Welcome to my Captivate and eLearning Blog!

Over the years I have developed a love/hate relationship with Captivate,  but all in all it is one of the best products for creating eLearning content around today. It also has multiple bugs and annoyances, but most of them can be worked around. In this blog I will share tips and tricks to make your eLearning production faster, easier and a lot more effective. 

Please feel free to use the material you may find in this blog and feel free to contact me if you need help or advice, or wish to share information, tips and tricks with the eLearning community!

Navigation Bar Widget

Here’s a navigation bar widget you can overlay on your Captivate projects when you do not wish to use the playbar from the skin.

Note that the scrollbar is switched off - that is, it displays how much you have completed, but the bar cannot be scrubbed. Also, the Forward button only lets you advance up to the last slide you have viewed. This is great for reviewing sections without allowing people to skip ahead.

To use the widget, download it to your machine. In your Captivate project, first slide, select Insert Widget. Browse to the widget and insert it. Set it to display for the rest of the project. The background of the widget is transparent, set a box of the desired color behind it. And remember to swith off the captivate skinning or you’ll have two playback bars!

Download wbar.rar

Mute that Audio!

If you need to programatically mute/unmute the audio in a Captivate Widget, use varHand to reference the Captivate variables as usual, and be aware that the correct variable in Captivate 4 is now called:

cpCmndMute

(in previous versions we used rdcmndMute)

So, to mute the audio, use

varHand.cpCmndMute = 1;

To unmute, use:

varHand.cpCmndMute = 0;

Progressbar widget

Ever had a Captivate movie playing without the scrollbar part of the navigation bar so as not to allow scrolling the content, but would like to display the progress made by the learner? Here is a progress widget you can insert in your Captivate presentation. Add it by using Insert –> Widget and set the timing to visible for the rest of the project. The progressbar is an Actionscript 2 progressbar component from Flash. Let me know if you would like the source code FLA. It is basically just a couple of lines, using the following update line:

progressbar.setProgress(varHand.rdinfoCurrentFrame, varHand.rdinfoFrameCount);

Remember varHand identifies the level in Captivate where you have the system variables in the widget.

progress.swf

Overlaying the control bar in Captivate 4

If you were used to Captivate 3 where the control bar could be placed above your content window, this is no longer possible in Captivate 4. The bar is always added outside movie boundaries. I will be posting a custom bar widget which you can overlay directly on your content. Keep connected!