Publishing the project in various formats using Adobe Captivate 6

In this article by Damien Bruyndonckx, author of Mastering Adobe Captivate 6, we will focus on making the project available to the outside world by publishing it in various formats.

Publishing the movie is the process by which we make our Captivate projects available to the outside world. Most of the time, we'll publish our movies in the Adobe Flash format or in the HTML5 format so that any student can enjoy the content of our online course across devices. However, Captivate can also publish the movie in many other formats

Publishing

So far, we have been working in a .cptx file, which is the default native file type of Captivate. The .cptx file format is great when creating and designing our projects, but it has two major disadvantages:

• It can become very large. Consequently, it is diffcult for us to upload the file on a website and for the student to download and view it.
• Opening a .cptx file requires Captivate to be installed on the computer system.

Publishing a Captivate movie is converting (the proper word is Compiling) the .cptx file to a format that can be easily downloaded and viewed by our students. The primary format to publish our projects is the .swf format . swf (pronounced swif) stands for ShockWave Flash. It is the file format used by the free Adobe Flash player plugin installed in more than 98 percent of the computers connected to the Internet. It has two advantages as compared to the .cptx file:

• A .swf file is usually much lighter than its .cptx counterpart, making it much easier to upload and download across the Internet.
• Any browser equipped with the free Adobe Flash plugin is able to open and play the .swf file. This makes it incredibly easy to deploy our Captivate courses.

That being said, the .swf format has some major disadvantages:

• It requires the Adobe Flash Player plugin to be installed. If, for whatever reason, the plugin is not available, the .swf file cannot be played back.
• There is no more Flash Player plugin available for mobile devices. Consequently, a .swf file cannot be played back on a Smartphone or on a Tablet.

That's why other publishing formats are available in Captivate. In Captivate 6, the most effective alternative to the .swf format is to publish the project in HTML5. When published to HTML5, the project can be played back in any modern browser without the need for an extra plugin. HTML5-enabled projects can also be played back on mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch! HTML5 also has its caveats. At the time of this writing, (June 2012) HTML5 is still under development. Consequently, some features of Captivate are not yet supported in HTML5.

In this article, we will explore and discuss the various publishing options at our disposal in Captivate.

Putting Sakai to Work

Sakai is an open source, web-based, collaboration learning environment (CLE) that is focused primarily on higher education. It supports the activities of students, teachers, researchers, and Sakai administrators. Sakai is flexible and enables users to configure it for their own specialized audiences. Sakai is mainly a courseware management platform that provides users with learning, portfolio, library, and project tools. It is flexible by design and has a set of frameworks (internal structures) that makes it easier for those who want to build tools. In this article by Alan Mark Berg and Michael Korcuska, we will discuss how to use Sakai tools in combination to create a better online learning experience.

Python 3: Building a Wiki Application

Building your own Python web applications provides you with the opportunity to have great functionality, with no restrictions. However, creating web applications with Python is not straightforward. Coupled with learning a new skill of developing web applications, you would normally have to learn how to work with a framework as well.

In this article by Michel Anders, author of Python 3 Web Development Beginner's Guide, we will:

• Implement a data layer for a wiki application
• Implement a delivery layer
• Take a good look at input validation
• Encounter jQuery UI's dialog widget

Python 3: Object-Oriented Design

In software development, design is often considered the step done before programming. This isn't true; in reality, analysis, programming, and design tend to overlap, combine, and interweave. In this article by Dusty Phillips, author of Python 3 Object Oriented Programming, we will learn:

• What object-oriented means
• The difference between object-oriented design and object-oriented programming
• The basic principles of object-oriented design
• Basic Unified Modeling Language and when it isn't evil

Python Books from Packt

This holiday season, Packt is pleased to announce that it is offering any 5 Open Source eBooks of your choice for only $40 / £25 / €30.

Python Data Persistence using MySQL

Among other merits, Python is an ideal language for writing server-side scripts, allowing you to integrate interactive behavior with HTML. Persisting dynamic content to an underlying database is fairly straightforward. By installing an appropriate Python DB module, you get the ability to interact with the database of choice from within Python code, moving your application data in and out of the underlying persistent store.

This article by Yuli Vasiliev will walk you through the process of building a simple Python application that interacts with a MySQL database. In a nutshell, the application picks up some live data from a web site and then persists it to an underlying MySQL database.

Python Data Persistence using MySQL Part III: Building Python Data Structures Upon the Underlying Database Data

This article, the third one in the Python Data Persistence using MySQL series by Yuli Vasiliev, discusses how you can implement Python data structures representing data structures stored in the underlying database and then manipulate those data structures on the Python side.

Python Graphics: Combining Raster and Vector Pictures

Vector graphics can be shrunk and expanded to any size and in any direction using simple algebra. They can be animated with rotations using basic trigonometry. Raster graphics are limited. They cannot be resized or rotated dynamically while the code is executing. They are more cumbersome. However, we can get tremendous effects when we combine both vector and raster graphics together. The one thing that Python cannot do is to rotate a GIF image by itself. There are ways of mimicking rotation reasonably but there are limitations you will appreciate after trying out some of these recipes. PIL can rotate them, but not dynamically on a Tkinter canvas. We explore some possibilities and workarounds here.

In this article by Mike Ohlson de Fine, author of Python 2.6 Graphics Cookbook, we will cover:

• Simple animation of a GIF beach ball
• The vector walking creature
• Bird with shoes walking in the karroo
• Making a partially transparent image with GIMP
• Diplomat walking at the palace
• Spider in the forest
• Moving band of images
• Continuous band of images
• Endless background – a passing cloudscape

Python LDAP Applications: Part 1 - Installing and Configuring the Python-LDAP Library and Binding to an LDAP Directory

This article mini-series by Matt Butcher will look at the Python application programmers interface (API) for the LDAP libraries, and using this API, we will connect to our OpenLDAP server and manipulate the directory information tree. More specifically, we will cover the following in this article series:

• Installing and configuring the Python-LDAP library.
• Binding to an LDAP directory.
• Comparing attributes between the client and server.
• Performing searches on the directory.
• Modifying the directory information tree with add, delete, and modify operations.
• Modifying directory passwords.
• Working with LDAP schemas.

This first part will deal with installation and configuration of the Python-LDAP library. We will then see how the binding operation is performed.