What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Captivate, introduces Captivate as an eLearning solution. It then drives you through the tool icons and panels of the Captivate interface. At the end of Chapter 1, we will view the finished sample applications that we will build during the course of the book.

Chapter 2, Capturing the Slides, tells how we will use the screen capture engine of Captivate to capture the slides of our movies. We will also discuss how to choose the right size for the projects we have to make.

Chapter 3, Working with Standard Objects, tells us how we will use the standard objects of Captivate to enhance the slide shots in the previous chapter. The standard objects discussed in this chapter are the Text Captions, the Highlight Boxes, the Images, and the Mouse movements.

Chapter 4, Working with Interactive Objects and Animations, introduces the objects that bring animation in the project. These objects are the Text Animation, the Animation, the Zoom Area, the Rollover Caption, the Rollover Image, and the Rollover Slidelet. At the end of the chapter, we will discover the three interactive objects of Captivate by converting a demonstration into a simulation.

Chapter 5, Working with Audio, tells how we can add sound effects on objects, voice-over narration on slides, and background music to the entire project. We will use the Text-To-Speech engine of Captivate to generate some of the needed audio clips, and we will add Closed Captions for enhanced accessibility.

Chapter 6, Final Changes and Publishing, in the first part of this chapter, we will make our projects ready for publishing by setting up the options valid for the entire project. One of these options is the Skin Editor that will let us customize the Playback Controls and the Table of Contents of our projects. In the second part of this chapter, we will make our projects available to the outside world by publishing them in various formats including Adobe Flash, HTML5, and PDF.

Chapter 7, Working with Quizzes, discusses the powerful quizzing Engine of Captivate. First, we will review each and every question type of Captivate one by one and see how we can integrate them into Question Pools to generate random quizzes. In the second part of this chapter, we will see how the interactions of the Quiz can be reported to a SCORM or AICC-compliant LMS for easy tracking of your student's performance.

Chapter 8, Templates, Master Slides, and Themes, focuses on the cosmetic part of the project. We will see what Themes are and how we can build our own Theme to ensure visual consistency both within a given project and across projects.

Chapter 9, Using Captivate with Other Applications, in this chapter, we will explore we will explore the relationship between Captivate and other Adobe and third-party applications. First, we will convert a PowerPoint presentation into a Captivate project. We will then export some Captivate data to Microsoft Word in order to localize a Captivate project. We will also import an Adobe Photoshop file and export the project to Adobe Flash.

Chapter 10, Reviewing a Captivate Project, tells how we will make the project available to a team of reviewers. The reviewers will then use the Adobe Captivate Reviewer to comment on our work. Finally, we will import the reviewer's comments into Captivate and address them one by one.

Chapter 11, Variables, Advanced Actions, and Widgets, tells us how to unleash the true power of Captivate. It discusses the Variables, the Advanced Actions, the Widgets, and the Smart Interactions. These features will help you design and develop highly interactive eLearning content that provides a unique experience to each and every learner.