Adobe Captivate - Click to Reveal with Multiple Audio Clips

In this video tutorial, I show you my workflow for creating a single slide click to reveal that contains both slide audio, as well as additional triggered audio for each state of a multi-state object. Your instinct might be to attach the audio to the individual states of the multi-state audio but you will quickly discover that this doesn't work.

Please note: that this type of interaction will not work with the built-in closed captioning for the additional audio items so you might want to include narration text on-screen for those who require closed captioning for accessibility purposes.

Adobe Captivate 2017 - Publish Your eLearning To Your LMS

In this video tutorial, I show you how you can publish your Adobe Captivate 2017 (Release) eLearning to your learning management system using the most common features and settings. Did I help you solve a problem? There are a number of ways you can show your support: Send me a thank you.

Webinar » Mastering Custom Quizzes with Adobe Captivate 2017

I've partnered with Training Magazine Network to deliver a webinar later this month (Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 9AM Pacific / 12PM Eastern). It's a one hour event and is completely free. 

In this course, you will learn how to...

• create a responsive design interface for your question slides in Adobe Captivate 2017 using fluid boxes
• setup variables to keep track of the selections made by the users of your eLearning course
• write advanced actions that will form the basis of the interaction for your users
• write conditional actions that will validate if your user has submitted the correct answers to your questions
• convert your questions to become scored final quiz questions

Special Bonus: Participants in the LIVE webinar will receive a coupon for FREE ACCESS to the full Udemy version of this course, including PROJECT FILES.

Fonts and Adobe Captivate

There have been some questions in the comments of my videos that suggest that some people may not understand Typekit fonts in Adobe Captivate. This article will try to explain it.

There are three different types of fonts on a Windows or Mac computer running Adobe Captivate 2017. These are system fonts, web-safe fonts, and potentially Typekit fonts. The importance of font selection only really applies to responsive designed elearning projects, since non-responsive projects convert your text into pictures, and whichever font you choose will render correctly on any device.

System fonts are the fonts that are installed on your computer. It's important to know that when you use a unique and exciting font found on your computer, that what you see isn't what someone else would. For example, if I created a Microsoft Word document that used the BlackHawk font and I sent that Word document to someone who doesn't have that font installed, they will see an entirely different set of characters than what I intended (it will probably display as Times New Roman).

Web-safe fonts are a subset of system fonts that have such a high percentage of use that they can be considered universal. It's smart to use web-safe fonts when you design for the web since you don't know what devices will be used to view your content, and usually an excellent choice for when you develop responsive design eLearning. An example would be the Trebuchet font. Because there are only a handful of web-based fonts, using them may your eLearning seem ordinary.

But what do you do if you want to design a responsive project using something other than the half dozen web-safe fonts available? That's where web-based fonts like Typekit come into play.

Typekit works like this. If you have an Adobe ID, you will have access to a small selection of these web-based fonts. Once you find a font on Typekit.com that you would like to use in your Captivate project, you would sync that font to your account. Behind the scenes, a system version of that font is downloaded and installed on your computer so when you return to your Captivate project you can select and use that font. Later when you publish that project, you would supply Captivate with the root domain of where your project will reside. For example, if you were an employee at Adobe and were going to make your eLearning project available on Adobe's website, you would include *.adobe.com as a domain when you publish. When users would run this course, the published project would check Typekit.com and make sure this was authorized to use the font and display the correct font in the eLearning project even if the user doesn't have that font installed. Here is an overview on how Typekit works in Captivate 2017 Release.

Typekit is only one example of web-based fonts. I've also used fonts that can be found on Google fonts. The advantage of Google fonts is that there are no fees or limitations required to use them. Here is a video that explains how you can use Google fonts in your Captivate eLearning project.

How Did I Start Making YouTube Videos

While I don't believe in learning styles, I do believe people have preferences in how they might want to learn something. I myself prefer watching someone else perform a task and then repeat those steps building my muscle memory for those steps. For example, about once per year, I found it necessary to remove the background from an image. I bookmarked this video created by Dr Allen Partridge, from the Adobe eLearning team. 

This video inspired me to start making my own YouTube videos. Of course, at the beginning of my YouTube channel, there were 6 subscribers (one might have been my mother), so really the first videos on my channel were really just for me. One reason was that when I figured something out in Adobe Captivate, I would worry that I would forget what I did.

This week I decided to update Allen's video to include the latest version of Adobe Captivate and Adobe Photoshop as a way of honouring his influence over my YouTube career and my decision to start my own freelance eLearning design and development business. Thanks Allen!

Adobe Captivate - Make Your Drag and Drop Behave

About three years ago Adobe came out with a drag and drop interaction for Adobe Captivate. It's often used as a question slide either in your knowledge checks or final quiz, however as most will tell you it doesn't behave exactly like a regular question slide. In this video tutorial, I show you how I maintain some consistency between my drag and drop questions and my proper question slides.

Background Images in Fluid Boxes

In this Adobe Captivate video tutorial, I demonstrate how you can work with background images in your fluid box responsive design eLearning projects and ensure they line up the way you want them to.

Baseball Card Flip Effect

In this video tutorial, I show you how you can use effects in Adobe Captivate to create the effect of a baseball card flip. For example, on one side of the card you have the image of the baseball player and on the back side, you have the player's statistics. This could also be used to simulate what recipe cards might look like or used in credit card training teaching employees to check for the signature of a client, and so on.

In this example, I used the baseball card for Bo Obama, President Barack Obama's pet dog. Don't ask me why they made a baseball card for the family pet, but like all government photography, it's in the public domain so I'm free to use it for this example.

Need Some Images For Your eLearning?

There have been other free photography sites, but I can assure that I've not seen anything like this before. Sometimes a site will offer free downloads but when it came time to using those images you still needed to purchase a license. Alternatively, there are other sites that offer free downloads, but you need to attribute the original photographer a specific way. Of course, I'm okay with everyone getting the attribution they deserve, but my clients don't want some fine print at the bottom of each slide of their eLearning course.

Check out https://pikwizard.com/ when you get a chance. They're just starting out, but they already have over 100,000 completely free images, of which 20,000 are exclusive to them. They are updating their library of stock photos daily and have expressed to me that their goal is to have more than 1 million images.

One thing that is rare are free sites that include pictures of people. You see models are required to sign a release and it's difficult for photographers and photo sites to get photos of people for free distribution. Pikwizard.com has a lot of pictures of people. Check this out for yourself by searching their site for things like "office" or "meeting", and you'll find some great quality examples of these types of photos.

I asked Micheal Brennan from Pikwizard.com how can all these files be truly free? 

Micheal explained that the photos on the site have two different licenses. 

The first is Creative Commons Universal. Pik Wizard doesn't own the images but the people who do have waived the copyright and allowed the use of the photos. You can learn more about this type of license here: https://pikwizard.com/cc0-license. 

The other license is where Pik Wizard owns the images but made them free to use without attribution. They still retain the copyright. You can learn about this type of license here: https://pikwizard.com/free-license.

Michael went on to explain that there are certain cases where an image can't be used, but in 99% of the cases, you will be free to use these photos for free without attribution. Each image will have an explanation on its page that covers these sorts of details.

Hope you find this useful.

The Best Deal in eLearning Conferences

When I participate in these sorts of events we call them speaking engagements, and that's certainly part of it. I like to think about this as really an instructor-led classroom session. My YouTube tutorials are often five to ten minutes of instruction, but what I do at the Adobe Live Events is a full hour of demonstration (I don't use PowerPoint). What you will see from me is one hour of me demonstrating how to do a bunch of things in Adobe Captivate.

This year my topic is Getting Started with Adobe Captivate (2017 Release). If you are new to eLearning, new to Captivate, or just new to this release, I will be showing you how you can quickly develop eLearning that works across a variety of different device types, and how easy it is to setup your eLearning to have a unique look and feel. While other developers will be messing around with their first eLearning modules, attending my session will help you rapidly pump out content for your organization. Or, if you are a learning and development manager, I will show you how your design and development team can rapidly get your organization trained up on what they need to know and do.

I refer to the Adobe eLearning Conference in Washington D.C. as the best deal in eLearning conferences and I mean it. Other conferences will cost you or your organization hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to just register, Adobe offers this event completely for free. All you need to do is convince your manager or director to foot the bill for your transportation and lodging.  Still not convinced? Well, breakfast and lunch are included as well.

2018 Adobe eLearning Conference - View

Attendees will get updates and insights that will put you ahead of the curve, connect you with experienced members of the community and do wonders for your network, and allow you to be an active participant in the community that is at the forefront of eLearning creation, delivery, and management.