When starting a new eLearning project, you may be tempted to jump right into Captivate and start adding slides to your course. You learned in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Adobe Captivate, that it is important to extensively research the topic and design the pedagogical approach of your course before beginning to work in Adobe Captivate. Starting your course without this preparation can waste a lot of your time later on. We cannot stress this enough. Captivate is a tool for teaching things to people. It helps you with the craft of teaching, but not with the art of teaching.

As this book is designed to teach you how to use Adobe Captivate, we have done all the important research and pre-production work for you. This will allow you to concentrate on the ins and outs of Captivate itself.

When you open Adobe Captivate 2019 for the first time, the following welcome screen appears:

If this is not the first time you're opening Captivate, you will ...

Choosing the right size for your project is the first critical decision you have to make. And you have to make it right because the size of the project plays a critical role in the quality of the student's experience when viewing the project.

Even though it is possible to resize a Captivate project later, you want to avoid doing that as the resize operation always results in a loss of quality. Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing the right size for your project:

• Where will the project be viewed? If your Captivate module will be deployed on an intranet site and be viewed mostly on a desktop computer, you can safely create a somewhat larger project. If your project will be viewed mainly on tablet devices or smartphones, you should consider a smaller size, or a responsive project.
• The website where your course will be published probably has its own elements to display (logos, links, footer elements, sidebars, and so on), leaving less space...

Now that you've started your takeTheTrain project, your next task is to apply a theme. The theme determines the look of the Captivate project. It brings a set of styles and a set of predefined Master Slides to use and reuse throughout your course development.

Captivate includes many predefined themes that you can apply to your projects. While these themes are a great way to jump-start your next project, you will probably design and develop your own customized themes. This is what we have done for this project. Later in this book, you will learn how the custom theme we are using was made. But for now, let's focus on applying it to the project:

1. With the new project open, click the Themes icon on the toolbar.
2. Click the Browse link in the bottom-left corner of the theme chooser.
3. In the Chapter02 folder of the exercise files, select the takeTheTrain_Theme.cptm file. (Note that a theme uses a .cptm file extension, while a regular Captivate project...

The Title Master Slide you just applied to the first slide of the project contains many objects. Some of these, such as the blue circle on the right of the slide, the blue lines stretching across the slide, or the image background, are aesthetic elements. Other objects define the placement and formatting of your content.

These objects are placeholder objects. Your next task is to add text in the two placeholders of the slide:

1. Double-click the title placeholder
2. Write Take the train ! into the placeholder
3. Double-click the subtitle placeholder
4. Write A guide to the best way of moving around in Belgium ! into the placeholder
5. Click anywhere on the slide or press the Esc key to complete your edits

Using Master Slides and placeholders makes it fast and easy to develop your eLearning content. It also ensures that the look and feel of your slides and objects are consistent within the file and across projects.

Now that the first slide of the project is finished, your next task is to add a second slide and apply the appropriate Master Slide:

1. Click the Slides icon, which is the first icon on the toolbar
2. Click Content Slide
3. In the Properties inspector, open the Master Slide list
4. Apply the Title&text Master Slide to your new slide

The Title&text Master Slide has a big rectangle that defines the content area of this slide. It also contains two placeholder objects that you will fill with text using these steps.

5. Double-click the title placeholder
6. Type Reading the schedule in the title placeholder
7. Double-click the caption text placeholder
8. Type Click the Next button to explore the various components of the schedule into the placeholder
9. Click anywhere on the slide or hit the Esc key to finish editing

Your new slide should now look like the following screenshot:

The Properties inspector is one of the most important and most widely used tools in Captivate. In this section, you will study the Properties inspector in more detail. When you first open Adobe Captivate, the Properties inspector is hidden by default. To turn it on, perform the following steps:

1. Click several times on the Properties icon situated in the top-right corner of the toolbar to toggle the Properties inspector on and off.
2. Make sure that the Properties inspector is turned off before moving to the next step.
3. In the Filmstrip, double-click any slide. This also opens the Properties inspector.

In Captivate, double-clicking an object opens the Properties inspector and displays the properties for that object. Double-clicking anywhere on the scrap area around the stage is yet another way to open the Properties inspector.

The Properties and Library icons on the Toolbar are used to toggle the corresponding panels on and off. Make sure the Properties...

Captivate supports more than a dozen objects. In this section, you will learn about standard non-interactive objects of Captivate. Later in this book, more complex objects will be covered.

The Text Caption is typically used to display text on the screen. In its most basic form, the Text Caption is a text item that appears and disappears from the screen according to its position on the Timeline. On the second slide of your project, the bottom text area is a Text Caption. Let's select it and examine what you can do with it.

There are two editing modes available when working with Text Captions:

• First, you can consider the Text Caption as an object. In this case, eight white squares appear around the Text Caption. These white squares are the handles used to resize the Text Caption. In this mode, you can move the Text Caption around and resize it, but you cannot edit the text inside the Text Caption.
• To edit the text, you must be in text-editing mode. In text editing mode, the eight white handles disappear and a blinking cursor appears in the Text Caption.

To switch from object mode to text-editing mode, double-click the Text Caption...

The Text Caption you just worked with was created by adding text in a placeholder from the Master Slide. You will now create and modify a brand new Text Caption:

1.  Still on slide 2, click the Text icon on the toolbar and select the Text Caption item.
2. Type Click Continue when done. into the new Text Caption.
3. Hit the Esc key to leave text-editing mode. The new Text Caption should still be selected.

When adding a new Text Caption, note the following:

• By default, the new Text Caption is inserted in the middle of the slide. In fact, this is the case every time you add any new object on a slide, regardless of it being a Text Caption or anything else.
• By default, the Text Caption is in text editing mode, allowing you to type in text right after inserting the object.

In Captivate, resizing and moving an object is very easy and can be done in two different ways, namely, using the white handles, or using the Options tab of the Properties inspector:

1. While still on the second slide of your project, use the resize handles to adjust the Text Caption so that the text you just typed fits into a single line.
2. Open the Options tab of the Properties inspector.

The Options tab contains properties that control the size and position of the selected object. W indicates the width of the object, while H stands for the height. Both dimensions are expressed in pixels:

3. On the stage, use the white handles to make the Text Caption a bit bigger.
4. Take another look at the Properties inspector. The height and width fields of the Options tab reflect the new size of the object.

If you want to give your objects a specific size, you can enter the height and width in the Properties inspector directly. If the Constrain proportions checkbox is...

You will now examine some of the formatting capabilities of the Text Caption object. To do so, make sure that the Text Caption you just inserted is selected before performing the following steps:

1. If necessary, open the Properties inspector by clicking the Properties icon on the toolbar.
2. In the Style tab of the Properties inspector, open the Caption Type drop-down list and choose Adobe Green.
3. Directly under the Caption Type drop-down list, experiment with the five Callout Type options.
4. Open the Caption Type drop-down list again and choose the Transparent item at the top of the list.
5. Experiment with the other properties. For example, change the color of the text, the font family, or the size.
6. When you are done, click the small menu icon just above the Style Name drop-down list and choose Reset Style, as shown in the following screenshot:

Your last action resets the Text Caption to its default formatting. In Chapter 6, Crafting the Graphical Experience...

Smart Shapes are a predefined collection of shapes, including rectangles, circles, banners, stars, arrows, and many more. Before working with Smart Shapes, let's add another slide to the project using the following steps:

1. In Filmstrip, select the first slide of the project
2. Click the Slides icon, which is the first icon on the toolbar
3. Click the Content Slide icon
4. With the new slide selected, use the Properties inspector to apply the contentBkg Master Slide to the new slide

Note that Captivate adds a new slide after the currently selected slide. In this case, Captivate has added the new slide as slide 2 because slide 1 was selected when you added the new slide. It not possible to insert a slide at the very beginning of a project. To place a slide at the beginning of a project, drag and drop slides in the Filmstrip panel.

You will now draw a simple rounded rectangle Smart Shape via the following steps:

1. Make sure that you are on the newly-created slide 2.
2. Click the Shapes icon on the toolbar. Take some time to examine the list of available shapes.
3. Click the rounded rectangle shape in the Basic section of the list of shapes.
4. Click and drag your mouse on the stage to draw a rounded rectangle shape in the top-right corner of the content area of the slide. Resize and move the shape as necessary.

In the top-left corner of the shape, you'll see a yellow handle in addition to the eight white handles that surround the shape. This yellow handle is one of the features that make a Smart Shape...smart. It is used to modify the shape. In this case, the yellow handle will adjust the roundness of the rectangle. Other Smart Shapes might display multiple yellow handles, allowing you to customize multiple aspects of the selected shape. The number of yellow handles actually depends on...

As you might expect, you use the Properties inspector of Captivate to format your Smart Shapes. In this section, you will discover the main formatting properties of the Smart Shapes object via the following steps:

1. On slide 2 of the Chapter02/takeTheTrain.cptx project, select the rounded rectangle shape.
2. Look at the Style tab of the Properties inspector.
3. In the Fill section, open the Solid drop-down menu.

This menu is one of the many reasons why I love Smart Shapes: because it offers you so many possibilities. Let's review these options one by one:

• Solid Fill: This is the default value. It allows you to define a single solid color as the background of your Smart Shape. Simply use the Fill property next to the drop-down menu you just opened to choose a color with the color picker.
• Gradient fill: This lets you arrange two or more colors in a gradient. This capability is unique to the Smart Shape object. The gradient editor is very similar to the one found...

In addition to predefined shapes, Captivate allows you to draw your own Smart Shapes and save them for later use. In the following exercise, you will experiment with this feature hands-on, via the following steps:

1. In slide 2 of the Chapter02/takeTheTrain.cptx project, click the Shapes icon on the toolbar to open the Smart Shapes menu.
2. Choose the Polygon tool in the Smart Shapes menu. It is the line that ends with a star at the top of the menu. With the Polygon tool selected, the mouse pointer turns into a crosshair.
3. Click anywhere on the slide where you want the first point of the Polygon to be located.
4. Click a second time at another location to create a second point. Captivate automatically connects the two points with a dotted line.
5. Use the same technique to add other points to the shape.
6. To close the shape, click a second time on the first point you created. Captivate displays a small circle next to the mouse pointer to indicate that the shape can be...

A Smart Shape is a vector object similar to those you can draw with Adobe Illustrator. To create these shapes, designers use the Pen tool of Illustrator to draw Bezier points and Bezier curves. Even though Captivate is not equipped with a full-fledged pen tool, you can, however, access these Bezier points and modify your shape via the following steps:

1. Right-click the shape you created and choose the Edit Points item in the contextual menu. This action reveals the points that you defined when you created the polygon.
2. Move those points to modify the shape. You can also move the green handles to modify the curvature of the connecting lines, as shown in the next screenshot.
3. When you are happy with the shape, hit the Esc key on your keyboard to leave the point-editing mode and to select the shape.

Note that you can only move the existing points or modify their curvature; you cannot add or remove points to or from the shape:

Captivate gives you the ability to save your custom shapes and add them to the list of predefined shapes. In this exercise, you will save your custom shape and insert a second instance of it via the following steps:

1. In slide 2 of your project, make sure that your custom shape is selected (with white selection handles around it).
2. Locate the Custom section at the very top of the Style tab in the Properties inspector.
3. Click the icon in the top-right corner of the Custom section and choose the Save Shape item, as shown in the following screenshot:

4. Type myShape into the Rename Item dialog and click OK to save your custom shape.

By saving your custom shape, you make it a part of the collection of predefined shapes, so you can reuse it in the future. Perform the following step to draw a second instance of the same shape.

5. Click the Shapes icon on the toolbar to open the Smart Shapes panel.

Note that your new shape is present in the Recently Used Shapes section at...

The awesomeness of Smart Shapes does not end here! In this exercise, you will add text inside a Smart Shape. This means that you can create an entire project without ever using Text Captions. You likely will still use Text Captions though, because they are so quick and easy to create. However, most of the time, you will probably only use the transparent Caption Type. For all your other text needs, the Smart Shape object gives you much more power, flexibility, and opportunities to be creative.

On slide 2, select the rounded rectangle Smart Shape:

1. In the Properties inspector, the Style tab should contain four sections: the Basic section at the top, the Fill and Stroke sections, and a collapsible Shadow and Reflection section at the bottom. This is shown in the following screenshot:

2. Double-click the rounded rectangle. This action brings a blinking cursor in the middle of the shape.
3. Type Liege Guillemins inside the Smart Shape. When done, use the Esc key...

Currently, you have a single rounded rectangle Smart Shape on your slide. However, you need three of those on this slide, and they should all look the same.

Instead of drawing two brand new Smart Shapes, you will build on what you've already created by duplicating the existing rounded rectangle and changing the text. Follow these steps:

1. Select the rounded rectangle Smart Shape.
2. Use the Ctrl + D (Windows) or command + D (Mac) shortcut to duplicate the existing shape.
3. Double-click the newly created shape and replace the text with Bruxelles - Midi.
4. Hit the Esc key to leave text-editing mode, while keeping the Smart Shape selected.
5. Repeat the procedure to create a third shape. Write Oostende in the third Smart Shape.
6. Arrange your Smart Shapes so that the slide looks like the following screenshot:

In this extra credit section, you will draw two additional Smart Shapes on your slide. This will give you the opportunity to experiment with another predefined shape. Follow these steps to draw two arrows pointing downward between the rounded rectangles:

• Make sure you are still on the second slide of your new Captivate project.
• Click the Shapes icon on the toolbar to open the list of available shapes.
• In the Arrows section, click the downward-arrow shape.
• Draw a downward-pointing arrow between the first two rounded rectangles.
• With the new arrow selected, experiment with the yellow square to see how it affects the shape of the arrow.
• When the arrow has the desired shape, move it into place. Use the green dotted Smart Guides to align the objects accurately.
• With the new arrow selected, open the Style Name drop-down list of the Properties inspector and apply the shape_As_HB style to the selected arrow. This style is part of the theme...

Captivate lets you insert various types of images on any slide. Once an image is inserted, you can modify and format it using the image-editing tools of Captivate.

Keep in mind, though, that Captivate is not an image-editing application. To guarantee the best possible results, you should always prepare your images in a dedicated image-editing application, such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, before inserting the image into Captivate. However, if you don't have access to these programs, you can do basic image editing inside Captivate.

Your first task of this chapter is to insert an image on a slide.

Adding images to your project is simple to do in Captivate, and is similar to what is found in other applications. Follow these steps to insert an image into a slide:

1. Make sure that you are still on the second slide of your Captivate project
2. Click the Media | Image icon on the Toolbar.
3. Navigate to the Chapter02/ folder of your exercise...

Now that you have inserted an image in the project, you will explore some of the image editing tools available in Captivate:

1. Make sure that the newly imported image is selected, and take a look at the Style tab of the Properties inspector.
2. Click the Edit Image button.

This action opens a dialog showing the image on the left and a set of control sliders on the right.

3. Move the sliders to see how each affects the image.
4. When done, click the Reset All button in the bottom-right corner of the dialog.
5. Take some time to inspect the other controls available in the dialog. Note that the image can also be flipped, resized, and cropped.
6. Click Cancel to close the dialog without saving the changes.

These image editing capabilities are a great convenience to fine-tune the images you insert in Captivate. However, let's reiterate the fact that these tools are not meant to replace actual image-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe...

Inserting images into existing slides is one of the many possibilities offered by Captivate. Another nice feature is the ability to create a new slide with an image as the background. In this project, you don't need to use this feature because all the slide layouts you need are included in the theme that you applied to your project earlier in this chapter.

But if you want to use an image as the background of a slide, here is the general process:

1. Use an external image editing application (such as Adobe Photoshop) to prepare an image with the same size as your project.
2. Use the Insert | Image Slide menu item and select an image on your computer.
3. A new slide is inserted after the selected slide. This new slide uses your picture as its background.

Even though the use of themes and Master Slides is a much better way of creating reusable slide layouts, the ability to create a new slide based on an image is a nice little feature of Captivate that is worth mentioning...

Characters are a collection of images that can be inserted in your Captivate projects. These images represent male and female characters in various postures and expressions. Inserting these in your eLearning projects brings in a human and sometimes humorous touch.

You will now create a new slide and insert a Character image using the following steps:

1. In the Filmstrip, select the first slide of your project...

The image files you have been working with so far in this section are all bitmap images. This means that they contain pixels. Each pixel is a tiny little dot of a certain color, and it is the collection of all these tiny little colored dots that recreates the picture as you see it.

Bitmap images are great, but they have one important limitation. To guarantee the best possible image quality, you must consider that a bitmap image is designed for a specific size. You should use an external application (such as Adobe Photoshop) to generate the image. Ideally, you should not resize the image after you insert it in Captivate.

The Text Effects feature lets you create and apply some sophisticated visual effects to the Text Captions and Smart Shapes containing text. If you are a Photoshop user, you'll be in familiar territory because Captivate's Text Effects feature shares most of its functionalities with the effects of Photoshop.

Follow these steps to experiment with Text Effects:

1. Return to slide 2 of the Chapter02/takeTheTrain.cptx file.
2. Double-click the Title placeholder and type Jan as the title text.
3. Double-click the Text Caption placeholder and type in the following text (hitting the Enter key after each line of text):

Nationality : Belgian
Lives in : Brussels
Occupation : Student
Takes the train : Everyday!

4. Hit the Esc key to leave text-editing mode and leave the Text Caption object selected.
5. Reduce the height of the Text Caption so that it takes approximately half the available space.
6. Select the title Smart Shape.

Now that you have some text on the slide, you can...

In this chapter, you learned a lot about the standard non-interactive objects of Captivate. Although very simple to use, these objects are the fundamental building blocks of every single eLearning project that you will build with Adobe Captivate.

Among the objects you studied in this chapter, one of them stands out. The Smart Shape object lets you draw custom or predefined shapes in your project. These shapes can be used in such a wide variety of situations that they can advantageously replace the Text Caption object in most situations.

Another important object is the Image object. You have learned that there are two very different types of images. Bitmap images contain a fixed number of pixels and are therefore designed for a predefined size. SVG images contain vector paths and shapes used by the computer to regenerate the picture each time its size changes. SVG images are therefore resolution-independent and very lightweight.

Now, let's be honest. You are not there yet...

In this section, we would like to introduce you to Anita Horsley, one of the most active members of the Captivate community and an awesome Captivate Certified Instructor. She authored the Fast Track to Adobe Captivate 6 video series by Packt Publishing (see http://www.packtpub.com/fast-track-to-adobe-captivate-6/video).

Anita has been a reviewer for two of my previous Captivate books. We finally met in October 2014 during the Adobe Learning Summit in Las Vegas. I was completely jet-lagged from the trip, but Anita was kind enough to offer me a gigantic cup of coffee!

I have had the privilege of co-presenting with Anita at various conferences in the past few years, and she is a delight to work with. She always comes up with fantastic ideas to present content during the sessions. My daughter is very fond of Anita and wants to be a firefighter like Anita one day!

During Anita Horsley's tenure as a firefighter, she initiated, developed, and managed the health and safety program. At the Oregon State Fire Marshal, she founded the eLearning track and also implemented and coordinated the eLearning team and internal training. She managed the learning management system and chaired the Oregon State Captivate User Group. She currently works for Connect 4 Education Innovative Services as the Director of Training and Development. She is the founder and President of CALEX Learning Consultants, LLC. In addition to this, she continues to develop and teach Captivate, and often presents at conferences nationally. She authored the video tutorial series Fast Track To Adobe Captivate 6 by Packt Publishing. She also has a blog named Crazy About Captivate, which provides tips and tricks on Adobe Captivate. She holds a Master's in Education, an Adobe Certified Expert in Captivate, and is an Adobe Captivate instructor.

• Website: https://c4eis.com/
• Personal website: http://calex-llc.com
• Blog: http://captivatecrazy.blogspot.com
• Twitter: @captivatecrazy
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