The Coolest Adobe Captivate Tips on the Planet

1. The Coolest Adobe Captivate Tips on the Planet Joseph GancieLearning Joe Every time I teach Captivate, these are the tips that make my students cheer!

2. 1. Power: The Amazing Smart Shape Fill The Smart Shape Fill color contains a plethora of cool features. Plus, you can turn any Smart Shape into a button! Plus, you can put those buttons on Master Slides!

3. 2. Power: The Eyedropper You can use the eyedropper to grab the color from ANYWHERE on your computer screen, not just in Captivate!

4. 3. Power: Auto-adjust a Rollover Area Place a rollover over another object, then right-click it and choose Auto-adjust Rollover Area. Voilà!

5. 4. Time-Saver: Export/Import Captions When you export captions and closed captions to a Word document (yes, you can), not only can you change the text, you can also change font attributes!

6. 5. Power: Reveal Your Paths! Thank you to Lieve Weymeis for cluing me into this tip two years ago on her excellent blog at http://blog.lilybiri.com/ There’s a tiny screen element containing a number when you use path effects. The number indicates the number of path animations for the object. Clicking it will reveal the paths and let you change them!

7. 6. Time-Saver: Tabby Tabbing See the three objects below? There is an oval shape “hiding” under the parallelogram. Pressing Tab will let you jump between each object, including those underneath others, so you can change their properties, etc. It’s faster than hiding or moving the object on top. Tabs let you quickly jump between screen objects when editing.

8. 7. Power: Tabby Tabbing Captivate 7 has a Tab Order…buttonat the top of the Properties window. Click it, then set the order in which the Tab key can be used by learners to jump between interactive elements. You can set up the Tab Order for accessibility. Also know that you can stop the playbar options from being included in the tab by choosing Preferences > Project > Publish Settings and the option below.

9. 8. Power: Roll, Change, Play Audio • Place an image on the stage. • Place a rollover image on top, using an image of the same size and shape. • Add audio to the rollover image. • Done! …Do it with a simple rollover image…

10. 9. Time-Saver: The Mouse Wheel! Anytime you see a blue underlined value in the Properties window, you can quickly change the value by moving your cursor the value and using the mouse wheel. Don’t click! It also works on slider gauges! Try it on the Branching View gauge. It’s cool.

11. 10. Time-Saver: Autosizing On/Off Sometimes you want text captions and buttons to size themselves automatically to the text they contain. Other times, you don’t, for instance when you want all your buttons to be the same size regardless of the text they contain. Use Preferences > Defaults

12. 11. Time-Saver: Previewing Slides Preview the Next 5 Slides? What about the next 3 or maybe 8? Who are you to tell me it has to be 5, huh? Use Preferences > Defaults

13. 12. Time-Saver: Clone and Apply The Object Style Manager lets you clone styles, then change them. Poof! You have a new style, all your own!

14. 13. Power: Stream YouTube Videos One of the 25 built-in Interactions is called YouTube. It gives you a ton of options for embedding YouTube videos in your eLearning.

15. 14. Power: Insert Web Pages One of the 25 built-in Interactions is called Web Object. It lets you embed live websites in your eLearning.

16. 15. Time-Saver: Use the Managers There are plenty of management tools for making changes fast in Captivate. Speech Management Video Management AudioManagement Object Style Manager Question Pool Manager Advanced Interaction Library Preferences

17. 16. Time-Saver: PhotoShop Wonder Import a PhotoShop File and YOU Choose the Layers Each layer comes in a separate image!

18. 17. Time-Saver: Borrow from Other Files Import/Export Lots of Stuff with Other Files Import Export

19. 18. Power: Use System Variables There are 5 categories: Movie Control 15 variables that you can set to make things happen. Move Information 13 useful variables that you can query to decide what to do next. Movie Metadata 9 variables that reflect that you typed in File > Project Info. System Information 11 variables all related to dates and times that you can use. Quizzing 22 variables all related to quizzes.

20. 19. Power: Use User Variables You can create all the user variables you like! • This means you can keep track and use everything from: • A learner’s name • A learner’s score • A value you wish to define only once, such as the Lesson Title, then use it everywhere you wish. • Anything else you need!

21. 20. Power: Master Slide Variables Put user and system variables on Master Slides. They will automatically update. For instance, put the time of day on a Master Slide and it will update every second. Learners will see it on every slide that uses that Master Slide. Use it with Shape Buttons too! For instance, use a Smart Shape button that has the learner’s name in it.

22. 21. Power: Simple Actions Why limit yourself to jumping to slides? You have other options too! Look at all the options you have. Have a button play a sound or show something previously hidden. Note: when you choose most of these options, the timeline will continue playing.

23. 22. Power: Advanced Standard Actions A Standard Action lets you combine as many actions as you wish and name it. Let’s say we want the Mentor button to not only show Samantha but also play a greeting from her. An Advanced Action to the rescue! Note: when using an Advanced action, the timeline will NOT continue playing.

24. 23. Power: Advanced Conditional Actions A Conditional Action lets you set up a toggle. Let’s say that we let the learner turn the mentor on or off at any time. This takes just a little more effort. Create a user variable called hideShow. Set its default value to Show. Place a button or smart shape and enter the text $$hideShow$$ Mentor. Create a Conditional Advanced Action you see here and make sure the button or smart shape is set to execute it.

25. 24. Power: Advanced Conditional Actions A Conditional Action lets you set up choices. Let’s say that we let the learner choose from four mentors and thereafter we show the mentor they chose. Create a variable called mentor. Place the four mentor images and names on the screen and put a click box or transparent button over each. Set the Action for each to Assign the mentor’s name to the variable mentor. The button or click box will go to the next slide. On the next slide place the four mentor images in one corner of the screen, one on top of the other. Set the properties for each to not be Visible and set the Timing as shown at right. On the same slide set up the On Enter action to an Advanced Action that you will create. Call it setMentor. Set the setMentor Advanced Action as follows.

26. 25. Power: Shared Actions Create an action once, reuse at will. Shared Actions let you take an action you have created and reuse it within the same file or any other Captivate file. Any actions that point to specific objects or variables, such as Assign, Show and Hide, will prompt you for the proper parameter when you reuse the shared action. Example: Play the right greeting This advanced action, called playGreeting, when called from a slide On Enter action, will play either Good Morning, Good Afternoon, or Good Evening, depending on the time of day. 1st Condition, morning: If cpInfoCurrentHour is less than 12 Play Audio Good Morning.mp3 2nd Condition, afternoon: If cpInfoCurrentHour is greater or equal to 12 AND cpInfoCurrentHour is less than 18 Play Audio Good Afternoon.mp3 3rd Condition, evening: If cpInfoCurrentHour is greater or equal to 8 Play Audio Good Evening.mp3 When you want to use the shared action, you choose it as a template for a new action. You will be prompted to fill in any element that you had to describe earlier. Right-click the shared action in the library and Export it to a file. It will get the extension .cpaa. Save it as a shared action and fill out the description fields. You can then import it in other files or reuse it in the same file.

27. For questions on eLearning and authoring tools, write me at joe@elearningjoe.com. www.elearningjoe.com 27