Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Susan Jacobs
Adobe Captivate: A Historical Perspectivewith Akshay Bharadwaj
Copyright© Copyright 2017 Adobe Systems Incorporated and The eLearning Guild. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, and Captivate are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. The eLearning Guild and the eLearning Guild logo are either registered trademarks or trade-marks of The eLearning Guild in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contact InformationAdobe Systems Incorporated 345 Park Avenue San Jose, CA 95110 [email protected]
The eLearning Guild 120 Stony Point Road, Suite 125 Santa Rosa, CA 95401 [email protected]
AuthorsSusan Jacobs with Akshay Bharadwaj
Note: The authors of this paper do not necessarily endorse Adobe’s products or the products of any other company.
ReviewersNipun Sharma & Gourav Sinha, Adobe Systems
Publications SpecialistBrian Craig, The eLearning Guild
1Adobe Captivate: A Historical Perspective
When choosing an eLearn-ing authoring tool, designers want a solution that enables them to easily and seamless-ly transform their creative thoughts and visions into re-ality. They require a platform that is intelligent and efficient. For this reason, many place their trust in Adobe Captivate.
Since its debut more than a decade ago, Captivate has established a reputation as a leader in the field of digital authoring. Captivate holds a large percentage of industry market share because Adobe engineers are continually re-fining it based on users’ needs and feedback.
This paper offers a historical timeline that chronicles the progression of Adobe Capti-vate, culminating in the 2017 release.
Key features of Adobe Captivate (2017 release)On April 11, Adobe unveiled the latest version of Adobe Capti-vate. The 2017 release boasts many exciting new features. Here are some highlights:
• Fluid boxes—Explore the building blocks of smart au-thoring with intelligent containers that optimally use white space. These containers appear when an author chooses a responsive theme; authors can also draw their own fluid boxes. Objects placed in fluid boxes align automatically, so learners always get a fully responsive experience, regardless of their device or browser.
• Auto-migrate from non-mobile to mobile—Transform existing Captivate desktop-only courses (versions 8 and 9) into fully responsive modules. Open them in Adobe Captivate (2017 release) and save them as responsive projects. When they are relaunched, logical object groupings are placed in fluid boxes, which can then be accepted or customized.
• Adobe Typekit integration—Good typography improves the viewing experience. Choose fonts from the online Adobe Typekit library, and deploy them consistently across courses and devices.
Click here to learn more about Adobe Captivate (2017 release).
INTRODUCTION
2Adobe Captivate: A Historical Perspective
Tracing the evolution of Captivate
Captivate began as a simple screen recording utility named Flashcam, and it evolved into an early eLearning authoring tool when eHelp Corporation acquired Flashcam and released it as RoboDemo in 2002. Over the course of two years, var-ious enhancements were added. Macromedia acquired eHelp in 2004 and further refined the product. Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia in late 2005, and the product was renamed Adobe Captivate.
Early historyAdobe released Captivate 2 in 2006. It added branching view, a simulation wizard, and a library, among other fea-tures. Captivate 3 was released the following year; highlights included multimode recording, randomized quizzes, and slide transition effects. Less than two years later, Captivate 4 debuted with SWF (small web format) commenting, professional proj-ect templates, and customizable widgets. It was packaged as part of the new Adobe eLearning Suite and was designed to interact with other Adobe products such as Photoshop, Bridge, and Soundbooth.
The middle yearsIn 2010, Captivate 5 made its debut. The code for this pioneering version was completely rewritten, and the product offered a host of new features. It included a new GUI (graphical user interface) similar to other Adobe products, as well as animation effects and extended Microsoft PowerPoint support. A 2011 upgrade (version 5.5) offered gradients, shadows, and object rotation; enhanced quiz/assessment templates; a You-Tube publishing option; and a pay-as-you-go subscription licensing option.
Captivate 6 emerged in 2012, introducing interactions, actors, and themes. Its HTML5 support was a major game-changer, setting the standard for how output could look. One year later, Captivate 7 came out and gave users a wide range of drag-and-drop components such as games, quizzes, and learning modules, as well as HTML5 conversion for Microsoft PowerPoint projects. It improved motion support, and MathMagic, an equation editor, was bundled into the package.
3Adobe Captivate: A Historical Perspective
Breaking new groundAdobe Captivate 8 was released in 2014. This trailblazing version showed designers that they did not need to be programmers in order to create attractive and effective eLearning and mLearning courses. It boasted a simplified user interface and, most importantly, applied the concept of responsive design to eLearning. This gave authors the ability to create a project that could be viewed on any type of device—desktop, laptop, tab-let, or smartphone. When the content required updates, the developer did not have to individually revise it for every device. Responsive design single-handedly revolutionized the industry; today, two out of every three eLearning authors use responsive design in their courses.
Version 8 also added geolocation variables, which allowed developers to leverage location-specific learning, and included a wide variety of avatars and responsive themes. It embraced symmetrical drawing and editing and allowed users to con-vert captions to smart shapes. It also brought the “pause and resume” feature to eLearning, provid-ing continuity of experience across devices.
Captivate 9 came out in 2015, and it was an instant hit within the eLearning community. New features included improved effects and motion paths and the ability to add multi-state objects. A partnership with eLearning Brothers provided ac-cess to a regularly refreshed library of more than 25,000 free assets at the time, including games, interactions, layouts, scenarios, and figures.
Two other new features made Captivate 9 an indispensable tool for authors. The first was Adobe Captivate Draft. With this free storyboarding app for iPad, users could effortlessly share content with clients or collab-orators. They could collect storyboard thoughts, branching ideas, and questions on an iPad and later seam-lessly import the content to Adobe Captivate 9, which could convert it to a full-fledged responsive eLearning course. In addition, this version allowed users to directly publish their courses to Adobe’s newly released LMS, Adobe Captivate Prime.
With an eye on identifying and then solving user needs, Captivate 9 became the industry standard for eLearning. Anita Horsley, founder and president of Calex Learning Consultants, says, “Adobe Captivate 9 is a one-stop shop for all your eLearning authoring needs.”
Captivate 8 revolutionized the industry by allowing authors to save their work as responsive. Projects could be viewed on any type of device, and when a revision was necessary, the author only needed to make it once.
4Adobe Captivate: A Historical Perspective
The revolution continues with Adobe Captivate (2017 release)Adobe has now unveiled its latest version of Ado-be Captivate. As with other iterations, the Adobe team carefully defined and clarified authors’ needs beforehand. The new release was created to make the workflow as simple and intuitive as possible, allowing authors to design and deliv-er engaging, interactive, and fully responsive content with a minimum of fuss. While they are creating, authors can check how their work will appear simply by looking at customizable de-vice-specific previews.
The 2017 release offers many new and enhanced features that will crunch authoring time and accelerate time to market. Although Adobe was the first company to introduce breakpoints in
responsive eLearning design, it is innovating again by replacing them with fluid boxes. This feature automat-ically resizes and realigns content to elegantly fit all screen dimensions and resolutions—from desktops to smartphones.
The library of free eLearning assets that help make content pop has been expanded; users can now choose from more than 75,000 images, people cutouts, interactions, themes, games, and scenarios. They can also make text more readable and attractive with an array of professional-looking fonts from the new Adobe Typekit library.
The program maximizes compatibility. Older courses created with Adobe Captivate 8 or 9 can be converted for fully responsive mobile learning. PowerPoint projects imported into the 2017 release retain text, shapes, audio, and animations when published directly to HTML5. Adobe Captivate (2017 release) is fully compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Audition. Using Captivate Draft, authors can move seamlessly from storyboarding to storytelling, and then publish their courses to Adobe Captivate Prime LMS with a single click.
Finally, Adobe Captivate (2017 release) offers an affordable solution, with a variety of flexible pay-as-you-go subscrip tion programs for both individuals and teams.
Timeline
Captivate
(2017 release)
2002 2005 2006 2007 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 Captiv
ate 9
Captivate 8
Captivate 7
Captivate 6
Captivate 5.5
Captivate 5
Captivate 4
Captivate 3
Captivate 2
Captivate
RoboDemo
Captivate (2017 release) permits authors to examine their work with a device-specific preview feature.
5Adobe Captivate: A Historical Perspective
CONCLUSIONThroughout its history, Adobe has carefully assessed the needs of the marketplace and its users prior to re-leasing new versions of its software. Adobe Captivate is no exception. Continual refinements and the addi-tion of cutting-edge features have made it the leader in eLearning authoring tools. The new Adobe Captivate (2017 release) carries on this tradition.
The true merit of a product is evidenced by the independent accolades it receives. This year, Captivate was once again named among the top 20 authoring tools by Training Industry, and in 2016, it won gold in the Bsoco Awards’ rapid eLearning tool category. Over the years, it has garnered a slew of other awards from a wide variety of organizations, including Elearning! magazine, the Brandon Hall Group, and the Software & Information Industry Association (Codie Awards).
Users are generous in their praise of Captivate. “I’ve been using Adobe Captivate for over a decade, and what amazes me is that with each version, the tool … not only outperforms itself but incorporates features that we request, showing that the Adobe support team listens to us,” Horsley says.
“Iteration after iteration, Adobe Captivate continues to widen the gap, leading the way to extend the depth and breadth of what an eLearning authoring tool should be able to do,” adds Coline T Son Lee, managing partner and principal consultant at Everest CS.
“I’ve been using Captivate for 13 years now, starting when it was still called RoboDemo,” Joe Ganci, president of eLearningJoe, writes in Learning Solutions Magazine. “With each new version, there have been some very welcome additions, some new features that would first make us scratch our heads only to find eventually that we couldn’t live without them.”
Phil Cowcill, senior eLearning specialist for Canada’s Department of National Defence, views the 2017 release of Captivate as a “must-get.” “While I’ve been creating responsive courses in Captivate since Captivate 8, I al-ways wondered if there was a more efficient way to turn my older, desktop-only content to mobile learning,” he says. “With this release, Adobe Captivate has fulfilled that wish for me.”
Awards and testimonials
6Adobe Captivate: A Historical Perspective
ABOUT THE AUTHORSSusan Jacobs is a senior editor with The eLearning Guild. She has a deep-rooted inter-est in and passion for education and technology. Prior to this position, she was a senior content producer at Bright Business Media, a leader in the meeting and events industry. Susan is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
SUSAN JACOBS
Akshay Bharadwaj is a senior product manager for Adobe Captivate with Adobe Sys-tems. Akshay is interested in building and growing products into successful businesses. He has helped build products across eLearning and internet domains, and in his eight years at Adobe, he has helped grow the eLearning products portfolio and built start-up products like KnowHow.
AKSHAY BHARADWAJ
