right and I want to use it over and over
| | 06:30 | again for different projects, all I
need to do is select that audio and I can
| | 06:35 | export it by simply clicking on the
Export button from the Library or you may
| | 06:39 | have noticed when I right click on the
audio here in the timeline, it offers me
| | 06:44 | the ability to export it right here.
| | 06:47 | Captivate produces very nicely modular
objects and that gives me the ability to
| | 06:51 | very quickly reuse things that I might
want to in other projects and that's all
| | 06:55 | there's to it. It's very easy to
get in and create a very effective
| | 06:59 | presentation using audio voiceover with
a simple set of tools that have quite a
| | 07:03 | bit of power nonetheless.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing audio in Captivate| 00:00 | Now that I have some recorded audio
in a presentation, I want to be able to
| | 00:04 | touch it up a little bit. Captivate has
a pretty capable Audio Editing feature
| | 00:08 | built right into it that I'm going to leverage.
| | 00:10 | Let's preview this and I want you to
hear a problem that was in the file.
| | 00:17 | (Audio Playing: Go.... In this pres--.)
| | 00:22 | It was right there. Did you hear
that? I said the word Go. I was saying
| | 00:25 | something else when I clicked the
Record button and hadn't settled myself down
| | 00:29 | and prepared myself to actually
start speaking for the recording.
| | 00:32 | Now it would have been tempting to
stop and start over and do the whole thing
| | 00:35 | again, but it really wasn't necessary.
I just kept going because what I can do
| | 00:40 | is edit the audio right here in Captivate.
| | 00:42 | So here is what I'm going to do.
I'm actually going to open up the Timeline,
| | 00:45 | I'm going to right-click on the audio
and select Edit. That will bring up the
| | 00:50 | Audio Editor and it brings it up for this slide.
| | 00:53 | What I can now do is play the audio.
| | 00:56 | (Audio Playing: Go....)
| | 00:57 | And I'll stop. So you could
hear that I said the word go.
| | 01:00 | In fact, if you look at the waveform,
you can see that I say the word Go.
| | 01:04 | So what I want to do is not only
remove this, but I'm going to remove this
| | 01:07 | entire section right before I start
speaking the words that I want to say and
| | 01:11 | to do that, I have drag selected it.
All I need to do is simply click
| | 01:15 | that button there. That did two things
though and I want to explain what just happened.
| | 01:19 | First off, it did remove the word Go,
but second off, it also shortened the
| | 01:23 | audio clip, which I may not have
wanted to do, so I'm going to hit Cancel.
| | 01:28 | We'll edit the audio and come back
in and we are going to take a look at
| | 01:31 | another way that I can accomplish the same goal.
| | 01:34 | Instead of drag selecting over this
and hitting the Delete button here,
| | 01:38 | I can choose to insert silence. Now what
inserting silence is going to do, it's going
| | 01:43 | to replace this entire amount of
time with silence. So we'll click OK.
| | 01:48 | Now, what will happen is the audio file
will be the same length. It's just that
| | 01:52 | there won't be any noise before I
actually start speaking the words that I want
| | 01:56 | to speak. I'm going to cancel it one
more time and I'll select Edit and there
| | 02:06 | is one other thing about this audio
that I want to pay attention to and that's
| | 02:10 | the fact that this audio has some noise
in it and that's what that is right there.
| | 02:14 | You can hear it. If you listen
carefully, you will hear, it sounds like a
| | 02:16 | little bit of a whine. I was using a
very inexpensive microphone when I did
| | 02:20 | this recording inside the Captivate
project and there is a couple of ways that
| | 02:23 | I can deal with that if I choose to.
| | 02:25 | One, I can drag select all of this and
insert silence. However, if I want to,
| | 02:31 | I can also choose to adjust the volume
and I'll just drag the volume down, and
| | 02:36 | click OK. What that did was
effectively the same thing, but there are times
| | 02:41 | when you might want to use Adjust
Volume because that sound might be
| | 02:46 | consistently found throughout the
entire presentation and while I'm talking it
| | 02:50 | might be behind my speech.
| | 02:52 | So instead of completely removing it,
which will be very obvious and you can
| | 02:56 | hear that, I can adjust the volume
down just a little so that it becomes less
| | 03:00 | noticeable, but it's still there just
enough not to create the distraction
| | 03:03 | that Insert Silence might.
| | 03:05 | In this case, I'm just going to go
ahead and delete it. Select OK and now
| | 03:10 | notice on the Timeline my audio is much
shorter and I'm going to drag it over a
| | 03:15 | little bit. I want there to be a
little bit of dead air before I start
| | 03:18 | speaking, but I don't want the slide
to last quite so long so I'll go ahead
| | 03:22 | and adjust the slide so that it ends at
the same time the audio ends and that's
| | 03:27 | how I can use the Audio Editor as a
very effective tool inside Captivate to
| | 03:31 | tweak audio to remove those little
mistakes that I might make while recording.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Splitting audio among slides| 00:00 | There will be times when you will want
to record audio outside of Captivate to
| | 00:05 | produce professional sounding audio,
using a professional level of audio tool.
| | 00:09 | Captivate has some very good audio
editing tools on board but you may need more
| | 00:14 | power than that and so in those
instances you can record your audio, bring it
| | 00:19 | in to Captivate and apply it to your
presentation. And that is what we're going
| | 00:23 | to do during this lesson.
| | 00:25 | Instead of recording each slide as a
separate audio file, what I've done is I
| | 00:29 | have recorded the audio for this
presentation as one long file. It makes it a
| | 00:34 | lot more easier to manage and I can
bring the file in to Captivate as one object.
| | 00:39 | So what we're going to do is
we'll select Audio and it's tempting to
| | 00:45 | consider Background Audio as my choice.
But Background Audio is not meant for
| | 00:50 | content that is designed to be
associated with a specific slide. Background
| | 00:55 | audio is for ambient audio that's
designed to play and loop and kind of just be
| | 00:59 | back there but it really doesn't matter
what's playing when a particular slide is showing.
| | 01:03 | What we want to do is actually choose
Import to Slide. We're going to Import
| | 01:07 | some audio that I have prerecorded
and this file is an MP3 file, although
| | 01:12 | Captivate will allow me to use a WAV
or an MP3 file. And I'll click Open.
| | 01:21 | Once it's done importing the file,
this is what Captivate is going to give me
| | 01:24 | the ability to essentially spread the
audio file out among the slides that I
| | 01:29 | have because the Timeline for slide 1
just doesn't last long enough for the
| | 01:34 | amount of audio that I have and that's
to be expected. I recorded the audio for
| | 01:37 | the entire presentation.
| | 01:39 | The next step here is basically to tell
it what I want to do. If I had created
| | 01:44 | audio that was specific per slide,
I could just do this slide by slide by slide and
| | 01:48 | I could tell Captivate to extend the
length of the slide to fit the audio that
| | 01:52 | I have. My other option is to
retain the current slide timing and just
| | 01:57 | distribute the audio files over
several slides. But the problem with that is
| | 02:00 | that I really don't have any control
over which audio is spoken during which slide.
| | 02:04 | So I'm going to choose this
middle option to distribute the file over
| | 02:07 | several slides and then we'll click OK.
| | 02:10 | What I'm actually looking at here is
currently Slide 1. But I'm looking at the
| | 02:15 | audio for the entire project and
Captivate has a nice interface that will allow
| | 02:20 | me to redistribute the audio so that
it makes sense per slide. So what I'm
| | 02:23 | going to do is zoom out a little
bit and if I scroll sideways, what I'm
| | 02:28 | looking for are these lines.
| | 02:30 | This indicates that this is when Slide
2 will appear visually. So what I need
| | 02:35 | to do is first of all, I'll zoom out a
little bit more so that I can see my entire
| | 02:41 | run of audio and actually I want to
zoom in just one bit there so that I can
| | 02:46 | see the entire audio string. But what
I'm looking for are these little silent areas
| | 02:52 | in and among the audio.
Of course, normally I could just click on
| | 02:55 | here and click Play, but I
can actually do this visually.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to grab this indicator,
which is for Slide 2, and I'm going to move
| | 03:01 | it here. What that means is that all
the audio up to this point will be spoken
| | 03:06 | while Slide 1 is visible. At this
point whatever is spoken from here on is
| | 03:10 | going to be spoken during Slide 2. Let's fix
Slide 3, Slide 4 and then finally, Slide 5.
| | 03:24 | I think actually if I scroll over, yup!
We got one more slide and there we go,
| | 03:27 | bring that over and Slide 6. So what I
can see here now when I drag all the way
| | 03:32 | back over to the left is that
everything here is spoken during Slide 1.
| | 03:36 | And Captivate shows me that's
what Slide 1 looks like.
| | 03:38 | You can click on this Slide 2.
Everything that's spoken from here over is
| | 03:44 | spoken during Slide 2 and if I click my
insertion cursor in there, you can see
| | 03:48 | that's what Slide 2 looks like. This is
what Slide 3 looks like, Slide 4,
| | 03:53 | Slide 5 and Slide 6. What I may want to do
at this point is actually play this sound
| | 03:57 | but I know that this is all set up
correctly. So I'm just going to OK this.
| | 04:02 | And I can see that my slides each
have the little sound indicator or the
| | 04:06 | little speaker indicator to indicate
that each slide has some audio associated
| | 04:11 | with it. And if I change my mind
about the particular associations,
| | 04:14 | I can always come back to Audio > Edit > Project,
and I can readjust my associations if necessary.
| | 04:22 | There's one other thing that I might
want to do if I've recorded audio outside
| | 04:26 | of Captivate and that is, I may want
to adjust the volume a little bit.
| | 04:31 | And instead of just adjusting the volume
by drag selecting and then clicking on
| | 04:35 | Adjust Volume and cracking it up or down,
what I actually want to do is Normalize.
| | 04:39 | We'll go ahead and click Normalize and
what that does is that it tries to even out
| | 04:44 | the sound across the entire
spectrum. Normalize is actually very useful
| | 04:49 | when I'm bringing two sound files
together in the same Captivate project and
| | 04:54 | one sound file is a little bit
softer than the other or vice versa.
| | 04:59 | But once I have done that, I have
brought my audio in, split it up among the
| | 05:02 | slides, normalized it to adjust for
volume. And then if I want, I can even go
| | 05:06 | further and do some cleanup work here,
which shouldn't be necessary if I used the
| | 05:11 | a professional external editor, there
shouldn't be any, and there isn't any in
| | 05:14 | this case. So I'm just going to click
OK and I'm pretty much done. The only
| | 05:17 | thing now to do is to simply preview it.
So we'll go ahead and preview the project.
| | 05:21 | (Audio recording: In this presentation,
I'm going to show you how to use...)
| | 05:27 | (Audio recording: effective Photoshop technique.
Specifically, I'm going to show you how to...)
| | 05:30 | (Audio recording: convert this colored
photograph into a black and white photograph.)
| | 05:35 | And normally, we would listen to the
entire audio just to make sure that
| | 05:38 | everything sounded good but for the
sake of this demonstration I'm comfortable
| | 05:41 | with the result. So that's how you can
take audio from an external editor
| | 05:45 | that allows you to do a lot more with the
sound than Captivate might be able to and
| | 05:50 | incorporate into your Captivate projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing audio with an external editor| 00:00 | As good as the sound editing tools
are in Captivate and they are quite good.
| | 00:03 | You can do quite a bit with your sound in Captivate
directly. There are still going to be some times
| | 00:08 | when you'll need to reach outside of
Captivate and leverage a more professional
| | 00:12 | sound editing tool. If you haven't had
the opportunity to record the sound in
| | 00:16 | that tool in the first place, perhaps
you need to use Captivate to go ahead and
| | 00:20 | leverage that tool after the fact and
that's what we are going to do in this lesson.
| | 00:24 | What I have here is a project and
so the voiceover for each slide is
| | 00:27 | represented by a separate file here.
What I need to do is beef up or pump up
| | 00:33 | the sound a little bit for this
particular slide. What I'm hearing sounds a
| | 00:37 | little bit flat to me and there
really isn't anything directly in Captivate
| | 00:40 | that I can use to fix that problem.
| | 00:42 | So what I'm going to do is right-click
on this object and choose to Edit with
| | 00:46 | Adobe Soundbooth CS4. That happens to
be the application that I have. If I have
| | 00:50 | a different application for editing
sound, then I can certainly choose it by
| | 00:54 | choosing Edit With and then
pointing out that application to Captivate.
| | 00:58 | In this case, we'll go ahead and choose
Soundbooth CS4. Captivate will hand the
| | 01:02 | file over to Soundbooth and then I can
use Soundbooth's editing tools to fix
| | 01:06 | the problem. So in this case here,
I'm just going to go ahead and play the sound.
| | 01:10 | (Audio recording: Specifically...)
| | 01:11 | It sounds a little bit flat to me, so
I'll just use some of its effects here.
| | 01:15 | What I want to do is add a little of
what's called Reverb, which will kind
| | 01:18 | of bounce the sound up a little bit,
and then if I play it, listen.
| | 01:21 | (Audio recording: Specifically,
I'm going to show you how to convert...)
| | 01:24 | What that does is it just
adds a little bit of echo.
| | 01:26 | Now this isn't a Soundbooth class, so I
don't want to get deep into Soundbooth,
| | 01:30 | but my point is that if you need more
sound editing capability than Captivate
| | 01:34 | has directly, you can hand a file over
to Soundbooth. In this case, what I'm
| | 01:38 | going to do now is simply save the
file and then when I jump back over to
| | 01:42 | Captivate, the sound has been edited
inside Captivate. I don't have to do
| | 01:48 | anything else. I can just publish the
file and the new effect has been applied
| | 01:51 | to the sound.
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| Using the Advanced audio panel| 00:00 | When you use audio with a project, you
may end up with a lot of audio in your
| | 00:05 | project and there are a couple of things
that you need to consider if that is so.
| | 00:09 | The first thing you need to consider
is how much audio do you have there and
| | 00:13 | what might you want to use it for?
For example, if there is a particular phrase
| | 00:17 | on slide two that you want to use with
other presentations because it's a good
| | 00:21 | standard phrase and you don't want to
have to re-record it, you can do that.
| | 00:25 | The second thing you need to consider
is what is the audio doing to the size of
| | 00:28 | your file and for both questions
we're going to look at the Audio > Audio
| | 00:33 | Management panel. What this does is it
gives you a bird's-eye view of all of
| | 00:37 | the audio in your project and then
gives you the ability to work with that
| | 00:40 | audio both within and outside of Captivate.
| | 00:44 | The first thing to consider is are you
using any Object Level audio? And if you are,
| | 00:48 | you want to select Show Object
Level Audio so that you can see it here in
| | 00:52 | the list. Without that selected,
that particular audio doesn't show.
| | 00:56 | The next thing to consider is what is your
file size? We've got some very small audio
| | 01:02 | files here. So they were created well,
but it's important if you are seeing
| | 01:06 | large file sizes to remember that this
is going to, in some cases, dramatically
| | 01:10 | increase the size of your file.
| | 01:12 | And so you may need to do something
about that and unfortunately one of the
| | 01:15 | things you may need to do is to go in
and re-record the audio. What I'm seeing
| | 01:19 | over here is the Audio Sample Rate,
which is set to 44.1 Kilohertz. If I expand
| | 01:27 | the panel to the side just a little bit
more we can also see the bitrate for the sound.
| | 01:32 | These two things are going to have an
impact on the quality and the size of the
| | 01:36 | file within your project and there is
a tradeoff. The higher the quality,
| | 01:39 | the larger the file size. We're going to
see in just a moment how we can deal with this
| | 01:43 | or at least where we can make
the decision about these file sizes.
| | 01:47 | But before we do that I want to also
show you that if you select a particular slide,
| | 01:50 | you can export the audio for
that slide if you want to and if you want
| | 01:55 | to hear the audio for particular slide,
you can select it and click the Play
| | 01:59 | button and hear the audio.
| | 02:01 | So if you're looking at a project and
you see that there are some audio that
| | 02:04 | you want, you can actually use this as
a way to get at that audio. We're going
| | 02:08 | to go ahead and cancel this because
I'm not going to make any changes there.
| | 02:12 | The second thing that we need to
look at is the under the Audio menu
| | 02:16 | the Settings, because this is where you're
going to determine the size of the audio
| | 02:20 | files and the quality of
the audio that you capture.
| | 02:24 | First off, you'll be choosing your
audio input device by selecting from this
| | 02:27 | pulldown list. On most computers
there'll be two or three options there at most,
| | 02:32 | perhaps a USB microphone, maybe
the internal microphone for your system,
| | 02:36 | and perhaps even one other option. But
select that and that'll determine what's
| | 02:40 | going to be doing the recording when you
record audio into your Captivate project.
| | 02:44 | The next choice is your Bitrate and
your bitrate will have a significant impact
| | 02:48 | on both quality and file size. If you
select CD bitrate, you're going to get CD
| | 02:54 | quality sound. The problem is that
you're also going to get CD quality sized
| | 02:59 | files in your Captivate project and
if your intention is to deliver your
| | 03:02 | Captivate project by the web, that
might not be the good option. It might be
| | 03:06 | better to choose FM or if you want
to choose a custom bitrate, you can.
| | 03:11 | But frankly anything below FM is
probably going to sound sufficiently poor that
| | 03:16 | you may not want to do it. However, if
you do need to, you can go all the way
| | 03:20 | down to 8 kilobits per second, which
is pretty low quality sound. I generally
| | 03:26 | tend to stick with FM radio bitrate
because its quality enough that you can
| | 03:30 | understand what I'm saying, but the
file sizes do tend to remain small.
| | 03:34 | Encoding Frequency is another option
that's basically going to affect quality
| | 03:38 | and really what that does is it
determines how many little chunks go in to each
| | 03:43 | sound that is made and it's kind of
a technical thing. But the higher the
| | 03:47 | Encoding Frequency, the larger the file
size and the higher the quality.
| | 03:51 | If you are in a really bandwidth constrained
situation, you may want to get down to a
| | 03:55 | lower frequency such 22 or on the
outside 11 Kilohertz. I'll leave it at 44,
| | 04:02 | because I generally produce things for
high bandwidth use. So I'm going to go
| | 04:05 | ahead and leave it there.
| | 04:07 | Then the final choice here is Encoding
Speed. And this really doesn't relate to
| | 04:11 | anything other than how does the
capturing engine trap sound and the higher the
| | 04:17 | number, the lower the quality of the
encoded files. The lower the number,
| | 04:21 | the higher the quality of the encoded
files. That's something that I generally
| | 04:24 | leave at 5, but if you are in a
significantly bandwidth constrained environment,
| | 04:29 | you may want to increase that a little
bit to see what you get for file size
| | 04:32 | and if that affects the sound's quality.
| | 04:34 | These are sort of save and forget
settings. Once you set these and record based
| | 04:38 | on these, you can't come back in after
the fact and undo them. For example,
| | 04:43 | if I use a very low bitrate and a very low
encoding frequency, I'm not going to be
| | 04:47 | able to go back in and turn these back up and
get anything back if the sound is poor quality.
| | 04:53 | My point for showing this to you is
that you will probably want to do some
| | 04:56 | initial testing to see what these
settings should be for your environment and
| | 05:01 | that's where you're going to want it
both listen to the sound that you create
| | 05:04 | after you've created it and look at
the file size implications by --I'll hit
| | 05:08 | Cancel-- coming back into the Audio
Management panel and looking at the file
| | 05:14 | size that you get from your recordings.
| | 05:16 | If you find that they're too high,
turn things down a little bit. If you find
| | 05:20 | the quality is too low, turn things up
a little bit, but just pay attention to
| | 05:23 | the fact that you're going to
increase file size, if you do so.
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| Creating closed captioning| 00:00 | Whenever you work with audio, you'll
need to consider potential members in your
| | 00:03 | audience who won't be able to hear it.
For that, Captivate offers you the
| | 00:07 | ability to apply closed captioning to
your projects and in this lesson that's
| | 00:11 | what we're going to look at how to do.
| | 00:13 | This is a presentation that has audio.
I can see that because of the little
| | 00:16 | speaker icons here. When I select a
particular slide, in this case slide 1,
| | 00:20 | notice that I have two little gray bars
down here. The bottom one, if I click that,
| | 00:24 | brings open the Timeline. However
the top one of the two if I click,
| | 00:28 | opens up the Closed Captioning feature.
| | 00:31 | The way to add closed captioning to a
presentation is to leverage your slide notes
| | 00:34 | and if you don't have them in
place for a particular slide, you can
| | 00:38 | actually add them right here. Before I
actually add them here, I'll also point
| | 00:41 | out that slide notes are a part of the
Slides Properties and you can add them
| | 00:45 | here if it's more convenient.
| | 00:47 | However, when you are closed
captioning and you don't have the slide notes
| | 00:50 | in place already it can be faster to go
ahead and type them in right here and
| | 00:53 | that's what I'm going to do now.
| | 00:56 | 'In this presentation I'm going to
show you how to use effective Photoshop technique.'
| | 00:59 | I know that that's what
that says because I actually wrote the
| | 01:02 | script out for the purposes of this demo.
I know it. But of course if I needed to
| | 01:06 | I could always just simply listen
to the slide and then type as I go.
| | 01:10 | Once I have done this, to make this a
closed caption all I need to do is click here
| | 01:15 | and that will turn it into a
closed caption. So we click on Slide Properties.
| | 01:20 | First off we'll see that
there are notes. So I could actually go
| | 01:23 | back and forth if I wanted to.
| | 01:25 | But the other thing that I wanted to
point out was that sometimes a long run of
| | 01:29 | speech will require you to break up
the closed captioning so that you don't
| | 01:32 | fill the screen with lots of text.
| | 01:35 | What I'm going to do is click on Audio
here and I'll show you that under the
| | 01:38 | Audio tab for any slide that has audio
on it I can click Closed Captioning and
| | 01:43 | here is my audio. At this point what I
may want to do is add rows. So instead
| | 01:47 | of having this be one long run of text,
I'm going to drag-select over half of it
| | 01:52 | and cut it. I'm going
to add a row and paste it.
| | 01:59 | And this little slider here will
actually allow me to determine where that
| | 02:03 | speech picks up. So in other words
I can time the text that appears on the
| | 02:08 | screen to the audio on the slide by
simply jumping into the Closed Captioning tab
| | 02:12 | in the individual slide itself and then
setting the timings using this technique here.
| | 02:18 | Either way you do it, it's a good idea
to add closed captioning because anyone
| | 02:22 | who can't hear the information that
you're delivering verbally will want to be
| | 02:26 | able to read that information. And you
may have noticed that there are now three
| | 02:29 | lines of notes in here. When you break
up your text, Captivate doesn't assume
| | 02:34 | that you want to throw out the
original text as it was. But you can just
| | 02:37 | actually just click here to
remove it because the text is there.
| | 02:40 | Now then the problem is that if we go
to Slide Notes, you can see that there is
| | 02:44 | actually a line break there.
Shouldn't be a problem of any kind, but I just
| | 02:48 | wanted to point that out. To actually
experience the closed captioning let's do this.
| | 02:53 | Before I preview this I'm actually
going to select Project > Skin Editor.
| | 02:59 | Notice that there is a Closed Captioning
button option among your playback controls.
| | 03:03 | You'll need to turn it on and
then the Closed Captioning button will appear.
| | 03:08 | You also will probably want to
configure it so that the text is more readable.
| | 03:13 | By default the text is Verdana 8
points, which is actually quite small.
| | 03:17 | So I'm going to enlarge that and make it
Verdana 14 points. And you'll probably also
| | 03:23 | need to consider the color of the text
and if you want to put a background.
| | 03:27 | So what I'm going to do is put a
white background with a little bit of
| | 03:30 | transparency, nice large Verdana text,
and then I'm going to limit the lines to
| | 03:36 | two lines so that it stays out of the
way of any content. Click OK, click OK
| | 03:42 | and now let's preview it.
| | 03:47 | (Audio recording: Go!)
| | 03:51 | (Audio recording: In this presentation, I'm going
to show you how to use effective Photoshop technique.)
| | 03:56 | And there you can see the closed
captioning was timed along with the actual
| | 04:00 | speech that was being spoken. Closed
captioning is very easy to apply inside
| | 04:04 | Captivate and frankly, if you want to
make your content as accessible to as
| | 04:09 | many people as possible it doesn't take
long to add it and it's a very good idea to do.
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|
|
7. Adding InteractivityAdding buttons| 00:00 | The thing about a self-running
presentation is that it's going to go through
| | 00:05 | the content no matter what. And what
you want to do, if you want your user to
| | 00:09 | able to gather that content or access
the content that you are providing them
| | 00:13 | is give them the opportunity to run the show.
Captivate has a variety of tools for doing that.
| | 00:19 | And in this lesson we are going to take
a look at the Button tool, which gives
| | 00:23 | your user the ability to continue the
presentation when it makes sense for
| | 00:27 | them. If I were to publish this, we
would actually see a presentation that
| | 00:30 | would very quickly show you some
basic information about me for this Resume
| | 00:34 | Presentation and then move on.
| | 00:36 | Well, if I want you to get my email and
jot it down, that's not going to work.
| | 00:40 | So what we are going to do is we are
going to add a button here. That will stop
| | 00:44 | the presentation. And then give the
user the ability once they have jotted the
| | 00:47 | email down to continue.
| | 00:49 | To get started, I'm going to use the
Button tool, and I can find the Button
| | 00:53 | tool right down here on the Toolbar.
I'll click it and then I'm going to choose
| | 00:58 | some of the very basic options here
to just quickly create this button.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to choose a Text button. I'll
add the text, Next. I simply want to tell
| | 01:08 | you what's going to happen when you
click it. If I want, I can edit the Font
| | 01:11 | for the button by simply clicking here
and choosing a type base or whatever.
| | 01:15 | I'm going to stick with Arial. It's nice, easy-to
-read, big. A little plain but it does the job.
| | 01:20 | The next thing that I need to consider
is, what does the button do? And in this
| | 01:24 | case, the user will click the button
and if they successfully click the button
| | 01:28 | then the project is going to continue.
That's all I want. I don't want anything special.
| | 01:33 | The rest of the items, I'm just going
to leave at their defaults and click OK.
| | 01:37 | Captivate will produce a button for me.
I'll just expand it a little bit to
| | 01:41 | make it larger, and move it into
place. And that's all there is to it.
| | 01:45 | Now maybe whenever you add an
interactive element to your Captivate project,
| | 01:49 | you'll want to preview it right away,
because you want to see if it's working
| | 01:53 | correctly. So we'll go ahead and
preview this. We'll play the project. And the
| | 02:01 | button appears and nothing else does.
So maybe I should click it. And what's
| | 02:07 | happening is the button actually did
exactly what it was supposed to do.
| | 02:10 | It stopped the presentation until I
clicked it. And then the rest of the content
| | 02:14 | on the slide fell into place, but it didn't
stop and allow me to observe that content.
| | 02:20 | And that's because the button isn't set
on the Timeline correctly, so let's fix
| | 02:24 | that. We'll go ahead and expand the
Timeline, and what we have here are several
| | 02:29 | different objects. I'll drag my
current Time Indicator, and you can see that
| | 02:32 | those objects are designed to build
onto the slide as time goes on, but my
| | 02:37 | button is in the wrong place. Instead
of being at the end of the Timeline,
| | 02:41 | which is where I want it, it's at the
beginning and so it stops the progress of
| | 02:45 | the slide right away.
That's would it's designed to do.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going to go ahead and just drag
it to the end here. And now I've got a
| | 02:51 | button that at the end of the
presentation pauses the presentation. And the
| | 02:56 | question becomes, where does it pause?
If the button is a three second button,
| | 03:00 | which is what this button is right now,
it lasts from little after 7 seconds to
| | 03:05 | little after 10 seconds, at what
point does it pause it? That is what this
| | 03:09 | little indicator right here does. That
little indicator is something that I can
| | 03:13 | place my mouse cursor on top of
and drag to one side or the other.
| | 03:17 | What that does is it determines the
point at which after the button appears,
| | 03:21 | the pause will happen. Now I can
edit that visually as I've just done.
| | 03:25 | Although, it's probably little easier
for me just to double-click on this which
| | 03:29 | will reveal the button's Options
dialog box. Click on Options, and then I can
| | 03:34 | be very specific about things like, for
example, when the button will appear on
| | 03:37 | the slide, I'll chosen even 7 seconds,
and if I wanted to pause not after
| | 03:41 | two-and-a-half but just two seconds, I
can type that in there and then click OK.
| | 03:47 | So what will happen now is that the
slide will progress along until 7 seconds,
| | 03:52 | when the button itself will appear, and
then at 9 seconds the slide will stop,
| | 03:56 | and wait for me to click the button
before it continues on. Let's have a look.
| | 04:00 | So the slide is going to progress, the
content is going to fill into the slide
| | 04:10 | based on the way that I had set the
slide up, and then at 7 seconds the button
| | 04:14 | appears. Part of the reason that I
don't have the button appear until after the
| | 04:18 | content has loaded is that if I were
presenting this information to somebody,
| | 04:23 | I don't want them to see the next button
and be given the option of clicking away
| | 04:27 | from this content before I wanted
them to click away from the content.
| | 04:31 | So even though, I'm giving the users
some control over the presentation,
| | 04:34 | I don't want to give them ultimate
control because I definitely want them to see
| | 04:37 | my email address, or of the sort e-
learning project, I want them to see the
| | 04:41 | content that I'm trying to teach them.
| | 04:43 | Either way the button doesn't even
appear until after the content is appeared
| | 04:47 | then after they read it, they have the
choice of moving to the next slide, by
| | 04:51 | clicking the Next button.
| | 04:52 | There is one more option for buttons
that I want to cover, and for that, we are
| | 04:57 | actually going to go the last slide in
this presentation, and we'll close the
| | 05:01 | Timeline because we are done with this.
Now this button is already in place,
| | 05:05 | and it's set up to work correctly
except that it's not setup to do the right
| | 05:09 | thing. So I'm going to double-click
on it because I want to show you the
| | 05:13 | options that you have besides
the Basic or Standard Continue.
| | 05:17 | In this presentation there is no
place to go to, it's over, the end of the
| | 05:21 | presentation. So what I want you to do
is to be given the opportunity to start
| | 05:25 | over. So I'm going to select Jump to
slide. And before I actually select this,
| | 05:29 | I'll point that there are many, many
options that you can choose from here to
| | 05:33 | do different things when
you've clicked a button.
| | 05:37 | We'll choose Jump to slide, and I said
a number of different times during the
| | 05:42 | various lessons for the Captivate for
Essential Training that you should name your slides.
| | 05:47 | In the Slides Properties, you
have the ability to label your slide
| | 05:50 | descriptively. This is why. If you are
going to send somebody to a slide, it
| | 05:54 | helps to know which slide you want to
send to them. If this said slide 1, slide
| | 05:58 | 2, slide 3, slide 4, it might not be
obvious what the content was that you were
| | 06:02 | trying to send someone back to.
| | 06:04 | In a three-slide presentation
obviously it's easy for me to figure this out.
| | 06:08 | But if you are working on a 10, 15, 20,
50-slide presentation, it might not be
| | 06:12 | obvious at all which slide you need to
choose unless you've labeled your slides
| | 06:17 | with something that will help you with that.
| | 06:19 | So I'm going to go ahead and choose
the Intro slide. Click OK. As with any
| | 06:24 | other interactive element, even if
I've only edited the element I want to go
| | 06:28 | ahead and preview it to make
sure that it's working correctly.
| | 06:30 | And so I'll preview the entire project,
and it will play through, and I can use
| | 06:39 | the Fast-Forward buttons here to
click through to this last slide which is
| | 06:44 | where I really want to test the new
object. The slide builds, the button will
| | 06:50 | appear, and then if I click on Back to
start, it takes me back to the start of
| | 06:55 | the presentation. So I'll close the preview.
| | 06:58 | So buttons are a very easy way to
provide interactivity to give the users some
| | 07:03 | level of control over the presentation
that they are looking at. It allows them
| | 07:07 | to stop, consider some information
that you might want them to consider and
| | 07:11 | then continue on through the
presentation in a way that makes sense for them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making hotspots| 00:00 | Captivate has a tool called the Button
tool that allows me to add interactivity
| | 00:05 | to a slide so that the user can control
the presentation by determining when to
| | 00:09 | move from slide to slide. In fact a
button can do many, many things that offer
| | 00:14 | interactivity for a presentation.
| | 00:16 | In this case, what I want to do is use
a button to go from slide 1 to slide 2.
| | 00:21 | However, if I double-click on slide 1
here, I'm in Storyboard View, we'll jump
| | 00:25 | into the Edit View. You can see that
I have an object in place that kind of
| | 00:28 | looks like a button but it actually isn't.
If I double click on it, it's a text caption.
| | 00:33 | And being a text caption, if I
select its Properties, I can change the
| | 00:39 | look and feel of the object, but what
I can't do is add any interactivity.
| | 00:43 | There just aren't any options
for that with a text caption.
| | 00:46 | So what I want to do is combine a
button with this to give myself what looks
| | 00:52 | like a button and in actual button in
the same place, and for that I'm going to
| | 00:56 | use a Transparent button.
| | 00:58 | To get a Transparent button, I'll
select the Button tool from the Object
| | 01:01 | toolbar down here at the bottom, and
all I need to do is choose from button
| | 01:08 | types, not text or Image
button but Transparent button.
| | 01:11 | I can have a semi-transparent button if
I want, by choosing a Fill transparency
| | 01:17 | and I can even give it a frame, but
frankly, that's not what I want. I'm going
| | 01:20 | to set the transparency all the way up
to 100% and the Frame width to 0 because
| | 01:25 | I don't want the button to be visible
in any way. We'll go ahead and click OK,
| | 01:30 | and before we go ahead and click OK, we
just want to confirm that when the user
| | 01:34 | clicks the button, what is the
action that it will perform. In this case
| | 01:37 | Continue, which is what I want. I want
the button to allow the user to go to
| | 01:40 | the next slide. So we'll click OK.
| | 01:41 | I have the button on the slide, what I
need to do is place the button over the
| | 01:49 | graphic object that I want to use as
the look of my button. So I'm going to go
| | 01:53 | ahead and make it nice and tight, it
really doesn't have to be, I mean, it's
| | 01:56 | not going to be a huge problem when
you drift over the button, you're not
| | 01:59 | completely over the next button looking thing,
but I'd like to try and get it as close as I can.
| | 02:04 | So we'll go ahead and preview. The
project has stopped. Nothing is there.
| | 02:14 | If I roll over this area and click, well,
the Transparent button didn't work.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to close the preview and the
reason the Transparent button didn't work is
| | 02:22 | because I didn't consider the timing
for the button. To fix that, what I'm
| | 02:27 | going to do is locate the button on my
Timeline, because it was the last object
| | 02:31 | that I added, it's right here at the top,
and what I'm going to do is visually
| | 02:36 | drag the button back to the end,
visually drag the start of the button and
| | 02:42 | notice that as I push, Captivate is
actually adding time to the slide because I
| | 02:46 | can't collapse the button anymore than
I have. I double-click on the button,
| | 02:50 | the reason for that is because under
the Options for the button, I've to hold
| | 02:53 | the button to display for a specific
amount of time, but I've given it a Pause
| | 02:58 | point that requires the button
to be at least 1.5 seconds long.
| | 03:03 | So in my attempts to collapse the
button below that, I'm actually extending the
| | 03:08 | length of the slide. If I want to I can
always shorten the slide again by just
| | 03:12 | grabbing it here and moving it back.
But the button itself has to be at least a
| | 03:17 | second-and-a-half long. If I double-
click it I want the button to appear for
| | 03:21 | the same amount of time that that Text
Caption appears. So we'll just type 2,
| | 03:26 | then click OK, and actually what I need
to do is click on the Text Caption, in
| | 03:30 | fact I'm going to double-click on the Text
Caption to check out how long it exists for.
| | 03:35 | Well, this exists for 4.8 seconds.
Even though this Text Caption is set to
| | 03:40 | display for the rest of the slide, I
can read that value and it's telling me
| | 03:44 | that that is 4.8 seconds long Text
Caption. In other words, after 4 seconds of
| | 03:49 | the slide, the Text Caption appears for
4.8 seconds. So what I want is for the
| | 03:55 | Transparent button to match that.
| | 03:57 | So click OK, we'll double-click the
Transparent button, coming to Options, I'm
| | 04:02 | actually going to set the Transparent
button, so that it will appear for the
| | 04:05 | rest of the slide, and I want it to
appear after 4 seconds and I want it to
| | 04:10 | Pause after, we'll say 2 seconds. Click
OK, and I've made a transparent button
| | 04:17 | that matches both, the shape and size,
visually and the time by entering in the
| | 04:21 | numbers of the Text Caption
underneath that looks like the button.
| | 04:24 | So basically what I've done is I've
created a button out of my Text Caption.
| | 04:28 | Let's go ahead and preview it.
| | 04:35 | The slide will play and then 4 seconds
in, the thing that looks like a button
| | 04:40 | will appear. When I click on it, it
will actually act like a button and then
| | 04:45 | onto the next slide.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating image buttons| 00:00 | There will be times in Captivate that
you want to create a button that looks
| | 00:03 | more interesting than a standard text
button or than a caption that you've
| | 00:08 | placed a transparent button on top of.
You may want to use an external resource
| | 00:13 | such as Photoshop or Illustrator or
something like that, to produce a graphic
| | 00:17 | for your button and then
apply that to your button.
| | 00:19 | And this lesson what we are going to
do is add that exact effect to this
| | 00:23 | presentation. What I have here is a
Start slide, and there are three buttons.
| | 00:28 | Each of which is designed to take you
to a slide in the presentation and so I
| | 00:33 | want the button to look like the
product that's going to be covered on those
| | 00:36 | slides that the buttons take you to.
So we'll start by double clicking on slide 1.
| | 00:41 | I'll put the timeline away, we
don't need that, and what I have here are
| | 00:44 | two buttons that are sort of in progress.
| | 00:47 | I have got one that's already setup.
This is the button that uses this graphic
| | 00:51 | as its face, and so to repeat that
what we are going to do is we are going to
| | 00:55 | edit this Illustrator button by double
clicking on it, and instead of choosing
| | 00:59 | as its type a Text or Transparent,
we are going to choose an Image button.
| | 01:03 | The current button style, you can see
that I have done this before with this
| | 01:07 | particular button, these are the
options that are already in there.
| | 01:10 | Captivate has a very long memory. When
you add an image to anything, Captivate
| | 01:15 | remembers that and gives that to you
as an option later on. But I'm going to
| | 01:18 | show you that I can go ahead and click
on this icon right here which allows me
| | 01:22 | to change the button. You can see
that Captivate is taking me to a folder
| | 01:27 | called Buttons and it's a folder
that's nested a little bit deeply.
| | 01:31 | So I want to take you along the path,
because it's a set of professionally
| | 01:34 | designed buttons that you can use with
your projects if you are not someone who
| | 01:38 | is comfortable doing that yourself, or
you don't have access designer who can
| | 01:41 | create on for you. So if you look on
your computer, on the C drive, inside
| | 01:46 | Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Captivate 4
in the Adobe folder, there is a folder
| | 01:53 | called Gallery and in there
there is a folder called Buttons.
| | 01:56 | This folder actually is filled with
buttons. If I scroll down, you can see that
| | 02:02 | there are many, many buttons there from
which you can choose. In fact, there's
| | 02:05 | even a folder in here called More.
I'll double click on that. There are more buttons.
| | 02:09 | Adobe did this because a
lot of people who use Captivate aren't
| | 02:12 | professional designers and they are
not comfortable trying to create their own
| | 02:15 | buttons for their project. So
there are some here that you can use.
| | 02:19 | And again, I'll just point that path
one more time so that you can see it,
| | 02:23 | because it's something that's ships
with Captivate. When you install, it's there,
| | 02:26 | and Captivate automatically
takes you there, anytime you click on that
| | 02:29 | little button to update the face of
the button that you are building.
| | 02:33 | But I want to use a Custom Button.
| | 02:34 | I've created a button using Adobe
Photoshop that isn't anything like one of the
| | 02:38 | buttons that I have here and so I
want to choose it. So what I'm going to do
| | 02:41 | is navigate my way to it. It's in my
Exercise Files here and in this case
| | 02:47 | what I'm going to choose is this single
square object that looks like the
| | 02:51 | Illustrator icon and we'll click Open.
Before I do actually, I'll point out
| | 02:55 | that you can crate a button using a
variety of different file types. This one
| | 02:58 | happens to be a png file, but it
maybe could be jpeg or gif or one of these
| | 03:02 | other file formats if you like.
| | 03:04 | So I'll go ahead and click Open and
then click OK and now my button looks like
| | 03:11 | the Illustrator icon. Now if I double
click on it, you can see that it's a
| | 03:14 | standard button. It allows me to jump
to a slide. In this case I'm taking you
| | 03:17 | to the Illustrator start slide, which
is this slide here. So the Buttons icon
| | 03:22 | or the image for the buttons looks like
the content that I'm going to. It's not
| | 03:25 | a must-have thing, but it's something
that makes the presentation look a little
| | 03:28 | tighter, but we are actually
going to take this a step further.
| | 03:31 | We'll click OK here, and I'm going to
edit this button and I want to show you
| | 03:35 | that you can do something that's
pretty neat with Captivate by using simple
| | 03:39 | naming conventions with the images
that you use for your buttons. I'll double
| | 03:43 | click on this and I'm going to choose
not Text, but an Image button, and
| | 03:48 | I'm going to click on the little chooser
icon here, and what I have here are a
| | 03:51 | series of files. They're all the same
file format, they're all named exactly
| | 03:56 | the same and they are in the same
enclosing directory. They are in the same folder,
| | 04:00 | except that for the naming
convention at the end I have used _down,
| | 04:06 | _over and _up. What that allows me to do is
basically create the three states of this button.
| | 04:14 | In other words, when button is just
sitting there, it's up and no one's
| | 04:17 | pressing it, it just looks normal.
When I hover over it, see it's going to turn
| | 04:21 | a little bit light and then when I
click down, it's actually going to get this
| | 04:25 | soft of yellow cast. Now I created
this effect inside Adobe's Photoshop, but
| | 04:30 | you could use any image editing tool to
create this effect and all you need to do
| | 04:33 | is create three different icons
that are the same size, use the same name,
| | 04:37 | up, to, down, over and up, and you
can create the same effect yourself.
| | 04:41 | I'll click on Open. Now you can see
here in the little thumbnails for my Image
| | 04:45 | Button icons. There are three different
images there and that's an indication
| | 04:50 | that Captivate just recognized,
because I had those three files with that
| | 04:54 | naming convention in the same folder,
and I chose it as my image for my Image
| | 04:58 | Button, Captivate understood that those were
to apply to the different states of the button.
| | 05:02 | Let's go ahead and OK that and let's
preview it. We'll preview the project.
| | 05:09 | The Illustrator button works when I
click on it, takes me to the Illustrator slide,
| | 05:13 | which actually continues on to
the end, and I can click Start Over.
| | 05:18 | Here however when I roll over the
Photoshop icon, notice that there is a slight
| | 05:22 | shift in color. That's that Over
Effect. When I click on it, notice that it
| | 05:26 | turns yellow and then when I let go, the
button does its job. So we'll close the preview.
| | 05:33 | So creating an image button isn't just
a matter of making a button look pretty.
| | 05:36 | You can actually give the button a
little bit of user feedback so that when
| | 05:39 | they roll over and click on it,
it changes the state of the button just a
| | 05:42 | little bit. And that's a common
practice to let somebody know that an object on
| | 05:46 | the stage that isn't otherwise
obviously a button is button. When they roll
| | 05:50 | over the changes, when they click the
changes, that will tell them that they
| | 05:53 | have a button on the stage that they can use.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding click boxes| 00:00 | Captivate is a great tool for
creating software simulations for a number of
| | 00:04 | reasons. I can actually record a
software simulation directly inside an
| | 00:07 | application, something we'll consider
in an upcoming chapter. In this lesson
| | 00:11 | though what I'm going to show you how to do is
use something called the Click Box to fake it.
| | 00:15 | What I have here is a two slide
presentation. It's sort of a before and after.
| | 00:20 | And the goal is to get somebody to be
able to click on the interface object
| | 00:25 | inside this interface. This is Adobe's
Photoshop that would convert the file
| | 00:29 | from color to black and white.
| | 00:32 | So, what I'm going to do is I'm first
going to add a Click Box to the first
| | 00:36 | page, and On Success, all I want is for
the Click Box to allow the presentation
| | 00:41 | to continue. That will continue on to
the next page. Among the options, I want
| | 00:47 | to make sure that the, Click Box pauses
the project until the user clicks and
| | 00:52 | I can offer a little help along the
way, if they don't click where they're
| | 00:55 | supposed to, or if it looks like they
need a hint then the click box can offer it,
| | 00:59 | and you'll see those in action in just
a moment. So we'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 01:04 | There are my hint text boxes, and
there is my Click Box. I'm going to place
| | 01:09 | that on top of, in this case, this is
the Black and White adjustment layer
| | 01:12 | icon and I'm going to move these so
that they are off to the sign and the
| | 01:18 | only other thing that what I'm going
to do is instruct the user. So that
| | 01:21 | they'll what they are suppose to do.
| | 01:22 | Because it's not a good idea to hide
something in the interface and then hope
| | 01:25 | your user will find it. So I'll go
ahead and take a caption, going to have a
| | 01:29 | transparent caption that is black
text that says Make this Black and White.
| | 01:40 | We'll add this up here. Let me jump
down to my timeline to set the timings.
| | 01:44 | I want the Click Box to appear after
they've had a chance to read Make this Black
| | 01:49 | and White. The Click Box should be
there for an amount of time. That's not
| | 01:53 | going to fool them, and they're
thinking they made a mistake when they didn't.
| | 01:56 | So I'm actually, going to set the Click
Box to appear after a second. That will
| | 02:00 | give them a chance to quickly read Make
this Black and White, and then they can
| | 02:03 | go hunting for the right tool, or if
they know where they can click on it.
| | 02:05 | Let's go ahead and preview this. The
Click Box is going to pause the project
| | 02:18 | and when I hover over this, you can see
the Type Hint Text here. If I click in
| | 02:24 | the wrong place, it will tell me there
was a failure, and then if I click, it
| | 02:30 | will actually give me the success
text. I'm going to close this preview,
| | 02:34 | because frankly Type Success text here
is probably not good help, so, I'll just
| | 02:39 | go ahead and update that.
| | 02:41 | These worked as like any Text Captions.
That's it, nope, and you're getting
| | 03:01 | warmer. Because you're getting
warmer it needs a little more space,
| | 03:04 | we'll increase the size of that box. If it
turns out that I really don't want that
| | 03:08 | Hint Text there, it's not a problem.
I can always double click on the Click
| | 03:11 | Box, go back to its options, and
take that caption away. Click OK.
| | 03:18 | Now I'll only have the two captions,
"That's it!" and "Nope." If they should
| | 03:21 | click on the wrong place, then they'll
get the feedback. If they should click
| | 03:24 | in the right place, then they'll get
the appropriate feedback for that.
| | 03:27 | So let's go ahead and preview this.
So the project display, I'm clicking.
| | 03:34 | No, that's not it. No, that's not it. No,
that's not it. A-ha, that's it! And then
| | 03:43 | the presentation will continue on to
the next slide, which makes it look like
| | 03:47 | I've actually applied the
Black and White adjustment layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Highlighting objects| 00:00 | In a presentation, it's often
convenient to focus somebody's attention on some
| | 00:04 | particular aspect of what you are
trying to show them. This is especially
| | 00:08 | useful in a software presentation
where you want to point out a part of an
| | 00:12 | interface that has lots of little parts
that make it difficult to tell what you
| | 00:16 | are supposed to be looking at.
| | 00:17 | In this lesson I'm going to show you
tool called the Highlight Box, which
| | 00:20 | basically is a little tool that will
do just exactly that. It will focus the
| | 00:24 | users attention by creating a little
visual on top of the thing that you want
| | 00:28 | of them to look at.
| | 00:30 | The Highlight Box can be found on the
Object toolbar. To use it, simply click
| | 00:35 | and then you'll want to configure it.
Now in this case, what I wanted to do is
| | 00:39 | stand out against the background.
The background is kind of gray, so I'm going
| | 00:44 | actually use a frame color here that is
a bright red and a fill color that is
| | 00:48 | also that same bright red, but I'll use
a fill transparency, and what that will
| | 00:53 | do is create a little bit of visual
discordance so that the person looking at
| | 00:57 | the slide will be able to see what it
is that I'm trying to focus them on.
| | 01:00 | Now, I'm going click OK, and the
highlight box itself needs to be placed over
| | 01:05 | the object that you want them to focus
on. In this case, what I want the user
| | 01:09 | to focus on is this little icon right
here, because in this presentation I'm
| | 01:15 | going to show somebody how to use that
icon to convert a document from color to
| | 01:20 | black and white in Adobes Photoshop.
I'm going open up the Timeline, because
| | 01:23 | the timeline is important here. When
this slide shows, I may have some other
| | 01:29 | thing happening. It's important to make
sure that the highlight box appears on
| | 01:32 | the timeline at the time when
it's most likely to have an impact.
| | 01:36 | And so for this situation what I'm
going to do is grab the highlight box, allow
| | 01:41 | it to start one second in, allow it to
appear for five seconds, and then have
| | 01:47 | it disappear for the final second.
We'll go ahead and preview it, and there you
| | 01:51 | have it. That's all there is to a
highlight box, it's a very simple tool, but
| | 02:05 | it's an incredibly powerful tool.
| | 02:06 | If you want to draw your users
attention to something, especially if that
| | 02:10 | something is among many other things in
an interface, for example in a software
| | 02:14 | demonstration, then the highlight
box is a great way to do it.
| | 02:17 | Simple, effective and does its job.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding pop-up images| 00:00 | Captivate has some really useful tools
for creating what are called software
| | 00:04 | simulations. But sometimes you don't
have the ability to setup and actually
| | 00:09 | take a screen capture of some software
in action and you might need to fake it.
| | 00:14 | For that Captivate actually has a tool
called the Rollover image and it's useful
| | 00:19 | in a variety of different ways.
I'm going to demonstrate it as a way to
| | 00:23 | show user a particular panel in the
interface that's not actually showing.
| | 00:27 | To set this up all I've done is I've
used any common screen capture utility to
| | 00:31 | capture a screen that I'm using inside,
in this case, Adobe Photoshop.
| | 00:35 | What I want to do is allow the user to
rollover something, in this case, this little
| | 00:40 | icon here, and have the panel that would
appear if you were have clicked on that, jump up.
| | 00:45 | To start with that I'm going to go
ahead and use the Rollover Image tool and
| | 00:49 | what the Rollover Image tool is asking
for is the image that you want to have
| | 00:53 | appear when the user rolls over the
hot spot. And I have that on my desktop
| | 00:58 | here in the Exercise_files,
and here it is. I'll click Open.
| | 01:05 | Now looks like it kind of just dropped
the panel in place here but if I move it
| | 01:09 | the side, you can that there's a
Rollover image box that comes along with this.
| | 01:13 | What I need to do is put that in the
hot spot that I want the user to use.
| | 01:18 | Let's go ahead and preview this.
| | 01:29 | When I rollover that icon, the panel
appears. We'll go ahead and close the
| | 01:35 | preview. There's nothing here that
will stop the presentation when you use a
| | 01:38 | Rollover Image. So to fix that I'm
just going to add a quick little button to
| | 01:42 | the project. We'll use the text button
with the label Next. Click OK. I'm just
| | 01:47 | going to put that down here in the interface
and we'll preview the project one more time.
| | 01:57 | There, the project has stopped and I
can rollover this and see the panel that
| | 02:03 | would appear if I were to click on this
button, all without having actually to
| | 02:07 | have Adobe Photoshop on my desktop. So
it's an effective little training tool
| | 02:10 | that you can use whether you're using
it for this or for a standard presentation.
| | 02:14 | It's a great way to allow something to
pop up and appear when the user rolls
| | 02:18 | over a hot spot on the slide.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding pop-up captions| 00:00 | When you're creating a presentation
that offers specific information, in this
| | 00:03 | case about a software product such as
Adobe Photoshop, it's useful to be able
| | 00:07 | to allow the user to poke around and
define things for themselves. And for that
| | 00:13 | Captivate offers a tool called the
Rollover Captions tool. And basically it
| | 00:18 | does exactly what it says. When you
rollover a hot spot, you'll see a caption appear.
| | 00:22 | In this lesson, we're going to go
ahead and do that. We'll start by selecting
| | 00:26 | the Rollover Caption tool from the
Object toolbar. We need to go ahead and type
| | 00:31 | our caption in, This is the Black and
White adjustment layer and I can choose
| | 00:37 | from among my Caption types to find
something that is a little bit more fitting
| | 00:42 | for the presentation. We'll choose this
haloblue option here and click OK.
| | 00:47 | And I can see that with the haloblue I
probably should have chosen black type, so
| | 00:51 | I'll just go ahead and correct this right here.
| | 00:54 | These are just captions by any sense
of the words so I can edit the caption
| | 00:58 | right here on the slide, in this case
I'll make the text black. There we go,
| | 01:02 | now it's much more visible. I'll put
the caption where I wanted it to appear
| | 01:05 | when I rollover the hot spot. That's
what this is here. I'll put the hot spot
| | 01:09 | on the little icon that I want to
define, and I'm going to add one more thing
| | 01:15 | to this presentation, and that is a
button because the Rollover Caption won't
| | 01:19 | stop the presentation from playing
so let's just go ahead and add a quick
| | 01:22 | button here. We'll make it a text
button. We'll say Next for the label.
| | 01:29 | Click OK. We'll just drop this down here
out of the way in the interface and then
| | 01:33 | we'll preview our project. Preview >
Project. The slide will play and it's
| | 01:39 | going to stop because of the button,
but nothing is happening however,
| | 01:43 | something will happen when I rollover
the Black and White adjustment layer icon.
| | 01:48 | Now I'm going to close the preview and
I'm going to double-click on this part
| | 01:53 | of the Rollover Caption and show that
you can if you want to add a frame.
| | 01:58 | So I'm going to add a Frame color of red
that is a single pixel wide, not going to
| | 02:04 | worry about Fill Color
and I'm going to click OK.
| | 02:06 | Now we'll go ahead and preview that.
And I did that because I wanted to show
| | 02:13 | that anytime you have a hot spot and
you don't do something to indicate to the
| | 02:16 | users that there are hot spots on the
slide, this could be a pretty boring
| | 02:20 | experience to sit here waiting for
something to happen without knowing that
| | 02:24 | there's a hot spot that you can roll your
cursor over to find out more information.
| | 02:28 | If I were building a larger
presentation what I would probably do is add a
| | 02:32 | standard text caption to the mix that
explain Rollovers over the icons to see
| | 02:37 | what they do and then the user might
understand that they need to do that
| | 02:40 | without that highlight there. So
either way that you do it, you want to
| | 02:44 | definitely indicate to the users
somehow that there's something to do here,
| | 02:47 | other than to sit and wait for
something interesting to happen.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding pop-up mini-slides| 00:00 | If you have used any of Microsoft's
products especially in the early 2000s,
| | 00:04 | you're probably familiar with Clippy.
That was the little paper clip person
| | 00:08 | that would jump up and offer you help
when it thought you needed it.
| | 00:11 | And as derided as it was, it was actually a
pretty useful tool. What it was trying to
| | 00:15 | do was give you information in place
that you needed it but not have that
| | 00:18 | information always on the screen.
| | 00:21 | Captivate allows you to create a
similar situation with something called a
| | 00:24 | Rollover Slidelet. Basically a
Rollover Slidelet is just a little Captivate
| | 00:28 | slide that you can have appear, do its
thing and then disappear when it's appropriate.
| | 00:34 | To start we'll go down to the Object
toolbar and click on the Rollover Slidelet tool.
| | 00:38 | We're just going to go ahead and
accept the defaults to get started.
| | 00:44 | This is the hot spot and I'm going to drop
the hot spot in on top of the Photoshop
| | 00:48 | icon. But I want it to built is a
little slide that quickly explains what
| | 00:53 | Photoshop is for a person who
might not be that familiar with it.
| | 00:56 | When they roll over this icon the
little slidelet is going to appear with some
| | 00:59 | information. The Slidelet is
something that I can configure separately.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to double-click on it and among
the options are its Border Color and Fill
| | 01:08 | Color. In this case it has a Fill
Transparency of zero meaning that it's a
| | 01:11 | solid blue color. And I'm
going to leave that. That's okay.
| | 01:15 | Another option though to consider is
how long will this slide appear for?
| | 01:19 | Just like any other Captivate slide, it has
a lifespan. And in this case I'm going
| | 01:24 | to set it for 5 seconds. And then
click OK. With this Slidelet selected,
| | 01:30 | I'm actually working in Slidelet mode and
I can tell that because if I click on the
| | 01:34 | Timeline here, I can see that I'm
looking at the Timeline for the Slidelet, not
| | 01:38 | the Timeline for the overall slide.
In fact if I click off the Slidelet,
| | 01:41 | now I can see that I'm looking
at the Timeline for Slide 1.
| | 01:44 | So I'll click on the Slidelet and
basically I can start to add things to the
| | 01:48 | Slidelet as if I were adding things
to a standard slide. We'll start with a
| | 01:52 | basic caption. Move here to the
Caption tool. We'll type the caption text
| | 01:58 | "Photoshop is an image editing tool"
and because that's going to be on light
| | 02:03 | blue for background, I'll change that
color to black and click OK. This text
| | 02:10 | lives entirely inside this Slidelet.
You can see that it's not allowing me to
| | 02:13 | drag it out beyond the Slidelet.
| | 02:15 | I can however expand the Caption Size
so that the text fits and we'll expand
| | 02:21 | the Slidelet just a little bit
because we're going to have some other
| | 02:23 | information in there as well.
| | 02:25 | The other information that we're going
to have is I want to place the picture
| | 02:29 | of the woman in there as if she's
speaking this information. So we'll choose the
| | 02:32 | Image tool and I'll choose
this 08_Woman file and click Open.
| | 02:38 | This is much larger than the Slidelet
so we'll go ahead and fit it to the stage.
| | 02:42 | That's what I want Captivate
to do. We'll click OK. And now she fits
| | 02:45 | within the Slidelet. And then last but
not least I want to provide an example
| | 02:49 | of the kind of work that Photoshop can
do. So I'm going to put another image in
| | 02:52 | there which is a picture.
| | 02:53 | We'll go ahead and choose the Image
tool one more time and then we'll add our
| | 02:57 | photograph. And again we'll set it to
fit to stage and I'm actually going to
| | 03:01 | scale it down once we get it on the
stage and move it into place. As I said,
| | 03:06 | this is just a little slide so I'll
provide a little bit of movement here as well.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to reset the timing
for the objects on the slide so that the
| | 03:14 | caption appears first, the woman
appears next and the photograph appears last.
| | 03:22 | We'll set that to start at 3 seconds.
| | 03:25 | Then finally, I'm going to go ahead up
here to the Slidelet and double-click it
| | 03:31 | and under Options, I'm going to set
this so that the transition for this does
| | 03:34 | not fade in and out. I'm just going to
set it to No Transition. And that means
| | 03:38 | it will kind of pop up into the
place or not. And we'll click OK.
| | 03:41 | The final setting that I want here is
if I double-click on this, I'm going to
| | 03:45 | choose if the user clicks inside the
Rollover Slidelet, which is this area here,
| | 03:50 | I don't want them to navigate
away. I want it to actually stick the
| | 03:54 | Slidelet up on the screen and we'll click OK.
| | 03:58 | Let's go ahead and preview this.
Preview > Project. The Next button is actually
| | 04:05 | forcing the entire slide to stop and
that's what I want so that we can take a
| | 04:10 | moment to examine the Slidelet. And
this is pretty standard. If you're going to
| | 04:13 | present some information on a slide
that has a Rollover, you'd better stop the
| | 04:17 | slide so that the person can at least
find the Rollover. In this case,
| | 04:19 | they roll over the icon for Photoshop,
the Slidelet will appear, the animations
| | 04:25 | occur, and then it disappears.
| | 04:27 | Now I can also click and then roll out
and that will actually stick the slide
| | 04:32 | so it replaces entirely through.
Notice that if I roll in and out without
| | 04:36 | clicking to stick it, the Slidelet
will appear and then disappear immediately
| | 04:40 | upon rolling out of it.
| | 04:41 | So the ability to click it means that I
can look at this information, the slide
| | 04:46 | will play through based on the
Slidelet's Timeline and then disappear.
| | 04:50 | So a Rollover Slidelet is a great
way to basically produce a little slide
| | 04:54 | within a slide on a Captivate project
and it gives you the ability to add some
| | 04:58 | auxiliary information that's not not
readily visible or that might obscure other
| | 05:03 | information on the slide that
you want to be there all the time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding input fields| 00:00 | There may be times when you're working
on a Captivate project that you want to
| | 00:03 | allow interactivity that goes beyond
just giving people the ability to click on
| | 00:07 | a button. Captivate actually has the
ability to do that with something called
| | 00:10 | the Text Entry Box. In this lesson,
I'm going to show you how to create one.
| | 00:14 | We're actually going to use it to
create a password situation for the slide.
| | 00:19 | The concept is that I have my resume
information here and I don't want you to
| | 00:22 | be able to access this information
unless you're someone that I know. So I'll
| | 00:26 | give you a password. You can type
in the password. When you type in the
| | 00:29 | password, the slide will play to the
point which will allow you to use the
| | 00:32 | Next button to move on.
| | 00:33 | So to get started, I'll select the
Text Entry Box from the Object toolbar and
| | 00:40 | the Text Entry Box has one main feature.
We're going to leverage the feature
| | 00:44 | here but you actually don't have to. So
I want to point this out. I'm going to
| | 00:48 | use this to validate against a
particular text string. In this case I'll just
| | 00:51 | do 12345. That's the password.
| | 00:54 | If you don't want to validate, you
don't have to have anything in here. You can
| | 00:57 | just allow people to type stuff on
to a slide to give them the sense that
| | 01:01 | they're interacting with the
presentation for no other reason than to allow
| | 01:04 | them to interact with the presentation.
However, I'm going to validate against
| | 01:08 | it. So this is the correct entry and it's
the only correct entry that I'm going to allow.
| | 01:13 | Now if the user enters something
incorrectly, you need to think about how
| | 01:16 | you're going to handle this. This is
what this option down here allows.
| | 01:20 | If I want to allow them literally infinite
attempts then they can keep typing in
| | 01:24 | different passwords and clicking, and
keep typing in different passwords and
| | 01:27 | clicking and clicking and clicking.
Nothing is going to happen, it will just
| | 01:32 | sit there. We'll provide them some
feedback but it's not going to do anything.
| | 01:34 | However, if I think someone's trying to
hack the presentation, then I can turn
| | 01:38 | off Infinite attempts and allow them
maybe to users. But this is very important
| | 01:43 | with these things. If you do this and
then you just allow it to continue, then
| | 01:47 | you've completely blown by
the password in this case.
| | 01:49 | So what happens after the last attempt
is very important. If I were going to do
| | 01:54 | this, I would probably add a slide to
the end of the presentation and jump to
| | 01:57 | it and the slide would say something
like, "No way, you're not coming in or
| | 02:00 | whatever." However you want to
indicate that someone has tried too many times
| | 02:03 | and failed. In this case I'm going
to leave it on Infinite attempts.
| | 02:07 | Under Options, this is how I can give
you the feedback that you failed.
| | 02:11 | First off, I'll have to validate user input.
Now if I turn that off, you can type
| | 02:15 | anything you want into the Text Entry
Field and because it's not validating
| | 02:18 | user input, as soon as you click to
go by the Text Entry Field, you're just
| | 02:22 | going to continue on. So, that's how
you can use it as a generic, sort of open
| | 02:25 | field that you can use for whatever.
| | 02:28 | I am going to validate and I'm going
to include a failure caption. You'll see
| | 02:31 | that on the slide in just a moment.
I'm not going to offer you a hint.
| | 02:35 | I do want to pause for the failure caption,
although I don't want to bother pausing
| | 02:40 | for the success or failure caption.
I want to show a button. That's going to be
| | 02:43 | the Submit button for the password and
then I'll allow a text box frame around
| | 02:48 | the Text Entry Box. Click OK.
| | 02:52 | Here are my objects. So I'm going to
drag them into place, this after the site,
| | 02:58 | make my Submit button a little bit
larger, spread these out just a little bit
| | 03:04 | more and just to make sure that
they're aligned, I'll use the Alignment tools
| | 03:10 | and I'll distribute them just to make sure
they're nicely distributed and there we go.
| | 03:14 | What's going to happen is the
presentation will stop when the Text Entry Box
| | 03:18 | appears. You click on Submit. If you
get it wrong, you'll see this. If you get
| | 03:22 | it right, I want all of this to
disappear, move on to the Next button. To make
| | 03:27 | that happen, I'm going to make you turn
to the Timeline and we'll see how this
| | 03:31 | has been added to the Timeline. Right
now, all of the stuff is added before the
| | 03:35 | content is complete.
| | 03:37 | So if you look on the Timeline here, if
I click on each of these little lines,
| | 03:40 | these are different objects on the
slide including my name, the fact that it's
| | 03:45 | a resume, my email and phone number.
Well these are all things that I really
| | 03:49 | want you to see, before you get into
the slide, because even if you can't see
| | 03:52 | the material beyond it, I want
you to be able to see who I am.
| | 03:55 | So all I'm going to do is just move
this down here little bit. The entire thing
| | 04:00 | happens before the Next button. So I
click on that. That's the Next button.
| | 04:04 | So the time indicator will play along.
You'll see that I'll get the Text Entry
| | 04:08 | field and it'll have to be allowed
pass the Text Entry field to give you the
| | 04:12 | Next button to allow you to move on.
That's how this is going to work.
| | 04:16 | The final thing that I want to do is
just extend the beginning of all of these
| | 04:19 | objects so that they appear before the
Text Entry field because I want to make
| | 04:24 | sure that they're on the slide, while
the user is waiting, because if the user
| | 04:28 | doesn't have a password, "Hey, I'd like
to have them call me up and ask for the
| | 04:32 | password. Now where I can vet them or
know who they are or hopefully I get a
| | 04:36 | job or whatever I'm
trying to do with this resume."
| | 04:38 | So the timings are all set. Let's go
ahead and preview this. Select Preview >
| | 04:43 | Project. The slide will build as it did
before and here's my Text Entry field.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to type the wrong password
first. Just do 11111 and click Submit.
| | 05:00 | That's my failure, darn well. Okay,
we'll try again. We'll try 22222, I can do
| | 05:06 | this in infinite number of times
however or I get the correct password, then
| | 05:12 | the project will proceed, give me the
Next button and then allow me into the
| | 05:16 | rest of the resume.
| | 05:17 | So the Text Entry field is something
that can be used for things as simple as
| | 05:21 | just allowing people to type on to
slide for whatever reason, to vetting things,
| | 05:26 | so you can use it to test passwords and
make sure that people have the right to
| | 05:29 | access the information.
| | 05:31 | You'll actually see in upcoming lessons
how it can be a tool for quizzes and a
| | 05:35 | tool with which you can correct
someone's name and then populate the rest of
| | 05:38 | the presentation with that name to
personalize a presentation. But however you
| | 05:42 | use it, it's a way that you can add
more interactivity than simply click
| | 05:46 | buttons to your projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating branching presentations| 00:00 | When you add interactivity to a
project in Captivate, one of the things that
| | 00:04 | you can do with that interactivity is
to produce something called branching.
| | 00:08 | Branching is just Captivate's term for
allowing the user to look at specific
| | 00:12 | content that they may find interesting.
If you build all of the content into
| | 00:17 | the presentation and you build
branching into the presentation, you actually
| | 00:20 | can offer a lot of information in one package.
| | 00:24 | In this lesson, we're going to add
branching to this presentation. Before we
| | 00:28 | get started with that, let me explain
to you what we have here. I have a slide.
| | 00:32 | On that slide are three buttons. Each
button will take you to an associated set
| | 00:37 | of information regarding that
particular software application. So if this were
| | 00:42 | an Adobe Tools Training presentation,
I might have on each of these slides,
| | 00:45 | some little bit of training information.
| | 00:48 | A Photoshop user might find the
Photoshop information useful, an Illustrator
| | 00:52 | user might find the Illustrator
information useful and the Flash user might
| | 00:55 | find the Flash information useful. At
the end each, of them might suffer little
| | 00:59 | bit of buyer's remorse. So I want to
give them the ability to go back to the
| | 01:02 | start of the presentation and look at
the stuff that they may have missed.
| | 01:06 | But at some point a user may decide to
skip any of this and that's why building a
| | 01:10 | branch presentation is useful.
Captivate makes it very, very easy both to build
| | 01:15 | one and to maintain one. So let's get started.
| | 01:19 | The first step is basically to hook
these buttons up. These are image buttons.
| | 01:23 | Right now they don't do anything. So
if I double click on one of them, I can
| | 01:27 | set it so that On success, when the
user clicks the Photoshop button, they're
| | 01:30 | going to jump to a particular slide.
Now I've said this before and I'm going to
| | 01:35 | say this again. If you're using
interactivity, especially branching with your
| | 01:38 | presentations, it's a very good idea
to give your slides labels that makes it
| | 01:44 | easy to figure out what they are.
| | 01:45 | I'm going to go ahead and click Cancel
because I want to show you that.
| | 01:49 | Here's the slide. I'll double click on it
to access its properties and here's its
| | 01:52 | label. By placing a descriptive label
in here, I'm making it a lot easier for
| | 01:56 | me when I actually go to hook up the
branching for this presentation, I'll
| | 02:00 | click OK, come back to slide one,
double click on our button and set it so that
| | 02:06 | when the user clicks on the button,
they're going to jump to the slide that is
| | 02:09 | the Photoshop start slide.
| | 02:10 | That makes some sense. Click OK.
We'll do the same thing for Illustrator.
| | 02:15 | In this case we're going to Jump to
slide and set it so that we can go to the
| | 02:19 | Illustrator start slide and then we'll
do the same thing to the Flash button.
| | 02:25 | When they click on the Flash button, they
will jump to the Flash start slide. There we go.
| | 02:31 | Everything seems like it should be
okay and as with any other interactive
| | 02:35 | project that you work on in Captivate,
I really want to encourage you to go
| | 02:39 | ahead and preview your work each step
at the way because it will allow you to
| | 02:42 | prevent yourself from making mistakes that
are difficult to untangle as time goes on.
| | 02:47 | So let's go ahead and preview this and
see if there are any mistakes. So far so good.
| | 02:53 | We have a slide that plays,
that stops, there are buttons there.
| | 02:55 | I can choose a button. We'll click on the
Photoshop button. It seems to go the right slide.
| | 03:00 | Uh-oh! It continues on to the
Illustrator slide and then through the
| | 03:05 | Flash slide and then to the end. Okay,
well that's not what I want to happen.
| | 03:10 | So really I haven't created a branched
presentation yet so much as I've created
| | 03:14 | a presentation that allows you to skip
some content but then you have to wait
| | 03:18 | through the content that comes after it.
That's not what I want. What I want to
| | 03:21 | do instead is have it so that once
you've come to this Photoshop information,
| | 03:25 | you then skip on to the end of the
presentation. That will give you your branching.
| | 03:30 | So I'm going to double click on the
slide and as a part of the slide's
| | 03:34 | properties I have the ability to
determine its navigation. On slide exit,
| | 03:39 | I don't want it to go on to the next
slide. Instead I want it to jump to a
| | 03:42 | particular slide. You guessed it.
Thankfully I've named it. I want to go the
| | 03:46 | Presentation end slide. Click OK.
We'll do the same thing to the Illustrator
| | 03:51 | slide, Jump to slide, Presentation end, Jump
to slide, Presentation end, and there we go.
| | 04:04 | Now we've created a branched
presentation that should work. Let's test it.
| | 04:08 | Preview. Preview the project.
Everything is working so far. I'm actually going
| | 04:15 | to skip the Photoshop slide and click
on the Illustrator slide and see what
| | 04:18 | happens. So we go to Illustrator and we go to
the end. That means the branching is working.
| | 04:24 | If I were actually, truly testing this,
I would want to text each and every
| | 04:27 | button. Don't just kip ahead and think
that because one works the others do.
| | 04:32 | You can very quickly and easily create
a presentation that one button works and
| | 04:35 | the others don't. Let's close the preview here.
| | 04:38 | '
| | 04:38 | What I want to do is get another look
at this branched presentation and for
| | 04:42 | that, I'm going to use the Branching
View. The Branching View has as its entire
| | 04:47 | purpose, the job of showing you the
structure of your branched presentation.
| | 04:51 | But it also allows you to fix problems
with your presentation that you might have.
| | 04:56 | What I need to do is actually build a
problem in. So I'm going to click on this
| | 05:00 | Illustrator slide. That will actually
put me back to edit mode. I'm going to
| | 05:04 | click on the slide's properties and
I'm going to set this on Slide exit to do
| | 05:08 | the wrong thing. I'm just going to set
it so that it goes to the next slide.
| | 05:11 | Click OK, and there we go.
| | 05:14 | This should be a presentation that
doesn't work correctly. I'm not going to
| | 05:17 | test it, instead I'm going to go to
Branching View and I'm going to look at it.
| | 05:21 | The Branching View gives me the
information that there is a problem here.
| | 05:24 | What it's saying is that the Photoshop slide
works correctly. I'll branch off to it
| | 05:29 | and then on to the end. The Flash slide
works correctly. I'll branch off to it
| | 05:34 | and then onto the end. However the
Illustrator slide doesn't work correctly
| | 05:37 | because when I branch to it, it takes me
onto the Flash slide and then to the end.
| | 05:43 | So not only can I determine this or
spot this problem, but I can fix the
| | 05:47 | problem. What I need to do is click on
this little link right here. This link
| | 05:51 | represents the object or the thing
about this slide that is designed to take me
| | 05:56 | in the correct place in my branch. So
if I click on that, the correct place for
| | 06:00 | this would be actually to go to the end.
You can see that I clicked on the link there.
| | 06:05 | Here's a little problem that I need to
point out for you. I've got this link
| | 06:08 | selected and this is what I want to
work on. But if I hover over another link,
| | 06:13 | notice over here in the Properties area,
whatever link I'm hovering on is what
| | 06:17 | the Properties area is going to show me.
If I should accidentally click on this
| | 06:21 | and come over and make an adjustment,
I could actually cause myself more
| | 06:25 | problems by incorrectly "fixing" this link.
| | 06:29 | So it's important when you select a
link that you want to work on, make sure
| | 06:32 | that that link stays selected and make
sure that what you're looking at in the
| | 06:36 | Properties dialog box makes some sense.
Right now here in the Properties panel,
| | 06:40 | it's not actually giving me the
properties of the link that I have selected,
| | 06:43 | this one. It was giving me the
properties and it's still giving me he
| | 06:46 | properties of this.
| | 06:48 | Now I have the right link displayed in
the Properties panel. Now I can go ahead
| | 06:52 | and correct things. So what I'm going
to do is set the navigation for this not
| | 06:56 | to go the next slide but to jump to
slide. We'll jump to presentation end and
| | 07:00 | click Apply and there we have it.
From my Illustrator slide, out to the
| | 07:04 | presentation's end. To finish this
project off, I'm going to double click on
| | 07:08 | this End slide here. I've got a button in
place that right now doesn't do anything.
| | 07:13 | Whenever I have a branched presentation,
it's a good idea to allow the user who
| | 07:17 | might suffer a little bit buyer's
remorse about the choice that they made to go
| | 07:20 | back and try over. So what I have here
is a Standard Text button, I'll double
| | 07:24 | click on it. When the user clicks the
button, I'm just going to use the same
| | 07:29 | Jump to slide option and send them
back to the start. Let's go ahead and look
| | 07:33 | at that in Branch View so
you can see how that works.
| | 07:36 | In the Branching View, to avoid
creating what looks like a nest of tangled
| | 07:40 | spaghetti, what Captivate is going to
do is any backward facing link is just
| | 07:44 | going to appear as a little object here.
And to see what it does, I can click
| | 07:48 | on it and then look in the Properties
panel to see what that link does.
| | 07:52 | I just want to make sure that that is what
in fact the Properties panel is displaying.
| | 07:56 | It is, and it actually in this case
works correctly, but just like any other link
| | 07:59 | I can update it by changing the
properties and then clicking Apply here in the panel.
| | 08:05 | So the Branching View is a really
useful tool for being able to look at the
| | 08:08 | structure of a presentation you have,
troubleshoot it and then fix any problems
| | 08:12 | that you can see based on what
you're seeing in Branching View.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using best practices| 00:00 | It turns out that the structure of a
branching presentation is something that
| | 00:04 | you'll use over and over and over
again and what we're going to do in this
| | 00:08 | lesson is actually build a branching
template, because it's a best practice to
| | 00:13 | create templates for yourself, the
structure of which you know works.
| | 00:17 | Otherwise if you are building branched
presentations from scratch each time,
| | 00:21 | you're going to quickly become
frustrated because there are a lot of little
| | 00:25 | steps to take that if you don't take
them correctly, you're going to build a
| | 00:28 | branch presentation that doesn't work
correctly. So what we're actually going
| | 00:32 | to do here is we're going to
deconstruct a branched presentation and build it
| | 00:38 | up into a template.
| | 00:40 | I said before in other lessons and
I'll reiterate it here. I like to create
| | 00:44 | things in Captivate that I can reuse
and it turns out that branching structure
| | 00:47 | is something is that I typically reuse.
So for example, what I want to do is
| | 00:51 | create a template for myself that is a
three branched presentation that when
| | 00:57 | I'll actually want to add some content
to it, all I need to do is open up the
| | 01:00 | template, add the content to it and move forward
and that's what we're going to do in this lesson.
| | 01:05 | We'll start with the first slide
here and often times when you start this process,
| | 01:11 | you're actually going to be
working with a branched presentation that
| | 01:14 | you created for a specific purpose. If
you have the opportunity to sit down and
| | 01:18 | create a blank branched presentation,
by all means to do so. But this is more
| | 01:22 | common in my experience, so what we're
actually going to do is we're going to
| | 01:26 | take the content out of this
presentation and use it for it's structure, not for
| | 01:30 | it's content, and you can see
that I begun that process here.
| | 01:34 | These are three buttons and in
previous lessons that I did, these buttons
| | 01:38 | actually refer to different Adobe
software products that I might want to teach.
| | 01:42 | I'm going to double click on this one
and I'm simply going to convert it from
| | 01:45 | an image button back to a text button
and the button text is simply going to
| | 01:50 | say Option1 and we'll click OK. So
now we have three generic buttons that
| | 01:57 | frankly can be placed anywhere on the stage
and can be treated graphically anyway you like.
| | 02:03 | The rest of this information is
basically just content that I don't need, so
| | 02:07 | I'm going to go ahead and delete
Adobe tools and I'm going to delete the
| | 02:13 | caption there, in fact I'm even going
to delete these rectangles because they
| | 02:18 | are really not necessary. For the
purpose of the template they are not necessary.
| | 02:22 | I'm probably going to replace the
graphics on this slide with something else
| | 02:25 | anyway. Now the next step is to go
ahead to the first slide, the slide that
| | 02:30 | this Option1 button took us to,
and we need to do a couple of things to make
| | 02:34 | this a more generic branching
presentation. You can see that in the other
| | 02:38 | options here, the yellow options and
the red options, I've got three slides and
| | 02:42 | there's a very specific reason for that.
| | 02:44 | What I need to build into my template
is the landing page that you go to after
| | 02:50 | clicking the button, but then because
I'm probably going to want to add some
| | 02:53 | unique content I need to have some
slides after the landing page. But then at
| | 02:59 | the end of that branch I need to have
the slide that takes you to the end of
| | 03:02 | the entire presentation. So what I'm
going to do first off is I'm going to make
| | 03:06 | this generic and get rid of this icon.
| | 03:09 | In fact, I'm just going to delete this
and I'm going to cheat a little bit.
| | 03:14 | I'm going to come over here to this slide,
I'm going to grab this caption,
| | 03:17 | I'm going to right click on it and
copy it and back over here to this slide,
| | 03:21 | right click and paste and then I'll double
click and type an A and I wanted to do
| | 03:28 | that because I wanted to set this slide
up exactly as I needed it to be for the
| | 03:33 | rest of the slides in my template.
| | 03:34 | There's actually one more thing I
need to do. It's still not quite generic
| | 03:38 | enough. If I click on Slide Properties,
you can see that it's labeled Photoshop
| | 03:41 | start. Well, that's specific to the
content. So I'm going to call this Option 1
| | 03:49 | Start and click OK. All I need to do
is duplicate this slide. I'm going to
| | 03:55 | duplicate it once, duplicate slide by
right clicking on it, duplicate it twice
| | 04:02 | and now basically I have
the structure that I need.
| | 04:04 | This slide here, which is in the
middle, is representative of all of the
| | 04:09 | content that I'm going to put into my
branch. In other words, I'm going to
| | 04:12 | replace this. I'm going to add slides
to this, whatever. So what this slide
| | 04:16 | needs to do is it needs to allow me
from the first landing slide to just
| | 04:21 | continue on through. So I'm going to
double click on it and I'm going to set it
| | 04:24 | not to jump to a particular slide,
which is how it's set now, but simply to go
| | 04:30 | to the next slide and click OK.
| | 04:32 | I'm actually going to do the same
thing to the landing slide because what I
| | 04:35 | want to have happen in this generic
branching template is I want the user to go
| | 04:39 | from the landing page to the content
placeholder page, if you will,
| | 04:43 | then to the end slide which then
jumps after the end of the presentation.
| | 04:46 | So we'll fix this one up, we'll double
click on it and we'll set it up so that it
| | 04:51 | continues on simply to the next slide
and click OK. Now, while I was in the
| | 04:57 | properties for this slide, I probably
should have fixed this too, so I'm going
| | 05:00 | to do this now. I'm going to set this
not to say copy of Option 1 Start.
| | 05:05 | I'm just going to say Option 1 Slide,
click OK and we'll double click on this last slide
| | 05:13 | and we can see that this last
slide already goes to the presentation end.
| | 05:19 | So I really don't need to change
anything there except that I'm going to change
| | 05:21 | this to Option 1 End and then click OK.
| | 05:30 | So what I've just done, if we go over
to Branching View, you can see that
| | 05:34 | I have the structure of my branching.
All I need to do to use this template now
| | 05:40 | is go ahead and update the content
for any one of these slides and there are
| | 05:44 | some easy ways to do this. If I want
to update the slides for Option 1,
| | 05:48 | the first thing that I might want to do is
Shift+Select all three of them, click on
| | 05:52 | Slide Properties and notice that there
some properties that I can change en mass.
| | 05:57 | So for example, maybe I want to set
that background color instead of to blue,
| | 06:02 | let's make it the nice purple and
I can change the background image by
| | 06:08 | selecting Import and I'll choose this
woman, we'll click Open and click OK.
| | 06:15 | All of the slides will update, they'll
become purple and they'll update with this
| | 06:19 | woman. Of course the rest of the
process is simply adding the individual
| | 06:23 | specific content to each slide that I
want, but what I have here if I save this
| | 06:28 | is essentially a Captivate branching
template for a three-branched presentation.
| | 06:34 | It doesn't matter what I do in any of
these middle slides for my branches,
| | 06:40 | I can add one slide each, 20 slides to one,
one to the other, the branching will
| | 06:46 | still work because the structure of
this presentation is set up correctly
| | 06:49 | for me. I'll do a Save As and this is
one of those useful Captivate projects
| | 06:54 | that I'll use frequently when I'm
setting up a branched presentation. In fact,
| | 06:57 | in my production workflow I'll have
one for four branching, one for two
| | 07:01 | branching, one for five branching,
if I should ever create such a thing.
| | 07:05 | But I have all those set aside, so that I
don't have to start from scratch each time
| | 07:09 | I want to create a presentation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. TemplatesRevisiting libraries| 00:00 | One thing that you should always strive
for when you're creating presentations
| | 00:04 | using Captivate is consistency.
Consistency allows the delivery vehicle,
| | 00:09 | the presentation itself, to fall away in
favor of the content and that's what you
| | 00:14 | really want when you're
presenting information to an audience.
| | 00:16 | A tool that Captivate offers that
allows that consistency is the library.
| | 00:21 | I've spoken about the library a few times
during these lessons. I've always sort of
| | 00:26 | promoted the library as something
that's going to save you time and
| | 00:29 | it certainly will do that.
| | 00:30 | But one of the other things that it
does and is probably more important that it
| | 00:34 | does this is it allows you to
maintain consistency when building a
| | 00:38 | presentation. What we're going to
do in this lesson is take a look at a
| | 00:42 | library. I'll show you how I organize
items within a library and then I'll
| | 00:46 | show you quickly how you can use a
library to very quickly create a consistent
| | 00:50 | experience for your audience even if
you are creating content from scratch.
| | 00:54 | This file is actually a library file.
It's just a single slide presentation.
| | 00:59 | I'm going to double click on it that
will send me into the Edit View. It's in
| | 01:03 | this view that I can look at the
library itself. This library isn't quite
| | 01:06 | complete. So I want to show you how I
can add things to the library as a way to
| | 01:11 | maintain and build that
consistency that I've spoken of.
| | 01:14 | The first thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to add something to the library
| | 01:17 | just by adding it to the library. As
we have seen before in previous lessons,
| | 01:22 | simply adding an object to my stage
will automatically add it to the library.
| | 01:26 | But in this case I'm actually
building the library itself. I'm not really
| | 01:29 | building a presentation.
| | 01:31 | Instead of adding something to the
stage and then kind of jockeying it
| | 01:34 | around within the library, I'm going to
be more formal than that. I'm going to
| | 01:37 | add it directly to the library by
simply selecting Import. Now what I have here
| | 01:43 | is a recording. Notice that it's an
untitled recording and that's fine. I did
| | 01:47 | that on purpose because I want to
show you that you can use the library to
| | 01:50 | organize it after the fact.
| | 01:52 | It's actually a recording that I
use over and over again. It's just an
| | 01:54 | introductory statement that I make at
beginning of every lesson. So we are
| | 01:58 | going to add it to the library and once
it's in the library, then I can begin to
| | 02:03 | quickly use it with any other project.
It has the name Untitled Recording which
| | 02:07 | isn't really a very helpful name so
the first thing that I'm going to do is
| | 02:11 | double-click on the name,
hit the Delete key, and rename it.
| | 02:20 | Now, this is an audio file that I
don't have to record every time I want to
| | 02:23 | create a presentation. It has been
professionally recorded. I cleaned it up and
| | 02:28 | it says what I needed to say as opposed
to having to sit down and say the same
| | 02:31 | thing over and over again and work from
a script so that I can be consistent.
| | 02:35 | I don't have to do that and we'll add
this to a presentation in just a moment
| | 02:38 | so you can see that happen. The next
thing that I have is a set of backgrounds.
| | 02:42 | Now these are common backgrounds that
I use for presentations. Right now they
| | 02:47 | are labeled to Blue Background, Gray
Background and Orange Background and I can
| | 02:51 | preview them in the library
to see what they look like.
| | 02:53 | But these names aren't descriptive.
Whenever you're working with a library,
| | 02:57 | you want to imagine who is going to be
using this content and you want to help
| | 03:02 | explain to them what this is. So I'm
just going to double-click on this.
| | 03:05 | Notice that when I double click on this
object, I get the Image Properties or the
| | 03:09 | Object Properties dialog
box right out of the library.
| | 03:13 | One of the things that I can do here
is very quickly name this. So instead of
| | 03:15 | calling this Blue Background, which yes,
it's a blue background but it doesn't
| | 03:19 | tell me what the blue background is
designed for, what I'm going to do is
| | 03:22 | rename it so that it says what it's
designed for. We'll just call this
| | 03:30 | Introductory Comments.
| | 03:31 | So in my presentations, my
Introductory Comments are always against a blue
| | 03:35 | backdrop. I do that because that
allows the audience to understand when they
| | 03:39 | see the blue background that there
in introductory material as opposed to
| | 03:43 | perhaps material that's going to lead
up to a quiz or something like that.
| | 03:46 | Again it's that consistency, so that
the users queued to what's happening.
| | 03:50 | Click OK to that and then the final thing
that I want to do to prepare this library
| | 03:54 | is to simply right-click on the
Library and select New Folder. Captivate
| | 03:59 | provides you a set of Default Folders
that are basically designed to organize
| | 04:04 | the objects in your library, not by how you
are going to use them, but by what they are.
| | 04:09 | That's sort of useful. But it's more
useful to be able to organize your library
| | 04:13 | in such a way that you can determine
what these things are and what they are
| | 04:16 | designed to do. So, what I'm going to
do is go ahead and name this folder and
| | 04:19 | we are going to call this Logos.
| | 04:23 | These are the approved logos that I can
use with my presentations. Click OK.
| | 04:28 | I have created a folder here. Now to use
the folder is simple. I'm just going to
| | 04:32 | drag each of these logo files into the
folder and there I have organized my logos
| | 04:39 | into a folder that allows me as
a presentation designer to understand
| | 04:43 | what these things are not just
know that they happen to be images.
| | 04:47 | Now at this point, my sample library
is set and ready to go. All I need to do
| | 04:51 | is save it. Remember this is nothing
more than a Captivate file. It's not a
| | 04:54 | special file type or anything like that.
To use this file I'll simply close it,
| | 04:59 | and in Captivate I'm going to create a
new Blank Project. Select OK. Jump over
| | 05:06 | into Edit View. I have my empty library here.
| | 05:09 | What I need to do is open the Library.
This is the library file that I was just
| | 05:15 | working on. Again the only thing that
makes it library file is the fact that
| | 05:18 | a) I have a bunch of library stuff
in it and b) I named it Library File.
| | 05:22 | So we'll click Open. I'm going to collapse
the library for this project and really
| | 05:27 | focus on the library that I have brought in.
| | 05:29 | To use the library is simple. If I
want to add audio from the library to a
| | 05:33 | slide, drag and drop. Now if I open
up the Timeline, you can see that that
| | 05:37 | audio has been added to this file.
If I want to use a background from the
| | 05:42 | library, I can drag and drop but that
doesn't actually create a background.
| | 05:46 | That dropped the image in as an
image. I can resize it, etcetera.
| | 05:52 | So I don't want that. I'm going to
delete that. What I want instead is to
| | 05:56 | select Slide Properties, select Change
Background Image and notice that Gray
| | 06:02 | Background is the only object that's in
my library here. It seems like I should
| | 06:06 | have a lot of objects in the library.
Well, that's one of the things about
| | 06:09 | working with Captivate is that objects
have to be in the library for the file
| | 06:13 | that you are working with to show up
here. So because I dragged it and dropped it
| | 06:17 | onto the slide, now
it's actually available to me.
| | 06:19 | So what I'm going to do is just cancel
and show you that if I want objects to
| | 06:25 | be in the library for this project,
the quickest way to do that is just to drag them
| | 06:30 | from the open library on to the stage.
Even if I delete them from the stage,
| | 06:36 | if I open up the library for
this file, now you can see that they have
| | 06:38 | been added. So the next step is
simply to select Slide Properties,
| | 06:43 | change background image and see the
images are now here in my library.
| | 06:46 | I'm going to click on Gray Background.
I'm going to click OK. There, I have
| | 06:50 | added this object as a background
image and you can tell that because I can't
| | 06:54 | select it. So libraries are designed to
give you a consistent set of tools in a
| | 07:02 | place where, when you are working on a
project, you will know how to find them.
| | 07:06 | If you build your libraries with that
in mind and use them it's going allow you
| | 07:10 | to create more consistent
presentations more quickly.
| | 07:14 | Now, there is one last thing about
libraries that I wanted to show you and that
| | 07:17 | is I'm going to open up the library
for this presentation, so this is this
| | 07:21 | presentation's library. There are
some objects in this library that aren't used.
| | 07:24 | When you are creating, it's easy
to drop things on the slide and decide
| | 07:28 | you don't need them to import things
and maybe decide you are going to use them
| | 07:31 | or even delete slides that have
objects. What that ends up doing is filling
| | 07:35 | your library with items
that you may not want there.
| | 07:38 | The tool to deal with that is this
tool right here, which is the Select All
| | 07:42 | Unused. If I click that, all of the
unused items in your library become
| | 07:46 | selected. If you are working on a
presentation and it's a complete
| | 07:50 | presentation, there really isn't any
good reason to fill your library with
| | 07:54 | items that aren't going to be used.
| | 07:56 | It makes your Captivate files larger
and it doesn't actually add any benefit to
| | 07:59 | that presentation. That's why I set my
library files up specifically ahead of time,
| | 08:04 | so that I don't have a lot of
bloated stuff in each of my presentations.
| | 08:09 | I only have those things in there that I'm
using to deliver the content that I care about.
| | 08:13 | So to get rid of these unused
selected items I'm simply going to click the
| | 08:17 | Trashcan, confirm that I don't want
them there. Now I have a nice clean
| | 08:21 | library that only has the items in it
that are used for my presentation.
| | 08:26 | So instead of thinking of every
Captivate project as a potential library,
| | 08:30 | it's a better strategy to set libraries up
from your projects ahead of time, save them
| | 08:36 | specifically as libraries and then
make sure that your Captivate projects
| | 08:40 | themselves, the ones that actually
carry specific individual content are nice
| | 08:44 | and clean and lean.
| | 08:45 | And that way you will be able to
maximize your disk space and have the ability
| | 08:49 | to use a library with all of the items
that you want in one place instead of
| | 08:53 | spreading it out throughout
files all over your system.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharing assets| 00:00 | As I said in previous lessons,
consistency is very important and it can be
| | 00:04 | difficult to achieve if you approach
each slide like it's a brand new canvas
| | 00:09 | and you're going to start from
scratch on that canvas. Captivate offers a
| | 00:12 | couple of very useful tools that allow
you to quickly repurpose work you do on
| | 00:16 | one slide onto a variety of
other slides. Let's take a look.
| | 00:20 | Here I have a four slide project. And
what I want to do is place some items on
| | 00:24 | the first slide and then essentially
populate the other slides with those
| | 00:28 | items. So I'm in Storyboard View.
To get the Edit View, I'm going to
| | 00:31 | double-click and we'll begin working.
Now the first thing that I'm going to do
| | 00:35 | is just quickly assemble this slide
and I've got some items in my library.
| | 00:40 | So I'm just going to go ahead and drag
them out. I want this logo here and I want
| | 00:44 | it to be in specific place. I want it
to be at 435 pixels from the left and
| | 00:51 | exactly 400 pixels from the top.
So that's the placement that I want.
| | 00:55 | The other thing that I want is some
text up here. So I'll add a quick Text
| | 00:58 | Caption and we're going to say this as
Sales training 101 and we'll drop that
| | 01:06 | down, move it into place and I'm going
to expand this box a little bit because
| | 01:12 | I need it to be larger. So I'll make it
18 points. So that it stands out.
| | 01:18 | This is what I want on every single
slide in this Sales training project.
| | 01:22 | So, to make that happen, I suppose
I could delete these slides and then
| | 01:26 | duplicate this one. But there's a
problem in doing that because if I were to
| | 01:30 | delete all of these slides and then
duplicate them and then I needed to make
| | 01:35 | some sort of a change, perhaps this
still isn't large enough. So I come back in
| | 01:39 | here and I'd go ahead and enlarge it. But
then I'll have to do that to every single slide.
| | 01:43 | That's a problem, because what that
means is that I might end up blowing out
| | 01:47 | content that I've placed on Slides 2,
3 and 4. So, maybe there's a better way
| | 01:51 | to do it and there is. Here is what I'm
going to do. I'm going to select this.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to right-click on it and
choose its Properties and among its
| | 01:59 | Properties, under Options, I find that
I can have the timing display for the
| | 02:03 | rest of slide, but I can also have a display
for the rest of the project and we'll click OK.
| | 02:10 | It doesn't look like it appears over
here in the little thumbnails on the
| | 02:13 | filmstrip, but if I click on each
of the slides, you can see that Sales
| | 02:17 | training 101 is there. Now, the logo
has disappeared, so let's go ahead and fix
| | 02:21 | that. Right-click, choose its
Properties, select Options and choose Rest of
| | 02:26 | project, but the logo wants to appear
after about a second and a half.
| | 02:30 | So I want it come in after the text. So,
I'll go ahead, type in 1.5 and I'll have it
| | 02:36 | Fade in only. Click OK.
| | 02:41 | Now I can see that it's on each slide,
let's quickly Preview > Project and we
| | 02:45 | should see Sales training comes in,
TCP2 comes in. Now, it looks like nothing
| | 02:57 | is happening. I'm going to close the
preview. On each slide the objects aren't
| | 03:00 | going to fade into view. So what we
were actually looking at was the project
| | 03:04 | was progressing from Slide 1 to 2
to 3 to 4 and so those objects were
| | 03:08 | consistent throughout.
| | 03:10 | But now, if I go back to Slide 1 and
I double-click on this and I need to
| | 03:14 | enlarge it, so I want to make it,
maybe 24 points to make it nice and large.
| | 03:21 | That is going to stay consistent
throughout the entire set of slides.
| | 03:25 | So by applying the property that allows
the object to appear for the rest of the slide,
| | 03:29 | you are able to create a
very consistent experience throughout.
| | 03:34 | The only other thing that I need to do
here and I just wanted to show you that
| | 03:36 | there's a quick way of doing this. I
can add a background to all of these
| | 03:40 | slides using that same method but
there's a quick way to get there. I'm just
| | 03:43 | going to shift select all of these
slides. Click on slide Properties and notice
| | 03:47 | that I can change some of the slide
properties among all of the slides or with
| | 03:51 | all of the slides selected. So we'll go
ahead and change the color here.
| | 03:55 | We'll just use this grayish color. Click OK
and I've updated all of the slides at once.
| | 03:59 | It's not quite as convenient as
setting the options for an object that would
| | 04:02 | have it appear across all the slides,
but at least it's something that I can do
| | 04:05 | very, very quickly. Now there's one
more little quick thing that I want to
| | 04:08 | point out here. I'm going to jump
down to Slide 2, I'm just going to grab a
| | 04:14 | drawing object, I'm going to drop it
in place at top the word Sales training
| | 04:19 | and that's inappropriate. Even if I
have content that needs to be up in the
| | 04:23 | area in sort of conflict with Sales training,
they always want Sales training to be on top.
| | 04:28 | We can fix that. I'm going to right-
click on Sales training and choose
| | 04:31 | Properties and I'm going to set among
the Options for rest of project to Place
| | 04:38 | object on top. All that will do is that
will make sure that the Sales training
| | 04:42 | text or whatever this object is that
I'm having appear for the rest of the
| | 04:46 | slide sits atop anything that you add
to the slide as individualized content.
| | 04:52 | So, if consistency is important, and
consistency should be important to you,
| | 04:56 | this is a very good way for you to be able
to create and update a large set of slides quickly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating project templates| 00:00 | Sometimes maintaining consistency in a
Captivate project means not giving too
| | 00:05 | much power to the person you are having
build the presentation. In the world of
| | 00:09 | e-learning, we have the concept of
the SME, the Subject Matter Expert.
| | 00:13 | That's generally a person who is very,
very knowledgeable about the topic that they
| | 00:17 | are creating e-learning to deliver,
but they might not be pure technologists.
| | 00:21 | In other words, they might not know
how to use Captivate and all the nuances
| | 00:25 | that Captivate has to offer
for building an excellent presentation.
| | 00:29 | Now of course, you should probably send
those people to lynda.com for training but
| | 00:33 | in a lot of cases, what you are going
to want to do is provide them some type
| | 00:36 | of a template that they can work from
into which they can pour their content
| | 00:40 | because that's what they are good at.
But you need to prepare something for them,
| | 00:43 | so that the template that they
pour stuff into is nice consistent type.
| | 00:48 | In this lesson, we're going to look at
something called a Project Template and
| | 00:52 | a Project Template is just exactly that.
It's a template but it's filled with
| | 00:56 | placeholders that allow the Subject
Matter Experts out there to just add the
| | 01:00 | content that they have to the overall
presentation and then it allows them to
| | 01:05 | end up with something that's very
nicely designed, works the way that you want
| | 01:08 | it to work yet has their content.
| | 01:11 | So to get started, I'm going to
select Project Template and you'll make the
| | 01:15 | same sorts of decisions for a
Project Template that you would in new
| | 01:18 | presentation. In this case, I just want
to select a size, I'm going to go with
| | 01:22 | 640x480 and as with any other template,
I want to design the structure of the
| | 01:28 | document. So I'm actually going to
jump from Storyboard View to Edit View and
| | 01:33 | if I want the presentation to always
have five slides, then I can just simply
| | 01:37 | hit Ctrl+D and make a five slide presentation.
| | 01:42 | How I want each slide to look is a
matter of just designing the slide with one
| | 01:47 | exception, instead of placing just
things like text captions, for example,
| | 01:51 | I could drop a text caption in place
that says Sales Training 101. Click OK.
| | 01:58 | But that's static text. That's not
going to change from presentation to
| | 02:05 | presentation. However, what happens
down here under Sales Training 101 may very
| | 02:10 | well change. So instead of dropping a
caption into place, what I'm going to
| | 02:15 | drop is a placeholder.
| | 02:16 | To find those I'm going to select
Insert > Placeholder. Now here's something to
| | 02:21 | keep in mind. What I'm working on in
right now is a CPTL file. It's not a
| | 02:26 | Captivate file; it's a Captivate
Template file. So Placeholders are available,
| | 02:30 | if I open up a standard Captivate file
and I go looking for this placeholder's
| | 02:34 | option, it's not going to be there for
me because it's only available when I'm
| | 02:38 | working in a template like this.
| | 02:40 | So I'll go ahead and choose Text
Caption and I can set the Text Caption at
| | 02:45 | anywhere I want it. So, instead of
having it be 50 point text we'll make it to
| | 02:49 | be smaller and click OK. And I'll
actually double click on this and make
| | 02:58 | whatever change that I want. So
basically a placeholder is nothing but an
| | 03:03 | object that you can edit in the template.
| | 03:06 | However, when you actually go into
the project file that you are working on
| | 03:11 | from this template, you're going to see
that the placeholder is something that
| | 03:15 | the Subject Matter Expert needs only to
double-click on and add their unique content.
| | 03:20 | If we take a quick look at the
Placeholder Options that you have, you can see
| | 03:23 | that there are placeholders for just
about everything that Captivate has to
| | 03:27 | offer. Even some things that we haven't
talked about yet. For example, adding a
| | 03:30 | Question slide, but each of these
placeholders is just something that you add,
| | 03:35 | you configure. So that it's set up
the way that you want the presentation to
| | 03:39 | look and work and then you publish it.
| | 03:42 | But I want to show you a better way to
quickly produce a Project Template from
| | 03:47 | an existing presentation, because in
all likelihood, you're not going to start
| | 03:51 | from scratch, you've got some template
out there or some file out there that
| | 03:55 | you want to build the template from. So
what I want to do is, first off, we're
| | 03:58 | just going to delete all of
this stuff, we don't need it.
| | 04:06 | We'll get rid of these slides, we
don't need this either because I've got a
| | 04:12 | project open and this is an example
project and this is the look and feel that
| | 04:16 | I want to use, not only look and feel,
but it's also the layout that I want to
| | 04:20 | use for my Project Template.
| | 04:22 | So I'm going to select each of these
slides, I'm going to right-click on them
| | 04:26 | and choose Copy Slide and then we'll
jump back over to the Project Template and
| | 04:33 | I'm simply going to choose to Paste the
slides. Now we'll delete this original
| | 04:38 | blank slide because we don't even need
it and anything that I leave as-is is
| | 04:45 | going to be in the template as-is.
It's not going to be a Placeholder object.
| | 04:49 | It's going to be something that's
static and my Subject Matter Expert doesn't
| | 04:52 | need to replace it.
| | 04:53 | Anything that I want my subject Matter
to actually replace in the project file,
| | 04:58 | I simply need to select and then hit
the Delete button. Now it didn't go away,
| | 05:04 | but it did get a little icon down here,
what this means is that by deleting it
| | 05:08 | what I'm essentially telling the
Project Template is that this now isn't static
| | 05:12 | content, it's a content that is going
to be replaced, so it's a placeholder.
| | 05:17 | It even leaves the original text in there,
so the Subject Matter Expert or whoever
| | 05:21 | is using this template can see kind of what
they are supposed to put in there for some text.
| | 05:25 | We can so the same thing on Slide 2
and you'll see that, this is the same
| | 05:29 | process. In fact any object that I
have in a presentation, I can turn into a
| | 05:34 | placeholder by simply selecting it and
clicking Delete. Any object that I want
| | 05:39 | to be static, I'll just leave alone and
then I'm done. I can select File > Save
| | 05:46 | As and again notice that I'm saving
this as a CPTL file, this is a Captivate
| | 05:52 | Template file and I'm going to
leave this in this directory.
| | 05:55 | When you first start Captivate,
Captivate is actually looking in a Project
| | 05:59 | Templates directory that is provided
for you by Captivate and you'll find it in
| | 06:03 | your Documents folder for your user, My
Adobe Captivate projects, you'll find a
| | 06:07 | Project Templates folder, we're
actually going to look at this in another
| | 06:11 | lesson, but what I'm going to do is
just simply add to this with my template
| | 06:15 | and we'll call this Sales Training Template and
then click Save and that's all there is to it.
| | 06:26 | You'll basically use all of your
Captivate skills to build a presentation and
| | 06:30 | then very quickly convert it into a
template project like this and in an
| | 06:34 | upcoming lesson, we're going to take a
look at how to use these templates to
| | 06:37 | create new content from scratch. But at
this point, I have my Project Template
| | 06:41 | and it's ready to go.
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| Using project templates| 00:00 | If you are a Captivate expert and a
content matter expert then you can use
| | 00:05 | Captivate to create very effective
e-learning, self-learning projects.
| | 00:10 | However, if you are a Subject Matter
Expert, and maybe you are not so familiar
| | 00:15 | with Captivate, you can still
produce a well-built, well-structured, good
| | 00:21 | looking presentation, if you have
someone who is a Captivate expert and can
| | 00:25 | build a template for you.
| | 00:27 | Captivate offers a thing called a
Project Template, and in previous lessons we
| | 00:31 | took a look at how quickly you can
build one of them, but in this lesson,
| | 00:36 | we are going to take a look at how
you can very quickly use one of them.
| | 00:39 | So what we are looking at here is
just the Captivate open window, I have
| | 00:43 | launched Captivate and I want to
create a project from a template, so I'll
| | 00:48 | select this and when I do, Captivate
will allow me to go ahead and open a template.
| | 00:54 | We've got a template that we
are going to work with in this lesson.
| | 00:57 | But before we do that, I want to
show you another place where you can get
| | 01:01 | templates because if you don't have
someone who is a Captivate expert that can
| | 01:06 | build a template for you, you actually have
some templates that have been built for you.
| | 01:10 | What I'm doing is I have gone into
my user, my users documents, my Adobe
| | 01:17 | Captivate Projects. Now this is
something that Captivate installs when you
| | 01:20 | first install the program, and in
there you are going to find a folder called
| | 01:24 | Templates. But what I'm looking for
is Project Templates. These are some
| | 01:30 | professionally build templates that
were created to be used for a variety of
| | 01:34 | different types of projects that
you might want to create in Captivate.
| | 01:37 | For example, Straight Business
Communication. If I double-click on that, there
| | 01:42 | are some templates here, and I'm going
to open up this Business template, and
| | 01:48 | what we are looking at, our series of
slides that are essentially ready to go.
| | 01:52 | I'll double-click on Slide 2 here
which is my title screen and to use the
| | 01:56 | template, all I need to do is click on
one of these things, called Placeholders
| | 02:01 | and add the content that is relevant,
plus I can look here and see that some of
| | 02:06 | the slides have been hidden, and to
unhide or to show a slide, I simply
| | 02:10 | right-click on it and select Show Slide.
| | 02:13 | The reason it was hidden in the
template was simple, it was a slide that was
| | 02:16 | optional to the structure of the
presentation, but in my case I wanted to take
| | 02:20 | advantage of this option. In other
words, a Project Template does more than
| | 02:25 | just give you a slide with
placeholders that you can replace with your custom
| | 02:28 | content. It also can provide you a
presentation that is setup structurally to
| | 02:33 | work in a consistent fashion compared
to the other presentations that you might
| | 02:36 | be making in your workflow.
| | 02:38 | Now we are going to close this one up
because I don't really need this one.
| | 02:41 | I just wanted to show you that these
are here. What I want to do instead is
| | 02:45 | choose Create Project from template,
and we go up to the Desktop and among my
| | 02:51 | Exercise Files here, I have a template
that I created from my own presentation
| | 02:56 | and we'll go ahead and populate this
with some actual content. Double-click on
| | 03:00 | Slide 1 and the first content that we are
going to update here is simply the text.
| | 03:05 | Everything is taken care of for me,
all I need to do is double-click, drag
| | 03:10 | select over the text and change it from
Presentation title to the title of the
| | 03:14 | actual presentation called the
Sales 101, and there I'm done.
| | 03:19 | If we go to Slide 2, now there is
little more to work with, double-click,
| | 03:25 | select instead of Content slide, the
title of the slide is Speaking carefully.
| | 03:32 | So this isn't anything more
difficult than working with any other Word
| | 03:36 | processor, or any other presentation tool,
it's just a matter of updating the type.
| | 03:40 | Now the final thing that we may want
to replace is an image. Now we can see
| | 03:43 | that I have got an Image Placeholder.
And in fact Captivate has many different
| | 03:47 | types of content that you can place on
to a slide. Each can be represented by a
| | 03:51 | placeholder. The most common is image.
So we'll just go ahead and update that.
| | 04:00 | Here, I have an image file that I want
to work with, we'll go ahead and open
| | 04:04 | that and there. The sizing of the
image is set. The placement of the image is
| | 04:09 | set. Basically all I needed to do
was double-click to add my image.
| | 04:14 | Working with Project Templates is a
very simple matter. All you need to do is
| | 04:18 | open the Project Template, which will
create a new untitled Captivate file,
| | 04:24 | add your content to each of the content
areas that have been setup as placeholders
| | 04:28 | for you and then the final step is to
simply save the file. Then we'll do a
| | 04:32 | Save As, name our file, and
that's all there is to it.
| | 04:40 | Project Templates are a great way,
if you are not that comfortable with
| | 04:43 | Captivate, to begin working with Captivate
and taking advantage of its many features.
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| Creating design templates| 00:00 | In Captivate, when you want to create a
presentation that has a consistent look
| | 00:04 | and feel throughout and you need to
update that presentation, there's a tool
| | 00:08 | that you'll want to take advantage
of called the Design Template. In this
| | 00:11 | lesson, we're actually going to
take a look at how to build the Design
| | 00:13 | Template, so that you can understand
how you can update just about anything in
| | 00:17 | a presentation, very, very quickly.
| | 00:20 | So to get started, we're going to
click Create Template, Design Template.
| | 00:25 | What we have here is a blank Design
Template with several slides and on each slide
| | 00:31 | you're going to find a different set
of objects that you can format in your
| | 00:35 | Design Template. For example, we're
going to build a Design Template that
| | 00:39 | carries the design of an Image button
and to do that, all we need to do is set
| | 00:45 | this image button up the way we want
it to work. So I'll right-click on it,
| | 00:49 | choose its Properties and what I want to change
is the image that's used in this Image button.
| | 00:54 | What I have here is a set of files for
my Image button. There's a Down, Over
| | 01:00 | and Up, when I select any one of them
and click Open, Captivate understands
| | 01:04 | that that is the upstate which means
that I'm not clicking on it. That's the
| | 01:08 | down when I click on it and that's the
overstate, when I use this button, it
| | 01:12 | will provide some nice interactivity
for the user, when they hover over it and
| | 01:15 | click, the button will change and that
will let them know that it's a button.
| | 01:18 | Notice that there are things in here
that I can't change. For example I can't
| | 01:22 | determine what happens if the user
clicks on a button and that makes sense.
| | 01:25 | The Design Template is really for the
purpose of changing the look and feel and
| | 01:30 | formatting of objects, not how those
objects get used. I might have several
| | 01:34 | different Image buttons throughout my project
that do different things when you press on them.
| | 01:39 | However I want them all to look the
same way and that's what the Design
| | 01:42 | Template allows me to change. So
we'll go ahead and click OK. Don't get too
| | 01:47 | nervous about the fact that the
button seems to be interfering with these
| | 01:50 | captions here. The layout of these
objects in the Design Template won't have
| | 01:54 | any effect on the project to
which I apply this Design Template.
| | 01:57 | So I can't actually move any of these
things around and that's on purpose so
| | 02:01 | that I don't accidentally delete
something that's a necessary part of a button.
| | 02:05 | Captivate just wont allow me to do that.
There's a couple of other things that
| | 02:09 | I might want to change about this
template. For starters, I'll want to select
| | 02:13 | Slide Properties and I want to change
the background color of the slide, so
| | 02:17 | that I can update that with
my Design Template as well.
| | 02:19 | So when I apply this Design Template,
every slide to which apply, this is going
| | 02:24 | to become blue. Click OK. And the
final thing that I want to update is a Text
| | 02:30 | Caption. Now in this case, the Text
Caption is sort of a darkish blue and it
| | 02:36 | will be difficult to see that against
this blue background. So again I'll just
| | 02:39 | double click on it, drag select it,
just like I would any other Text Caption
| | 02:43 | and we'll set the color to be white
and we'll make it bold and click OK.
| | 02:50 | If you're looking over here in the
thumbnails, you'll notice that there are two
| | 02:53 | slides whose background color didn't
change. That's a Question slide and a
| | 02:57 | Question Result slide. And the color
of those didn't change because those are
| | 03:01 | something that I can set separately.
So I'm going to right-click on this one,
| | 03:04 | choose Properties and I do want the
color of this to match the rest of the
| | 03:08 | slides of my Template. So I'll click OK. And
the same thing goes for this Results slide.
| | 03:13 | That's all there is to it. If I were
creating a Design Template for more
| | 03:20 | complicated project, of course I
probably want to select each and every item in
| | 03:25 | the Design Template and make some
sort of change to it. But for the sake of
| | 03:28 | this demonstration, I'm done. So, I'm
just going to simply select File > Save
| | 03:32 | As and I'm going to save this right
onto the Desktop, so that I can easily find
| | 03:35 | it and we'll call this PS_Design.
| | 03:40 | Now notice that what I'm creating here
is a Captivate Design Template file,
| | 03:45 | a CPDT file. This is not a file that I
can use to add specific content to.
| | 03:50 | It's only a file that I can use as a Design
Template and in an upcoming lesson we're
| | 03:55 | actually going to look at how to apply a
Design Template to a project that you're
| | 03:59 | working on. But for now, that's all
there's to it. We've created our template,
| | 04:02 | we've clicked Save and we're done.
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| Using design templates| 00:00 | Creating consistent presentations is
very important when you're working with
| | 00:03 | Captivate. Being able to change your
presentation so that it is both consistent
| | 00:08 | but also updated is also very important.
And Captivate has a feature called the
| | 00:12 | Design Template that allows you to do
that. In this lesson we're going to take
| | 00:16 | a look at how to use a Design Template
to make a wholesale of change to your
| | 00:20 | presentation in one quick step.
| | 00:22 | So to get started, I'm actually going
to create a project from a template.
| | 00:27 | Now what I have here is actually a
Project Template, and Project Template just
| | 00:31 | allows me a head start on the process
of building a presentation. We've covered
| | 00:36 | Project Templates in our previous lesson,
so we're just going to use it here as
| | 00:39 | a way to get it started.
| | 00:41 | But the problem with my Project
Template was that it was set up for a different
| | 00:44 | product, than I want to use this
presentation to create training for. In this
| | 00:49 | case it was Adobe Flash, and what I
need to do is create a presentation for
| | 00:53 | Photoshop. So you can see that the
Project Template has a nice placeholder
| | 00:56 | here. Instead of typing in Adobe
Flash, I'm going to type in Photoshop.
| | 01:03 | And I can even come over here to
page 2, and double-click on this image
| | 01:07 | placeholder, and add the Photoshop
icon here. But the project still isn't
| | 01:12 | really ready to go. What I need to do
is update it so that it has the look and
| | 01:16 | feel for my Photoshop classes. And I
suppose I could do this manually by Shift
| | 01:21 | selecting on the slides, and making
slide property edits and what not.
| | 01:24 | But there's a faster way, and
that is to use a Design Template.
| | 01:28 | To use a Design Template, the first
thing I need to do is open up the Design
| | 01:31 | Template panel. When I select that, it
opens up the panel here, and there are a
| | 01:36 | variety of available Design
Templates from which I can choose. A Design
| | 01:41 | Template is nothing but a Captivate
file that's saved specifically as a Design
| | 01:45 | Template file, and I've already covered how
to create one of these in a previous lesson.
| | 01:49 | What we're going to do is go ahead
and use one. In the file, all of the
| | 01:53 | formatting for all of the items that I
might want to use with the presentation
| | 01:57 | has been taken care of for me. What
I'm going to do is apply the Design
| | 02:02 | Template to these slides,
and you'll see the changes.
| | 02:05 | Captivate has a very long memory,
and you can see that this recently used
| | 02:09 | Design Template is available to me.
But instead of just using this, I want to
| | 02:12 | show you how you can quickly load a
new Design Template if someone should
| | 02:15 | provide one for you.
| | 02:16 | I'm going to click on this Browse
button here, and among my Exercise files I
| | 02:23 | have a Design Template that was
previously created. And here it is. Now this is
| | 02:28 | a CPDT file. It's not a Captivate file
or a Captivate Project Template file.
| | 02:33 | It's a CPDT, which is a
Captivate Design Template file.
| | 02:37 | Once I have located it, I can just
click Open, and then it appears as an
| | 02:42 | available template. To use the template
it's very simple. What I want to do is
| | 02:47 | simply click Apply. I can either click
Apply or Apply to All and I'm actually
| | 02:51 | going to go ahead and Apply to All.
But before I do, I want you to look over
| | 02:55 | here in the Filmstrip because you're going
to see the changes appear in the Filmstrip.
| | 03:00 | The Design Template did three basic
things. It changed the look and feel of
| | 03:05 | this object here and if I double-
click on this object, this is a button, it
| | 03:09 | changed the image that was used for
my image button. It also changed the
| | 03:13 | background color of both of the
slides, and there was a subtle change, it
| | 03:18 | changed the type phase that was used for
all of the text captions in my project.
| | 03:23 | And that's a little bit of gotcha that
I want to point out. Everything that the
| | 03:27 | Design Template can change, it will
change. And so it's not uncommon to create
| | 03:33 | Design Templates that are specific to
each slide in your project. I used a
| | 03:38 | single Design Template and chose to
Apply All, which means that if I have a
| | 03:42 | text caption on this slide, it will go
ahead and put one on the slide just so
| | 03:46 | you can see it. And I'll make
it something obviously different.
| | 03:54 | Now if I click Apply All again, notice
that Text Caption formatting changed.
| | 03:59 | You'll want to think about how you're
going to apply your Design Template and
| | 04:02 | you may end up having two or three or
four or five different Design Templates
| | 04:06 | for your project, and that's okay,
because it's still a much faster way to very
| | 04:11 | quickly apply a formatting change to
all of the slides in a project, even if
| | 04:15 | you have to only use the Apply button, you can
still very quickly update each slide in your mix.
| | 04:20 | So a Design Template is a very quick
way to take a set of formatting options,
| | 04:25 | apply them to one or all of the slides
in your projects, and update everything
| | 04:30 | with nice consistency and
also some good efficiency.
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|
|
9. Recording a Software SimulationIntroducing software simulations| 00:00 | Captivate began its life as a product
called RoboDemo. And then when Macromedia
| | 00:05 | acquired it and then Adobe acquired
it from there, the name has changed to
| | 00:08 | Captivate because the Captivate is
capable of doing many, many things other
| | 00:12 | than what RoboDemo was first built
to do. And that was create a software
| | 00:16 | simulation. A software simulation is
basically a way to train someone in the
| | 00:21 | use of some software without having
to install it on their workstation.
| | 00:25 | What Captivate allows you to do is
record yourself using some software and
| | 00:29 | then from there you build what's called
a software simulation. Now the way the
| | 00:33 | software simulation in Captivate
differs from a standard screen capture,
| | 00:37 | which is what a lot of people do
when they create software recordings,
| | 00:41 | is instead of creating a linear movie,
Captivate actually takes a series of screen shots,
| | 00:45 | distributes them among slides and then
adds on top of that a set of Captivate objects.
| | 00:54 | In this case, there's a caption,
there's this mouse object, which I can
| | 00:59 | actually move around, and a
highlight box. Now these were all created
| | 01:04 | automatically during the recording
process as a way to help focus the users'
| | 01:08 | attention on the various aspects
of the interface that I'm trying to
| | 01:12 | demonstrate during the software simulation.
| | 01:14 | The reason that Captivate does it this
way as opposed to just creating a linear
| | 01:18 | movie is twofold. One, it makes the
software simulation a lot more flexible and
| | 01:23 | modular. For example, if I want the
mouse to seem to have clicked on this object,
| | 01:29 | I can simply move it on the
slide. If I want to highlight that object,
| | 01:33 | as opposed to the panel that I actually
highlighted, I can actually move the Highlight as well.
| | 01:39 | And then if I want to change the text
inside this caption, I can double-click on it
| | 01:43 | and change the text.
| | 01:53 | In fact, if I want to change
the entire look and feel
| | 01:57 | of the software that I'm simulating,
I can do that by selecting Slide
| | 02:00 | Properties and then
changing the background image.
| | 02:04 | Now I'm not going to do that here so
I'll just hit Cancel. But the point is
| | 02:08 | that this is a very modular,
flexible method for producing a software
| | 02:12 | simulation. I have a lot of editability
that I wouldn't have in a linear movie.
| | 02:16 | Now that's not to say that linear
movies aren't valuable. In fact, they can be,
| | 02:20 | and it turns out that Captivate can
create those too. Usually when you create a
| | 02:25 | software simulation in Captivate,
you're actually going to create a combination
| | 02:28 | of slides that are built such as
these are, and slides that contain movies.
| | 02:34 | In the rest of the lessons in this
chapter, we're actually going to create a
| | 02:36 | software simulation and work with the
various things that Captivate creates
| | 02:41 | for you while producing
that software simulation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Preparing simulations| 00:00 | Before you can just jump in and start
creating a software simulation, you need
| | 00:04 | to set yourself up a little bit, and
Captivate can help you with this process.
| | 00:08 | First off, you need you know what size
you want your software simulation to be.
| | 00:13 | In other words how big a rectangle
are you going to allow people to watch?
| | 00:17 | There is a tradeoff here between making
something that's very, very large, and
| | 00:20 | is hard watch on all computer screens.
| | 00:23 | But also having something that's so
small you can't really fit the interface of
| | 00:27 | your application into the space that
you are recording. So you can create a
| | 00:31 | happy medium. What I'm going to do is
actually create a software simulation
| | 00:35 | that's 800x600 pixels. I'm not
necessarily advocating that, but it is a happy
| | 00:39 | medium that I found that works fairly well for
most software products that I'm trying to simulate.
| | 00:43 | So to get started, I'll click on
Software Simulation. I'm not actually going to
| | 00:47 | start my recording yet. I'm doing this
because I want to set my application up
| | 00:53 | to be prepared for the process of the
recording. Before we actually do anything
| | 00:57 | else here, I'm just going to jump over to
the application that we are going to record.
| | 01:01 | This is Adobe's Photoshop, and I'm
going to create a simulation that shows you
| | 01:05 | how to apply some color adjustments to
this photograph. But you can see that I
| | 01:08 | have somewhat of a random window size.
| | 01:13 | There are many techniques that you can
use to try and find out what this looks
| | 01:18 | like at 800x600, and kind of get it
into that space, but Captivate can actually
| | 01:23 | help you here. So let's jump back to Captivate.
| | 01:25 | I am going to tell Captivate that I
want to record an 800x600 Full Screen
| | 01:29 | video. I want to select the
application Photoshop. Now if I have other
| | 01:33 | applications running, they'll appear
in the list as well. I don't actually
| | 01:37 | recommend that you have a lot of other
stuff running while you are trying to
| | 01:40 | record software simulation. You want
to keep things as clean as possible.
| | 01:44 | So quit your email, quit your browsers
and all that other stuff. Just focus on
| | 01:48 | the app that you want to record. At
this point I'm going to click OK, and watch
| | 01:51 | what will happen? Captivate will
actually force Photoshop's window to within
| | 01:55 | that 800x600 pixel space, meaning that now
my interface is at least set up size-wise.
| | 02:01 | I am not going to record yet, because
there are a couple of other steps that I
| | 02:06 | want to take simulation-wise. So
I'm going to go ahead and start the
| | 02:10 | simulation. I'm going to hit Cancel.
I'm going to minimize Captivate, because I
| | 02:15 | want to look at the screen.
| | 02:16 | It's important that you take a look
at what's around you, and if there's
| | 02:20 | anything that you are going to need to open,
you want to have that readily available.
| | 02:24 | So for example, if I want to have a
set of files that I'm going to work with,
| | 02:28 | and I don't want them on screen, I
can work with them off screen. Captivate
| | 02:31 | doesn't record anything outside of the
window that you set up. So I can have a
| | 02:35 | folder over here for example, full of files
that I might want to open during the simulation.
| | 02:40 | It's actually better to open them and
have them ready in Photoshop, but you may
| | 02:43 | want to for whatever reason have them
on the side and not open inside your
| | 02:48 | application. So I'll go ahead and do that.
| | 02:50 | The other thing you'll want to do is
set up the interface of software to work
| | 02:53 | the way that you want to. You don't
want there to be any surprises.
| | 02:56 | For example, when I hit Captivate,
it changed the size of the Photoshop interface.
| | 03:01 | Now the scaling of my image makes it
such that I have got scroll bars and it's
| | 03:05 | not completely on screen.
| | 03:09 | To address that I'm simply going to
take my Zoom tool in Photoshop, and I'm
| | 03:13 | going to zoom out a little bit. And
there, now that's nicely framed in the
| | 03:17 | Photoshop application window. This
goes for any document in any application
| | 03:21 | that you are going to record. You want
to make sure that the user is able to
| | 03:24 | very quickly and immediately
see what you have to show them.
| | 03:28 | If there are any other interface tools
that you want to have visible when you
| | 03:32 | start the simulation, best to get that
set up now. So I'm going to want to do
| | 03:36 | something with the Adjustments panel
right away. I'll bring that forward before
| | 03:39 | I start my simulation.
| | 03:41 | You don't want to treat your
simulation like a live action class, and when we
| | 03:46 | actually talk about how to do the
recording, I'll cover that in some more
| | 03:49 | detail, but you don't want there to
be any surprises, and you don't want to
| | 03:53 | have to do anything that really isn't
a part of what you are trying to train.
| | 03:57 | Clicking on windows or hiding things
that shouldn't have been there, those are
| | 04:01 | all things that you want to avoid and
you can best avoid those by prepping the
| | 04:05 | interface of the product that you
are going to simulate, ahead of time.
| | 04:08 | So now my application is all set up,
and I'm about ready to start simulation.
| | 04:12 | I can jump back to Captivate. Click on
Software Simulation. Click OK, and there's
| | 04:19 | one more group of setting that I want
to adjust, and those settings are here.
| | 04:23 | What kind of Automatic Recording am I
going to be making? We are going to talk
| | 04:26 | about panning in the up coming lesson.
So I'm not going to use that now, so
| | 04:30 | leave that off. Because I'm going to
actually be speaking to you about the
| | 04:34 | recording that I'm making, instead of
recording my voice as a narration,
| | 04:38 | I'm going to turn Narration off. But if
I wanted to, I could actually choose an
| | 04:42 | input source, which is Line in, and record a
narration at the same time that I'm recording.
| | 04:48 | Now again, I'm going to turn that off,
because I want to be talking to you
| | 04:50 | about what I'm doing, not recording
into the actual simulation. The mode is
| | 04:54 | important to consider. We are going to
talk about Assessment and Training modes.
| | 04:57 | I can do Assessment, Training and
Demonstration all at the same time.
| | 05:02 | In this case I'm just going to be doing
what's called the Demonstration, which is where
| | 05:05 | you are going to be watching me
demonstrate some software as a simulation.
| | 05:10 | So everything is ready to go, all I need
to do now is click on the Go button, and
| | 05:15 | I'll start my recording.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recording simulations| 00:00 | I am all prepared. I have my
application all setup. I'm ready to record my
| | 00:04 | software simulation. So in Captivate,
I'll click on Software Simulation,
| | 00:09 | identify the application that I want
to simulate. Make sure that my size is
| | 00:13 | correct. Click OK. And I'm almost
ready to go. All I need to do is click the
| | 00:18 | Record button, and we'll be under way.
| | 00:20 | (Chi-click! Camera shutter noise.)
| | 00:21 | Now when you do that, you'll hear
what sounds like the shutter of
| | 00:24 | an old fashioned camera. That's done on
purpose. If you recall from the first lesson
| | 00:29 | in this chapter, I talked to you about
how Captivate does its job. It doesn't
| | 00:32 | record movies. What I'm doing right
now is not actually being recorded.
| | 00:35 | I'm just waving my mouse around.
| | 00:38 | Captivate creates a series of screen
shots and then places objects on top of
| | 00:41 | those screen shots to simulate the
software in action. To tell you when it's
| | 00:46 | made a screen shot, it gives you
some audio feedback in the form of that
| | 00:49 | shutter click, and that's handy,
because what that allows you to do is to
| | 00:52 | develop cadence. Now if I were
narrating, this is what I would do. Describe
| | 00:57 | what I'm about to do and then do it.
| | 00:59 | First, I'm going to click on the Black
and White adjustment layer button.
| | 01:03 | Then I'll go ahead and do it
and listen carefully. (Chi-click!)
| | 01:08 | Because the screen changed,
| | 01:09 | Captivate caught that, made a screen
shot and simulated the change that was made
| | 01:13 | to the document and to the interface.
Now here's the other good part about this.
| | 01:17 | As I'm recording my simulation, I
don't have to worry too much about what
| | 01:20 | happens in the interim. As long as I
don't hear a shutter click, I should be in
| | 01:23 | good shape. And also as long as I'm not
clicking the mouse and holding it down,
| | 01:27 | I'll explain that in a second.
| | 01:29 | Captivate doesn't record like a movie
records, where you are capturing a lot of
| | 01:33 | dead air when you are not actually
doing something. Until I do something and
| | 01:37 | trigger Captivate to make that screen
shot, Captivate just sits by waiting for
| | 01:41 | me to go ahead and do something
interesting. There is one situation where
| | 01:45 | Captivate will create full motion video,
as opposed to creating a screen shot.
| | 01:50 | And that's whenever I click and drag the mouse.
| | 01:53 | Let me give you an example. I'm going
to click and drag this slider here.
| | 01:57 | So I'm clicking, and I'm dragging.
Captivate can't create a series of screen shots
| | 02:02 | to represent that. I'm deliberately
dragging this back and forth,and then I'll
| | 02:08 | leave it on the darker side. (Chi-click!)
| | 02:11 | That shutter indicates that from the moment that I
| | 02:14 | clicked the mouse, until I heard that
shutter noise, Captivate actually went
| | 02:18 | into a full motion recording mode.
| | 02:21 | Now, how do I know that? Well, I know
that because I was clicking and holding
| | 02:24 | the mouse. Captivate can create a
series of screen shots that are frame by
| | 02:28 | frame what I'm doing. That's called
a movie. So it just jumps over into the
| | 02:32 | full motion capture mode. The good news
is that you'll really not need to think
| | 02:35 | about it. You can work on the
application as if you were doing any standard
| | 02:40 | demonstration, except that again, I
want to encourage you to develop a cadence,
| | 02:44 | say what you are going to do and
then do what you are going to do.
| | 02:48 | Next, I'll adjust the Green slider.
I'm clicking. I'm dragging. I know that
| | 02:53 | Captivate's producing full motion video
right now, then I'm going to let go. (Chi-click!)
| | 02:59 | By developing that cadence, what you
are actually doing is you are forcing
| | 03:02 | yourself to be very deliberate during
your demonstration. So that instead of
| | 03:05 | clicking on things that don't matter
and really aren't a part of the software
| | 03:09 | simulation, you're really allowing
the user to focus on what is important
| | 03:12 | about what you are trying to teach.
| | 03:15 | So the next step in this case will be
for me to go to the Layers palette, so
| | 03:17 | I'd say next we'll click on the Layers
tab and we'll go ahead and add a mask
| | 03:27 | to mask the house from the Black and
White layer. Let's go ahead and choose the
| | 03:33 | Paintbrush, set my color. It's
actually a good idea to get into the habit of
| | 03:38 | saying everything that you are going to
do before you do it. That way it's very
| | 03:41 | clear to the student what you are doing.
But it also, it forces you into a very
| | 03:46 | deliberate set of actions, as
opposed to just kind of clicking around the
| | 03:50 | interface which is appropriate in a
live action class, but not all appropriate
| | 03:54 | for a screen recording.
| | 03:55 | So the final thing I'm going to do here,
I'm going to paint and I'm going and
| | 04:00 | actually take a long time on this
painting, because we are going to use this
| | 04:03 | exact asset for the demonstration of
how you can use Captivate to clean things up.
| | 04:08 | And I want to caution you here.
This is something that you might be able to
| | 04:17 | get away with in a live action class.
It's certainly something that's valuable,
| | 04:21 | to go ahead and take a long time to
accomplish a task such as painting out this house.
| | 04:28 | But this is really boring for students
to watch. It's much better to choose a
| | 04:33 | way to demonstrate this functionality
using much less time and much less mouse
| | 04:39 | movement. I'm holding mouse key down,
I'm creating a full motion recording, and
| | 04:44 | I'm actually doing this on purpose,
because I want to show you that Captivate
| | 04:47 | can allow you to edit this stuff.
But ahead of time, if when you are
| | 04:51 | practicing, you notice that you're
spending any more of them, ten to fifteen
| | 04:55 | seconds completing a task, you're
probably asking the students to watch a lot more
| | 05:00 | than is going to be engaging
enough to keep them in front of the
| | 05:03 | computer. Their attention could
drift away and you might lose them.
| | 05:06 | I am going to make this mistake on
purpose, because again, we are going to use
| | 05:10 | this asset to show how editing works in
Captivate. So I'm going to go ahead and
| | 05:13 | make a quick mistake. I didn't actually
want the File menu and I realized that
| | 05:22 | after I selected the File menu.
Don't panic when you make a mistake.
| | 05:25 | Just do the next thing and continue on,
because the good news is that Captivate will
| | 05:30 | allow you to edit these things, and
it's much more efficient to at least try that,
| | 05:33 | than it is to say, um darn it,
and start completely over again.
| | 05:38 | So there am I. My recording is done.
I'm going to go ahead and all I need to do
| | 05:41 | is bring Captivate to the fore. That
will stop the recording and allow me to
| | 05:48 | name the recording. And just a quick
look at what Captivate creates.
| | 05:59 | It's a series of slides. There are thirteen
of them. You can see that some of them
| | 06:02 | have a little mouse cursor indicator
there. That's just how you know that that
| | 06:06 | is a screen shot. If I double click on it
with a mouse cursor sitting on top of it.
| | 06:12 | Go back to Storyboard View. Some of
them have a little camera. That's an
| | 06:17 | indication that these are the places
where Captivate had to jump into full
| | 06:20 | motion recording mode, and create a
full motion recording. And then the final step.
| | 06:24 | We'll start right here on this
Slide 2. We'll review it from the slide
| | 06:28 | just so you can see that what
Captivate does is seamless. It's impossible
| | 06:36 | to tell the difference between a full
motion recording slide, which is what we
| | 06:39 | are looking at right now, and the rest
of the slides in the project, which are
| | 06:44 | a series of screen shots and Flash
objects on top of the screen shots.
| | 06:48 | And it even jumped between to full motion
recording slides and it worked fine.
| | 06:53 | So that's all there is to a basic
software simulation recording. It's easy to do.
| | 06:57 | The good news, it's also easy to edit.
We'll take a look at that in a later lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing simulations| 00:00 | No matter how good you are at creating
a software simulation and how much you
| | 00:03 | practice, you will probably run in to
small mistakes that you will want to edit out.
| | 00:08 | The good news is that Captivate
makes this process very, very easy and in
| | 00:12 | this lesson we are going to touch this
presentation up. So I can show you how
| | 00:16 | easy the editing is.
| | 00:17 | Let's take a look at Slide 1.
Double-click to open it in the Edit mode.
| | 00:22 | I'm looking at the Timeline. I'm looking
at the objects and what I'm noticing is,
| | 00:28 | hide the Timeline momentarily here so
we can see, is that first off Photoshop
| | 00:32 | told Captivate to use the wrong cursor.
For whatever reason it thought I was
| | 00:35 | using the Eyedropper cursor.
| | 00:38 | Also, this blue thing here is a
highlight box and it's not quite centered on
| | 00:45 | the button that I clicked. So those are
things that I want to touch up and fix.
| | 00:48 | First off, I'm going to grab the
cursor and move it, which is to say that if
| | 00:52 | you miss with the cursor, you can
actually move the cursor and make it look
| | 00:55 | like you clicked on something else.
| | 00:57 | But what I really want to do is
adjust this Highlight box and I'm going to
| | 01:02 | Center it just so, there we go. Let's
put the cursor back, but actually before
| | 01:08 | we do, I'm going to right-click on the
cursor because I want to reset that so
| | 01:13 | that it's not an Eyedropper but it's
an arrow, which is more likely to be the
| | 01:17 | actual cursor that I want to use in
this situation and then let's just go ahead
| | 01:20 | and put it back on top of the box.
| | 01:23 | Now the next thing that I want to do
is adjust or at least consider adjusting
| | 01:26 | the timing. I'm going to open up the
Timeline panel and we'll take the Time
| | 01:31 | Indicator and drag it to the side.
Notice that the Highlight box comes and goes
| | 01:36 | pretty quickly. Well, I'm going to
adjust that because I want the Highlight box
| | 01:41 | to be there until
basically the cursor gets there.
| | 01:45 | So that's when the cursor arrives, we
have the Highlight box disappear just
| | 01:51 | before that, there. And I don't want
the Highlight box there when the screen
| | 01:57 | shows because I want it to draw your
attention. So I'll have the Highlight box
| | 02:01 | appear after a second.
| | 02:03 | This isn't necessary to do. This is a
stylistic choice that I'm making, but
| | 02:08 | this little bit of editing will add a
lot of polish to your presentation and
| | 02:12 | also add effectiveness because by
making the Highlight box appear after a
| | 02:15 | certain amount of time, it catches
your attention, then the mouse cursor goes
| | 02:19 | down to it and then the mouse
cursor clicks and that's all there is.
| | 02:24 | In a very large software simulation,
I might not spend so much time on each
| | 02:28 | slide. By doing this to specific
slides, I can have a big impact on the
| | 02:32 | effectiveness of my simulation.
| | 02:33 | Now I'm going to scroll all the way
down here to the end and I have got a
| | 02:40 | caption here that Captivate put in
place. Anytime Captivate understands or
| | 02:45 | knows what you are doing, in other
words anytime Captivate can hear from the
| | 02:49 | software that you are simulating, what
action you took, in this case I clicked
| | 02:52 | on the File menu, Captivate captures
that and then creates a caption for you.
| | 02:57 | This caption is black text on a
transparent background and it makes it very
| | 03:01 | difficult to read, especially
when it was on its original location.
| | 03:04 | So, I suppose I can move it, but I can
also right-click on this object, choose
| | 03:08 | Properties and reset the properties so
that it shows up better, so that it's
| | 03:14 | much more visible than
it was before I edited it.
| | 03:18 | Now you don't want to have to do this
each and every time. If you have recorded
| | 03:21 | a software simulation and you are
seeing the captions don't look particularly
| | 03:24 | good, I want to remind you that under
your Preferences, you should consider the
| | 03:32 | Defaults for Recording and these are
the defaults that Captivate will use for
| | 03:36 | creating objects such as Text Captions.
But if you have discovered this after
| | 03:41 | the fact, you can
certainly go ahead and change them.
| | 03:44 | Another note, if you want to use a
Design template, something that we covered
| | 03:47 | in previous lessons, you can use the
Design template to make a wholesale change
| | 03:51 | across your entire project
with one click of the button.
| | 03:53 | Now the next thing that I need to
change is on Slide 9. If you look at Slide 9,
| | 03:59 | this is a Fullmotion recording and I'm
going to jump over to the Library panel
| | 04:02 | and I want to show you that
Fullmotion Recordings in Captivate are saved as
| | 04:06 | Flash files in the Media folder in the Library.
| | 04:09 | The good news is that you can right
-click on one and choose Edit with
| | 04:13 | FMREditor, Full Motion Recording Editor.
This is built in to Captivate and what
| | 04:18 | it allows you to do is to
edit your Full Motion Recordings.
| | 04:22 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
lop off a good chunk of this recording
| | 04:28 | and I'm going to drag my CTI just over
here, Current Time Indicator because I
| | 04:32 | don't want you to have to watch me do
that entire paint sequence because it's
| | 04:38 | really kind of boring.
| | 04:39 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
cut this entire hunk of movie right out
| | 04:45 | by selecting Edit > Delete Frames. Now
I have to be sure about this because if
| | 04:50 | I go ahead and do this and I don't like
it, remember that I'm editing the asset
| | 04:56 | inside Captivate and that
might not be something I can undo.
| | 05:02 | So there we go. I have deleted those
frames from this Flash video. All we need
| | 05:06 | to do is select Save and I'm going
to close this and it jumps me back to
| | 05:12 | Captivate and what that will do is
it will make it a much smaller movie.
| | 05:16 | The final thing that I want to do is
correct the problem that I created for
| | 05:19 | myself by accidentally clicking in the
File menu. These three entire slides are
| | 05:25 | absolutely extraneous. I don't need them.
So I'm going to Shift+Select them and
| | 05:31 | delete them and by jumping back and
forth between Slides 9 and 10, I can see if
| | 05:39 | there is any obvious hitches there and
it turns out that Slide 10 doesn't even
| | 05:44 | offer anything useful. So I'm
going to delete that as well.
| | 05:47 | At the end of this process now, I have
a much tidier, much cleaner, much more
| | 05:52 | engaging software simulation that is
easier to follow and easier to stay with
| | 05:58 | because I have shortened it up by quite
a bit. And Captivate with its editing
| | 06:01 | tools makes it very easy to
go ahead and apply those edits.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Panning while recording| 00:00 | There will be times when you are
creating a software simulation in a project
| | 00:04 | that is a specific size, that it
will be inappropriate to squeeze your
| | 00:08 | interface into that size.
| | 00:10 | For example, I want to do a
simulation of Photoshop, but while I'm
| | 00:13 | demonstrating, I want you to be able
to see the nice woodwork here and if I
| | 00:17 | were to squeeze Photoshop down into
the 800x600 pixels that I want for my
| | 00:21 | project, I wouldn't be able to see that
detail and the two needs seem like they
| | 00:25 | are going to conflict, but Captivate
actually offers me a tool to deal with
| | 00:29 | that and it's called Panning.
| | 00:31 | To use Panning, I'm just going to
start a standard software simulation, move
| | 00:35 | here to Captivate, start the simulation
and instead of choosing an Application
| | 00:40 | Window to record, I'm going to record
a specific screen area, in this case,
| | 00:45 | 800x600 and then click OK.
| | 00:48 | Captivate shows me what 800x600 pixels
looks like and I can actually move it
| | 00:52 | around the screen if I want to, but I
don't need to do this manually because
| | 00:57 | I'm going to click on my Options here
and I'm going to choose Automatic Panning.
| | 01:01 | Now I can turn Panning Off if I don't
want it to move or use Manual Panning,
| | 01:04 | which I'll talk about in just a moment,
but in this case, just to get started
| | 01:08 | I'm going to go ahead and use
Automatic Panning. We'll OK those choices and
| | 01:13 | start the recording.
| | 01:15 | Now when I move the cursor, I'll click
on the Adjustments panel, I'll apply the
| | 01:24 | Black & White adjustment layer, but now
I need to get the Paintbrush, which is
| | 01:27 | all the way over on the other side of
the screen. So I'll just go ahead, move
| | 01:31 | my cursor over and grab the Paintbrush
and now we'll come back to the area on
| | 01:38 | which I want to use the Paintbrush
and I'll start using the Paintbrush.
| | 01:44 | Now when I'm done, I'm actually going
to tell you about a little Key command
| | 01:48 | here. I'm going to hit the End key,
instead of trying to move my cursor down to
| | 01:53 | get to the Task bar to turn Captivate
Off or stop the recording, I'm just going
| | 01:57 | to hit the End key and we'll take a
look at those key commands in just a
| | 02:01 | moment, but first, let's go ahead and
create our project, we'll just call this Panning.
| | 02:05 | Let's go ahead and preview this
because if you look at the slides, they don't
| | 02:13 | tell the entire story although,
actually let's take a quick look at Slide 2.
| | 02:16 | You can see that I'm not seeing the
entirety of the interface there but when we
| | 02:21 | preview this, you will see that it's all there.
| | 02:30 | So what Captivate is going to do is
it's going to use a series of still and
| | 02:33 | live motion shots to produce what
looks like a movie that pans back and forth
| | 02:38 | as I move the cursor.
| | 02:39 | We will go ahead and close the preview.
That Automatic Panning is good, but I
| | 02:53 | want to show you how you can control
the Panning as well if you want tighten
| | 02:57 | things up even further.
| | 02:58 | So we'll close this project, we'll
save it, we'll create a new software
| | 03:03 | simulation and click OK, jump back over
to Photoshop and this time I'm going to
| | 03:10 | turn on what's called Manual Panning.
| | 03:14 | Okay and now I start my recording and
now all I'm going to do is hit the F11
| | 03:20 | key, every time I want Captivate to
center the recording area on my cursor.
| | 03:29 | With Manual Panning, it does require a
little bit forethought and a little bit
| | 03:32 | of practice, but I can actually
produce a much tighter approach because
| | 03:36 | Captivate is not going to add the
actual pan moment and it's just going to jump
| | 03:41 | from place to place in the interface, so
oftentimes it produces a tighter result.
| | 03:46 | Now I'm going to actually escape from
this. We'll hit the End key. I'm not
| | 03:50 | going to save that one because I do
want to show you some preferences that will
| | 03:54 | help you with any of these recordings
and they are the recording keys.
| | 03:59 | These preferences will allow you to control
the recording as you go to do things like
| | 04:04 | pause and resume a recording. Very,
very helpful if you need to take a moment
| | 04:08 | to think about what you are going to do.
| | 04:10 | The snap recording window to mouse,
that's how you control the Manual Panning
| | 04:14 | and the other reason I wanted to show
you this was because you can actually
| | 04:16 | edit these. I'm going to
click on Restore defaults.
| | 04:19 | Notice that the pause/resume recording
is a Pause button. Well, I don't have a
| | 04:25 | Pause button on my keyboard anywhere,
so I can reset that to be Page Down and
| | 04:29 | then to create some parity, I'm going
to resume with Page Up. It's a good idea
| | 04:34 | to jot those down, especially as you
are first starting to work with Captivate
| | 04:37 | because it will allow you to be much
smoother when you create your software simulations.
| | 04:41 | So Panning is a great tool to allow
you to record something that's very, very large
| | 04:45 | and it's something that you can't
scale down to fit within your recording
| | 04:49 | window. That, in combination with the
ability to control it, makes recording
| | 04:53 | software simulations much easier.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting simulations into quizzes| 00:00 | One of the unique capabilities that
Captivate has is that it can create a
| | 00:04 | software simulation that you don't
just look at, but that you interact with.
| | 00:09 | That's called a training simulation.
And then if you throw assessment into the mix,
| | 00:13 | you can actually create an
assessment simulation. The good news is that
| | 00:16 | you can do all three at the same
time, which allows you to create a
| | 00:19 | presentation that says, "here watch
me do it, now you do it, but I want to
| | 00:23 | make sure that you have done it correctly."
| | 00:25 | In this lesson, I'm going to show you
how to create them and we'll take a tour
| | 00:29 | of what Captivate creates, so that
you can understand how they work.
| | 00:33 | We'll start by creating a software simulation
and I'm going to simulate Photoshop at
| | 00:37 | 800x600 and click OK. Under my options here,
I'm going to choose Assessment and
| | 00:44 | Training as well as Demonstration.
Captivate is actually going to create three
| | 00:48 | projects when I'm done with this. We'll
put that away and we'll start the recording.
| | 00:54 | (Chi-click! Shutter clicks.)
| | 00:56 | I am going to do something very basic.
| | 00:58 | (Chi-click!Chi-click!Chi-click! Shutter clicks.)
| | 01:06 | Just to give this simulation a few clicks
| | 01:08 | so that we can actually examine them.
I'm going to hit the End key.
| | 01:15 | And now it's going to create a Demonstration,
an Assessment and a Training. We are
| | 01:20 | not going to call this Untitled.
I'm actually going to call this
| | 01:23 | 05_assessment_and_training, but notice
that Captivate will add to the filename
| | 01:29 | 05_assessment_and_training_demo, 05_
assessment_and_training_assessment and
| | 01:35 | 05_assessment_and_training_training.
These suffixes are created automatically
| | 01:40 | by Captivate to indicate which of the
three projects that you have and then you
| | 01:44 | can tell Captivate which one to open.
| | 01:45 | So I'm going to start by opening the
Training simulation first and then
| | 01:49 | we'll take a look at the Assessment
simulation and how it differs. I'm actually going
| | 01:52 | to put these in a particular place
and there we go. And you can see that
| | 02:01 | Captivate created a standard project,
it has some Full Motion video, it has
| | 02:05 | some screenshots, but the way this
one differs is because it's the Training
| | 02:10 | simulation, if I double-click on this,
is that there is no mouse in this.
| | 02:15 | In other words, I'm not going to show you
where to click, but there is a Click Box
| | 02:19 | and the Click Box is in the
area that I want you to click.
| | 02:22 | Now I'm going to grab these elements
and move them out of the way, double-click
| | 02:27 | on the Click Box to show you that this
is essentially just creating a hot spot
| | 02:31 | on the video. In a normal situation if
I were actually creating this, I would
| | 02:35 | either add a caption to say 'Please
click on X' or I might say "Please click on X,"
| | 02:40 | or in this case I have just left it
blank because I want there to be nothing there.
| | 02:44 | I want it to basically say 'now you do it.'
During the training, if the user clicks
| | 02:49 | outside of the Click box,
the Click box treats that as a fail or a miss.
| | 02:54 | Not success. In other words, if the
user clicks outside the of Click box, what happens?
| | 02:59 | I can allow you infinite attempts or
I can allow you a specific number of attempts.
| | 03:04 | In a Training simulation, it's
probably best to allow at least one or two
| | 03:08 | attempts here, but you might not want
to and when we talk about Assessment in
| | 03:12 | just a moment, you will see how you
might use the number of attempts in an
| | 03:15 | Assessment situation.
| | 03:16 | So basically, what this Click box will
do is if you do click correctly, it will
| | 03:20 | move on. If you don't click correctly,
then it's just going to sit there and
| | 03:24 | wait until you actually do click correctly.
| | 03:27 | Now the final thing that I want to say
about these Click boxes, I'll click OK
| | 03:30 | here, is that these things here can be
more than just a "No, you didn't do it right."
| | 03:35 | So I'm going to double-click
on this and rewrite this to say:
| | 03:46 | 'Remember to click the adjustment layer.'
I'll make that a little bit larger and
| | 03:55 | 'Click here!' appears when you hover over it.
| | 03:57 | So a Training simulation is nothing
more than a software simulation where the
| | 04:02 | hot spots are Click boxes and the
Click boxes actually do something different
| | 04:06 | if you click on them than
when you don't click on them.
| | 04:09 | So if I accidentally click on
something else while I'm watching this
| | 04:11 | presentation, it will actually provide
the user with feedback. Let's go ahead
| | 04:15 | and quickly take a look at that. I'm
going to preview just from this slide.
| | 04:21 | And if I click, it's telling me to remember
to click the adjustment layer. Oh yeah,
| | 04:26 | there we go and then it
takes me on to the next slide.
| | 04:30 | One of the values of a software
simulation in general is the fact that you
| | 04:33 | don't have deploy software to train it.
One of the values that Captivate brings
| | 04:37 | to the table is that you can actually
make this an interactive process, but you
| | 04:41 | could also make this an Assessment process.
| | 04:44 | So I'm going to close this and I'm
not going to save the changes here.
| | 04:48 | I'm however going to open the Assessment
simulation that Captivate created here.
| | 04:52 | I'll double-click on slide 1. I'll move
this. Now notice that there is no hint
| | 04:59 | this time because in an Assessment
situation I don't want you to get a hint
| | 05:03 | that when you are all over this that
that's where you need to click. Plus, if I
| | 05:06 | double-click on this Click box under
Reporting, it will deliver the points to
| | 05:11 | the quiz if I get it right.
| | 05:13 | Now if I get it wrong, in this case
it's set up automatically to use infinite attempts.
| | 05:18 | Well, I'm going to turn that off.
I only want you to be able to click
| | 05:21 | around the interface maybe four times
before we give up and realize,
| | 05:24 | you just click on everything you think of
to hopefully hit the right thing and
| | 05:29 | after the last attempt, instead of
allowing you to continue, I can do something
| | 05:32 | like Jump to slide or even Jump to URL
to say "hey, you know what, you need to
| | 05:36 | go back and study the material that you were supposed
to have learned before you attempted to take this quiz."
| | 05:42 | So an Assessment simulation is nothing
more than a Training or a Demonstration
| | 05:46 | simulation except that you can add
reporting and you can determine what happens
| | 05:50 | if the user clicks outside the box or
makes a failed attempt. It's actually a
| | 05:56 | pretty powerful way to bring someone
into the process of learning software
| | 05:59 | without having to deploy
that software beforehand.
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| Creating simulations from scratch| 00:00 | There will be times when you need to
create a software simulation and you don't
| | 00:03 | have the materials that you need for
that simulation. In fact, in some cases,
| | 00:08 | I have actually been without the
software that I need to simulate.
| | 00:11 | Fortunately, Captivate actually has a
strategy that can help you with that if
| | 00:15 | you've done some work beforehand or
maybe if somebody else has done some work
| | 00:18 | that you can leverage.
Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:21 | In this lesson, what we are going to
do is we are actually going to leverage
| | 00:24 | work that we've done previously in
Captivate to create a software simulation
| | 00:28 | from the scratch without actually using
the software to do so. So I'm going to
| | 00:31 | go ahead and create a Blank Project
and we'll choose as our size 800x600 and
| | 00:39 | I'll double-click so that we
can see the slide in editing mode.
| | 00:42 | I have a Library over here, which is
an empty library. This is a completely
| | 00:45 | blank project. What I'm going to do
is open a library which is actually a
| | 00:50 | previous file that I have been
working on and here we have a
| | 00:52 | Previous_Simulation and click OK. This
was a previous Photoshop simulation and
| | 00:58 | you can see that because of the way
the Captivate does its work, there are a
| | 01:02 | series of background images
that are the Photoshop interface.
| | 01:06 | What I'm looking for is this background
I can see in the preview, in fact I can
| | 01:10 | expand this little bit to make it
easier for me to see that I have a situation
| | 01:14 | where the file is opened, it's unedited,
and my Adjustment panel is forward.
| | 01:18 | So to work with that I'm just going to
drag it out of the Background's folder onto
| | 01:22 | the slide and let go.
| | 01:24 | Now I don't actually want this to be
an object, I want it to be a part of the
| | 01:27 | background. The quickest way to do
that is to right-click on it and choose
| | 01:30 | Merge into Background. And bang!
It's now in the background.
| | 01:35 | Now frankly, I'm done with this
Library, so I'm just going to go ahead and
| | 01:38 | close that. You can see that now I
have got that in the library and also it's
| | 01:43 | in as an image as well because when
I merge something to the background,
| | 01:46 | Captivate doesn't remove it from its
Images folder, it just duplicates it,
| | 01:50 | creates a background object as well. So if
I wanted to I can reuse this in other ways.
| | 01:55 | So at this point, I want to close up
the Timeline briefly because what I want
| | 01:59 | to do is add the mouse. Go ahead and
click on the Mouse object and I can make a
| | 02:05 | variety of choices about the mouse. We
are just going to go ahead and keep the
| | 02:08 | standard cursor, I want to leave it
at the same size, I do wanted to mouse
| | 02:12 | click when I click on it, I do wanted
to click when it hits the end of its
| | 02:16 | path. And I wanted to have a curve not
straight pointer path. But these are all
| | 02:21 | things that I can go
ahead and change, so click OK.
| | 02:23 | I am going to move this over here
because I want it to look like it's clicking
| | 02:27 | on that object. And instead of
starting it all the way up in that corner, I'm
| | 02:30 | just going to start it over here somewhere.
| | 02:33 | The final thing that I want is a
highlight box that will highlight where that
| | 02:36 | mouse cursor is going to click. So
we'll take the Highlight Box tool, click OK,
| | 02:41 | we'll move that over on top of the
object that we want to highlight and then
| | 02:47 | I'm going to open up my Timeline and
we'll extend the length of time the slide
| | 02:52 | exist for to, we'll say 8 seconds,
just to give myself some wiggle room here.
| | 02:56 | I am going to put the highlight box
down on the lower layer because I want it
| | 03:00 | to be under the mouse when it clicks.
We'll have the highlight appear after a
| | 03:04 | full second, we'll have it disappear
after 7 seconds, I'll make the mouse take
| | 03:09 | a little bit longer to do its trick
and let's preview this. And there we go.
| | 03:21 | Without having Photoshop on this work
station at all, I have created a slide
| | 03:26 | that appears to show you how to use
Photoshop and the only other thing I might
| | 03:29 | do here is just extend the length with
the slide a little bit, we'll move the
| | 03:33 | mouse back a little bit so that it
doesn't quite fade out so quickly and there
| | 03:38 | I have just created a software simulation
without having Photoshop on this work station at all.
| | 03:42 | I am not going to tell you that this
is the best way to do it. This does work
| | 03:46 | but there are many situations where
this can be helpful if you either need to
| | 03:49 | create something custom that's very
difficult to record or you want to produce
| | 03:53 | a very simplified version of a
demonstration or as I said if all you have is
| | 03:58 | some previous work or a screenshot. You can
actually build something from the scratch.
| | 04:02 | To finish this off, I can add
voiceover recordings, I can add captions, I can
| | 04:05 | do whatever I need to but the basics
are here for a software simulation to
| | 04:10 | convert this into a training or an
assessment simulation, all I need to do is--
| | 04:14 | I'm going to delete that and instead
of using a Highlight Box there, we can
| | 04:20 | replace that with a Click Box.
Click OK. Put the Click Box in place.
| | 04:31 | To delete the mouse, it's a little
bit of a different process. Once you've
| | 04:34 | place the mouse on a slide, you can't
just click on it and delete it. What you
| | 04:37 | can do though is click the mouse and
right-click on it and choose not to show
| | 04:41 | the mouse and there the mouse is gone.
So now I have either a training or an
| | 04:45 | assessment simulation depending
on how I configure the Click Box.
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| Capturing full motion video| 00:00 | As good a job as Captivate does
creating a software simulation using the
| | 00:04 | screenshot with objects on top of it
method, and it does a good job with that,
| | 00:08 | there may be times when you need to
create a full motion recording.
| | 00:11 | For example, if there is a lot of painting
involved or if there is a lot of mouse
| | 00:14 | movement where you really want the
user to be able to track and follow the
| | 00:18 | mouse even when you are not clicking
on the mouse, then you'll need to use a
| | 00:22 | full motion recording for that because
remember unless you are clicking on the
| | 00:26 | mouse, Captivate is not necessarily
recording that you've done something.
| | 00:29 | Fortunately, Captivate can create a
full motion recording and in this lesson,
| | 00:33 | I'm going to show you how to do it.
I'm going to click on software simulation
| | 00:36 | and we're going to go ahead and get
when started. I'll click OK. The Full
| | 00:41 | Motion Recording Option, when you
select it, will force you into full motion
| | 00:45 | recording the entire time.
| | 00:47 | This is something you want to do in a
deliberate fashion, you don't want to
| | 00:50 | just jump in and treat Full Motion
Recording like a standard Captivate
| | 00:54 | recording because if you should just
sit there and noodle for a while, while
| | 00:57 | you are trying to think about what to
say or what to do or etcetera. You are
| | 01:01 | going to create a very large movie
that you'll then just have to chop up and
| | 01:04 | edit anyway. It's a good idea to
practice these things and be very comfortable
| | 01:08 | before you actually sit
down to do your recording.
| | 01:11 | Before I actually trigger this
recording, I'm going to click on Settings
| | 01:14 | because there are actually a lot
of settings with respect to software
| | 01:17 | simulations that you probably should
take a look at and become comfortable with.
| | 01:21 | For example, do you want to show
the mouse the entire time you are doing
| | 01:25 | the recording? You probably do if you are doing
a demonstration but you may or may not want to.
| | 01:29 | Your Video Color mode. If you want to
create a large movie, that's more color
| | 01:33 | accurate to what you are seeing then
you'd go to 32 Bit. Now it's going to be a
| | 01:37 | larger movie, so that's why you have
the option of turning it down to 16 Bit.
| | 01:41 | And then generally speaking how
compressed do you want the video that the
| | 01:45 | recording creates? Do you want a very
small file? Do you want just a little
| | 01:49 | tiny file or very large
file with a high frame rate?
| | 01:53 | Captivate doesn't give you a lot of
bells and whistles for determining exactly
| | 01:57 | what kind of recording you are going
to get because Captivate really doesn't
| | 02:00 | focus on the full motion recording
though it certainly can provide them.
| | 02:04 | But if you are creating recordings that do
require full motion, you can used these
| | 02:08 | settings and produce some pretty good results.
| | 02:10 | I also want to point out under the
Keys, you have the ability while you are
| | 02:15 | doing a standard recording to force
Captivate into a full motion recording
| | 02:20 | while you are doing your work and as
much as full motion recording is a useful
| | 02:24 | thing, it's actually probably a better
strategy to record in standard mode but
| | 02:29 | memorize these key commands and use
them to jump into and out of full motion
| | 02:32 | recording when it make sense.
| | 02:34 | However, we'll click OK, you can
certainly create a useful full motion
| | 02:39 | recording here. All you need to do is
click Record and you got it down.
| | 02:49 | Do whatever adjusting that you want to do.
None of what I'm doing right now is
| | 02:54 | producing that click sound, that camera click
sound, because this is a full motion recording.
| | 02:58 | Now to stop it I'm going to hit the
End key. I hear the final shutter.
| | 03:04 | I'll produce a single slide Captivate
presentation. I'll double-click on it. It is a
| | 03:09 | full motion single slide Captivate
presentation and you can see that I have my
| | 03:15 | media here, which is a Flash file
that has the animation built into it.
| | 03:19 | Now part of the reason that Captivate
doesn't use full motion for everything is
| | 03:23 | because of file size. That little bit
of work created about a 2.7 MB file.
| | 03:28 | So it's something to think about. Tthere is
usually a trade off between the ad hoc
| | 03:32 | nature of a full motion recording and
the way Captivate does its recording
| | 03:35 | otherwise, but you can mix and match
them and because you can mix and match them,
| | 03:39 | you can actually create a very
effective software simulation that employs both.
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|
|
10. QuizzingCreating questions| 00:00 | One of the things that differentiates
Captivate from other presentation tools
| | 00:04 | is its ability to provide assessment.
In other words, you can add a quiz to
| | 00:08 | your project and in this lesson, we
are going to add a question, which will
| | 00:12 | actually add a quiz to our project,
and then we'll take a look at what
| | 00:15 | Captivate does to the
project to create the quiz.
| | 00:18 | So to get started, we'll go to Edit
View by double clicking on our slide here
| | 00:22 | and this slide represents the end of
our presentation where I have delivered
| | 00:25 | some content and now I need the student
to demonstrate his or her understanding.
| | 00:29 | I will select Quiz > Question Slide and
that will kick the process off. I have
| | 00:37 | many question types and we are
going to take a look at each of these in
| | 00:40 | upcoming lessons. I'll start though
with Multiple Choice, it's a fairly common
| | 00:44 | type and it's very easy to use.
| | 00:46 | I am going to create a graded question
versus a survey question and all that
| | 00:50 | means is that if my quiz is going to
track a score, then this question will
| | 00:55 | have a score amount. In other words,
it will be weighted for the quiz so that
| | 01:00 | it contributes to the overall score
that I receive for answering the question
| | 01:03 | right or perhaps, getting it wrong.
| | 01:06 | If I choose Survey Question, then
the question isn't actually going to
| | 01:09 | contribute to the score for the quiz
and it's okay to mix both graded and
| | 01:13 | survey questions into a single quiz.
In an upcoming lesson, we are going to
| | 01:17 | take a look at how Captivate works with
your score and determines what happens
| | 01:22 | based on your score.
| | 01:23 | So for here, we are just going to go
ahead and select Graded Question and the
| | 01:27 | name of the quiz question is
Multiple Choice. I can change this name to
| | 01:32 | anything that I want, it's not actually
the question, it's just the name of the
| | 01:35 | question and I'm going to leave it Multiple
Choice for the purpose of this demonstration.
| | 01:40 | Here, however, is where the rubber
starts to meet the road. This is the
| | 01:43 | question that you want to ask so I'm
going to ask a question based on some
| | 01:47 | sales training. What is an appropriate
question to ask during a sales call? If
| | 01:52 | the question is a graded question then
you can assign it a number of points,
| | 01:57 | that means is these are the number of
points that contribute to the overall quiz score.
| | 02:01 | We'll talk about that more in some
detail in an upcoming lesson but I just
| | 02:04 | wanted to point out that
that's what that is for.
| | 02:06 | To provide the answers or the potential
answers, all I need to do is come down
| | 02:11 | to the Answers box and click Add. This
is a potential answer and 9 times out of
| | 02:16 | 10 when I'm creating quizzes, the
correct answer will be the first one that I
| | 02:20 | have typed in. So we'll go ahead and
add that and by leaving this selected,
| | 02:26 | this means this is the correct answer.
| | 02:28 | Now I need some distracters, so I'm
going to click Add one more time and type
| | 02:32 | my distracters. If you are not
familiar with e-learning terminology,
| | 02:35 | a distracter is nothing more than an
answer but it's the wrong answer. So we'll
| | 02:39 | go ahead and type my distracters.
Because I tend to use the first answer as the
| | 02:45 | correct answer, I don't want you to be
able to figure that out and just always
| | 02:48 | answer A when you answer my quizzes. So
what I'm going to do is select Shuffle
| | 02:51 | Answers. What will happen is when
this is published, the presentation will
| | 02:56 | actually shuffle the answers up so
that how much money do you have, won't
| | 03:00 | always option A it may B, C, or D.
| | 03:04 | Now with multiple choice questions, I
also have the ability not to do just a
| | 03:07 | Single Response but I can do a
Multiple Response multiple choice question as well.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to leave this as a
Single Response question and then I can make
| | 03:15 | some other formatting changes such as
using small letters, numbers, or large
| | 03:22 | letters, I'll just leave
the default, large letters.
| | 03:25 | Finally, when I click on Advanced,
there are some Advanced Answer Options that
| | 03:29 | I have. For example, if you answer this
one, this is the correct answer so I'll
| | 03:33 | click OK. I'll choose this one and
click Advanced and maybe this answer is just
| | 03:37 | so wrong that I need to stop
everything and take you to another presentation.
| | 03:42 | Well, then I can choose to Open another
project and then choose the project to
| | 03:49 | open from the list here. In other words,
I can ask Captivate to do something
| | 03:53 | different based on each
individual answer that you attempt.
| | 03:57 | So at this point I'm done, my question
is in, I'm going to go ahead and click OK.
| | 04:01 | Captivate will go ahead and
generate two slides, at least two slides
| | 04:06 | depending on how many questions I'm
working with. Slide number 1 is the
| | 04:09 | question, you can see that I have got
my name, I have got my question, there
| | 04:13 | are my potential answers and the little
dot indicates which is the correct answer.
| | 04:19 | Now I also have some other things
that are on the slide and I'm going to
| | 04:22 | Shift+select to select these and drag
them out of the way a little bit.
| | 04:26 | These are the feedback that you get when
you answer the question right or wrong.
| | 04:31 | I also have a set of buttons. These
buttons are basically the choices that I have
| | 04:35 | after I have answered the question.
| | 04:37 | So let's go ahead and actually
preview this to see how this works. Slide 1,
| | 04:43 | tells me that I'm about to start a quiz.
This is my quiz and notice that the
| | 04:48 | question answers are jumbled here. And
the correct answer is 'How much money do
| | 04:53 | you have?' So I select that, click on
Submit, then I'll go to the Results page,
| | 04:59 | which is the page that tells me how I did.
| | 05:02 | Now it was only a one question quiz.
I got it right so I had an accuracy of
| | 05:05 | 100%, which allowed me to pass. We
are going to take a look at what all of
| | 05:09 | these stuff means in upcoming lessons
but I wanted to point out that when you
| | 05:13 | build a quiz, you are not just
building a question. You are building the
| | 05:16 | overall structure for the quiz and then
you could add questions to that as you go.
| | 05:20 | And that's all there is to adding
quiz questions to your presentation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing questions| 00:00 | It's not uncommon when you're creating
quizzes to make mistakes either in the
| | 00:04 | questions or in the grammar of the
questions that you're writing. And the good
| | 00:08 | news is that you can edit just about
anything that you want in a quiz after the fact
| | 00:13 | For example, in this quiz I created a
multiple choice question, but I used some
| | 00:18 | poor grammar and also a wrong choice
for this distracter and I need to fix it.
| | 00:24 | One way to fix it is simply to click
Edit Question. I can come back into the
| | 00:27 | Question dialog box and update it
here. So I can see that I've misspelled
| | 00:31 | bosses for this usage. So we'll just
replace that with an apostrophe. I've also
| | 00:37 | omitted the question mark there so
we'll go ahead and fix that, and that's
| | 00:42 | fixed nicely. You can see
that it's updated on the screen.
| | 00:45 | However, it might be easier just to
actually edit the object right here.
| | 00:49 | It turns out that a quiz is nothing but a
collection of Captivate objects and then
| | 00:53 | some underlying stuff to make it a
quiz. But the fact that it's a bunch of
| | 00:56 | stuff on the screen means that I can
just go ahead and double click and edit it
| | 01:00 | right here. So instead of ice-cream
flavor, maybe I want to replace that with pet.
| | 01:05 | If I click on Edit Question, you
can see that it's updated here as well.
| | 01:09 | So they both work together.
| | 01:11 | Frankly, any of the things on the
screen are up for grabs. These captions here
| | 01:18 | which are a part of the question and
are something that you configure, and
| | 01:21 | we'll take a look at in an upcoming
lesson that speaks to reporting and how you
| | 01:25 | can collect results in the back-end
but these are just objects. So if I don't
| | 01:28 | want it to say Correct - Click
anywhere or press 'y' to continue, I can just
| | 01:32 | double click and just rewrite this
text to say, Good job! Click to move on.
| | 01:37 | But that's not the only thing about
a quiz question that I can edit.
| | 01:41 | For example, when you create a quiz
question, it automatically assumes that the
| | 01:45 | question is going to fall behind the
slide that you're on when you chose to add
| | 01:50 | a quiz question. So for example, when
I created this one, I had this slide
| | 01:54 | selected, I chose Quiz >
Question Slide and it was added.
| | 01:58 | But that's not where I want the
question. This question actually refers to
| | 02:01 | content that's being delivered by this
slide. So all I need to do is grab the
| | 02:05 | slide and move it. It will still work.
It will still report to the overall quiz.
| | 02:11 | In fact I can sprinkle questions
throughout my project as a way to get
| | 02:16 | people to reflect on what they're doing
as they go as opposed to expecting them
| | 02:19 | to remember everything until the very end.
| | 02:22 | So quiz questions are very editable
things. They're just objects like anything
| | 02:27 | else in Captivate. Now of course when
you interact with them, they provide
| | 02:31 | information for the overall quiz,
something that we'll talk about later but as
| | 02:34 | objects on the slide and as slides in
the presentation, they are very flexible
| | 02:39 | and very editable.
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| True or false| 00:00 | In Captivate there are 8 different
question types that you can use with your quiz.
| | 00:05 | In this lesson we're going to take a
look at another question type, True/False.
| | 00:10 | So to do that, we'll go ahead and add
a Question Slide and we'll choose the
| | 00:15 | True/False question type. We'll add
it as a Graded Question. Just like any
| | 00:20 | other question, I can assign it Points.
It will have a Name and then I can ask
| | 00:25 | a Question. Only the question in a True/
False question is a little bit different.
| | 00:30 | So I'm actually going to make a
statement here and then it will true or false
| | 00:33 | as my potential answers. You should
always try to close the least well-paid
| | 00:39 | employee. Now is that true or false?
I'm going to select False as the correct
| | 00:44 | answer there. And that's all
there is to a True/False question.
| | 00:47 | Now you can actually change it from True
/False to Yes/No and instead of using,
| | 00:53 | you should always try, I would
convert this to a question. In fact, I could
| | 00:56 | actually make this anything that I
want to be. You should always try to close
| | 01:01 | the least well-paid employee. Are you serious?
Obviously, those would give away the answer.
| | 01:13 | So what I'm going to do is revert this
back to True/False question and leave it
| | 01:17 | as such. But I just wanted to show you
that there is actually some flexibility
| | 01:20 | there when you're creating True/
False type questions. Really what you're
| | 01:23 | creating is a multiple choice
question with two potential answers.
| | 01:27 | Once you've created your quiz questions,
simply click OK. In this presentation,
| | 01:32 | I've actually added it as another
question in my quiz. Then as with any other
| | 01:37 | quiz type I can edit some things on
the screen. For example, I want to move
| | 01:42 | these boxes because they're
obscuring my question and there we go.
| | 01:45 | I've added a True/False question to my quiz.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fill in the blank| 00:00 | Aside from some of the basic
question types, True/False, Multiple Choice,
| | 00:04 | Captivate also allows you to get a
little bit more complicated with your quiz
| | 00:08 | questions. In this lesson we're going
to look at the Fill-in-the-blank question
| | 00:12 | type that Captivate offers.
| | 00:14 | So we'll go ahead, we'll select Quiz
> Question Slide. In this case we'll
| | 00:18 | choose Fill-in-the-blank and choose
Graded Question. This is a little bit more
| | 00:22 | difficult for the user. You have to be
very, very specific in preparing someone
| | 00:27 | for this question. In other words
you can't be loose with your diction.
| | 00:31 | We'll go ahead and add our phrase. This
is the phrase that the student is going
| | 00:36 | to complete. So the phrase is "A
prospect should talk, you should listen." To
| | 00:42 | create the Blanks and the correct
answers for the Blanks, all you need to do is
| | 00:46 | drag select those items and then
click Add Blank. The user will type the
| | 00:53 | answer, which will be
compared to the list below.
| | 00:55 | Now I can add different options. So I
can add speak and I can add jabber. Click OK.
| | 01:05 | But what that means is that the
person who's answering this quiz question
| | 01:09 | needs to type talk, speak, or jabber
and they need to do so precisely.
| | 01:13 | They can't answer blab on, blather on, yak,
whatever. It has to be one of those three answers.
| | 01:19 | To finish this off, we'll go ahead
and do listen, Add a Blank. And I'm just
| | 01:26 | going to leave listen, The user will
select the answer from the list below.
| | 01:30 | So I could actually type in some correct
answers and some distracters, but I'm not
| | 01:34 | going to do that. I'm just going to leave
the word listen. Click OK. And there we go.
| | 01:39 | So now I've created a question, I'll
click OK, where the student is going to
| | 01:44 | come in and they're going to replace
this by typing something in here, replace
| | 01:48 | this by typing something in here. And
again it has to be exactly what you've
| | 01:53 | offered as potentially the right answer.
| | 01:55 | So when you're using fill-in-the-blank,
my advice to you is to make sure that
| | 01:58 | you've spoken or you've presented
the exact phrase or word that you're
| | 02:03 | expecting. Otherwise the student could
enter a correct answer but it might not
| | 02:08 | be phrased exactly correctly for the
quiz. So it's just one of those things you
| | 02:12 | need to be careful of.
Otherwise it's an effective quiz tool.
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| Short answer| 00:00 | In this lesson, we are going to take a
look at another of the question types
| | 00:03 | that Captivate offers for your quizzes.
This question type is short answer, and
| | 00:08 | to add it we'll choose Quiz >
Question Slide > Short Answer.
| | 00:13 | We will create a Graded Question and
this is another question type that you
| | 00:17 | need to be pretty specific when you
are offering information that you are
| | 00:21 | quizzing against. Because I can type a
question, the question I'll type here is....
| | 00:26 | And the acceptable answers are
listening, hearing, or paying attention.
| | 00:33 | Now notice that I didn't capitalize
these and the answer here needn't be
| | 00:38 | case-sensitive. However, if your
answer is going to a proper noun such as
| | 00:41 | somebody's name, then you may want to
make the answer case-sensitive. That's
| | 00:44 | certainly up to you. But the important
thing to remember here is that these are
| | 00:48 | the three potentially
correct answers and that's it.
| | 00:51 | If someone were to type listening
intently, or focusing, or something like
| | 00:56 | that, that's not going to be a correct
answer though it may seem like a correct
| | 00:59 | answer. Again, in your presentation,
you want to make sure that you are
| | 01:03 | delivering content that is very
specific if you are going to use a Short answer
| | 01:07 | question. And I have made a
mistake here that I want to show you.
| | 01:11 | Type the answer here is now a potential
answer for this question, so I need to
| | 01:15 | delete that. Whenever you click Add,
Captivate is going to add a potential
| | 01:22 | answer. Now Captivate expects that
you will come in here, double-click and
| | 01:24 | change those, but if you don't, they are left
in place, and those are now potential answers.
| | 01:29 | So you just want to make sure to
delete those leaving only the acceptable
| | 01:33 | answers that you intend to leave.
Click OK, Captivate will create a Short
| | 01:37 | answer slide for you. And I'll go
ahead and move these out of the way just so
| | 01:42 | that they are not in the
way and we are good to go.
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| Matching| 00:00 | One of the question types that
Captivate offers is a Matching question, and to
| | 00:05 | see how this works, let's just go ahead
and add one and then we'll set it up.
| | 00:11 | Choose Quiz > Question Slide > Matching.
We'll add it as a Graded Question.
| | 00:17 | The Matching question is simple. It's a
set of terms on one side that you somehow
| | 00:20 | match with a set of terms on the other
side. Somehow match means you actually
| | 00:24 | have to produce a question that
explains why you're doing the matching.
| | 00:28 | So I'll go ahead and type a question,
which is actually in this case going to
| | 00:30 | be a phrase. Complete the phrase by
matching the pairs of words. Down here are
| | 00:37 | the pairs of words that I want you to
complete. So what I'm going to do is
| | 00:40 | start the phrase by typing in, and
then there will be a set of words here.
| | 00:49 | Before I add the pairs of words, I'm going
to add another aspect of the phrase here.
| | 00:56 | So in my Matching question, I'm going
to have "the customer is" and they'll be
| | 01:00 | doing something here, "you are" and
you'll be doing something here, and you'll
| | 01:04 | want to match them up. So we'll go
ahead and add the text. So, The customer is,
| | 01:10 | Talking, Asking, Thinking,
Discussing, Considering. You are, Listening,
| | 01:15 | Answering, Preparing, Participating and Closing.
| | 01:18 | So the way this question is going
to work for the student is that they
| | 01:21 | basically need to determine which of
these pairs of objects go together.
| | 01:25 | To match them, all I need to do is drag-and
-drop. So when the customer is talking,
| | 01:29 | you are listening. When the customer
is asking, you are answering, you are
| | 01:34 | preparing, you are
participating, you are closing.
| | 01:38 | Now obviously, this match is going to
be very easy for someone to figure out,
| | 01:41 | the words are right next to each other.
So obviously, what I want to do is
| | 01:45 | shuffle these around, and to shuffle
the answers, I'm just going to go ahead
| | 01:48 | and click Shuffle Answers.
| | 01:50 | Now if I don't want that to be a
random shuffling, I can actually move the
| | 01:53 | answers up and down in the stack.
So if I want Closing to be the first
| | 01:57 | potential answer that they're going to
see, I'd just push it up. But you can
| | 02:01 | see that it matches to Considering. I
don't generally need to do this with my
| | 02:05 | quiz questions, because I'm just going
to shuffle them up, but I wanted you to
| | 02:08 | see that you can actually determine the order
and it will leave the correct matching in place.
| | 02:14 | At this point, I'm going to go ahead
and select OK, and before we finish up
| | 02:18 | with this lesson, I want to show you
how this works, because it's pretty neat.
| | 02:22 | We'll go ahead and preview from this
slide. All we need to do is type the
| | 02:30 | letter for the correct answer,
but I can also do drag-and-drop.
| | 02:37 | When I refer to Captivate as Flash
for the rest of us, this is one of the
| | 02:40 | reasons that I do. This drag-and-drop
feature would require some pretty robust
| | 02:44 | Flash work if you were to use Adobe's
Flash authoring tool. In Captivate,
| | 02:48 | it was as simple as focusing on the
content of the question and letting Captivate
| | 02:52 | build the question for you.
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| Hot spot| 00:00 | Sometimes, when you're creating quiz
questions, you need to create a visual
| | 00:03 | question, not just a question-
answer or a multiple-choice question, and
| | 00:08 | Captivate has a question type called
the Hot Spot that allows you to do that.
| | 00:12 | In this lesson, we're going
to go ahead and build one.
| | 00:13 | So we'll get started by choosing Quiz
> Question Slide > Hot Spot. We'll make
| | 00:19 | it a Graded Question. All we need to
do here is type the question, which
| | 00:25 | expressions are likely good signs?
And the way I'm going to construct this,
| | 00:29 | there will be two correct answers,
so I want there to be two Hot Spots.
| | 00:33 | For the Animation, I'll explain this
when we actually get to the quiz and
| | 00:36 | preview it, but right now I'm going
to leave the Default Animation.
| | 00:38 | I can change this if I have another Flash
file format animation. When we do the
| | 00:44 | preview, I'll show you what the animation
is and you'll understand when we get there.
| | 00:48 | I could only allow clicks on Hot Spots,
but what I want you to be able to do is
| | 00:52 | click anywhere other than a Hot Spot,
and essentially, make a mistake. So I'm
| | 00:55 | going to allow clicks anywhere. What
that will do, if I leave that on, then you
| | 00:59 | are only able to select Hot Spots, and
basically the quiz would work that you
| | 01:03 | have to click both Hot Spots and not
just one of them, but you can't click on
| | 01:07 | something else. That's not what I want.
I'm actually going to have a distracter
| | 01:10 | that's not going to be under a Hot Spot.
| | 01:12 | So, we'll go ahead and click OK.
Captivate provides me the slide, but I need to
| | 01:16 | do the rest. These are my Hot Spots. I
can move these around. I'm going to move
| | 01:20 | these out of the way for right now.
What I'm going to do is use my Image tool
| | 01:24 | to drop a picture of a woman who has an
expression, and this is a potentially right answer.
| | 01:30 | We'll do this two more times,
because I have two more pictures. We'll use
| | 01:40 | Captivate's tools for aligning and
distributing these things. I'm just going to
| | 01:44 | get them roughly located. I'll Shift-
select them, use my Alignment tool to
| | 01:48 | center them and then to distribute them.
This is a Hot Spot. That is a correct answer.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to put this over this picture
here. She looks happy enough. This is a
| | 02:00 | Hot Spot. That's also a potentially
right answer. She is leaning forward and
| | 02:03 | she is engaged. Okay, that's good sign
too. This, however, she doesn't look so
| | 02:07 | happy, so this is not a right answer.
| | 02:10 | If I had set this so that I would
allow you to select Hot Spots only, you
| | 02:13 | couldn't choose this as a potential
answer and get it wrong. So that's why I
| | 02:17 | didn't make it so that you can only
click on Hot Spots. You have to choose both
| | 02:21 | of these Hot Spots to get the question
right. That's an important thing to note
| | 02:25 | about the Hot Spot question type. Let's go
ahead and preview this and we'll see how it works.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to preview from this slide.
The first thing that I'm going to do is
| | 02:34 | I'm going to choose one of the wrong
answers. I'm going to click on her.
| | 02:37 | Now remember I talked about animations,
that's the animation. You can change that
| | 02:41 | if you want to make that some
other type of animation, but that's the
| | 02:44 | animation. So if I click on that and that and
click Submit... Oh, darn it! I got it wrong.
| | 02:50 | I'm going to close the preview so that
we can re-preview it. We'll preview the
| | 02:54 | project from this slide. It's also
wrong if I choose one of the correct
| | 03:00 | answers, but not both. So if I click
Submit, oh, darn! I got that one wrong too.
| | 03:04 | So, preview it one more time, just
because I like to eventually get things
| | 03:10 | right, there. Aha! Those
are the two correct answers.
| | 03:15 | So the Hot Spot question allows you to
set a slide up. Put Hot Spots anywhere
| | 03:19 | you want on the slide that the user has to
click in order to get the answer correct.
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| Sequencing| 00:00 | Sometimes when you're quizzing someone,
you're not asking them to provide the
| | 00:04 | information, but you are asking them
to provide it in the correct order.
| | 00:08 | For that, Captivate offers
the Sequence question type.
| | 00:12 | So in this lesson, we're going to go
ahead and add one to our project.
| | 00:14 | I'll select Quiz > Question Slide > Sequence.
We'll make it a Graded Question and in
| | 00:21 | this case, what I'm going to do is ask
a question. I'm not just going to say
| | 00:24 | Arrange in sequence but I'm
going to provide some more context.
| | 00:34 | "What is the cycle of a sales call?"
We'll enter the answers and we'll enter
| | 00:38 | them in correct order here, there,
I'll type Return. So these are the answers
| | 00:44 | and they're in the correct order.
Obviously, when the question slide is
| | 00:48 | displayed to the student, these are
going to be mixed up. So we'll go ahead and
| | 00:51 | choose OK. The question slide has been
added, let's go ahead and preview this one.
| | 01:00 | These are all out of order, what we
need to do is place them in order.
| | 01:05 | Research, Close will be last and
Submit. And I got it right. So, you can
| | 01:12 | provide a list of terms that need to be
in a specific order and use a Sequence
| | 01:16 | question to ask your student to
put them in the correct order.
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| Rating scale| 00:00 | Asking someone a question inside a
Captivate project is not always about
| | 00:04 | collecting a score. Sometimes you just
want to know how they felt. Captivate
| | 00:08 | offers a question type designed for
this. It's called the Rating Scale,
| | 00:12 | otherwise known as a Likert Scale.
| | 00:15 | So we'll go ahead and add one. We'll
choose Rating Scale. Notice that Graded
| | 00:19 | Question grays out. I can't create a
Graded Likert Scale, because the Likert
| | 00:23 | Scale concept is that I'm asking
your opinion. Since when I'm asking your
| | 00:27 | opinion, there is not supposed to be a right
answer. We'll go ahead and create a survey question.
| | 00:32 | The question in a Likert Scale works
this way. I can ask actually a series of
| | 00:36 | questions and then each question can
have a set of columns that allow you to
| | 00:42 | label them. So we're just going to do
one here. We'll make a statement about
| | 00:46 | how you felt about the class. "This
class helped me to sell more". I Disagree,
| | 00:56 | Somewhat Disagree, Neutral, Somewhat Agree,
Agree. These are all editable as well.
| | 01:01 | So instead of Disagree, type in No way.
Now obviously, I'm going to leave it
| | 01:07 | with Disagree, and we'll click OK so
that you can see what Captivate produces.
| | 01:15 | So basically, this is just a standard
survey. Disagree, Agree, I didn't place
| | 01:19 | the other labels in here because they
didn't fit. Now I can and I can just
| | 01:22 | adjust things on the slide, but
I'm not going to bother with that.
| | 01:25 | What I'm going to do though is go back
and select Edit Question and show you
| | 01:29 | that I can add another question, and
then click OK. I automatically get another
| | 01:40 | question. In this case, it was actually a
statement with the different Likert options there.
| | 01:46 | You might be wondering, well, why
wouldn't I just make this be a different
| | 01:49 | slide? Well, you can. There is
certainly no reason not to. It's just that in
| | 01:53 | Captivate, these are questions that are
somewhat related and use the exact same scale.
| | 01:57 | So you can group questions
together based on content and the responses
| | 02:01 | that you offer on to a single side.
| | 02:03 | Now don't forget the things are
editable on these slides because I notice that
| | 02:07 | I've missed a period there. So I'm
just going to double-click, add my period,
| | 02:11 | and there I've updated my slide.
| | 02:13 | So the Rating Scale is very, very
valuable. Even if you're not going to use
| | 02:16 | quizzing to collect a score and
determine how a student did, you may want to
| | 02:20 | find out what a student thought of your
e-learning or your presentation project
| | 02:24 | and the Likert Scale is a
tool that allows you to do that.
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| Assessing software simulations| 00:00 | Quizzes in Captivate are valuable,
because you can ask questions of the student
| | 00:04 | and get them to provide an answer and then
test that answer against the correct answer.
| | 00:07 | But there is another way to create a
quiz in Captivate and you can do this
| | 00:12 | manually using the tools that I've
discussed in previous lessons. The reason
| | 00:17 | that you might want to do this is, for
example, I've got a software simulation
| | 00:20 | here and what I want to do is test to see
if you understand how to take the next step.
| | 00:26 | In this example what I'm going to ask
you to do is to point out the object that
| | 00:30 | you'd click on in order to convert
this to black and white based on the
| | 00:33 | previous information that I delivered.
In this case here it's actually this
| | 00:38 | tool right here. It's called the Black
and White adjustment layer tool and it's
| | 00:42 | found in Adobe's Photoshop.
| | 00:43 | Now I could use a hotspot question, but
what I want to show you in this lesson
| | 00:48 | is how you can actually build one of
these things manually using some of the
| | 00:52 | tools that we've covered in previous
lessons. Then I'm going to show you how to
| | 00:55 | make it an official quiz as opposed to
having it be just a hotspot that you can click on.
| | 01:00 | So to get started what I'm going to do
is add what's called a Click Box to this slide.
| | 01:05 | Now to get started what I'm
going to do is add a Click Box to this slide.
| | 01:09 | Before I do that, I'll point out
that this slide is nothing more than a
| | 01:13 | screen shot that I've taken ahead of time and
dropped in as a graphic object on to this slide.
| | 01:17 | So we'll go ahead and I'll choose the
Click Box object, which is this tool
| | 01:23 | right here. On success, I'm just going
to say Continue. In fact, I'm going to
| | 01:27 | eave everything else alone and click OK.
| | 01:31 | If you've seen the other lessons in
this chapter, you've noticed that quizzes
| | 01:35 | have these success and failure boxes.
We haven't really talked about those.
| | 01:39 | I'll cover those in an upcoming lesson.
I'm just going to move those off to the
| | 01:42 | side right now and set my Click Box
over here so that it covers over the object
| | 01:49 | that I want you to click on. I'm going
to double-click on this again and I'm
| | 01:54 | going to come over to Reporting.
| | 01:55 | What I need to do in order to make
this Click Box work along with my quiz is
| | 02:00 | simple to select Include in Quiz and
then I can give it a point value. In this
| | 02:04 | case, I'll give it 10 points. I want it
to add to the total for the quiz.
| | 02:09 | When you add a question to a quiz, this
is already done for you. The question
| | 02:13 | assumes that it wants to be included in
the quiz and it will report the points
| | 02:17 | for the quiz, if it's a graded
question automatically. But I'm doing this
| | 02:21 | manually, partially just to show you
that I can but also, because it's a very
| | 02:24 | convenient way for you to
build your own custom quiz objects.
| | 02:28 | What I've just done is I've taken the
interface of Adobe's Photoshop and turned
| | 02:32 | it into a quiz object. Now I'm going
to click OK and nothing will happen.
| | 02:38 | I'm going to select this slide here,
because when I click the Click Box the first
| | 02:43 | thing that will happen is that I'll
jump to this page. The next thing that will
| | 02:47 | happen is that it will provide a score
to the quiz and what I need to do is get
| | 02:52 | the quiz results slide to show.
| | 02:54 | Remember if I select Quiz and add a
Question Slide, the Result Slide is
| | 02:59 | automatically going to be there. However,
I need to get one there now because I
| | 03:02 | didn't add a quiz question, but I want
the result as slide. So I'll select Quiz
| | 03:06 | > Quiz Preferences. Among the Quiz
Preferences is the ability to show the score
| | 03:13 | at the end of the quiz. Click OK and
there. Because I want the results to
| | 03:18 | appear after the final slide, I
can just go ahead and move it.
| | 03:23 | Now this quiz Results page is
collecting a score from this Click Box that I
| | 03:28 | just added. Let's say it in action.
I'm going to click Preview > Project.
| | 03:36 | To get it right, I'll click and then the
slide will continue. It takes me to the
| | 03:47 | result of clicking on that button.
Then at the end, it's going to take me to
| | 03:53 | the quiz Results slide telling me that
I got 10 points, because I was able to
| | 03:56 | effectively click on that object.
| | 03:59 | So I'm going to close the preview.
We're going to add one more thing to this.
| | 04:03 | I'm going move around a little bit.
I'm just going to throw a caption box up
| | 04:10 | here that says Click on the Black and
White adjustment layer. Because frankly
| | 04:17 | without this it's not really a quiz. It's
just sort of an interesting guessing game.
| | 04:21 | We'll open up the Timeline and we'll
set it so that the Click Box doesn't
| | 04:27 | appear until a little bit into the
slide. That way the caption will appear,
| | 04:32 | then the user will read it and
ostensibly go and click on the Click Box.
| | 04:36 | Let's go ahead and preview this.
| | 04:41 | Click on the Black and White
adjustment layer. The slide will actually stop
| | 04:48 | giving you the opportunity to click on
it. I've clicked on it. I see that I was
| | 04:53 | successful. I'll see that I was
successful by also seeing that the change
| | 04:58 | "happened". That's why I built the slide
this way. Then at the end I'll see the results.
| | 05:03 | So basically what this has allowed
me to do is to actually build a quiz
| | 05:08 | question completely from scratch using
the interactive interface elements that
| | 05:12 | Captivate offers me. The Click Box is
just one example of them. I could also
| | 05:16 | use a button if I wanted to because--
we'll just add a Click button to this.
| | 05:21 | I'll show you that the button offers the
ability to include it in a quiz as well.
| | 05:26 | The last thing that I want to say about
this is that if you've used these tools
| | 05:30 | and you wondered why it's called On
success when you click a button--
| | 05:33 | "Are people really dumb enough that they
can't find a button?" Well, this is why On
| | 05:37 | Success is the terminology used for
when you click a button. On success is what
| | 05:42 | you want to have happened, because
Captivate's early days were about using
| | 05:46 | these tools to create quizzes from
scratch, not just to create interactivity as
| | 05:51 | we've seen in previous chapters in
this set of lessons. So with Captivate
| | 05:54 | you can create your own
custom quiz slide from scratch.
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| Creating custom short-answer questions| 00:00 | One of the interactive elements that
Captivate offers you is something called a
| | 00:04 | Text Entry Box. And what we are going
to do is we are going to see how to use
| | 00:07 | the Text Entry Box to create the custom
quiz question from scratch on top of a slide.
| | 00:12 | In this case, what I want to do
is I want them to answer the question by
| | 00:16 | typing into this text box and then
we'll test it to see it if it's correct.
| | 00:20 | So we'll start by asking the question.
The question is going to be, What type
| | 00:25 | of layer should you use? Click OK.
That's the standard caption. Place that on
| | 00:34 | the top of the image. Now to get the
students some place so that they can
| | 00:37 | answer the question we are
going to use a Text Entry Box.
| | 00:41 | Now the Default text is somewhat of
reiteration of the question. The Correct
| | 00:47 | entries are what I type here. And if I
were simply to accept this as-is, this
| | 00:58 | would be a reasonable question and
I'm just going to adjust and move these
| | 01:01 | objects around a little bit. However, what I
want for this is for to be a part of a quiz.
| | 01:07 | So I'm going to double-click on this
one more time and click Reporting, because
| | 01:12 | I want to include this in my quiz, and
we'll give it a point value just like
| | 01:16 | any other type of question and click OK.
The student is going to be expected to
| | 01:21 | type into this box, the type of layer
they should use. I'm actually going to
| | 01:25 | expand this out, because I want to
give plenty of room for the answer.
| | 01:29 | Then the final thing what I want to
do is actually provide a little bit of
| | 01:33 | guidance through these of timing. In
other words, I don't want the text box to
| | 01:38 | appear immediately and I don't want the
question to appear immediately. I want
| | 01:42 | it to catch your attention. So there.
| | 01:47 | Now let's go ahead and preview this so
we can see how this works. Preview the
| | 01:52 | project. The question appears, the
answer box appears and I can type and then
| | 02:02 | click Submit. And I got it right. Now
the final thing that I need to do for
| | 02:06 | this is, it's reporting to a quiz,
but I don't know where or how to get the
| | 02:11 | answers or see the answers or the results.
| | 02:13 | So what I'm going to do is select Quiz
Preferences, and on my preferences click
| | 02:21 | Settings > Show the score at the end
of the quiz and click OK. Now we'll go
| | 02:26 | ahead and preview the project, and
again the questions appears, the answer box
| | 02:33 | appears and Submit button appears.
We'll type in the correct answer. Click on
| | 02:40 | Submit, and then it takes me to
the end where I can see my score.
| | 02:50 | So I can use the text box to create
custom quizzes on my slides, if I want to
| | 02:55 | ask a question related to some graphic
or some visual that's already on my slide.
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| Randomizing questions| 00:00 | As good as Captivate is at allowing you
to create quizzes, there is a potential
| | 00:04 | problem here because Captivate will
deliver the same questions over and over again.
| | 00:08 | A particularly astute student who
might not understand the material can
| | 00:13 | memorize the questions and then go
look up the answers and retake the quiz.
| | 00:17 | Captivate has a response to this in the
form of what's called a Random Question Slide.
| | 00:21 | In this lesson we're going to
add the slide, we're actually going to
| | 00:25 | work also with the Question Pool which
feeds a Random Question Slide so that
| | 00:29 | you can understand how you can
incorporate them into your quizzes to make your
| | 00:33 | quiz results more accurate.
| | 00:35 | So to get started, we'll select Quiz
and we'll add a Random Question Slide.
| | 00:40 | When you do so it's asking you which
Pool should the question come from, and
| | 00:45 | you can choose that. Now, this
project doesn't have any questions in the
| | 00:48 | Question Pool because we haven't built any.
| | 00:50 | So let's go ahead and do that next.
We'll click OK. We'll choose Quiz >
| | 00:57 | Question Pools Manager. Normally you
set these up ahead of time, before we
| | 01:01 | start using Random Question Slides. But
because we've used the Random Question
| | 01:05 | Slide from a pool that has no
questions in it, I'm getting this little
| | 01:08 | indication that there is a problem.
| | 01:10 | To add questions to my Question Pool,
all I need to do is select my Pool and
| | 01:15 | then click the Plus sign to add a
question. So I'm just going to add a quick
| | 01:19 | question here, I'm not actually going
to flash out an entire question, I'm just
| | 01:23 | going to add a couple of quick sort
of question placeholders, if you will.
| | 01:26 | So, now I have a Pool with two
questions in it and when I place a Random
| | 01:33 | Question Slide that's based on this
pool, the pool will pull one of these two
| | 01:37 | questions and display it. If I like, I
can have more than one pool in a given
| | 01:41 | project by simply clicking the plus sign
here, and then adding questions to each pool.
| | 01:47 | And what's also nice is that I can
double-click on a pool and rename it, so if
| | 01:50 | I want to group questions based on a
theme or a type of question or whatever,
| | 01:54 | I can do so. Now I'm actually going to
close this up because generally speaking,
| | 01:59 | I don't create question pools on the fly.
I actually create them and pull from
| | 02:03 | them because one of the things that I
can do is Import Question Pools from an
| | 02:07 | existing Captivate project.
| | 02:09 | So what I have here actually is a
project that is a single-slide project, it
| | 02:14 | doesn't look like there is anything in
it until, I select Quiz > Question Pools
| | 02:19 | Manager and you can see that in the
Question Pools Manager for this project I
| | 02:23 | have created three Question Pools.
| | 02:26 | Now, in this case I have chosen to use
the pools to group questions by Type.
| | 02:30 | You can mix and match any types of
question you want in a given Question Pool.
| | 02:34 | I have just chosen to do
it this way for my purposes.
| | 02:37 | So what I'm going to do is I'll close
this up and I'm actually done with this.
| | 02:41 | I can close the project. It doesn't
need to be open. We'll go back here to the
| | 02:44 | project that we were working on, go to
my Filmstrip and I'm actually going to
| | 02:49 | delete this Random Question Slide
so that I can add it one more time.
| | 02:55 | We'll select Quiz > Random
Question Slide and I want to choose from a
| | 03:00 | particular pool. Now, I have got
three pools in here that I created as
| | 03:03 | placeholders. But what I want is
actually to pull from one of the question
| | 03:07 | pools in that other project.
| | 03:09 | So first we'll select Quiz > Import
Question Pools from the Question_pools file.
| | 03:14 | Click Open and I have the option
of importing all of the questions from a
| | 03:18 | given pool and all of the pools from a
given project. So I'm actually going to
| | 03:23 | deselect this and only pull in
MultiChioce and TorF question pools. Click OK.
| | 03:30 | Now, we'll go back to my Filmstrip here.
We'll choose Quiz > Random Question Slide.
| | 03:39 | We'll choose the pool from which
we want the slide to come, MultiChoice.
| | 03:45 | Click OK. So what will happen is at
runtime Captivate will randomly choose one
| | 03:50 | of the three questions from
the MultiChoice Question Pool.
| | 03:54 | And you can see this in action by
choosing Preview, we'll choose From this Slide.
| | 03:58 | When should you talk? I'll close
the preview, and let's do it again.
| | 04:12 | Who is the most important person on the call?
That's a different question from the pool.
| | 04:16 | One more thing about working with
Question Pools that you should be aware of,
| | 04:20 | you can place more than one Random
Question Slide linked to a given a pool.
| | 04:24 | So I can do this again. Quiz >
Random Question Slide > Question Pool >
| | 04:31 | MultiChoice, OK and now there are
going to be two questions in the quiz from
| | 04:36 | that pool. Both will be different.
| | 04:39 | Now, the only situation that I need to
be aware of is that I can't have more
| | 04:42 | Random Question Slides than I have
questions in my pool. Otherwise Captivate
| | 04:47 | would be forced to repeat them. So, if
I want to create a quiz that is a truly
| | 04:52 | randomized selection of questions from
a set of questions that really prevents
| | 04:57 | my user from being able to simply
memorize the questions that I'm asking, I can
| | 05:01 | do that with the Random Question Slide in
conjunction with the Random Question Pool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing quizzes| 00:00 | In previous lessons we have looked at
how you can edit quiz question so you can
| | 00:03 | make the quiz more suited to your needs.
In this lesson we are going to take
| | 00:07 | that a little bit of a step further
and talk about how you can manage your
| | 00:10 | overall quiz and change the way
quiz questions work to meet your needs.
| | 00:15 | So we are going to start with a
specific quiz question and I showed you that
| | 00:19 | you have these text boxes here that
appear. Let's go ahead and see how these work.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to go ahead
and Preview > From this Slide.
| | 00:25 | And what they're designed to do is give
the user some immediate feedback so, What is
| | 00:31 | an appropriate question to ask during
a sales call? I'm going to choose an
| | 00:35 | answer. This is the wrong answer. When I
click Submit you get the Wrong Answer dialog box.
| | 00:39 | So I'll go ahead close that. That's
what these are. So you have a Correct,
| | 00:43 | a Wrong and in this case, if you
attempt to click "Skip, You must answer the
| | 00:48 | question before trying to continue,"
well, that's a quiz preference and we are
| | 00:51 | going to set that in just a moment.
| | 00:52 | But before we do, let's take a look
at the preference for some of these
| | 00:56 | specific items that get placed on to
the slide when you create a quiz question.
| | 00:59 | We'll click on Edit Question, under
Options. This is where you can determine
| | 01:04 | what these things are.
| | 01:05 | For example, I don't want to allow you
to change your mind. There is a Clear
| | 01:09 | button here and I can disallow that.
It's not generally a good idea for a quiz
| | 01:13 | but you can do it. I can also allow
a Back button or not. This determines
| | 01:18 | whether or not I'm going to allow you
to back up and try to answer different
| | 01:20 | question that you may have skipped previously.
| | 01:22 | Now, this is actually an overall quiz
preference that we'll take a look at in
| | 01:25 | just a moment. Then the Skip button, if
I want to allow you to skip a question I can.
| | 01:29 | If I want to disallow you
from skipping a question I can.
| | 01:32 | It's generally a good quiz form to
allow you to skip it and allow you to come
| | 01:36 | back so that you can move on from
questions that you are not quite sure about,
| | 01:40 | answer the ones you do and then back up and
answer the ones that you are not sure about.
| | 01:43 | Now, I can also determine which of
these boxes appear. I can decide that I
| | 01:48 | don't want there to be a correct
message and that I don't want there to be an
| | 01:51 | incomplete message. Again, it's
generally bad form not to provide feedback to
| | 01:55 | the user but these are things that I
can choose to include or not to include.
| | 01:59 | When I click OK, you will see that in
this case that correct message box went away.
| | 02:02 | Now moving on, I'm actually going to
jump down here to this quiz question,
| | 02:07 | which is one that I created manually
using a Click box. If I double-click my
| | 02:11 | Click box, there are some
options here that I can consider.
| | 02:14 | I'll click on Options. For example, I
can have a Hint caption or not. Now the
| | 02:19 | Hint caption is something that I
don't generally like for a quiz question
| | 02:22 | because if you are floating around on
the screen and you roll over the box the
| | 02:27 | Hint caption can appear. So that can
give things away but if you want the Hint
| | 02:31 | caption to be there you can allow it.
| | 02:34 | A Success and a Failure caption are
generally important to allow the user to
| | 02:37 | know whether they have gotten the
question right or wrong. Now I'm going to
| | 02:40 | click OK and the only thing I have
left to do here is double-click on the
| | 02:44 | captions and type the success text,
"Good job!" And the failure text, which is
| | 02:56 | "Sorry, wrong answer."
| | 02:58 | Those will only appear if I, a) get
the question right or I get the question wrong.
| | 03:01 | So I can configure my questions
the way that I want them but I can also
| | 03:06 | configure the overall quiz to work
the way that I want it to, for that I'll
| | 03:10 | select Quiz > Quiz Preferences.
Among the Preferences I'm going to select
| | 03:15 | Settings, here I can do some
things to the overall quiz.
| | 03:19 | For example, I can disallow backward
movement in the entire quiz. In fact, if
| | 03:24 | you look carefully here, there is a
Back button there. If I deselect Allow
| | 03:31 | backward movement, click OK, you'll see
that it disappears. In fact, it jumped
| | 03:36 | me to this page so that I can see that.
| | 03:37 | If I had 15 quiz questions in the
presentation they would all loose their Back
| | 03:41 | button. So let's return there to the
Quiz Preferences. There is just of couple
| | 03:46 | of others that I want to cover here,
for example at the end of the quiz,
| | 03:50 | I can show the score or not and if I do
show the score, I can customize all of the
| | 03:55 | various aspects of that score slide.
| | 03:59 | Do I want to show the number of
attempts that they have tried or do I want
| | 04:02 | them to know how well they could have
done etcetera. This is customizable,
| | 04:06 | configurable. Then finally, if I
allow them to review the quiz, I can offer
| | 04:12 | Review customization as well.
| | 04:14 | What the Review does is at the end of
the quiz, if you want to back up through
| | 04:18 | the quiz you can see on each slide how
you did. So if I click OK here, this box
| | 04:22 | here is the Review Area. When I have
completed a quiz and I'm backing up
| | 04:26 | through to see how I did on each
question, what is in this Review Area is
| | 04:30 | determined by the Quiz Preference,
under Settings, this information.
| | 04:37 | So I'll type what I wanted to say. If
I want to customize it or I can just
| | 04:40 | leave it. Then of course your answer
would actually be the answer that you
| | 04:44 | indicated in the correct answer so you
can juxtapose them. But Captivate will
| | 04:48 | automatically add those things to the Review.
| | 04:51 | So when I'm working on quiz it's
important to think about what I want the quiz
| | 04:56 | to do and how I want the student to
encounter the quiz. If I want them to able
| | 05:00 | to back up through the quiz, I can
allow them to. If I want them to be able to
| | 05:04 | back and see the correct
answers, I can disallow that.
| | 05:08 | Frankly I can configure the quiz to
work in just about any way that I want to,
| | 05:11 | based on the needs that I have for the project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reporting results| 00:00 | In this lesson, we are going to take a
look at what Captivate allows you to do
| | 00:04 | with the results of a
quiz when someone takes it.
| | 00:07 | In many cases, you will just want to
provide some feedback to the students so
| | 00:11 | that they can understand if they have
been able to gather the information from
| | 00:15 | your e-learning project or your
presentation that you are trying to deliver,
| | 00:18 | but in other cases, you may
need to be more formal about it.
| | 00:21 | For example, if the student fails the
quiz, you may want to force them back to
| | 00:24 | the beginning of the project and have
them retake the entire e-learning class
| | 00:29 | and these are all options that Captivate gives
you, so let's go ahead and take a look at them.
| | 00:33 | First off, I want to take a look at the
questions themselves because they play
| | 00:37 | a big role in whether or not you pass,
not just whether you get them right, but
| | 00:41 | what is a question worth.
| | 00:43 | So I'll click on Edit Question here
and you can see that because this is a
| | 00:47 | graded question, I can double check
that under Options and see that it is a
| | 00:51 | graded, that it is worth 10 points.
| | 00:54 | Now that's a rating that I have
provided or given to this question based on my
| | 00:59 | understanding of the importance or the
value of the question. I can certainly
| | 01:03 | change it, I can make it worth a whole
lot or not very much, I'm going to leave
| | 01:08 | it at 10 and I'll click OK.
| | 01:11 | The next question here, I want to do
the same thing, except that instead of
| | 01:14 | clicking on Slide Properties,
remember this is a question that I build by
| | 01:19 | adding a Click Box to the slide. But
it's okay because I can report the results
| | 01:23 | of the Click Box as if it were a
question and again, I can assign a point value here.
| | 01:27 | So I'm going to make this
also worth 10 points, we'll click OK.
| | 01:33 | How do we collect the store? Well,
first off, if the student takes the quiz, at
| | 01:37 | the end of the quiz there is a slide
that shows you the score, but underneath
| | 01:42 | the hood, Captivate is going to make some
decisions based on what those point values are.
| | 01:46 | So what we are going to do is select
Quiz, choose Quiz Preferences and take a
| | 01:51 | look at how Captivate allows
us to handle a Pass or a Fail.
| | 01:56 | The first question is what is a Pass or
a Fail and here is where I can set the
| | 02:01 | point value required in order to
pass the quiz. I'm going to set it by
| | 02:04 | percentage because that will have
Captivate do the math for me. If I want
| | 02:08 | though, I can tally points
specifically and it's just up to me to figure out
| | 02:12 | what an appropriate point value would
be based on the questions in the quiz.
| | 02:16 | I'm going to leave it on percentage.
| | 02:18 | If I pass the quiz, what do I want to
have happen? In this case, what I'm going
| | 02:22 | to do is sent the user beyond the
quiz on to the next topic. So I'll select
| | 02:27 | Continue and I'm just going to choose
Jump to slide and I don't want to send
| | 02:31 | them back to the Start, so I'll choose
the End slide and again, labeling your
| | 02:35 | slides is a very good idea because it
allows you very quickly to choose from
| | 02:39 | among the slides that you
have, this is the End slide.
| | 02:41 | However, what happens if you fail? Well,
that's a different story. If you fail,
| | 02:45 | then I want you as the user to go back
to the beginning and start over. So what
| | 02:50 | I'm going to do is select as
the Action, Jump to slide, Start.
| | 02:54 | Here is the thing. If I'm going to put
you back through the material, it may be
| | 02:59 | the case that I'm going to quiz you
again. In that case, I should allow you two
| | 03:03 | attempts to take the quiz. What
becomes sticky here is what if you take it
| | 03:07 | twice and you fail twice, and jump back to the
start and then you can't take the quiz anymore?
| | 03:11 | Well, that's probably an indication
that you need to do something else besides
| | 03:15 | just plough through the same
information again. And what most people do with
| | 03:19 | the failing grade, instead of just
forcing you to the beginning of some
| | 03:22 | information, unless you simply allow
Infinite attempts, in which case, I'm just
| | 03:26 | trying to tell you that you are not
getting it, you might want to keep taking it.
| | 03:29 | But in a formalized situation, what
I'm probably going to do is maybe allow
| | 03:34 | you to take it twice, but in a formal
situation, what I'm probably going to do
| | 03:38 | is allow you to take it once and then
if you fail, jump you out to a URL, where
| | 03:44 | you will either have to re-register
for the quiz or do something other than
| | 03:47 | simply retake the quiz inside Captivate.
| | 03:50 | And what that implies is Captivate
can work with systems outside of the
| | 03:55 | Captivate project not only to determine
what happens if a person fails a quiz,
| | 03:59 | but also to collect the scores and
for that Captivate offers Reporting.
| | 04:05 | Now the first thing that I have to do
in order for Captivate to even talk to a
| | 04:09 | system outside of itself is to enable
Reporting for a project. There are many,
| | 04:13 | many different types of learning
management systems. Adobe has Acrobat Connect
| | 04:18 | Professional. There are a number of
them that use a Standard called SCORM.
| | 04:22 | It's just a standard way to report things
like Slide views, Quiz results, Quiz
| | 04:29 | results and slide views and all of the
different things that you might want to
| | 04:33 | know about a person's progress
through a Captivate e-learning project.
| | 04:37 | So, if you are going to quiz somebody,
first off, you need to decide what
| | 04:41 | happens if they pass or fail or even if
you care whether they pass or fail, but
| | 04:46 | then from there, if you are going
to quiz somebody and collect that
| | 04:49 | information, you will want to
consider Enabling reporting for your project.
| | 04:53 | The rest of the process of working with
this Reporting data really requires you
| | 04:57 | to work within an external system such
as Connect Pro or Blackboard or Angel or
| | 05:02 | Moodle and there are many of them out
there, but the first step that you will
| | 05:06 | need to take with your Captivate projects
is to enable reporting for your project.
| | 05:10 | Now there is one more aspect of this
that I need to cover and I'm going to
| | 05:12 | cancel this and that is when you
report quiz data from an e-learning project,
| | 05:17 | it's important for the Reporting
system to know what each object is. So I'm
| | 05:21 | going to click on Edit Questions and
I'm going to click the Reporting tab and
| | 05:25 | show you that you can label every
single object in your quiz with an Objective
| | 05:30 | ID and an Interaction ID.
| | 05:33 | These IDs represent information that is
used by the learning management system
| | 05:37 | to know which quiz question you got
right, which quiz question you got wrong
| | 05:42 | and instead of depending on a name
based on the question itself or whatever,
| | 05:46 | you are able to provide a specific
ID so that you can actually change the
| | 05:50 | nature of the question, but continue
to use the same ID. And that's a common
| | 05:54 | practice in learning management. If a
quiz is producing too many failures, you
| | 05:57 | might want to go in and tweak the question, but
leave the ID the same, so that you can track it.
| | 06:02 | Now the final thing that I wanted to
point out was that you also have a time
| | 06:06 | limit and many learning management
situations, you don't want to allow a
| | 06:09 | student just to sit there and noodle
the question or even worse, get up, walk
| | 06:13 | away from their computer, find the
answer somewhere and then come back. So you
| | 06:16 | can set for each question a time limit
and if the student drifts past the time
| | 06:21 | limit before answering the question,
then the question itself will essentially
| | 06:24 | report a fail and move to the next question.
| | 06:27 | So, quizzing in Captivate is not just
a matter of asking a student to think
| | 06:32 | about whether or not they understand
the information. It can be a way for you
| | 06:35 | to actually assess whether a student
understood the information and know very
| | 06:39 | specifically how well they did acquiring
the knowledge that you are trying to transfer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating assessment templates| 00:00 | When you are working with quiz
questions in a Captivate project, especially if
| | 00:04 | you are doing it in a formal setting
where you are going to collect responses,
| | 00:08 | provide those responses to some sort
of an external resource to manage them,
| | 00:12 | you may want to consider good quiz question
design and there's actually a science to it.
| | 00:18 | What you can do with Captivate is
create for yourself an Assessment Template
| | 00:22 | that you can use over and over and
over again and whether you are the quiz
| | 00:26 | question expert or you are getting
that help from somebody else, it can be
| | 00:30 | useful to set yourself up a template
ahead of time that you can just add the
| | 00:34 | specific content to and then use that to make
sure that your quiz questions are well constructed.
| | 00:39 | For example, what I have here is a
simple Captivate project and there is a
| | 00:44 | single quiz question in it. So this
is my template for a multiple choice
| | 00:48 | question. To use it, all I need to do
is click on Edit Question and I can come
| | 00:53 | in and populate these with the actual
question and distracters and correct
| | 00:58 | answer that I want to use and it's
more than just knowing that I should have
| | 01:02 | four potential answers when one
of them is the correct answer.
| | 01:06 | It's about things like usage. How
should I phrase and construct the question in
| | 01:11 | such a way that it's easy to read and
what should the answers look like, should
| | 01:15 | they be single-word answers or should
they be phrases? These are all things
| | 01:19 | that I can indicate by simply
creating a blank quiz question set up the way
| | 01:24 | that it should be set up and then
instructing my user to match what I have
| | 01:27 | here, except using their own actual content.
| | 01:31 | Now at this point, if I want to create
more than one multiple choice question,
| | 01:35 | it's not a problem because I can simply
right-click on and duplicate a question slide.
| | 01:40 | And so if I know I want 5 questions
or 6 or 10 or whatever, I can simply
| | 01:45 | duplicate the number of questions that
I want, copy them and then paste them
| | 01:49 | into my content project.
| | 01:50 | There is one more way to create an
Assessment Template that I find useful and
| | 01:55 | let's take a look at that. If Captivate
running here and I'm going to create a
| | 02:00 | brand new Project Template from scratch
and I have covered some of the details
| | 02:05 | of creating Project Templates in
previous lessons, but we are going to do
| | 02:08 | something a little bit different here.
| | 02:09 | We will go ahead and create it and the
only thing that we are going to add to
| | 02:12 | this Project Template is a
Placeholder for a Question Slide. Here I can
| | 02:20 | configure many of the aspects
of a question by selecting them.
| | 02:24 | For example, I don't want there to be a
back button. If the answer is correct,
| | 02:28 | I do want them to Continue, but I don't
want a correct message and we'll click OK.
| | 02:33 | Now what I have is the beginnings of
our Project Template that has a Question
| | 02:37 | Slide as a Placeholder. The reason that
I might use this is not necessarily to
| | 02:41 | determine the structure of an
individual question, but to determine the
| | 02:45 | structure of an overall quiz or even a
project that uses it. So what I would do
| | 02:50 | is have several slides of content
and then maybe a quiz question, several
| | 02:53 | slides of content and a second quiz question.
| | 02:56 | But by creating a Project Template
with the Question Slide Placeholder built
| | 03:00 | into it, I can determine that
structure for my user as well and then all they
| | 03:05 | need to do is create a new project from
the template. So I'm going to go ahead
| | 03:08 | and select File > Save As and we'll
save this on to the Desktop and we'll call
| | 03:13 | it Quiz Template and click Save.
| | 03:17 | I am done with this, so I'll close it
and I'm going to open a new project from
| | 03:22 | template. There is my Quiz Template,
we'll open it up and on the Question Slide
| | 03:27 | Placeholder, if I double-click to go
into Edit mode, double-click, it simply
| | 03:31 | brings up the Question Types dialog box,
I can choose from among the different
| | 03:35 | types of questions that Captivate has to
offer, edit my question and then I'm good to go.
| | 03:40 | So there are two ways that you can work
with Assessment Templates depending on
| | 03:43 | how you are trying to guide your user
and the experience level that they have
| | 03:47 | with writing quiz questions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
11. Customizing the Project InterfaceIntroducing skins| 00:00 | In Captivate, you have a robust set of
tools for building the content on your
| | 00:05 | slides in your presentation. You can
use them to create a graphic look and feel
| | 00:09 | for your presentation and you can use
them to create things like interactive
| | 00:13 | elements such as buttons to determine
how a user can move through your presentation.
| | 00:19 | Let's go ahead and preview this and
take a look at the results here. Everything
| | 00:24 | that I have created is found within
the window of my presentation. However,
| | 00:29 | I may want to go a little bit further
than that and provide a frame and some
| | 00:33 | playback controls to my presentation.
| | 00:36 | In this lesson, we are going to see
what's possible so that you can understand
| | 00:39 | what I'm talking about with
respect to the skin of your project.
| | 00:44 | So I'm going to select Project > Skin
Editor and I'm simply going to turn on
| | 00:48 | Playback Control and turn on the
Borders. In upcoming lessons, we'll take a
| | 00:54 | look at that in some more details so
that you can understand what options you have.
| | 00:56 | In this case I just want
to show you what is possible.
| | 01:00 | So we'll go ahead and preview the
project and now I have a set of controls.
| | 01:04 | For example, I have a border here at
the bottom. I can pause and play the
| | 01:09 | presentation even as a slide is playing.
Without this playback control, as the
| | 01:14 | user, I basically have to watch until
the Next button appears and then I can
| | 01:18 | choose to do something else.
| | 01:20 | However, if I click on the Rewind
button here, I can actually jump ahead to the
| | 01:24 | next slide. Perhaps before I
should be able to, but I certainly can.
| | 01:31 | Offering the user playback control in
the form of the skin is a good way to add
| | 01:35 | some branding to your project, add a
little professionalism, but also allow the
| | 01:40 | user who is watching the presentation
a little bit more control over it than
| | 01:44 | perhaps you were able to consider when you
built the presentation in the first place.
| | 01:48 | So adding these elements isn't
always something you should do, but it's
| | 01:51 | something you should consider doing because
it might make your presentation more usable.
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| Editing playback controls| 00:00 | Creating an interface for your
presentation is something that if you were to
| | 00:04 | have to do it inside the Flash
authoring tool, you would require a pretty
| | 00:08 | robust understanding of that tool.
Fortunately, Captivate gives you the ability
| | 00:12 | to create a project skin very easily by
basically choosing what you want it to
| | 00:18 | look like, and so for this project
what I want to do is edit the skins.
| | 00:22 | So we'll start by selecting Project >
Skin Editor and the first thing that
| | 00:27 | I may want to do is decide to Show
Playback Controls. These are all of the Pause,
| | 00:32 | Rewind, Sound on, Exit buttons that
you might want to give a user who is
| | 00:37 | watching your presentation. And that
makes it so that you don't have to build
| | 00:41 | all of those buttons into your
presentation; you can have Captivate add them to
| | 00:45 | every single slide as a
skin around the entire project.
| | 00:48 | But you have a lot of control here.
For example, I'm going to choose this
| | 00:53 | default skin. And notice that
Captivate will preview the skin for me as I go.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to set the Transparency down
to zero and set the button face color
| | 01:04 | to a light green. And this is sort of
the default skin that Captivate creates,
| | 01:10 | if you don't decide to customize it.
| | 01:12 | One of the first questions that I
always get when I'm talking to people about
| | 01:14 | Captivate is, how do I remove this
Adobe Captivate thing? Captivate is a nice product,
| | 01:19 | but I don't really want to advertise
for it in every single project that I create.
| | 01:23 | Well all you need to do is just
choose a different playbar, and you can see
| | 01:25 | that there are many of them here. I'm
going just going to choose this Club
| | 01:28 | playbar and then I can take even
further control of it by doing things like
| | 01:32 | deciding I don't want you to be able to
rewind. So I'm going to turn that off,
| | 01:36 | and you'll see that the Rewind button
disappeared from down here. I don't want
| | 01:40 | you to be able to go back.
The Back button disappeared.
| | 01:44 | In other words, each of these is a
button that the skin can have but you can
| | 01:47 | take off the skin by simply
deselecting it. And I can even control the color
| | 01:52 | scheme here. So if I wanted to create a
color scheme that was based on blue not green,
| | 01:55 | I could choose a dark blue, a
light blue, and we'll choose a deep blue
| | 02:04 | for the button icon color. And for the background
color we'll go for this really pastel blue.
| | 02:09 | The good news is that I don't have to
set these each and every single time that
| | 02:13 | I come in to a project. First off
Captivate is very, very long in its memory.
| | 02:18 | If I leave this alone right now, click OK,
come back in here a month from today and
| | 02:22 | add a skin to my project this is
what the skin is going to look like.
| | 02:25 | But if I don't want to depend on that
I can also select Save As and save my
| | 02:30 | skin with a particular name. Before
we do this though, let's take a look at
| | 02:34 | another aspect of the skin, the borders.
We'll turn the borders on and we'll
| | 02:40 | set a border for the side, for the top
and the other side. By clicking on these
| | 02:45 | buttons what I have done is I have
basically revealed the border for the top
| | 02:48 | and the sides. Now it's not visible
down here and it's not visible because
| | 02:53 | the playback controls are obscuring it.
| | 02:54 | So we'll go back to Playback Control
and I'll turn the playback control's
| | 02:58 | Transparency all the way up to 100.
Click out of that. Come back to Borders and
| | 03:05 | now I have the playback controls
floating on top of this border. What's kind of
| | 03:10 | neat about the border is that I can
change the style of the edges of the border
| | 03:16 | and I can also change the texture of the border.
| | 03:19 | If you look, there are a wide variety
of textures that I can use in here.
| | 03:22 | So for example, if I want to use a Dark
Oak looking border to create that sort of
| | 03:27 | good old boys network appeal, I can
go ahead and do that. And if I want the
| | 03:31 | border to be a little bit thinner,
I can just go ahead and squeeze the border
| | 03:37 | down just a little down. Now notice
that the bottom border has to be at least
| | 03:40 | big enough to hold the
playback controls that I have.
| | 03:42 | So if I change the border size and
make it smaller than it has to be the top,
| | 03:46 | left and right borders will shrink, but
the bottom border will stay at least as
| | 03:49 | big it needs to be. Now these textures
by the way are something that you can
| | 03:53 | customize. You can add
your own textures to the mix.
| | 03:55 | Let me show you where to find them.
I'm going to go to the computer here.
| | 03:59 | I'm going to click on Computer and we are
going to look in the local drive for the
| | 04:05 | Program Files folder. In there, there
is an Adobe folder, which contains the
| | 04:10 | Adobe Captivate 4 folder.
| | 04:12 | Now what we are looking for here is
the Gallery and in the Gallery there is a
| | 04:16 | folder full of textures. These are
all the texture files that we are
| | 04:21 | interacting with in the Skin Editor.
So if you want to use your own image
| | 04:24 | editing application, a quick thing to
do would be to open one of these things,
| | 04:28 | add your own image to it and save it.
And then you can create your own funky
| | 04:32 | borders. Although, for people who
might not be comfortable with an image
| | 04:35 | editor, the good news is there are
many of these in here that you can choose from.
| | 04:39 | So you should be able to
find something that you can use.
| | 04:42 | Now again, at this point I really like
the skin. I want to keep the skin, so
| | 04:46 | I'm going to select Save As, I'm going
to name it Tim's Project Skin and click OK.
| | 04:54 | And now no matter what I do, I come
in here and change all of these things up.
| | 05:01 | I can always get back to Tim's
Project Skin by simply selecting it and
| | 05:07 | it will jump back to that project skin. Click OK.
| | 05:10 | Let's go ahead and preview our project.
And you will see that it's wrapped by
| | 05:17 | that mahogany looking border with the
playback controls that I wanted in place
| | 05:22 | that I can use to play, fast forward,
jump to the end and exit my project.
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| Creating a table of contents| 00:00 | What we have here is a fairly
complicated project and there are clear sections
| | 00:06 | in this project that I want you to be
able to access, but you might want to be
| | 00:10 | able to access them on your own terms.
Let me show you what I mean here.
| | 00:14 | This is a resume presentation and there
are some samples in here that might be
| | 00:18 | relevant to you but not relevant
to somebody else or vice a versa.
| | 00:21 | For example, this is the set of slides
designed to show you the kind of work I
| | 00:26 | can do to teach you how to use
some software. Well, you might be very
| | 00:30 | interested in that but really disinterested
in the sales training capabilities that I have.
| | 00:35 | So instead of forcing you to walk all
the way through every bit of my project
| | 00:39 | to be able to see any one particular
thing, what I might want to do is create a
| | 00:43 | Table of Contents for you. And for any
presentation that has any complexity at
| | 00:48 | all, a Table of Contents is a very good thing.
| | 00:52 | To add a Table of Contents I'm
going to select Project and I can add it
| | 00:55 | directly here. But notice that it's
actually just a part of the Skin Editor, so
| | 00:59 | I can also access it
through the Skin Editor directly.
| | 01:02 | So the first question is do I even
want a Table of Contents? Click Show TOC.
| | 01:07 | What I have got right now is just an
absolute list of every single slide in the
| | 01:12 | project. And I suppose that could be
helpful but let's take it a step further.
| | 01:17 | What I want to do is start grouping
things in such a way that you can make some
| | 01:20 | decisions about what you might want to look
at and what you might not want to look at.
| | 01:23 | For example, all of my slides that
represent the work that I have done for A
| | 01:28 | Corp are here. I'm going to Shift
select them and I'm going to click on this
| | 01:31 | little arrow which will basically nest
them under a Topic Name. I'll just click
| | 01:36 | and change the Topic Name and we'll
call this A Corp Examples. What that will
| | 01:44 | do, if you look over here in the
example of the TOC that I'm creating is it
| | 01:48 | will create the ability for me, to
collapse all of the A Corp Examples, so I
| | 01:56 | can focus on other aspects of the
presentation that might be of more interest
| | 02:00 | to me as I'm watching the presentation.
| | 02:03 | So let's continue here. I'm going to do
the same thing to the C Corp Examples.
| | 02:08 | We'll give them a Topic Name, instead
of just naming these generically C Corp
| | 02:17 | Examples, perhaps a better strategy
would be to allow you to understand what
| | 02:21 | these things are. Again, the whole
purpose for doing this is to allow you to
| | 02:26 | access information that
might be of some value to you.
| | 02:28 | So instead of using generic names
that are a little bit difficult to
| | 02:32 | understand, in fact, these are
slide label names that I used during the
| | 02:35 | presentation to make it easy for
me to figure out how to build the
| | 02:39 | presentation. To make it easy for
you to figure out how to watch the
| | 02:42 | presentation, what I'm going to do
instead of using C Corp Examples as a name
| | 02:46 | is use something that's descriptive of
the content that's under this heading.
| | 02:56 | Sales training sample.
| | 02:57 | By using the TOC, I'm basically able
to do two very important things with my
| | 03:02 | presentation. One, I can allow you to
access the content in a way that make
| | 03:06 | sense to you, not necessarily how I thought
you might want to examine this information.
| | 03:10 | Two, it also allows me to provide a
little bit of a different structure than
| | 03:15 | simply the slide after slide after
slide structure that the presentation had to offer.
| | 03:19 | And although I can create a
branch presentation to do some of that work,
| | 03:23 | this is an easy way to apply a
little bit of different structure to the
| | 03:26 | information and present it in a
such a way that tells a little bit of a
| | 03:30 | different story, than simply the slide view,
after the slide view, after the slide view.
| | 03:35 | To go a little bit further in this,
I want to go ahead and click on Info.
| | 03:39 | If I'm going to add a Table of Contents,
I may want to add some information about
| | 03:43 | myself in the presentation and so I
would put my Name here. And if I have a
| | 03:48 | Designation, Email, I can fill all of this out
basically as a way to brand the presentation.
| | 03:55 | And then under Settings, I can take a
little bit more control over the Table of
| | 03:59 | Contents by, for example, having it
become an Overlay. By setting it to be an
| | 04:03 | Overlay basically it hides until I want
to see the Table of Contents and I can
| | 04:08 | click it and then it will appear. But
the problem with this is that, it will
| | 04:12 | appear over the content not sitting
beside the content as Separate does.
| | 04:16 | Which is why I tend to like Separate
if I'm going to use a Table of Contents.
| | 04:19 | And then there are other settings with
respect to branding and how transparent the
| | 04:22 | presentation can be, and what I want to
be available in the Table of Contents.
| | 04:26 | For example, I may or may not want to
allow you to Search the content in my
| | 04:31 | presentation from the Table of Contents.
| | 04:33 | So these are settings that I can choose.
Once I have chosen them I'll click OK,
| | 04:37 | and I'm going to just accept this as-is
and let's preview this and see this in
| | 04:41 | action. So we'll go ahead and preview
the entire project. And now instead of
| | 04:49 | just a simple project with some slides
alone, or a simple project with a skin
| | 04:54 | and some slides alone, I now have a
Table of Contents that I can use to do
| | 04:58 | things like, jump to the content that I
care about. And if it's content that I
| | 05:02 | want to come back and revisit, I can
use the Bookmark tool to bookmark the content.
| | 05:07 | And then if I want to find
some content I can click on Find and
| | 05:11 | I'll type the word "work" and click Go. And these
are the slides that have the word go in them.
| | 05:21 | So providing a Table of Contents is
a great way to make your content more
| | 05:24 | available to someone who might be
looking for something specific that will help
| | 05:28 | you to deliver the message
that you are trying to deliver.
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|
|
12. Publishing Your ProjectAnalyzing bandwidth| 00:00 | So after a long journey of creating a
project, a project that has presentation
| | 00:04 | slides in it, has software
simulations in it, quizzes in it, it's time to
| | 00:08 | publish your project.
| | 00:10 | You can't just click the Publish
button and walk away and expect that
| | 00:14 | everything is going to work exactly as
you might think it will. That's not to
| | 00:18 | say that Captivate is going to put
any bombs in your way but you might have
| | 00:20 | actually laid some land mines for yourself.
| | 00:23 | Before you publish, it's a very
good idea to select Project and choose
| | 00:27 | Bandwidth Analyzer. Because remember
what Captivate is going to publish for you
| | 00:32 | is a set of slides that you are
going to deliver over the computer.
| | 00:36 | In many cases you are going to
leverage the Internet for this. And if you are
| | 00:40 | going to leverage the Internet, you
want to be sure that you are not trying to
| | 00:42 | send too much information over the wire.
So, what are we looking at here? Well,
| | 00:47 | we are looking at a lot of data.
| | 00:49 | But basically, I'm looking for big
numbers because big numbers mean slow.
| | 00:53 | I'm actually going to click this little
divider so that I can expand the number
| | 00:57 | out, so that you can see the heading.
What these numbers are telling you is the
| | 01:05 | amount of bandwidth required for the slide
because of the size of something on the slide.
| | 01:10 | In this case, I have got a 5.5 second
slide that is 183 kilobytes which is
| | 01:17 | quite large for something that's
going to go over the web. It's going to
| | 01:20 | require 33.3 kilobytes per second. If
you are not an Internet junky and you
| | 01:25 | don't understand the exact terminology
that I'm using here, you don't need to.
| | 01:29 | Again, small numbers are what you are
shooting for. A lot of times diagnosing,
| | 01:35 | it means a just a matter of looking
at the slide that's large and trying to
| | 01:38 | figure out what it is. So I'm going to
go ahead and go to slide A Corp Example
| | 01:43 | S3. Another good reason to label your
slides because it will be a lot easier to
| | 01:47 | find the slide and see
what seems to be the problem.
| | 01:50 | I'm going to click OK. It can require a
little bit of sleuthing. So if we go to
| | 01:53 | Crop Example S3, here we go, this was a
software simulation. We'll double-click
| | 01:58 | on it and we'll click on its Slide
Properties and I can see the problem right away.
| | 02:04 | The Quality of the slide is set to
High. What that means is that these are
| | 02:08 | essentially uncompressed pixels trying
to be shoved through the Internet.
| | 02:12 | The Internet doesn't like uncompressed
pixels, so what I'm going to do is convert
| | 02:16 | that to JPEG and select OK.
| | 02:20 | Let's go ahead back to the Bandwidth
Analyzer. Project > Bandwidth Analyzer.
| | 02:27 | Notice that it's actually
generating the slides that means that's its
| | 02:30 | publishing the project behind the scene
to see if it can fix the problem and lo
| | 02:34 | and behold, it seems to have fixed
the problem. There are a couple of other
| | 02:39 | things that are going to
lend to the size of your file.
| | 02:42 | One is audio. Audio files tend to be
quite large so we'll click OK here, let's
| | 02:46 | take a look at under Audio > Settings.
These settings, your Encoding Bitrate
| | 02:53 | and your Encoding Frequency, are going
to lend to the quality of your file but
| | 02:56 | also the size of your file.
| | 02:58 | So if you have an audio file on a
slide and it is showing up as a large file
| | 03:02 | then what you may need to do is re-
record that audio at a lower frequency.
| | 03:07 | When you're using the Bandwidth Analyzer,
its definitely an after the fact kind of
| | 03:11 | tool but it would be a very good idea
for you to run a test project, analyze
| | 03:16 | its bandwidth, see if there are any
things that you might want to change before
| | 03:20 | you go ahead and capture something.
| | 03:22 | Now the same is true of video. Let's
go ahead and cancel this. I'm going to
| | 03:25 | choose Edit > Preferences. We're
going to look at Recording preferences and
| | 03:31 | Full Motion Recording. If I need a very,
very, very small file, I may choose a
| | 03:36 | smaller color mode and smaller flash size.
| | 03:40 | I'm going to lose some quality by
doing to so but the quality may be enough
| | 03:44 | that I can convey the message without
having to choke someone who is coming in
| | 03:48 | DSL or even Dial-Up which may be the
case. There are few on a completely high
| | 03:52 | bandwidth situation, you don't have to
worry about it. Well, then you can make
| | 03:55 | a different set of decisions. But it's
the set of decisions that you want to
| | 03:59 | make and you can't always
depend on making them after the fact.
| | 04:02 | When you record video, when you record
sound, once you have recorded it, it can
| | 04:06 | be very difficult to downsample or to
compress those files after the fact.
| | 04:12 | So the Bandwidth Analyzer is a great
tool both right before you publish and
| | 04:18 | right before you actually begin
recording in earnest because it can give you a
| | 04:21 | lot of numerical data. Now the reason
I brought the panel back up is because
| | 04:25 | you can also see the information
visually, get a sense of over time what the
| | 04:30 | bandwidth requirements are.
| | 04:32 | Because the bandwidth is required at
the end of this project more than at the
| | 04:36 | beginning, some of this might not be a
problem because the users machine might
| | 04:40 | actually be able to cache stuff
ahead of time as the project is playing.
| | 04:44 | Still it's probably a good idea to
deal with spikes that you see here.
| | 04:48 | A Project Summary just gives you an
overall sense of things like the file size,
| | 04:53 | how much of it is audio, how much of
it is flash information in the form of
| | 04:56 | SWF, how much is video, etcetera. And
then last but not least, you can get a
| | 05:00 | lot of information about each
individual slides specifically by selecting the
| | 05:04 | Slide Info panel and looking at what you have.
| | 05:07 | It's a robust diagnostic tool. It's
really designed to allow you both to create
| | 05:12 | a presentation in the first place that
was created with bandwidth in mind, but
| | 05:16 | also to fix problems that you might
see that could cause your presentation to
| | 05:20 | run slowly over the web.
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| Securing the project| 00:00 | What we are looking at here is super
secret information and I'm concerned that
| | 00:04 | my enemies are going to find it and be
able to compete with me. It's my resume
| | 00:08 | and I don't want anybody but the person I
intend to see this information to be able access it.
| | 00:14 | Captivate allows for that using
security. To apply it all I need to do is
| | 00:18 | select Edit > Preferences, and among
my Project preferences, under the Start
| | 00:27 | and End, I can Password protect the
project. The reason it's at the Start and
| | 00:31 | End panel here is because at the start of the
project it's going to force me to enter a password.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to indicate the password,
we'll use 12345, and click OK.
| | 00:43 | Now let's preview it.
| | 00:48 | Let's see, the password is
obviously 23456. Hit Continue.
| | 00:55 | No, it's incorrect. So we can try again,
12345. Click Continue. And there you go.
| | 01:03 | Security is fairly simple to add but
it's something that if you are working
| | 01:06 | private data or if you are working
with information that you just don't want
| | 01:09 | someone else to see, you can add
security very easily to your project.
| | 01:13 | Now there is one more security
option that we have here. We'll go to
| | 01:15 | Preferences, we'll click on Start and
End, and along with or instead of the
| | 01:23 | password, I can actually
have the project expire.
| | 01:26 | So for example, maybe it's going to
end or the information is going to become
| | 01:29 | irrelevant on May 15th. Because we
can't fast forward to May 15th in the world
| | 01:34 | right now, I'll just show you
that when you do that, you will have two
| | 01:37 | lines of information to say "The
project has expired." And here is a new URL,
| | 01:42 | http:// blah, blah, blah.
| | 01:45 | You could put a URL to some updated
information if you want to. Now I suppose
| | 01:49 | the question might be, why would
you do this and not just replace it?
| | 01:52 | Well, you might want people who were used
to looking at the older project to know that
| | 01:57 | the project has expired or changed or
whatever and then automatically redirect them.
| | 02:01 | If you just slip the new project in,
they might not realize something has
| | 02:04 | changed. And that's why Captivate gives
you the ability to expire a project and
| | 02:07 | to go off to a new URL.
| | 02:11 | So it's a simple thing but it's
powerful aspect of Captivate that you can
| | 02:14 | protect you information to make sure
that a) you are delivering the information
| | 02:17 | only to the correct person. And b) that your
information is as up to date as you need it to be.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Spell-checking| 00:00 | I am about to publish this
presentation, but I'm nervous. I have big fat
| | 00:05 | fingers, and I don't spell particularly
well even when I use the fingers on the
| | 00:09 | correct keys. Typos and spelling
mistakes are the bane of my existence.
| | 00:14 | Captivate can help me with this
because Captivate has a spell checker built
| | 00:18 | into it, and the spell
checker is actually really robust.
| | 00:21 | In this lesson, I'm going to show you
how to use it. It's really easy but it's
| | 00:24 | something you should use. We'll click
on Check Spelling and first off, my name.
| | 00:30 | My name is something that is spelled
correctly, even though it wants to put a B
| | 00:33 | in it like many people do.
| | 00:35 | So I need to add that to the dictionary.
Jr, same thing. I'm going to keep
| | 00:42 | adding things to the dictionary that I
don't want Captivate to catch. Captivate
| | 00:47 | is going to move through. Now what was
happening down here was that Captivate
| | 00:51 | was actually looking at every single
text item, anything that was text that was
| | 00:55 | build into the background of a
screenshot or something Captivate can't access.
| | 00:58 | But anything that is text,
Captivate can. In this case it found that I
| | 01:02 | misspelled the word example and I
made it ex-maple. Maybe it's an oak.
| | 01:06 | We'll go ahead and change that. Say
Change. It's going to continue through.
| | 01:14 | Increased, another misspelling, and
because I might tend to do that frequently
| | 01:19 | I'm going to select Change All.
| | 01:20 | And any time Captivate encounters the
word 'increased' spelled that way,
| | 01:25 | it will fix it. Gift misspelled, we'll do
a Change All on that. Y is okay so I'm
| | 01:31 | going to Ignore. In fact, in this
case I can probably Ignore All. Although
| | 01:35 | Ignore All is tricky because if you
make a misspelling by typing the word say
| | 01:39 | completely, but have a space before
the word y, well Captivate won't catch
| | 01:44 | that for you. So I'm going to go
ahead and just do actually Ignore once.
| | 01:48 | Dewscribe? No, I think that's supposed
to be describe. Another one of those and
| | 01:54 | for the sake of this demo, I'm
actually going to Ignore All because there are
| | 01:56 | quite a few of those in this project.
And then it moves through the rest of the
| | 02:01 | project and you eventually get to the
point where you can see that there were
| | 02:03 | four corrections that were made.
| | 02:06 | Now a cautionary tale here. It did
catch spelling mistakes. That's a given.
| | 02:10 | That's great. But it didn't catch
things like improper grammar, improper usage,
| | 02:15 | typos that aren't actually spelling
mistakes, and things like that. So you are
| | 02:19 | still going to want to review the
project, but this is a quick way to check it
| | 02:22 | for actual spelling mistakes because it's very
thorough and will catch all of them for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cleaning up| 00:00 | At the end of a long project, it's
not an unusual for you to end up with a
| | 00:03 | Captivate file that has a lot of
unused items in it. And what that means is
| | 00:07 | that your Captivate file is bigger than
it needs to be and it's less efficient.
| | 00:11 | It really won't have any impact on the
published project if you have a large
| | 00:15 | Captivate file. But if you have a
sloppy Captivate file, you are inviting
| | 00:19 | trouble. If for no other reason then
the more the complicated file, the more
| | 00:22 | chance there is for some sort of
corruption to occur within the file.
| | 00:26 | So it's a good idea to clean your files
up, make sure that your files are nice
| | 00:30 | and tight and really represent the
information that you are publishing from
| | 00:34 | that file. And that's especially true,
if you have files that you are using for
| | 00:38 | templates that you are pulling from.
Keep those files large with lots of stuff.
| | 00:42 | Keep your project files nice, tight, and lean.
| | 00:45 | What we are going to do is open a file
here, and it's a file that has a lot of
| | 00:50 | extra items in it. In fact, Captivate
knows that and it will tell me so.
| | 00:53 | So we'll click OK, and to access those,
I'm going to double click and then go to
| | 00:58 | the Library. Because it's in the
Library that a lot of things tend to
| | 01:02 | accumulate, and if you've used an item
once on a slide but then removed it from
| | 01:06 | the slide, you haven't removed it
from the Library. It will still be here.
| | 01:10 | The good news is that it's easy to deal
with this, because Captivate allows you
| | 01:14 | to click on the Select all unused items
in your Library, and then click on the
| | 01:19 | Delete button. It will ask you to
confirm and yes that's what I want to do.
| | 01:23 | And you can see that it removed a lot of
images from my Library. There weren't
| | 01:27 | helping me, so don't need them.
| | 01:29 | There is another thing that you might
want to consider. In this presentation, I
| | 01:34 | have two slides that I have hidden, if
I right click on them, I can select to
| | 01:37 | show them. But I have hidden them for
a reason and if the reason is because I
| | 01:41 | want a single project that I can
publish in two different ways, for
| | 01:44 | re-purposing, that's fine.
Then I'm going to leave them here.
| | 01:48 | However, if the reason that I have
hidden them is simply because I decided that
| | 01:52 | I might not want them and now I
actually don't want them, then it's probably a
| | 01:56 | good idea for me to
remove them from the project.
| | 01:59 | So I'm going to go ahead and remove
this by right clicking and choosing Delete Slide.
| | 02:02 | And yes, I definitely want to do
this. And we've got an issue here, this
| | 02:08 | is Captivate telling me that this slide
has dependencies, if I delete the slide
| | 02:12 | then anything that is supposed to jump
to it will just continue on to the next
| | 02:16 | slide and that may break
something. So I'm going to click no.
| | 02:19 | And when you see that, it's a very good
idea at this point to show your slides,
| | 02:24 | in fact, I'm going to show all of my
slides. And go to your Branching View and
| | 02:30 | take a look at what the dependencies
seem to be. Well, I'm looking, I'm seeing
| | 02:34 | each slide goes in succession except at
the end, this slide 9 depends on slide
| | 02:42 | 10 because there is something on
slide 9 that lets you jump to slide 10.
| | 02:48 | So these two slides are actually
dependent on one another. Well, the good news
| | 02:51 | is that I'd hidden them both and
probably didn't want either of them. So I'll
| | 02:55 | go back to the Edit View, roll down to the
Filmstrip, Shift+Select them and delete them.
| | 03:04 | Now Captivate is not sure what the
dependencies are, it doesn't know that these
| | 03:08 | two are only dependent on each other.
So it's giving me the warning again, I'm
| | 03:12 | just going to say Yes to All
because I confirmed that it's okay.
| | 03:15 | Now once I've done this, it's a good
idea to come back to my Library, click on
| | 03:18 | the Select unused items one more time,
because by deleting those slides you may
| | 03:22 | have created some more unused items.
So I'll click on the Trash Can one more
| | 03:25 | time, and there. Now we have a much leaner,
cleaner Captivate file that I can save for my project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Resizing a project| 00:00 | When you first create a Captivate
project, you'll choose the project size
| | 00:05 | 640x480, 8x6, 1024x768, whatever you
want the size to be. Well, it's not
| | 00:11 | terribly uncommon at the end of a
project or halfway through a project to
| | 00:15 | realize that you need a different
size or if you are mixing and matching
| | 00:20 | Captivate projects, you may discover
that one project is larger than the other
| | 00:24 | or smaller. Fortunately, if you do
need to change the size of a file, that's
| | 00:28 | what I'm going to show you in this
lesson. It's called Rescale and it's found
| | 00:32 | under the Project menu.
| | 00:33 | I'll select Rescale. Now you have to
make some decisions, you can't just have a
| | 00:37 | slapdash attitude towards this. In this
case, I'm going to increase the Size of
| | 00:41 | my project and I'm going to maintain
the aspect ratio. So, I'll just go ahead
| | 00:45 | and type in 800, and Notice that it
automatically added 600. If you are going
| | 00:52 | to rescale a project, it's usually
best to maintain the aspect ratio, but you
| | 00:56 | may not be able to.
| | 00:57 | So if you need a different size for
some reason maybe you wanted to be a
| | 01:00 | square, you can turn off Maintain
Aspect Ratio and change it. If you happen to
| | 01:06 | know the percentage and you don't know
the number of pixels, you can actually
| | 01:08 | use percentages to accomplish this or
if you want to jump to a Preset size, you
| | 01:13 | can do that as well.
| | 01:14 | So, I'm going to go back to 800x600.
Now you have two choices here. If you are
| | 01:19 | making your file larger what do you
want to have happen. Do you want things to
| | 01:22 | get larger or do you want things to
stay the same size, and just kind of fill
| | 01:28 | in around it with color. The choice
that you make is really up to you and good
| | 01:32 | news is you can try a couple of things
because you don't have to save the file,
| | 01:35 | until you are ready to.
| | 01:37 | I am going to actually rescale
everything to fit the new size. If you were
| | 01:41 | going smaller then you can see that
you have some choices there too. Do you
| | 01:44 | just want to crop out the information
or do you want to rescale things to make
| | 01:47 | them look smaller? Again, what you
choose really has to be up to you. Generally
| | 01:52 | speaking, you'll probably want to
rescale things because if you Crop, you'll
| | 01:55 | find that information that you were looking at
will find itself off screen but that's up to you.
| | 02:00 | All you need to do is click Finish and
Captivate will resize your project.
| | 02:04 | Note that it cannot be undone. That
doesn't mean that you can't get out of this.
| | 02:08 | So, I'll click OK and while it's resizing,
I'll explain that, you can't undo it
| | 02:11 | with the Edit > Undo command, but
if you don't save the file you can
| | 02:15 | essentially undo it. Just close the
file. Don't save it and reopen the file again.
| | 02:19 | But because I tend to be a
little bit save-happy, it's probably a good
| | 02:26 | idea to do your rescaling on a copy
of your file so that in case anything
| | 02:30 | strange happens that you can't fix,
you at least have an original version that
| | 02:34 | you can go back to.
| | 02:35 | Now, in this case it actually did a
pretty good job of scaling it up if I
| | 02:38 | double-click on this question slide,
everything looks to be in the same
| | 02:41 | relative location. If I click on the
Intro slide everything seems to be in the
| | 02:46 | same relative location. And if you
scale up a lot, things will get blurry.
| | 02:50 | I only scaled up a little bit about 25%.
So, I can go ahead and move forward with this.
| | 02:55 | Rescaling is an effective way to
repurpose information from one Captivate
| | 02:59 | project to another or to repurpose an
existing presentation to a larger or a
| | 03:04 | smaller size and though there are some
limitations, it's at least worth a try
| | 03:07 | because it's a one step process,
and generally, it works pretty well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Publishing a project| 00:00 | Well, the moment of truth has arrived.
It's time to actually publish our project
| | 00:04 | and Captivate allows me to publish
a project in a variety of different ways.
| | 00:09 | In this lesson, we are going to take
an overview look at those ways, so that
| | 00:12 | you can understand the options that
you have and understand what Flash can
| | 00:16 | produce for you, after you
have created a presentation.
| | 00:19 | To get started, I'm going to click on
the Publish button and note that there
| | 00:23 | are 7 different options that I have here,
and some of them are essentially the
| | 00:27 | same thing but they are just
different delivering mechanisms for that same thing,
| | 00:30 | because at its heart what Captivate
creates is Flash, SWF. Not the FLA file,
| | 00:36 | the authoring file for the
Flash authoring tool, but SWF which
| | 00:40 | is the delivery file. If you want a
generic Flash file with perhaps some HTML,
| | 00:46 | this is your choice. You tell it where
you'd like to save it and off you go.
| | 00:49 | We are actually going to cover this in
a little bit more detail in an upcoming
| | 00:52 | lesson. So, I'm going to jump next
to Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro.
| | 00:56 | This is Adobe's web conferencing
collaboration e-learning software product that can
| | 01:01 | host a Captivate project as an object.
And so if you own Acrobat Connect Pro or
| | 01:06 | if you have a license to it then you can
actually use Captivate to publish directly to that.
| | 01:11 | Media. If you actually want to create
a self-running Windows Executable,
| | 01:15 | you can, or you can actually create a
video file. One of the things that Captivate
| | 01:21 | does very well is produce Flash, which
gives you interactivity and it's small,
| | 01:25 | etcetera, but sometimes you might want
to create a standard linear movie.
| | 01:29 | For example, if you want to convert this
into a video podcast, well, this is your
| | 01:34 | method for doing so. Generate an AVI
and then you can use Apple's software to
| | 01:37 | convert that over to something
that is appropriate for a podcast.
| | 01:41 | E-Mail. All E-Mail does is it produces
the Flash file, but then wraps it up and
| | 01:47 | emails it off to somebody so that
they can have it. Print is kind of
| | 01:51 | interesting because as you are
reviewing a project it may be valuable to
| | 01:54 | actually print it out and look at it on paper.
| | 01:57 | It seems a little odd to take a
computer based learning module and print it out
| | 02:00 | and look at it on paper, but there are
many times when that might be valuable
| | 02:03 | like for example, when you're prototyping
and you want to sit in a conference room
| | 02:07 | without the computer on and
really considering brainstorm about your
| | 02:11 | project without being affected by the
computer itself. Maybe you want to make
| | 02:15 | decisions with the computer off and
sometimes that can be a better way to tweak
| | 02:19 | or to design a project than to
actually be looking at a computer and working
| | 02:23 | from within whatever perceived limitations exist.
| | 02:27 | FTP is really nothing more then a
delivering mechanism for the standard Flash
| | 02:31 | option. What it's designed to do is
allow you to FTP your project directly to a
| | 02:36 | web server. Now you'd have to talk to
your server admin to get the information
| | 02:39 | about the FTP server that you can plug
into Captivate but it's a convenient way
| | 02:44 | to be able to deliver your project right to
the server, if it's complete and ready to go.
| | 02:49 | And then finally Review. We are
going to talk about Review in an upcoming
| | 02:52 | chapter, but basically you want to be
able to look at your Captivate project
| | 02:56 | and make sure that it's correct.
Now, I showed you how you can use
| | 02:59 | spellchecking in a previous lesson,
but you may actually want to review the
| | 03:02 | entire the project with respect to
interactivity, it's usage and all of the
| | 03:07 | items in it. Captivate has a really
interesting workflow for doing this so
| | 03:10 | we are going to save that for later.
| | 03:11 | What we are going to cover in some
detail in the rest of the lessons for this
| | 03:15 | chapter are creating a Flash file and
creating an AVI file. But for now those
| | 03:21 | are your output options and they
provide a number of different ways for you to
| | 03:24 | take your project from a
Captivate file to a deliverable.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Publishing to Flash| 00:00 | Okay, so my project is ready to go.
It's clean. It's been spell checked. I have
| | 00:04 | analyzed the bandwidth and I'm ready
to go ahead and publish it. So, I'll go
| | 00:08 | ahead and click Publish. The option
that I'm going to choose for this lesson is
| | 00:12 | Flash and I'll tell you
what we are going to get.
| | 00:14 | First off at its heart, I'm going to
get an SWF file. That's the file that
| | 00:19 | will contain just about everything
that is my project. However there are some
| | 00:23 | extra files that I may want to
consider adding to the mix as I go.
| | 00:26 | For example, HTML. Now HTML is a web
page and an SWF file needs HTML wrapped
| | 00:35 | around it in order to be able to
render in the browser. Now, if I turn this
| | 00:39 | off notice that Captivate warns me that it
might not display correctly. I'll click OK.
| | 00:44 | If you are comfortable with the web
and you use something like Adobe's
| | 00:47 | Dreamweaver, or Microsoft Expression
Web or BB Editor or something like that,
| | 00:51 | then you can certainly generate your
own HTML, however there has to be some
| | 00:55 | specific code in that HTML in order
for the Flash file to render correctly.
| | 01:00 | That information is very well
documented, well known and it's not difficult.
| | 01:04 | But if you are not the person who
understands how to create a webpage then just
| | 01:08 | export the HTML, Captivate can create it
for you and you don't have to worry about it.
| | 01:12 | Additionally, you may choose to zip
the project, if it's particularly large
| | 01:17 | project and there are a lots of pieces.
Zipping it, means that you'll have one
| | 01:21 | file that represents all of the stuff
that goes into your project and it's a
| | 01:25 | convenience factor, especially if you
are going to deliver your project to
| | 01:28 | somebody who is a web master of
somewhere else, they can unzip it and then
| | 01:31 | upload it to the web server.
| | 01:33 | The Zip file itself won't work. It's
actually just a container. So you wouldn't
| | 01:38 | be able to upload the zip file
directly and have your Captivate project but
| | 01:42 | it's a convenient tool for collecting
all of your assets together and then
| | 01:45 | delivering them in one package.
| | 01:47 | The next options to consider are
Generate Autorun for CD and Full Screen.
| | 01:51 | If you Generate Autorun for CD, Captivate
is going to produce a little file that
| | 01:55 | when you pop the CD and that
contains this information, it's going to
| | 01:59 | automatically run this project. And
that can be very convenient if you are
| | 02:03 | distributing your project on a CD. The
only caveat here is that this Autorun
| | 02:08 | for CD will only work on a Windows
workstation. It won't work on a Macintosh or
| | 02:12 | a Linux workstation.
| | 02:13 | Now the Captivate project can
because it uses Flash, which is generally
| | 02:17 | platform neutral, but the Autorun for
CD won't work on these other workstations
| | 02:21 | and so it's just something to consider.
| | 02:24 | Now, I can also go to Full screen but
watch when I do, I have to have HTML when
| | 02:28 | I choose Full Screen and that's
because Captivate builds some special
| | 02:32 | instructions into the HTML to create
that Full screen effect and so if I turn
| | 02:36 | that on, I have to have HTML
in order to accomplish that.
| | 02:40 | And then the final choice here is PDF.
Adobe with its version 9 added the Flash
| | 02:45 | Player to Acrobat and Reader. So if
you have Acrobat and Reader 9, you can
| | 02:50 | actually open up this PDF file and all
of the Captivate project will run on a
| | 02:55 | page of a PDF which is pretty neat. If
you want a completely platform neutral
| | 02:59 | delivery mechanism that doesn't
require anything other than the free reader,
| | 03:03 | well PDF might be your choice.
| | 03:05 | I am going to turn Zip files off just
because I don't want to zip everything,
| | 03:08 | I'll want to be able to look at them.
I'll leave all of the other options
| | 03:12 | selected here and we'll just go ahead and
publish. And let's go ahead and View the output.
| | 03:17 | This is actually a link that's just
warning you that when I click on this it's
| | 03:20 | going to jump to Full screen mode.
There we go, all the data was just hidden
| | 03:26 | all of that browser chrome. We'll go
ahead and close this up. And let's take a
| | 03:30 | deeper look at what we ended up with,
so that you can see the bits and pieces.
| | 03:34 | So, that file that said Click here to
go to Full screen mode, that's that file
| | 03:38 | right there. This is the HTML that
Captivate generated to wrap around this
| | 03:44 | file, which is the SWF movie file.
There is your Autorun file. So that needs to
| | 03:49 | be on the CD, and this is just a
JavaScript file that controls some of the
| | 03:52 | interactions that
happened in the Captivate movie.
| | 03:56 | So if you are going to take this now
and upload it to a web server you will
| | 04:01 | want to include all of these pieces
except for the PDF. You won't need the PDF.
| | 04:07 | Frankly, if you want to, you can
double-click on this and run this on your
| | 04:12 | local desktop. However, I do need
to warn you that you might run into a
| | 04:16 | security warning message because
when you run Flash locally on your
| | 04:20 | workstation, that may seem to the computer
like it's a virus trying to take over your system.
| | 04:26 | If that's the case, I'll show you in
an upcoming lesson how you can deal with
| | 04:29 | that if you want run it locally. But
the good news is if you want to run it
| | 04:32 | locally and you don't want to have
to worry about that, that's one of the
| | 04:35 | things the PDF is good for. I'll double-
click on this. It will open in Acrobat,
| | 04:46 | and I happen to have Acrobat on this
workstation but I could do this with the
| | 04:50 | Free Reader as well. Now this is
rendering completely inside a PDF file.
| | 04:53 | So I'm done. So, I'll close that up.
So these are the things that Captivate
| | 05:01 | creates for me. It's a set of tools
designed to work together to allow me to
| | 05:05 | play my presentation in a variety of
different environments and I can choose to
| | 05:09 | upload them to my own web server or I
can run them locally or I can run them as
| | 05:13 | a PDF file. Pretty neat.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Publishing to AVI| 00:00 | For this movie, I want to create a
video podcast. It's a little tips and tricks
| | 00:05 | and techniques thing that I want to
deliver and I'll either deliver it via
| | 00:09 | Apple's iTunes or I might just put it
on my website as a movie file, using
| | 00:13 | QuickTime or AVI or whatever. This
right now, if I publish it using the Flash
| | 00:19 | publishing methodology, well that's not
going to work, especially with iTunes.
| | 00:23 | So I'm going to click on Publish, then
I'm going to show you that under Media,
| | 00:26 | I have the option of publishing an AVI
file. AVI is a video file format that
| | 00:31 | will produce for me a linear
video for my Captivate project.
| | 00:36 | All I need to do is select it. Now
when I choose Media, I can choose Windows
| | 00:39 | Executable or AVI. In this case, I'm
going to choose AVI because that's what
| | 00:43 | I want as a movie, name it, determine
where I'm going to put it. I'll actually
| | 00:48 | put it in the AVI Output folder and
then I need to choose a video format.
| | 00:56 | Built-in to just about every Windows system
is the Cinepak Codec by Radius and that's
| | 01:00 | the default that Captivate is going to use.
| | 01:02 | If you are someone who understands
video codecs, you know that you can install
| | 01:05 | other ones that may or may not be
useful for your needs. We are not going to
| | 01:09 | get into installing video codecs onto
Windows workstations in these lessons.
| | 01:13 | So I'm going to choose the Cinepak
Codec by Radius option, which is a default,
| | 01:17 | and click on Publish.
| | 01:18 | When I do, I need to point out
something before I do, because when you are
| | 01:22 | publishing a project, especially a
project that has in this case some full
| | 01:26 | motion video built into it, it may take
a while to publish this project and it
| | 01:31 | may actually stop and do nothing for
a while, while it's going through a
| | 01:34 | process called transcoding. Converting this
full motion video into AVI full motion video.
| | 01:40 | So be patient, and don't give up on a
project just because it's taking a while.
| | 01:44 | If it's a large project with a lot of
slides, you may want to do this at the
| | 01:48 | end of the day and then come back in
the morning to see if it was successful.
| | 01:51 | In most cases it's going to
be. We'll click on Publish.
| | 02:00 | (Recording: In this presentation I'm going
to show you how to use effective Photoshop technique.)
| | 02:05 | Specifically, I'm going
to show you how to convert this color photograph...)
| | 02:09 | (Recording: into a black and white photograph.
To create a black and white photo...)
| | 02:13 | (Recording: we are going to use
adjustment layers in Photoshop.)
| | 02:18 | (Recording: Here is a photograph before
the adjustment layer has been applied.
| | 02:27 | (Recording: Here's the photograph after
we've applied the adjustment layer.)
| | 02:36 | And this is where it looks like it might have hung up.
It's actually doing that transcoding thing because
| | 02:41 | this is full motion video
built into the file.
| | 02:48 | (Recording: And here we see the finished result.)
| | 03:00 | And there you go. Captivate has
published an AVI file and you can view
| | 03:03 | the output and I'm just going to click Close,
because we'll go take a look at the output here.
| | 03:17 | So here we have it. Now on this
workstation, AVI is set to be
| | 03:21 | handled by QuickTime. However
your system would handle AVI,
| | 03:24 | you can just double-click on it...
| | 03:30 | and it will play.
| | 03:36 | (Recording: In this presentation,
I'm going to show you how to use effective...)
| | 03:40 | There and we don't need to watch the entire
thing but you can see that Captivate was
| | 03:44 | able to produce a linear movie for me.
At this point it's up to me to figure out
| | 03:48 | how to convert to one of the
various file formats that I might want to use
| | 03:51 | for what intended use, but I have a
project that I can deliver as a Flash file
| | 03:55 | via the web. I can upload it into Adobe
Acrobat Connect Professional, directly
| | 04:00 | from Captivate but if I'm using a tool
that can't render Flash for some reason
| | 04:03 | then I have a movie file that I can
also deliver. And that's why Captivate allows
| | 04:07 | the AVI and makes it pretty easy to create.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up Flash player security| 00:00 | In this movie I want to talk to you
about a security issue that you may
| | 00:03 | encounter when you are previewing you're
actual files from your local system.
| | 00:08 | And it has to do with the fact that Flash
player when it's playing locally looks
| | 00:13 | like it's trying to talk to the
internet and collect some information and
| | 00:16 | browsers and operating systems often
misinterpret that as some sort of virus
| | 00:21 | activity or spyware or something like that.
| | 00:23 | And here is what it looks like. If
you generate a published project and you
| | 00:27 | double-click on the HTML file, you may
get this Flash warning dialog box.
| | 00:33 | If you do I'm going to show you how to
deal with it. I'm going to click OK. What's
| | 00:40 | happening is the file is playing right now.
But that warning is still disconcerting.
| | 00:44 | So what I want to do is set my system
up so that I won't get that warning going
| | 00:48 | to right-click on it, choose Settings
and among the Flash players settings I
| | 00:53 | need to actually go beyond what's
available here. So I'll click on the question
| | 00:56 | mark and that will take me to Adobe's
Flash Player configuration site.
| | 01:00 | I'm going to click on Global Privacy
Settings panel and when I click on the little
| | 01:07 | Global Security Settings tab. And
this is where I can add that folder as a
| | 01:13 | location that is trusted, meaning that
I know the activity in there is okay and
| | 01:17 | it's not going to cause a problem.
| | 01:18 | So I'm going to choose Always to trust
files in a particular location.
| | 01:22 | We'll edit the location and we'll add one.
What this is showing me here is this is
| | 01:26 | the location that caused the trouble
that gave me the error. So I'm going to
| | 01:30 | drag select it. I'm going to Copy it
and I'm going Paste it up here. Seems like
| | 01:36 | a lot rigmarole to get that up there,
but it's done this way so that a
| | 01:39 | malicious software can't make this
happen on it's own. We'll click Confirm.
| | 01:43 | I always want to trust files in those
locations otherwise I'm always going ask.
| | 01:48 | Now if I choose Always allow, I won't
get any warning, any more from that, but
| | 01:53 | you may not want to do that. So I'm
going to select Always ask leave this as a
| | 01:56 | trusted location, and make it so that
this project can play. I'll also point
| | 02:01 | out that if you want to set it up, so
that the Desktop is always a trusted
| | 02:04 | location. We'll come back in here to
Add location. I can type anything that I
| | 02:09 | want to in here. So I'm going to
actually choose Paste. And I'm going to remove
| | 02:14 | all of the specifics about that location.
I'm going to keep hitting the Delete
| | 02:19 | key, so that now anything in my
Exercise Files folder, Confirm will work.
| | 02:27 | And that's how you can configure the
Flash player to allow you to do that.
| | 02:30 | So we'll go ahead and close this up
and I want to quit Firefox so that the
| | 02:35 | Flash player will accept the change.
And now when I double-click on that I
| | 02:39 | won't get that warning. Now you
probably thinking to yourself well, wait a
| | 02:42 | minute. If I'm going to deliver this
to a customer and they are going to have
| | 02:46 | go through this, so are they really going to
put up with that? The answer is probably no.
| | 02:50 | If you are going to deliver your Flash
project to a customer directly from the
| | 02:53 | Desktop, Captivate has an option for
that. That may be better and that is the
| | 02:58 | Windows Executable option, which you
can then drop on to a CD, otherwise you
| | 03:03 | are probably going to better off
creating the Flash and uploading that to a web
| | 03:07 | server instead of trying the deliver that
as HTML in Flash as a local set of files.
| | 03:13 | But the reason I showed you how to
configure the Flash player is that it can be
| | 03:17 | very convenient at very least to
prototype and test your work outside of
| | 03:21 | Captivate to see if it works. Of
course bear in mind that your preview
| | 03:25 | generates Flash and HTML for you to
look at. So you are actually previewing an
| | 03:29 | accurate SWF preview but it's still
may be valuable for you to preview inside
| | 03:33 | an actual browser and that's why I showed you
how to set Flash up so that you can do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Generating SCORM-compliant output | 00:00 | When you publish a project that has a
quiz built into it, you have the option
| | 00:04 | of reporting the results. And there
are number of ways that you can collect
| | 00:07 | that information. One of those ways is
called SCORM and that's an acronym for
| | 00:13 | Sharable Content Object Reference Model.
| | 00:15 | It's a standard way of delivering
information from a quiz into some sort of
| | 00:20 | learning management system such as
Blackboard, Angel or Moodle. And if you
| | 00:25 | those systems to host a Captivate file,
it's very important to make sure that
| | 00:29 | you tell the project when you publish to
create information that the SCORM compliant.
| | 00:34 | In this movie that's exactly what I'm
going to show you how to do. It's very
| | 00:36 | easy and it's just a matter of
configuring the quiz settings so that it
| | 00:39 | produces the SCORM compliant information.
| | 00:42 | All you need to do is select Quiz >
Quiz Preferences. Make sure that you enable
| | 00:48 | reporting for the project. So under
Quiz Reporting, enable reporting for the
| | 00:52 | project. And then select Standard
SCORM as your reporting model. There are
| | 00:57 | other ways to report information from
a Quiz from your Captivate project, if
| | 01:01 | you use Acrobat Connect Pro you can.
If you are Questionmark Perception user,
| | 01:05 | you can. And basically they all do the
same thing. When you establish that you
| | 01:09 | want to use in this case SCORM for
our example, then simply select OK.
| | 01:13 | When you publish your project and you
will publish it as you normally would.
| | 01:17 | We'll close it here. I'm going to open
up and show you the result that I have
| | 01:21 | already created for you. There are
several files here that the learning
| | 01:24 | management system is going to expect to be in
place when you actually publish the project.
| | 01:29 | So whether you are going to use an
FTP server or you are going to hand this
| | 01:32 | file set over to a system admin. These
are all of the files that the Captivate
| | 01:37 | project populates when the user takes a
quiz. And the system administrator for
| | 01:40 | your learning management system will
understand how to use these and where to place them.
| | 01:44 | So when you publish a project using
SCORM output for example you are going to
| | 01:49 | get a lot of little bits and pieces.
They may not be important for the playing
| | 01:53 | of the presentation but they are
definitely important for their quiz reporting.
| | 01:57 | So don't change them don't rename them
and don delete them. Send them off to
| | 02:01 | your system admin and do good to go.
And that's one the reasons when you
| | 02:04 | publish a project, I'll just open a
Publish panel one more time. You are given
| | 02:08 | the opportunity to zip all the
information together. Well that will do as it
| | 02:12 | will take all of those little bits in
parts zip them together into a single zip
| | 02:15 | file that you can then submit to
their system admin for your learning
| | 02:18 | management system. But
that's all there is to it.
| | 02:20 | If you are going to report using SCORM
compliant reporting from your Captivate
| | 02:24 | project just choose that as your Quiz
Setting and then publish your project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting to Flash FLA| 00:00 | As robust a tool as Captivate is
for creating interactive, engaging
| | 00:04 | presentations, you may want to go a
step further, or you may have a Flash guru
| | 00:09 | on your side, who wants to take it a
step further using the Flash authoring tool,
| | 00:13 | Adobe Flash CS3 or Adobe Flash CS4.
| | 00:17 | The good news is that you can share
your project with that person by simply
| | 00:21 | exporting it to Flash. Under the File
menu, I'll choose Export and Project To.
| | 00:28 | If I have Flash CS3 installed then it
will allow me to choose that. If I have
| | 00:32 | Flash CS4 installed then I can use that.
| | 00:35 | On this workstation I have Flash CS4
installed. I'm going to go ahead and
| | 00:38 | export the project because it's not
going to be a perfectly clean one to one
| | 00:42 | conversion. I'm going to select it.
Captivate will begin to build the Flash
| | 00:46 | objects, open up the Flash product and
then start to Export. And I can choose
| | 00:52 | what it is I would like to
have go into the Flash project.
| | 00:55 | So we'll go ahead and click Import.
And I might see that there are a couple of
| | 01:00 | things that may seem concerning but
basically these are the places where
| | 01:05 | Captivate and Flash may think a little
differently and so I'm going to get what
| | 01:09 | are going to be considered compiler
errors. And if I'm Flash expert
| | 01:13 | I'll understand what means and what to do
about those things. In this case I also
| | 01:17 | have a font that's being used in the
Captivate project that Flash doesn't
| | 01:19 | understand and it will go
ahead and substitute the font.
| | 01:23 | This isn't a Flash class, so I'm not
going to talk about exactly how to change it,
| | 01:26 | but what I'm going to do is
select OK and I want to show you the results
| | 01:30 | because in reality the results work
just fine. In fact I can publish right
| | 01:35 | directly from Flash and get the same
thing that I would have gotten from Captivate.
| | 01:39 | One more little warning about 508
compliance. I'm going to click OK. And this is
| | 01:43 | just some information what I'll need in
order to be able to publish this as a Flash
| | 01:47 | project. And again as a Flash user I would
understand what to do with these. We'll click OK.
| | 01:50 | Now the good news is that if I choose
Control > Test Movie inside Flash,
| | 01:57 | we'll see the same output that
I would have gotten from Captivate.
| | 02:04 | (Recording: In this presentation I'm going
to show you how to use effective Photoshop technique.)
| | 02:10 | (Recording: Specifically I'm going
to show you to how to convert...)
| | 02:13 | And we don't need to watch the entire thing
but the results were the same. Which leads to the
| | 02:17 | question, so why would I do this?
| | 02:19 | Well, the reason I might do this is
because now I have a Flash project inside
| | 02:23 | the Flash authoring tool that would
allow me to use Flash technology to take it
| | 02:28 | a step further than what Captivate
can do by itself. So it's not something
| | 02:32 | I would for any standard presentation
that I need simply to deliver. It's only
| | 02:36 | something I would do if I want to ask a
Flash author to do something that only
| | 02:40 | Flash can do that Captivate can't. And
Flash is a very robust product and there
| | 02:44 | are many things that it can do, for
example with programming, to take this
| | 02:48 | presentation a step further.
| | 02:50 | So if I need to go from Captivate to
Flash I can go there directly and produce
| | 02:54 | an FLA file, which is the Flash
authoring file format, from the File menu.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
13. Reviewing Your ProjectInitiating a project review| 00:00 | In a previous lesson, I showed you how
you can use the Project > Check Spelling
| | 00:04 | feature to find any spelling mistake
that you might have in your project.
| | 00:08 | One of the problems with that is that it
can't ferret out usage problem and typos
| | 00:12 | and other things that really require
a human to spot, plus there are number of
| | 00:16 | other things that I might want to have
a human being look at my project to try
| | 00:19 | and determine if it's correct or if
it still needs some work. For example,
| | 00:24 | branching logic, or does my
phrasing make sense, etcetera.
| | 00:28 | For that reason, Captivate has built
in a Review feature that allows you to
| | 00:33 | package up your presentation, deliver
it to a reviewer, have them provide their
| | 00:37 | comments and actually get those
comments back to you and you can even see those
| | 00:40 | comments inside Captivate.
| | 00:42 | Now that's the whole workflow. In
this lesson we're going to talk about the
| | 00:46 | start of the workflow, which is to
actually send something for review.
| | 00:49 | So to get started I'm just going to click
on Send for Review and this actually opens
| | 00:54 | up the Publish dialog box
and shows me the Review tab.
| | 00:58 | The Review tab basically is going to
create Flash just like I had created
| | 01:02 | before, except in this case it's
going to do two other things. The Review
| | 01:06 | feature essentially builds Flash, but
it packages it up quite differently than
| | 01:10 | the Flash that's used for distribution.
Because it's actually builds it into an
| | 01:15 | overall workflow that allows you to send
the project out and receive comments back.
| | 01:20 | So the first choice to make is what do
we want to call the file we'll call this
| | 01:23 | Review_project. But notice it's going
to have a different extension.
| | 01:27 | We're going to see that extension.
We'll take a look at that extension once
| | 01:30 | we've published the review. I'm going to
Browse and I'm going to put this out on the
| | 01:35 | desktop to make it easy for me to
find during this demonstration and I'll
| | 01:38 | create a folder on the desktop and
we'll just call it Review. Click OK.
| | 01:45 | During this process, I'm going to have
comments that are going to be stored as
| | 01:49 | a separate external file to the
review and so I need to determine a project
| | 01:54 | Comments folder. I'm going to Browse
and I'm actually going to create a folder
| | 01:58 | inside the Review folder for that
and I'll call it Comments and click OK.
| | 02:05 | In delivering this, I can deliver the
individual components that Captivate
| | 02:09 | creates, but it's easier just to allow
Captivate to help me. Plus part of this
| | 02:14 | review requires something called Adobe
Captivate Reviewer and it's and Adobe
| | 02:18 | AIR product. Adobe AIR stands for
the Adobe Integrated Runtime.
| | 02:22 | It's essentially Flash on the desktop.
It's pretty neat technology and Adobe is
| | 02:26 | leveraging it here to allow you to
create a little reviewer tool that you can
| | 02:30 | use to review these Captivate projects
without having to actually take them out
| | 02:34 | to the web and then it attaches the
crev file, which is the review file.
| | 02:39 | So we'll go ahead and Publish.
Captivate will render the presentation,
| | 02:43 | build the files that I need and because
I chose to send it as an email, it will
| | 02:48 | actually talk to in this case Microsoft
Outlook and create an outgoing message
| | 02:52 | with the review file in place and
this is the little reviewer tool that you
| | 02:57 | need to perform the review. And then
all you would do is just go ahead and type
| | 03:01 | in the address of the reviewer.
reviewer@company.com or whatever and you can
| | 03:07 | send it to multiple people.
| | 03:09 | Now I'm not actually going to send this
email. So I'll just go ahead and close
| | 03:12 | this, but let's go ahead and take a
look at the output. I'm going to close this
| | 03:16 | and before we actually leave Captivate,
notice that Captivate is warning us
| | 03:19 | that now because this project is in
a review state, if we Add, Delete, or
| | 03:24 | change the project in any of these ways,
then the review isn't actually going
| | 03:29 | to work as anticipated. It still
actually might work, but some of the review
| | 03:33 | features might not work as expected.
| | 03:36 | So the best bet here is to make all
of your structural decisions first, get
| | 03:40 | everything settled and then use the
review to determine if the content is
| | 03:43 | correct and then you can go from there
to the next phase, review that, the next
| | 03:48 | phase, review that.
| | 03:49 | I'll go ahead and click OK to that.
I'll minimize Captivate then we'll go out
| | 03:54 | and look at the desktop. So I have got
my folder here my Review folder, we'll
| | 03:57 | double-click. Here's my Review
project. That's the crev file. Here's my
| | 04:04 | Comments folder and actually in there
Captivate created a folder with a long
| | 04:08 | list of numbers to uniquely identify it
and there's nothing in here right now,
| | 04:13 | because nobody has provided any reviews.
| | 04:16 | In the next lesson I'm actually going
to show you how to review a project, but
| | 04:21 | this right here is all you would need
to send to somebody. If they already have
| | 04:25 | the Captivate Reviewer in hand, you
don't even need to send them that again.
| | 04:29 | You can just email them this Captivate
review file. They can open it up, apply
| | 04:33 | their reviews, and then in the
upcoming lessons I'll show you how you can get
| | 04:36 | those reviews back into your copy of Captivate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing a project| 00:00 | Adobe Captivate has a Send for Review
workflow that allows you to send your
| | 00:04 | document out to reviewer, collect
comments back from that reviewer, and then
| | 00:09 | employ them to make changes in your document.
| | 00:12 | In this lesson, we are going to talk
about the process of actually adding
| | 00:15 | comments to the review, and I want to
show you what it's going to look like
| | 00:18 | from the perspective of a reviewer.
Because it's pretty powerful and they don't
| | 00:22 | need anything special, well, not
anything special that you can't provide for free.
| | 00:26 | So to get the process started, in a
previous lesson I've shown you that you can
| | 00:29 | click on Send for Review, set the file
up by naming it, establishing where you are
| | 00:33 | going to put it, and creating what's
called the Comments folder. And then you
| | 00:37 | can click on Send Mail, and this is
how you'll bring others into the review
| | 00:42 | that don't own to copy of
Captivate. So we'll click on Close here.
| | 00:45 | And the files that get sent in
the email are these two here, the
| | 00:54 | AdobeCaptivateReviewer Installer and
the Adobe crev file. That's the Captivate
| | 01:00 | Review file. Before you can use the
Review file, if you hadn't already done so
| | 01:04 | you need to install the Reviewer.
| | 01:06 | The reviewer is built on Adobe AIR,
the Adobe Integrated Runtime.
| | 01:10 | It's essentially Flash on the desktop
that you can use to build applications.
| | 01:14 | And Adobe has leveraged it, to create a
little Reviewer tool that you can use to
| | 01:18 | apply your comments to the project.
So if you haven't already installed it
| | 01:21 | once, you simply double-click on it.
It will install and it takes just a
| | 01:28 | moment. It's a very small tool,
and now we have the Reviewer loaded.
| | 01:33 | So the next step is simply to load
the Captivate movie and that's the crev file.
| | 01:37 | You can either click on this
button and navigate to it or you can
| | 01:42 | actually drag-drop on top of it. The
next question that you'll need to answer
| | 01:47 | is where would you like your comments
to go? Because what you are going to do
| | 01:51 | is create a set of comments as an XML
file, and it's that XML file that you'll
| | 01:56 | share back with the initiator of the
review. That means you can send a very
| | 02:00 | small file with your comments, but the
good news is the XML knows the context
| | 02:04 | of your comments and can put
them in place in the project.
| | 02:07 | So I'm going to click on Browse, and
I'm going to look for a folder to put
| | 02:14 | these in. I want to put it in my
Reviewing folder. Make New Folder there.
| | 02:25 | And we'll click OK. Now you can put it
anywhere that you want as long as you
| | 02:29 | remember where this folder is,
because to share the comments back to the
| | 02:32 | initiator, you're going to have to go
to grab that file, and then just email
| | 02:35 | back to them. So we'll click OK and now Play.
| | 02:40 | In this presentation, and at any point
that you decide that you need to add a
| | 02:44 | comment, you can just Stop and click
on this little plus sign and add your
| | 02:47 | Comment. It took too long to start.
Click on Add, and Plays some more. But you
| | 03:00 | don't have to actually have to watch
the whole thing, if you know that there is
| | 03:02 | something you are looking for.
| | 03:03 | For example, I'm looking here and I'm
seeing that the Compression settings seem
| | 03:06 | to be a little bit high. Too muddy.
Lower compression, and I'll continue and I
| | 03:18 | just have to add a couple of quick
random comments here. Not all comments have
| | 03:28 | to be bad. I'll click Add. At this
point, I need to save these comments,
| | 03:32 | because right now they are not save.
So I'm going to click on Save. And what
| | 03:35 | I've just done is I've written
that little XML file that I mention.
| | 03:38 | Let's go have a look at that. Here is
the folder that I created written file.
| | 03:41 | If I open it up, you can see that there
is an XML file, and it's identified me
| | 03:45 | by my email address. Something I can
configure here under Preferences.
| | 03:51 | I'd already install the Captivate Reviewer
on this workstation. So that's how it
| | 03:54 | automatically knew who I was, but
you can see that my email address is
| | 03:57 | misspelled there. I can go ahead and
fix that and I can also update the Comment
| | 04:02 | Location, if I want to
here as well. We'll click OK.
| | 04:06 | Those changes won't happen until after
I restart the Reviewer, something I'm
| | 04:09 | not going to do. But the good news is
that, once I'm done with the review, I
| | 04:13 | can go ahead and email this little XML
document. Now look at this thing, it's 3
| | 04:18 | kilobytes. Even if I had 25 different
comments or 125 different comments, we
| | 04:23 | are going to stay well under a megabyte.
Probably well under 50 kilobytes.
| | 04:28 | So I can email this back to the person who
initiated the review and they'll be able
| | 04:32 | to use that to see what changes
I'm suggesting that they make.
| | 04:35 | In fact, they'll be able to look at the
comments of several different reviewers
| | 04:38 | all in the same file and that's what
we are going to take a look at in the
| | 04:42 | next lesson. But you can see that it's
a very easy process to take a Captivate
| | 04:46 | project and review it, even if you don't own
a copy of Captivate on your own workstation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Collecting reviewer comments| 00:00 | The final step in the Captivate Send
For Review workflow is to gather the
| | 00:04 | comments and then make use of them.
That's an easy step to take. We are going
| | 00:08 | to start from the perspective of the
reviewer and then we are going to jump
| | 00:11 | over and play the role of the
initiator because I want to show you the tools
| | 00:14 | that Captivate has that allow you to
very quickly make use of these comments
| | 00:18 | that you get from others.
| | 00:19 | So I have my Captivate Reviewer. I
have reviewed my project. I have had some
| | 00:23 | things to say about it. The Reviewer
actually allows me to see them all and I
| | 00:27 | can edit them, I can delete them before
I send them out. To send them out, all
| | 00:31 | I'm going to do is simply export the
comments and I'm going to dump them down
| | 00:35 | onto the Desktop. That is an XML file
that I can then go ahead and email to the
| | 00:40 | initiator of the review.
| | 00:42 | At this point, we'll switch gears. I'm
going to quit this application, we'll
| | 00:47 | jump back into Captivate, and I'm
going to play the role of the initiator.
| | 00:51 | I need your comments and I need to see
what to do to change or fix my file.
| | 00:55 | To get that started, I'll select Window >
Comments, and you can see that I have
| | 00:59 | already collected some comments from some
of the reviewers and they are listed here.
| | 01:04 | To get the reviewer Tom Miller's
comments into the project, all I need to do is
| | 01:07 | click on Import Comments and there are
Tom's comments and Open. Now you can see
| | 01:14 | that Tom's comments have been added to
the project, and I can go through them
| | 01:19 | one by one and take a look at them.
| | 01:22 | When I click on them, notice that it
will actually take me to the slide the
| | 01:26 | comment refers to and even better, it
will show me on the Timeline for the
| | 01:32 | slide what the problem is.
| | 01:34 | So if I go to this one here, it says
Too Long, this one says Too Long. What I'm
| | 01:39 | assuming he means is that this text
says on the screen Too Long. So I'm just
| | 01:44 | going to grab that and shorten it and
there I have made the change based on this.
| | 01:48 | Once I have made the change, I
can go ahead and click on his comment here
| | 01:53 | and I'll add my own comment, Fixed. Click Submit,
and now we have added Fixed to that comment.
| | 02:02 | I can trip through the rest of the
entire project the same way and I can even
| | 02:06 | sort them by reviewers or by status.
So for example, if this comment is
| | 02:10 | something that I'm not going to make a
change based on, I'm going to reject it
| | 02:13 | and it says Rejected, but I can
actually add some text to that.
| | 02:16 | I will just say Rejected and I can
sort by Status, those that have been
| | 02:22 | Rejected, those of Toms, those that
have been accepted, all of these have been
| | 02:27 | accepted into the project and those
that are new, which are these here with a
| | 02:31 | little Star next to them, or I can
sort by reviewer. So if Sam's comments are
| | 02:36 | more important than anyone else's, I can
pay attention to Sam's suggestions first.
| | 02:41 | There are a couple of things to be
aware of here, one way that you can actually
| | 02:44 | use this essentially in real-time. The
couple of things to be aware of are that
| | 02:48 | A, when you open the document, there
is a Warning dialog box that warns you
| | 02:52 | that if you change timings of slides
or if you make just about any structural
| | 02:57 | change to your presentation, it's going
to break this review because the Review
| | 03:01 | for example wouldn't understand if I
deleted some of the time on the slide,
| | 03:05 | where would that review go? If the
reviewer had said something that seven
| | 03:09 | seconds needs to be fixed and that's
no longer there, Captivate wouldn't know
| | 03:12 | how to deal with that. So
that's going to break things.
| | 03:14 | Another problem that you encounter is
that if you create different versions of
| | 03:18 | this file, and you try to bring
comments from one file into another, even if
| | 03:22 | you don't make any changes to the actual
content, Captivate won't like that either.
| | 03:26 | So you have to make sure that you are
bringing comments into the document that
| | 03:29 | you originally sent out and the
document that you originally sent out only.
| | 03:33 | If you don't do that, Captivate is not
going to work. When I say not going to work
| | 03:36 | or break, what I mean is that you will
try to import the comments and nothing
| | 03:39 | will happen. Captivate just won't know
what to do with it, and so they won't appear.
| | 03:43 | The good thing though is that when you
start this process, if you click on Send
| | 03:47 | for Review, you select a Project
Comments folder. Well, that Project Comments
| | 03:52 | folder is something into which you can
just dump the comments as they come in
| | 03:56 | and then simply refresh your comments as you go.
| | 04:01 | So you can simply use the Comment
folder that you have set up ahead of time as
| | 04:04 | a place to store the comments as they
come in and then instead of having to
| | 04:08 | import them one by one, you can
simply click on the Refresh button and that
| | 04:11 | will refresh and any new comments file
that's in there will appear as a set of
| | 04:15 | comments in the list.
| | 04:18 | This Comment and Review process is a
really slick way to get feedback about
| | 04:23 | your projects, and to get that
feedback in context and for multiple reviewers
| | 04:28 | at the same time. Now at this point,
I can actually go ahead and save this
| | 04:31 | project and I'll even
have a record of the review.
| | 04:34 | So if someone should challenge me later,
I can show them the comment that you
| | 04:37 | are claiming to make wasn't made. So
you didn't tell me or you didn't send me
| | 04:41 | your last round of comments. But
either way, this workflow is a great way for
| | 04:45 | you to gather the comments and
feedback from your colleagues and anyone else
| | 04:48 | that might need to comment on your work and
then apply the changes right in Captivate.
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14. VariablesCreating a variable| 00:00 | One of Captivate's more interesting
features is its ability to work with
| | 00:03 | variables. Variables, if you're not
familiar with programming terminology, are
| | 00:08 | just containers that can hold
information and when you place the container in
| | 00:13 | place, you can change the content of
the container which is a convenient way to
| | 00:17 | update information on a slide or a
set of slides very, very quickly.
| | 00:22 | Let me show you what I mean. I'm
going to create a slide, actually a set of
| | 00:27 | slides here that have a particular title.
But this is the look and feel that I
| | 00:32 | want to use with a lot of different
types of presentations and I want to make
| | 00:36 | an easy way for myself to update
everything in the presentation and I'm going
| | 00:39 | to use variables to do so.
| | 00:41 | To get started, I actually have to
create a variable so I'll build my container
| | 00:46 | and to do that, I'm going to select
Project > Actions. I'll select a User
| | 00:51 | Variable. There are whole set of
things called System Variables, which are
| | 00:55 | pretty advanced stuff, and we're not
going to get into. I want to use a User
| | 00:59 | Variable as opposed to a System Variable,
and I'm going to add a new variable.
| | 01:04 | I have to click the Add New first.
That can be a little confusing. When you
| | 01:07 | first bring up the dialog box, if you
don't click Add New, you won't be able to
| | 01:10 | add a new variable name. So let's name
the container. We're going to name this
| | 01:14 | container Title, and we'll give it a
value. The value is in this case 'Making
| | 01:22 | the sale' and we'll choose Save.
| | 01:24 | Now I'm going to close this. To use
the variable, I'll double-click on this
| | 01:30 | text here, Drag+Select it and I'm
going to replace it with a variable by
| | 01:35 | choosing it from this Insert Variables
menu. We'll choose our variable, it's
| | 01:40 | the Title variable that I just created
and we'll select OK. Simply says Title.
| | 01:46 | Let's do the same thing
to the other three slides.
| | 01:48 | I've inserted my variable. This
doesn't look very interesting. In fact, this
| | 02:02 | $$Title$$ doesn't look very useful
until we preview the project. That container
| | 02:11 | is replaced with the actual text that
is the value of the variable. Now let's
| | 02:15 | close the preview. Here's
where variables become useful.
| | 02:18 | If I want to change the title of
this entire presentation anywhere that
| | 02:22 | $$Title$$ is used in the entire
presentation, it's going to update to whatever
| | 02:27 | the new variable's value is.
| | 02:29 | To update the Value, I'll select
Project > Actions. Select the variable.
| | 02:35 | I'll update its Value. Click on Update.
It's important that you click on Update.
| | 02:43 | I make this mistake a lot.
| | 02:44 | I'll change the Value here and I won't
click on Update and click Close, and the
| | 02:47 | Value won't update. So it's important.
Select the variable here in your list,
| | 02:51 | update its Value and click the Update
button. Click Close and now let's preview
| | 02:55 | from here. Sales 101, Sales 101.
| | 03:02 | Variables are a really quick way to use
a standard look and feel but customize
| | 03:07 | little bits and pieces here and
there to quickly re-purpose an entire
| | 03:10 | presentation from one topic to another and
their use is really only limited by your imagination.
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| Using a variable to hold user-input information| 00:00 | Variables are useful as containers
for information, but how you get that
| | 00:04 | information into the variable is also
interesting. What I have here is the
| | 00:08 | front page of a presentation. Here I
have a text entry field that I want to use
| | 00:14 | to collect some text. Now my
expectation is that the user will enter their
| | 00:18 | first name here and then click
submit, standard text entry field.
| | 00:21 | However, what I'm going to do is use it
to collect the name and put that into a
| | 00:26 | variable, and then we'll use the
variable during the rest of the presentation.
| | 00:30 | Let's start by creating the variable.
Project > Actions, and we'll Add New, and
| | 00:36 | we're just going to call this firstName.
| | 00:40 | I'm not even going to put a Value in
here because the Value right now doesn't
| | 00:43 | matter. I'll select Save and there's
my variable, and close. The text entry
| | 00:49 | field is something that when I double-
click, I can enter some text into, but I
| | 00:54 | can also under the Advanced tab,
associated with a variable.
| | 00:59 | By doing that, this text field
becomes a method by which I can enter
| | 01:02 | information into the variable. I'll
click OK. To finish this off, I'm going to
| | 01:07 | go to slide 2, and instead of saying,
"This presentation will help you to
| | 01:11 | become better salesperson," I'm
going to personalize it. Delete the first
| | 01:15 | letter there. I'm going to insert the
User Variable firstName and then type a
| | 01:25 | lowercase t. Let's take a look at what happens.
| | 01:29 | We'll preview this. Enter your first
name here, Tim, submit, and let me Pause
| | 01:43 | it, "Tim, this presentation will help
you to become better salesperson." So by
| | 01:49 | collecting a little bit of information
using the text entry field upfront, I've
| | 01:54 | been able to personalize this
presentation, and frankly, I can personalize it
| | 01:58 | all the way through.
| | 01:59 | Any information that you want to
collect about somebody on the first page or
| | 02:02 | even as you go through the presentation,
you can then dump that into a variable
| | 02:06 | and use it throughout the
rest of your presentation.
| | 02:08 | It's a very slick way to take a static
presentation with some static content,
| | 02:13 | and I don't mean that it doesn't move,
but non-changing content, and make it
| | 02:17 | data-driven content by collecting that data and
then using that data in the form of variables.
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| Using system variables| 00:00 | There is one more type of variable
that I want to show you how to use, and it
| | 00:04 | actually opens up a whole broad spectrum of
programming possibilities that Captivate offers.
| | 00:09 | I have referred to Captivate as Flash
for the rest of us. Well, there is some
| | 00:14 | Captivate for not all of us built into
the product. I'm going to touch on it
| | 00:18 | because it points to some capabilities
that Captivate has that go beyond what
| | 00:22 | this training series really is
designed to cover, but if you're interested in
| | 00:27 | learning about programming,
you can get started this way.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to select Project >
Actions, and instead of choosing the User
| | 00:34 | variable, which I have covered in the
previous lessons regarding variables, I'm
| | 00:37 | going to choose the System variable.
System variables come in a variety of
| | 00:42 | different flavors. These are all listed here.
| | 00:45 | To my knowledge, I haven't actually
been able to find any documentation that
| | 00:49 | covers each of these in detail. But
you can start to work with them, for
| | 00:52 | example, you can look at something
like CurrentDate, which will actually pick
| | 00:57 | up the date set on the user's computer.
If we scroll down, I'm going to choose
| | 01:02 | CurrentYear and note that it's the
current year as set on the user's computer.
| | 01:06 | So we'll click on Close.
| | 01:08 | To add a System variable, the same
process as adding a User variable.
| | 01:12 | I'll drag-select some text. I'm going to
insert a variable. I'm going to insert a
| | 01:16 | System variable. I'm going to choose
from among the System variables. So I'm
| | 01:19 | looking for that CurrentYear,
there it is. Click OK, and there we go.
| | 01:25 | Now it actually doesn't look good here
because the variable itself is a long
| | 01:30 | string. Not a problem, I can just go
ahead and preview this and we'll just
| | 01:35 | preview from this slide. You can see,
"Your guide to better selling in 2009."
| | 01:43 | Now obviously, it's easy to type 2009,
but, if you want to use this sales
| | 01:47 | presentation, for example, next year,
and you want to say, "Your guide to
| | 01:51 | better selling in 2010," you're not
going to have to go in and update every
| | 01:54 | single one of your slides in order to
update it for the New Year. It's sort of
| | 01:57 | like the problem that you have when
you start your checkbook out in the New
| | 01:59 | Year and you keep forgetting the actual year.
| | 02:01 | The other thing that I want to point
out that's sort of an advanced level
| | 02:04 | variables thing is that the variable
formatting here is something that you can
| | 02:07 | take direct advantage of. If you happen
to know that you have a variable called
| | 02:11 | year that you've created for yourself,
you can just go ahead and type it.
| | 02:15 | You don't actually have to insert
variables using the Insert Variables command.
| | 02:19 | It's a very convenient way to insert
variables, but this formatting is reserved
| | 02:23 | for variables. Anything that is between
two pairs of Dollar signs is understood
| | 02:29 | to be a variable. If you don't
actually have a variable for the variable that
| | 02:34 | you insert, Captivate will just
ignore it and present it as a string.
| | 02:43 | So it's not going to break, but it
means that you have to actually have a
| | 02:45 | variable there, in order to be able to
use it. System variables and your own
| | 02:50 | Custom variables are easy to create.
Captivate makes the process of beginning
| | 02:54 | to work with programming inside
Captivate a lot easier than starting from
| | 02:58 | scratch and having to hand-code in
order to create these kinds of effects.
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| Adding cool prebuilt features| 00:00 | Another interesting way to use
programming and variables and such with your
| | 00:04 | Captivate projects is to use Widgets.
There is a Widgets tool on the Object
| | 00:09 | toolbar. And what it allows me to do is
to leverage Flash and programming that
| | 00:13 | I can do there inside my Captivate project.
| | 00:16 | The Widgets aren't something you are
going to create directly in Captivate, but
| | 00:19 | you are going to leverage. And the
good news is that Captivate 4 ships with a
| | 00:23 | wide variety of widgets that you can use.
| | 00:25 | So the first Widget we are going to use,
we'll use here on slide 2, and it's a
| | 00:30 | very simple Widget. I'll select the
Widget tool from the Object toolbar and I'm
| | 00:35 | going to select a PieChart. And we'll
click Open. Right now, there is nothing
| | 00:40 | in here because the Widget Parameters
haven't been set so we'll go ahead and
| | 00:43 | set the parameters. And these are just
going to be the pie slices, so you need
| | 00:48 | to assign a value and there you have it.
| | 00:55 | So it's a basic PieChart and you can
update it as you need to. We'll scale it
| | 00:59 | down just a little bit to fit on our
slide. And then, if the value you should
| | 01:02 | change at some point. You can always
double click, select the Widget Parameters
| | 01:06 | and change them. So that's a simple
widget, but there are actually many of them
| | 01:11 | and some of them are pretty
robust. Let's take a look.
| | 01:13 | I am going to add in this case, the
JumbledWordQuestion Widget. Double-click on
| | 01:19 | this and all we need to do is type
the word to be jumbled. So we'll do
| | 01:24 | Captivate. Click OK. Notice that,
this widget actually added slides to your
| | 01:32 | presentation, for you, I didn't need to
put it on a particular slide, and this
| | 01:36 | is in the form of a quiz. So this is
the Jumbled Word Quiz. In fact, the quiz
| | 01:40 | actually has a Results slide.
| | 01:42 | Now, I'm going to go in here and under
the Quiz Preferences. I'm going to not
| | 01:49 | show the score at the end of the quiz,
for reasons that will become clear in
| | 01:53 | just a moment. But this is just a
standard jumble and we'll preview this.
| | 01:57 | Just so you can see how this one works.
So there you go. It's just a standard
| | 02:04 | jumble. I want to close this up,
because we'll complete the jumble in a moment,
| | 02:08 | because the last Widget that I want to add
is actually a quite robust and very useful.
| | 02:13 | Click on the Widgets tool here. We'll
go up a level and I'm going to choose the
| | 02:18 | Certificate widget, and there it is.
Click on Open. This Widget has a set of
| | 02:24 | parameters and I'm going to select them.
The only parameter that you actually
| | 02:27 | can type in here is the name of the
class, so this is Selling 101. But these
| | 02:34 | Instructions are pretty important.
| | 02:36 | The name of the user should be
collected in a Text Entry Box. That's what TEB
| | 02:41 | stands for there. And then the Validate
User checkbox should be turned off and
| | 02:45 | should be associated with a variable v_
Name. So I'm going to OK that, and we'll
| | 02:49 | return to the beginning slide of
this project, and I already set this up.
| | 02:53 | I've got a Text Entry Box here. Now
I'll double click on it, and under it's
| | 02:58 | Options, we'll turn off Validate user
input as per the instructions and then
| | 03:02 | under Advanced, we'll associate this
Text Entry Box with the variable v_Name.
| | 03:08 | Now if I choose the pull-down menu, it
isn't available there. But that's not a
| | 03:11 | problem because all I need to do is to
type it in. So lowercase v_Name and click OK.
| | 03:20 | Let's go ahead and preview this project
from the start. I'll Preview > Project.
| | 03:27 | Selling 101, I'll enter my name.
Click on Submit. Go to the next slide.
| | 03:34 | There is my PieChart widget. Here is my
JumbledWord Widget. We'll go ahead and
| | 03:39 | unscramble the word Captivate,
and I got it right. Excellent!
| | 03:52 | But now, when I go to the next slide,
it's their certificate from the widget
| | 03:55 | and look my name is in it, the course
name is in it. But also notice that I
| | 03:59 | have the Score and my Grade. So this
is acting as the score page for a quiz.
| | 04:05 | And if I'd had many, many questions in
the quiz, they would all contribute to
| | 04:09 | the score, just like any other score
page. And that's why I turned the Score
| | 04:12 | page off. That had been defaulted as on
in the Quiz Settings for this project.
| | 04:16 | Because this widget actually acts that way.
| | 04:19 | And I even had the ability to go ahead
and print. And if there were more slides
| | 04:22 | or an action that the quiz would take
for a pass, when I clicked on Next, it
| | 04:27 | would trigger that action. Let me
close this up and the one last thing that I
| | 04:31 | want to show you here, when I click
the Widget button, when you launch
| | 04:35 | Captivate for the first time. It's
automatically going to look into this
| | 04:38 | Widgets directory but in case, you
were using widgets that you had someone
| | 04:42 | create for you in Flash and you want it
to get back here, I just wanted to show
| | 04:45 | you the path to this widget's directory.
| | 04:48 | It's in the Gallery, which is found on
your C drive, in Program Files, there is
| | 04:52 | an Adobe folder and that Adobe Folder
contains among other things, the Adobe
| | 04:56 | Captivate folder. In the Adobe
Captivate folder, you'll find the Gallery, and
| | 05:01 | in there you'll find the Widgets folder.
And that's where you are going to find
| | 05:04 | all of these widgets and there are many
of them that you can use, including More.
| | 05:09 | And these are all of the different
things that you may find useful. They've
| | 05:12 | been created by professional
programmers at Adobe to give you these useful
| | 05:16 | widgets that you use. Now, there is
one last caveat that I want to throw on you.
| | 05:20 | Notice that's some of these are
the labeled with AS3, some of these are
| | 05:23 | not labeled with AS3. Again, that has
to do with the ActionScript setting or
| | 05:28 | the ActionScript level that they require.
| | 05:31 | The AS3 use the ActionScript 3.0, AS2
use ActionScript 2.0. Unfortunately, you
| | 05:36 | will not be able to use a mix of widgets.
If you are going to use ActionScript
| | 05:40 | 3.0 widgets, you can't use
ActionScript 2.0 widgets because, under the Edit >
| | 05:45 | Preferences menu, for your Project
Preferences under Publish Settings, you'll
| | 05:50 | choose your ActionScript version, and
this warning pretty much describes it.
| | 05:55 | ActionScript 2.0 animations may not play
as expected, if you select ActionScript 3.0.
| | 06:00 | And in my experience, the widgets are
ActionScript specific, meaning that if
| | 06:04 | you try to mix them and you are
using an ActionScript 3.0 movie,
| | 06:07 | the ActionScript 2.0 widgets just won't work.
So if you are having trouble getting
| | 06:10 | your widgets to work. Check here,
change it, and then you will just have to be
| | 06:14 | aware of it, if you have a mix of them,
you may not be able to use one or the
| | 06:18 | other, or both of them in the same program.
| | 06:20 | Other than that, the widgets are
really, really useful in their way to take
| | 06:23 | your project even a step further than
what you can do directly in Captivate.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, there you have it. Adobe
Captivate 4 Essential training. I hope you found
| | 00:04 | this information to be useful.
In sharing with you the experiences that I had
| | 00:08 | while creating this presentation, I've
tried to deliver those things that are
| | 00:12 | going to make it easier for you to
create very engaging interesting projects.
| | 00:16 | I hope you've enjoyed this as
much as I have enjoyed creating it.
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