A

Anonymous

Question

Captivate 2.0 - More Buggy Software?

Forum|Forum|19 years ago
September 27, 2006
7 replies
1309 views

Well, I watched the Captivate 2.0 preview today as part of Adobe's breeze (now called "connect?") presentation for educators, and while I was impressed with the new features, like the library, new way to create question libraries, etc., the thing that left the biggest impression on me was the fact that Captivate 2.0 CRASHED while the presenter presented. That's right. He was right in the middle of his presentation and Poof! He had to start from scratch.

I was going to let this go and not post a comment about it here. However, I just had a project crash on me with Captivate 1x, and I'm just slightly pissed off. And it's not the first time the program has crashed on me. I've lost lots of work before, even saving early and often. I do have better success with Camtasia, but there are things that only Captivate can do, so I'm sort of stuck with using it. I kind of dread opening the program now, because I never know what type of adventure I'm going to be in for.

Anyway, I think I'm gonna wait awhile before updating to even bigger and more spectacular crashes. For those who have downloaded the demos or beta tested, what has your experience been like?

This topic has been closed for replies.

K

keithroby

Known Participant

Cat Bandit -

What I saw was most definitely a Captivate app crash. However, I will say that it appeared that the guy's system seemed to ebb/flow. As if Breeze/Connect was using considerable intermittent chunks of resources. That may have caused his crash. Also, I wouldn't necessarily call Captivate 2 'buggy' based on what I saw since I have no idea what type of machine the guy was even running it on..

R

ricksnowaputi

Inspiring

Hello,

I attended two Captivate presentation on 2.0 and both went just fine with no problems. For the most part 1.0 did not cause me a whole lot of problems with freezing or shutting down but with two exceptions...

1) If I decided to change a cp project and republish (and rewrite the html and swf file) the software would shut down on me after the publishing was complete.

2) If I had the movie set to open another after playing or links to other movies embedded then Captivate would close after publishing the html and swf files.

What's frustrating to me is having a piece of software that could potentially have the fixes to little "bugs' and other problems I have been dealing with for the last couple of years but being unable to get a copy and start using it until October 5th. But I have to wait just like everyone else... but I like what I have seen for 2.0

B

Boxing_Boom

Inspiring

Hi,

Personally, I feel the same. I myself have seen great demos of Captivate 2 in action (Mark Fletcher) awesome; but on the other hand the problems I encountered with Version 1, was in my opinion a hair pulling experience and I like many others do think that an alternative package will be required; should Captivate 2 be riddled with BUGS as Captivate 1 is. And also Adobes technical support teams assistance and admittance to BUGS. Otherwise, the shelf life of this sometimes great product will dimise, quite quickly this time round.

Regards,
Boxing Boom

A

Anonymous

Hello Boxing Boom,

Many thanks for your kind words! I share you sentiment about Captivate 1, there have been many times when I could have quite happily booted this version from one end of the room to the other and I care deeply about this application.

I have been in the privileged position of being able to work closely with both the old Macromedia team and now the Adobe team so I have been able to report bugs, submit examples of damaged files and talk to the QA managers from both teams on a regular basis and since I have had their ear’s on a number of occasions talked in detail about the issues I had experienced.

Now, don’t get me wrong I am not saying that Adobe Captivate 2 will be 100% bug free, no one in right mind would dare to claim such a thing, all I will say is that personally I have had a better experience with Adobe Captivate 2 than I ever had with Captivate 1.0.

Regards,
Mark

CatBandit

Inspiring

Hi Guys;
Congrats from me too, Mark, for gettting the logo.

I'm thinking the same thing Rick. It's just too far out that two demos in a row (or at least that close together) crashed, on software that you and Mark and I know to be exceptionally stable.

I'm also wondering if we are actually talking about a crash of Captivate Deux, or of Breeze (Connect) . . . I've attended dozens and dozens of Breezos and have regularly had to reschedule for later, or just kill time while the presenters get Breeze working . . . let's be sure it's Captivate that is crashing, folks, before spoiling the party by jumping to conclusions.

**Before Adobe "fires" me I'll append this comment to my thoughts above: The regular problems with Breeze that I describe above may very well be caused - not by bad software, but - by the fact that the software is completely dependent on external "connection" and "network" support, neither of which is a part of the Breeze ("Connect") application. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I am criticizing the software itself as "buggy" (I just hate that word, even when it's me using it).

BTW, this thread is an excellent discussion. It's really great that everyone seems concerned with a potential problem, but is looking for the truth instead of blindly throwing bricks.
.

K

keithroby

Known Participant

Captivate 2 crashed on the guy who presented the demo I participated in last week.

A

Anonymous

Sounds like there have been two crashes during demonstrations. One during the education demo that I saw, and another last week(?). If that's the case, it migh be best to sit this release out, watch the boards, and see if Captivate 2.1 is more stable. Dunno. Would like to hear from more beta testers on their experience.

A

Anonymous

Hello rica_help,

I don't know if this helps at all, but of the last week I have used Adobe Captivate extensively. I worked with the application for over 35 hours and did not experience any crashes nor project corruptions. You can read about this on my Blog where there is also a link to the project in question.

I have found Adobe Captivate 2 to be incredibly stable

Regards,
Mark

michaeltowse-D9Wc11

Inspiring

I'll keep that in mind when I get my CP2 shipped out. I should count myself lucky that I never had to rely on that feature!!

Always worth ctrl+s'ing every other slide either way!

A

Anonymous

quote:

Originally posted by: michaeltowse
Always worth ctrl+s'ing every other slide either way!

File saving is one of the many improvements made in Adobe Captivate 2, sometimes it does it so fast that I forget I have even perform this action. Unlike in Captivate 1 where I could go way and have a short tea break, in this new version there I don't even get chance to reach the kettle!

Best,
Mark

michaeltowse-D9Wc11

Inspiring

I also saw the presentation and honestly felt for the guy when the screen quit on him. Although I have never come across any software which is 100% bug free, I would recommend using the autosave feature on CP1 so at the very least you only lose a few minutes work as it is 'buggy'

Fingers crossed CP2 will be more stable.

A

Anonymous

Hello michaeltowse,

Quite right, no software is every 100% bug free and sometimes attempting to fix bugs right toward the end of a dev cycle can cause more problems and prevent you from being able to launch on time. All I can say is that personally I think that the Captivate team did a very good job in ensuring that stability in Captivate 2 was a very high priority.

Just one point to add, I would not recommend relying on the auto-save feature in Captivate 1, this particular feature was very flaky and never worked properly. Because of this and a number of other reasons, this feature has been removed in Adobe Captivate 2.

Regards,
Mark

A

Anonymous

Hello Rica_Help

quote:

Originally posted by: rica_help
Well, I watched the Captivate 2.0 preview today as part of Adobe's breeze (now called "connect?") presentation for educators, and while I was impressed with the new features, like the library, new way to create question libraries, etc., the thing that left the biggest impression on me was the fact that Captivate 2.0 CRASHED while the presenter presented. That's right. He was right in the middle of his presentation and Poof! He had to start from scratch.

Poor guy, I feel for him. I would imagine that this is just the curse of demonstrating software, maybe he didn't have the final release build or maybe Breeze (also Flash-based) did something weird. I've seen this with the demonstrations and tech meets we have done at work.

I've used Adobe Captivate 2 extensively and I have found the application to be much more stable that Captivate 1. In fact I have just finished authoring my first real-world project and didn't experience any crashes.

I also demonstrated Captivate 2 on behalf of Adobe Systems Europe last week; thankfully, I didn't encounter any crashes then either. I had the privilege of working closely with the Adobe Captivate 2 team and IMO they have done a really great job to ensure that Adobe Captivate 2 is a very stable version. If I do find any issues that can be reproduced I will post them to the community.

Regards,
Mark

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