Captain Captivate

Adobe Captivate 5 and eLearning Suite 2 Announced!

Posted on 04. May, 2010 by captivatehero.

Today Adobe announced the update to Adobe Captivate 5 and eLearning Suite 2. This is a detailed list of all the new features and my own commentary.  This release is defiantly a game changer for rapid eLearning development, and will really spice up my Captivate 5 training classes.

Captivate 5 New Features :

Optimized User Interface

• If you have been using any of the CS4/CS5 products then this new interface is going to feeling like home. You will be able to fully customize the layout of panels in Captivate 5 and save it out as your own custom Workspace. This is really going to help Captivate users who are working with multiple monitors. Also, the new Property Inspector will seem foreign to those of you who just use Captivate, but over time will become indispensable as you build your content. Finally, there is paste board/scratch area so you can have content off the screen, or partially on the screen. This is going to come in handy for introducing content with the new Animation Effects (see below).

Collaborate via Acrobat.com

• The integration of Captivate 5 and Acrobat.com will be a nice added benefit for anyone who can use the Acrobat.com service. Send Captivate review files to Acrobat.com for a Shared Review, and notify your team members with an e-mail blast right from Captivate 5. All of your files will be accessible to team members across the internet, and you will be able to track changes remotely.  You can post Captivate development files to Acrobat.com for backup or share them with a team member. With 5 gigabytes of storage for free - there is a lot of space to work with.

Rich Animation Effects

• Captivate 5 now has the ability to animate your objects using the new Effects panel. There are over 130 of pre-built animations that you can take advantage of by just choosing the effect from a menu and setting the timings. Multiple effects can played in sequence and some can even be played concurrently. One of my favorite effects is the motion path. You click on a small icon that appears in the lower right corner of your object and a motion path editor become enabled. This is a feature really should be put in Flash for aspiring animators. Now for you advanced Flash jockeys out there - you will be able to export your Motion XML files and use them as a Custom Effect. This is going to allow for the easy expansion of animation capabilities in Captivate 5.

Open Multiple Projects and New File Format

• You can now have multiple projects and Captivate Libraries open at the same time. Gone are the days of having multiple versions of Captivate open at the same time! Copy and paste assets between files with ease and drag and drop Library elements from different files. You will notice that there is a new file extension: .CPTX.

Object Styles

• Design Templates in Captivate are no more. They have been replaced with new Object Styles feature. You will now be able to select an object in Captivate 5 and format it visually with a default style or something that you whip up. Some formatting options of objects include Character, Text  Format, Fill & Stoke, and Transition.  Here is a big one: Quiz question elements can now set up with styles including the progress indicator.  Once you make a change to a Captivate Style it will easily propagate those changes throughout your entire Captivate development document. The Object Styles Manager panel will be intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it will prove to be one of the most powerful new features in this product.

Track & Report via Acrobat.com

• Attention all small and medium businesses… you now have a way to track your courses without a learning management system! This is all done by using the new Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer, or what I would like term ACQuRA - pronounced just like the car. All you need is an account to Acrobat.com and you are in business. When you set up reporting for your Captivate 5 files just pick Acrobat.com for eLearning reporting, and your student results are then written to the Acrobat.com cloud. The “ACQuRA” desktop application then kicks in an analyzes the files and will generate a report for you. Also, it has the ability to download to a file, export to .CSV, customize reports and hook up to external servers. This feature alone would sell me on an upgrade to Captivate 5. I can only imagine how many users are going to be praising Adobe for this functionality.

Multi-Video format Support

• With Captive 5 you will now be able to use FLV, F4V, AVI, MP4, MOV and 3GP for all your video needs.

Master Slides

• This feature is for all of you who have been saying to yourself, “I wish that Captivate had Master slides like PowerPoint.” Master slides in Captivate 5 allow you to add elements and set up a layout. You can have multiple Master slides in a project, and create new slides based upon a Master slide. Changes to a Master slide will update all slides based upon that Master. Using Master slides with Captivate Templates is going to be an amazing one-two punch for eLearning development.

Span & Synch Video

• This includes placing one video on a slide, or having your video span across multiple slides. The new Video Timing panel will give you precise control over when your video plays and the timing of other Captivate events. Another new feature is the ability to place video on the Table of Contents using the Video Timing Panel. Your TOC will slide down to reveal a video for the slide and then slide back up when the video is done playing.

Expanded Asset Library

• Get a larger set of prebuilt widgets, playbars, skins, stock animations, images, text captions, and buttons with superior aesthetics and usability.

Adobe Captivate Twitter Widget

• I have yet to use this widget so I really can’t say too much other than it’s going to be nice to have a hook into a social media site like Twitter. I would imagine that this will close feedback loops when students have comments on a course.

Enhanced Rich Media Support

• Better support for Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 animations.

Community Help

• There is a new Adobe AIR application that will search the Adobe help files and specific related sites that have a wealth of information. You can think of this as a hyper focused Google search with a nice interface. It’s nice to have an organized way tap into the user community for knowledge.

Enhanced Custom Widgets

• There’s a large amount of  new widgets that will expand the functionality of your courses. Some of them include: webcam access, volume control, external video link, timer, text area tied to a variable, custom caption, data table, slide numbering, quote of the day, print, podcast link, new playbar designs, help link, hangman game, send email, open web browser and ask the expert/send an email.

Macintosh Version

• Captivate 5 is now available for the Macintosh OS. Welcome Mac enthusiasts to the world of Captivate!

Screen Recording Workflow

• Brand new countdown and interface to start a recording. The quality of panning has increased, and there are other tweaks under the hood that are going to give you cleaner recordings.

Audio Recording/Editing Workflow

• There ’s a new audio recording window and edit window for you to take in. You have just about the same functionality as the previous version of Captivate, but this new interface will speed up your audio production. It’s going to be a breeze for those of you who add closed captioning.

eLearning Suite 2 New Features:

1. Round-tripping between Adobe Captivate 5 and Adobe Soundbooth CS5
2. Round-tripping between Adobe Captivate 5 and Adobe Flash Professional CS5
3. Round-tripping between Adobe Captivate 5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended
4. Multi-video support and Synchronization leveraging Adobe Media Encoder
5. Application capture in Adobe Flash Professional CS5
6. Domain-specific HTML templates
7. No LMS Required: Tracking and reporting of Learning outcomes
8. Optimized user interface of Adobe Captivate 5
9. Easy/ Enhanced Multi-Module SCORM / AICC LMS Integration

I’m really looking forward to these new products and all the options for creating amazing eLearning content.

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A New Direction

Posted on 10. Jan, 2010 by captivatehero.

Happy 2010!

Well it’s been awhile since my last post. I’m truly sorry that I have not been keeping up  - there’s a backlog of cool article ideas I can’t wait to share. I will get to them, but they will not be in written form. More on that in a bit.

Over the last three months there has been many changes happening with my company Lodestone Digital. For those of you who are not familiar with Lodestone - we operate Adobe Authorized Training Centers across the USA that focus on corporations, creative firms, government agencies and higher education. A majority of these classes are delivered in the classroom, and some are delivered via Lodestone Live - our online training offering. The way that we deliver courses is evolving, and that of course had my FULL attention.

There is a fundamental change happening in education fueled by a convergence of delivery technology, social media, and online video. This is at all levels K-12, higher ed, and professional adult classes. I have immersed myself over the past 3 months with this opportunity, and with my team at Lodestone have come up with a new training model that changes everything we do. Our focus has always been to empower you to be creative and have more fun with software  - now we have a new way of making it happen. You will see a lot more video from Lodestone on the web, and in this blog.

Lodestone will be making an announcement at the beginning of February that will spell everything out, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Josh

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Captivate 3 Wins Best Simulation Solution Award

Posted on 12. Jan, 2009 by captivatehero.

Recently Adobe Captivate 3 was named Best Simulation Solution in the 2008 “Best of Elearning!” awards competition. With all the other tools that are out in the marketplace - it’s good to see that Captivate still comes out on top. The Captain is still amazed each day how fast you can create demonstrations, guided practice and assessment simulations with Captivate. Obviously the voters thought the same thing.

Congratulations to the Adobe Captivate 3 development team, beta testers, and power users!

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Captain Captivate’s 2009 Goals

Posted on 09. Jan, 2009 by captivatehero.

Greetings fellow Captivate users!

The Captain was on hiatus the last few weeks, but now I’m back to supply you with all the Captivate knowledge you can handle. For readers of this blog - one thing you will notice is that it now has a nice, new design. This includes a Captain Captivate Twitter feed where I’ll be supplying quick tips for the day. If you would like to get these daily tips - just follow me on Twitter. In addition, there are new sections of the blog that will be filled with wonderful content - including training videos. Check out the video intro that will be part of these videos that you can preview.

Here are the Captain’s goals for 2009:

• Post meaningful training videos with great examples once per week
• Prepare you for Captivate 4 by reviewing new features
• Offer support materials including templates and training tips
• Come up with a killer slogan - for example - “By the power of Captivate!” or “Suffering Slidelets!”

As we move into 2009 - distance learning is going to accelerate with the reduction in training and travel budgets. To support this movement - the Captain is now offering online Captivate classes that you can take right at your own desk. Check out Lodestone Live for more information and class dates.

Thanks for hanging around the Captain’s blog!

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Captivate On-Site Class: Flextronics

Posted on 18. Oct, 2008 by captivatehero.

I just returned from a fantastic two day Captivate on-site class with Flextronics corporation in Denver, CO. There were students in from all over the country - Washington, Ohio, New Jersey and Illinois.

Denver is such an beautiful place - I can see why so many people migrate to the area. I was able to see the Rockies from the training room - now that’s what i call a view.

Here are some pictures from the training.

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Captivate Masters Week in Charlotte

Posted on 14. Oct, 2008 by captivatehero.

This past Friday was the last day of the Captivate Masters Week in Charlotte, NC. What an amazing class! There were students in from as far as Sweden, and India - and a great mix of corporations and higher education institutions. I want to thank all of my Captivate Masters for a great week, and I wish you all the best.

The next Captivate Masters week is scheduled for April 2009 in NYC. There are no firm dates yet, but I will post them when they become available. Here are a few pictures from last week:

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Adobe® eLearning Challenge

Posted on 29. Aug, 2008 by captivatehero.

Adobe recently announced the Adobe® eLearning Challenge.

As the tagline reads: “Show your Adobe eLearning skills and you could win attendance to the Adobe eLearning Summit in California and Adobe software!”

All you have to do is create a video, or sequence of images of your eLearning work and post it to the BrickFish website. There are numerous categories that you can win in including best video, best image, best blog, and most viral.

You can use any Adobe tool for your content creation - Captivate, Flash, Presenter, Connect, Dreamweaver, or even Director.  The contest is running until October 5, 2008.

Upload your best work to win!

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Captivate 4 Beta Announced!

Posted on 15. Aug, 2008 by captivatehero.

Today Adobe announced the upcoming Captivate Beta. This was mentioned on Silke’s blog and the The Adobe Captivate Blog.

Adobe is looking for Beta testers - so if you are interested check out prerelease interest form.

The Captain is currently working on the Alpha version and I can honestly say… nothing at the moment. (The Captian never spills the beans.)

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Adobe Announces Flex 3.0 and Air 1.0 – Why Should You Care?

Posted on 26. Feb, 2008 by captivatehero.

The Captain is excited about this one.

Adobe Flex has matured into a real development tool for all web based applications. It has had it’s bumps in road with version 1.0 and 2.0, but the Flex 3.0 release is just amazing.

Some of the features that I like:

• It is open source. Yup. There’s a Software Development Kit (SDK) ready for download. This will allow for full customization of the tool, and foster innovation.
• Smaller SWF files.
• Better Web Service integration.
• OpenType Font support. — Excellent.
• The ability to export Flex formats from other CS3 tools like Photoshop and Flash. Great Designer/Developer work flow item.

And finally – the ability to publish to AIR 1.0.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with AIR – just think of it as a rich internet application for your desktop. You will be able to run E-bay and Amazon– with better usability and improved functionality. Wow – image that.

Ok – so why should you care about AIR 1.0?

I know there is a tremendous movement right now towards eLearning content management systems (ECMS). With multiple delivery channels and mediums out there – it’s getting pretty darn tough to keep up with it all. So it’s inevitable that systems will be built to handle the massive quantities of training materials that need to be produced. So the vision here is that we will eventually have an ECMS on the back end that will feed into an AIR front end on the desktop.

I feel that Adobe AIR will be that technology that brings eLearning back to the desktop. Yes—I said it—back to the desktop. Can you imagine – PDF’s, Flash Movies, HTML, Video, Audio, etc. in a framework that actually makes sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if the LMS vendors are investigating it right now. Take a look at this eBay demonstration to see what I’m talking about:

You can download the application and try it yourself.
(Please keep in mind that to see this application run you will be asked to install the AIR client!)

It’s going to be awhile before we see anything to market, but my bet is on AIR bringing eLearning desktop delivery back.

Be prepared IT departments!

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Captain Captivate is Here

Posted on 24. Feb, 2008 by captivatehero.

Hello true believers of Adobe Captivate.

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