September Morning Workshop:
Adobe Captivate 2 – Tricks with Advanced Features

Captivate wasn’t the first tool that let us create on-screen movies showing how to use a piece of software. That honor goes to Lotus® ScreenCam® in 1993, then Qarbon™ ViewletBuilder™ in the late 1990s. But Captivate has become a standard tool for creating such movies because it’s cheaper than mainstream eLearning tools and a lot faster and easier to learn and use.

If you’re self-taught on Captivate, there may be some uses for it or features that may not have occurred to you. Or you may be finding some features that might be useful but are not clearly explained. This workshop will look at some of those advanced and hidden features and give you hands-on practice with them. Rather than being a random collection of tips and tricks, the workshop is structured into three areas:

• Taking Captivate beyond software movies by creating role-playing simulations.
• Customizing the output by using the skin editor and modifying the auto-caption text feature.
• Working with audio and closed captioning.

Important: You will need a laptop and software for this hands-on workshop!

This workshop is intensive and heavily hands-on. It assumes you have either taken a course in Captivate basics or are self-taught and experienced. Neil can answer some basic questions during the workshop but will not have much time to do so. If you’re unsure about whether you have the background for this workshop, contact Neil at nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net or 978-657-5464.

The workshop covers Captivate 2 rather than Captivate 3 because Captivate 3 will only have been out for about a month, and some attendees may not have upgraded yet. Neil will discuss the major changes in version three.

Attendees must bring a laptop with the following hardware configuration:

• Pentium III 600 MHz or (preferably) higher
• 512 Mb RAM or (preferably) higher
• 100 Mb or more of free disk space
• A screen resolution of at least 800 x 600, preferably 1024 x 768
• A sound card and a headset with a boom mike (preferably), or speakers and a mike
• A CD drive or USB drive

And the laptop must have the following software configuration:

• Windows 2000 or XP
• A Flash-enabled browser, preferably IE 5+ or above
• Flash Player – any version from 6.0 through 9.0
• Captivate 2.

To download a trial copy, go to www.adobe.com/products/captivate/, click the Download Free Trial link, and follow the instructions on the screen. You may not be able to download a trial copy of Captivate 2, since Captivate 3 may have replaced it. If that’s the case, contact Neil at nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net or 978-657-5464.

© “Adobe product box shot(s) reprinted with permission from Adobe Systems Incorporated.”