When Captivate 8 was released, it included the ability tocreate eLearning that was responsively designed, meaning it could be customizedfor different mobile resolutions. It included three views (or breakpoints) andall the features needed to customize each view to your heart’s desire. Using avery smart waterfall approach, objects you placed on the desktop would cascadedown to the mobile views, automatically being adjusted by percentage. However,you could override built-in automated features a number of ways. In short,Adobe did not take for granted that it knew better than you what you wanted toinclude in your different views. The few other authoring tools at the time thatalso boasted responsive design features were much more templated and formatted,with little room for customization.
In Captivate 9, Adobe increased the number of views to fiveso that all contingencies were covered: desktop, tablet landscape, tabletportrait, mobile phone landscape, and mobile phone portrait. No other authoringtool contains as many features as Captivate does to customize the differentviews. The others may be a bit simpler, but they lack some of the power. Somestill don’t offer responsive design at all.
Now with fluid boxes!
Now Adobe Captivate 2017 Edition has been released,and once again Adobe has forged ahead and not rested on its laurels. It has broughtCaptivate even further into modern times by providing fluid boxes,an industry standard that has become popular with web developers. Thedifference is, of course, that Captivate has included it in a way that makes iteasy enough to use without needing to know a lick of programming.
While you can still use breakpoints in your mobile learning,fluid boxes make the job easier. Fluid boxes are a new option on the Captivatetoolbar. See Figure 1. Choosing Horizontal or Vertical then gives you an optionto choose how many. Figure 2 shows choosing four horizontal boxes.
Figure 1: The new toolbar option, Fluid Box
Figure 2: Choosing horizontal boxes
The results are four boxes side by side (horizontallyplaced) on the stage, evenly spaced, as you can see in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Four horizontally placed objects
You can change the spacing of the boxes and furthersubdivide any fluid boxes. You can then place content in each box. See Figure 4.When shown in different resolutions, the stage then readjusts the fluid boxesin ways that you can control. You can even make some of the boxes and contentoptional, meaning when there is little room, those are expendable.
Figure 4: A desktop view of the stage with fluid boxes
Figure 5 shows the same stage squeezed down to a resolutionof 320 pixels wide, as you might see on many mobile phones.
Figure 5: The same stage as in Figure 4, shown 320 pixels wide, as on some mobilephones
Text Expander
Notice also in Figure 5 the icon at the bottom of one of thetext areas: 
This automaticallyappears whenever resizing the browser causes the text to be cut off. Clickingit gives you a translucent text box so that learners can read the text fully. SeeFigure 6. I think that’s a pretty sweet option.
Figure 6: The translucent text box, which will scroll if necessary
In-Source Preview
In Captivate 2017, you can see your stage at differentresolutions without going through the Preview option. In Figure 7, you can seedirectly at the top that you have a slider you can move along a drop-down listof standard resolutions by popular devices and the desktop. You can also addyour own resolutions and name them.
Figure 7: Preview in Source
Adobe Typekit now included
Whenever you edit text in Captivate 2017, you have a newoption in the text properties, Adobe Typekit. See Figure 8. This gives youaccess to many new fonts free of charge, as you can see in Figure 9, and evenmore with an upgrade to Adobe’s Portfolio plan. If you have a paid CreativeCloud subscription that comes with a Portfolio Plan on Typekit, you have accessto thousands of fonts already. You are no longer limited to just the five“safe” fonts that are universally consistent on the web.
Figure 8: Adobe Typekit
Figure 9: Some of the Typekit fonts
Improvements to advanced actions
Advanced actions have been given a couple of much-needed improvements:
- You can now loop in an advanced action using oneor more While conditions
- You can now mix standard and conditional actionsin one advanced action
Improvements to slide notes,closed captions, and text-to-speech
Slide notes can now be formattedusing boldface, italics, underline, and colors. See Figure 10.
Figure 10: Slide notes
As before, you can apply the slide notes to text-to-speech,to closed captions, and to video captions. In each case, the dialogs arebigger, cleaner, and easier to manage. See Figures 11, 12, and 13.
Figure 11: Text-to-speech dialog improvements
Figure 12: Video closed caption improvements
Figure 13: Audio closed caption improvements
I’m very happy about the new flexibility we’ve been given withregard to the appearance and location of closed captions on the screen. In thepast, they had to appear at the bottom of the stage, where they often wouldcover navigation buttons. Now they can be sized to any size and placed anywhereon the stage. They are also responsive now. That is a very welcome set ofimprovements to closed captions. See Figure 14.
Figure 14: Closed captions can now be customized in many ways
Further improvements and additions
Here are a few other areas that have improved in Captivate2017:
- You can now use multi-state buttons on question slides and on the results slide, aswell as on smart shape buttons that you use on drag-and-drop slides and on masterslides
- You now have a new option under the File menu thatallows you to save any standardCaptivate file as a responsively designed file
- There is a button that lets you have Captivate suggest fluid boxes on those slidesthat don’t have them
- The number of free resources from eLearning Brothers, including characters,templates, games, and more, has risen to over 75,000
- Buttons now have a built-in Visited state, which you can activate, that allows you to show thata button, such as a menu option, has been visited
Pricing
The cost of Adobe Captivate remains the same—and nothingbeats the $29.99-a-month subscription, as it includes every new version of Captivate.
Conclusion
Captivate continues to be the most powerful eLearning toolon the market. Powerful means feature-rich, and feature-rich means more optionsfor delivering the best instructional design approaches to almost any learneraudience and content. Since it is a powerful tool, you should expect to spendsome time learning it. When you do, you will find few limitations to what youcan deliver to your learners.
Last week, The eLearning Guild released a new research papertitled The Next Generation of Asynchronous Authoring Tools: What Practitioners Want in 2017, co-authored by SharonVipond and myself. It is the result of surveys conducted by the Guild regardingasynchronous authoring tools. One of those questions was, “If you had tochoose, which is more important to you for your primary authoring tool—power orease of use?” The result was that61.7 percent responded they would opt for power, 31.1 percent would choose easeof use, and 7.1 percent did not know. Twice as many wanted power vs. ease ofuse. Captivate meets that need for power.
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