I'm looking for sincere feedback here; not to either bash or blow smoke up Captivate's behind.It looks like the first update to Captivate since 2015 brought new features around Responsiveness. That's always a good thing, and I can see where people sitting on a lot of courses built with previous versions will take huge advantage of its ability to add responsiveness to those legacy courses.However, after more than 2 years waiting, I was expecting some much needed improvements 'under the hood' to the app.Therefore I do have some criticisms that I'd like to offer, in hopes that somebody can speak to them or offer when they may be addressed. I'm not trying to just Bash this app; as the only real cross-platform solution I desperately want Captivate to improve and succeed vs. its PC-only competition.The UX. Its still awful. Captivate used to at least try and follow the Adobe UX for its creative apps (like around version 5..?) But with competing products arising that ape PPT's interface, it looks like Captivate tried to go 'middle' between Adobe's Creative app UX and PPTs. It competes with neither very well. I'm glad it doesn't have its green-tinged palor any more, but it needs a lot more work. The other Adobe apps work much better with HiDPI displays, and they don't have cartoonish, huge icons. They allow for shifting the UI from light to dark, and they are way more flexible in their docking/undocking/framing behavior. Why can't Captivate borrow that stuff..? Captivate users are professionals, too.Performance. The app overall is extremely sluggish and clearly not optimized for modern hardware systems. Neither on Mac or PC. This is ALSO something that the other Adobe apps shine. But Captivate compares poorly with all of its competition - even the PPT plug-in based competitors. I don't think any optimization of the code base has been done since version 7 - half a decade ago.The timeline. It's awfully imprecise and the state of objects changes if you drag its bar on the timeline the wrong way. I work in Premiere, AE, FCPX, and Animate and I can say that Captivate's is the only timeline that causes me constant undos because of the way the timeline functions. Like changing the status of objects from 'end of slide' to a specific amount of time which then moves the whole slide duration. I know how it works and the correct spots to click and drag; but as I said its really imprecise.Captivate at version 5 was amazing for its time and aligned really well with the other Adobe apps. But clearly its separation from the Adobe mother ship has put it in a position where it cannot follow the other Adobe apps as they evolve. The strategy seems to be to extract as much life out of it as is by tacking on features until it just passes away. I'd rather see it handed off to someone else who can make it great again.Thanks to anyone who reads this and can add insight or info.

Will give this a shot. Most Captivate users do know that I always give my honest opinion, talk in my blog about the good and the bad. I do agree with some of your criticism, not with all of it. Let me follow the same structure:The UX? I do work with Captivate since version 1 (was MacroMedia) and have a pretty good memory about the changes in the versions. The day that the UI was aligned with the 'global' Adobe brand, which was indeed with version 5, I was very happy! I just regretted not having more tools integrated in the (vertical) toolbox, and the absence of a context-sensitive bar on top. All was embedded in the Properties panel, which grow too big when later versions were released. Being able to customize, to use workspaces, to have the panels opened for the active work flow I was involved with made the developing a lot easier than in version 4. When Themes got their full functionality (Captivate 6), it took some time to change the previous work flow, but with the arrival of shared actions, and the possibility to copy objects with advanced actions attached to them made the old-fashioned (and problematic) templates almost superfluous (see What's in a Theme - a Template? - Captivate blog). Captivate 7 had the nicest UI, it was possible to minimize panels to icons (like PS, AI...). The biggest problem was that Properties panel, too long, lot of scrolling, cumbersome. The most unhappy day in my CP-past was the new UI and UX appearing with CP8. Total lack of consistency: Big Button Bar that looks outdated, takes up too much real estate and cannot be moved. Still today I wished to have the old Toolbox back. In Expert UI you can still create workspaces and make panels floating but there is no way to minimize a panel to an icon, which means that the central stage window is very limited in size since both vertical docking stations always keep their width. Customisation was discouraged, or even became impossible. Shortcut keys were lost. The Insert menu, traditionally used for inserting everything was reduced to a couple of options, everyone had to use that BBB. You can feel that even after 3 years I still dislike the present UI and I spend daily hours in Captivate. It is a relief when I can work in Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, InDesign (I hate the Acrobat UI as well). Never did like the Flash, now Animate UI neither, sorry.Performance The last released 9.0.2.437 was less sluggish, with exception of responsive projects even on a very performant system. I learned to restart Captivate several times a day, and clear the cache whenever possible. Since I also spend time on forums for other Adobe apps, that complaint is also heard in those forums. Captivate still has no way to use the GPU (as is the case for other apps), nor the touch screen (except with Captivate Draft). I am not a programmer, but suspect that under the hood Captivate is pretty complicated, it has to focus on so much with all its features. Improvement performance would be welcome however.Timeline: here I tend more to disagree. You cannot compare the timeline of a pure video app, nor the timeline of Animate (with its child timelines....not the correct term) with Captivate's timeline. I recently wrote a sequence of 5 articles about Captivate's timeline. I just wished the cursors in the timeline were not so tiny on a retina screen (typing on a Surface Pro screen), and that more shortcut keys would be added.The marketing people will know better, but for Captivate it seems more important to 'look' easy for newbies than to offer the features/enhancements wanted by the 'real' professionals. Maybe the big majority of CP users is not on the same level as for other Adobe apps? Being just a user, can only guess. I still find it superior to the competitors because of its integration with other Adobe applications (something that is never mentioned in publicity): Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, PhoneGap. Fluid boxes first appeared in Dreamweaver (if I'm correct), wished we could have an easy way to integrater output from Character Animator and for JS integration as well.Just my (too long) 2 cents

ray.boehmer

Known Participant

Question

Captivate 2017 any "improvements"?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
April 26, 2017
4 replies
1235 views

I'm looking for sincere feedback here; not to either bash or blow smoke up Captivate's behind.

It looks like the first update to Captivate since 2015 brought new features around Responsiveness. That's always a good thing, and I can see where people sitting on a lot of courses built with previous versions will take huge advantage of its ability to add responsiveness to those legacy courses.

However, after more than 2 years waiting, I was expecting some much needed improvements 'under the hood' to the app.

Therefore I do have some criticisms that I'd like to offer, in hopes that somebody can speak to them or offer when they may be addressed. I'm not trying to just Bash this app; as the only real cross-platform solution I desperately want Captivate to improve and succeed vs. its PC-only competition.

The UX. Its still awful. Captivate used to at least try and follow the Adobe UX for its creative apps (like around version 5..?) But with competing products arising that ape PPT's interface, it looks like Captivate tried to go 'middle' between Adobe's Creative app UX and PPTs. It competes with neither very well. I'm glad it doesn't have its green-tinged palor any more, but it needs a lot more work. The other Adobe apps work much better with HiDPI displays, and they don't have cartoonish, huge icons. They allow for shifting the UI from light to dark, and they are way more flexible in their docking/undocking/framing behavior. Why can't Captivate borrow that stuff..? Captivate users are professionals, too.

Performance. The app overall is extremely sluggish and clearly not optimized for modern hardware systems. Neither on Mac or PC. This is ALSO something that the other Adobe apps shine. But Captivate compares poorly with all of its competition - even the PPT plug-in based competitors. I don't think any optimization of the code base has been done since version 7 - half a decade ago.

The timeline. It's awfully imprecise and the state of objects changes if you drag its bar on the timeline the wrong way. I work in Premiere, AE, FCPX, and Animate and I can say that Captivate's is the only timeline that causes me constant undos because of the way the timeline functions. Like changing the status of objects from 'end of slide' to a specific amount of time which then moves the whole slide duration. I know how it works and the correct spots to click and drag; but as I said its really imprecise.

Captivate at version 5 was amazing for its time and aligned really well with the other Adobe apps. But clearly its separation from the Adobe mother ship has put it in a position where it cannot follow the other Adobe apps as they evolve. The strategy seems to be to extract as much life out of it as is by tacking on features until it just passes away. I'd rather see it handed off to someone else who can make it great again.

Thanks to anyone who reads this and can add insight or info.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Paul Wilson CTDP

Community Expert

No software is perfect and Captivate is no exception. Believe me, there are many small things that I wish I could change about Adobe Captivate. I include a link in the description of each one of my Adobe Captivate YouTube tutorials where users can provide their feedback directly to Adobe. I can tell you that not all my ideas have been listened to but many of my ideas have ended up in the next major release. Make sure you provide your feedback. If the vast majority of users feel the same way, you can bet those changes will show up in the product. That said, I have to disagree with much of your concerns.

I suspect that the vast majority of Adobe Captivate users are not the pro users like some of the long-time users within this community. Certainly, Adobe’s goal is to attract more new users who might be intimidated by complex looking software. The pro panels and features are all there but you have to dig a little to get at them. Each time a new release comes out, I need to spend 10 minutes setting it up the way I like it. Then I don’t worry about it until I either reinstall the software or upgrade to a new release.

I personally don’t feel that Captivate needs to conform to the Creative Cloud apps. It isn’t part of Creative Cloud and I don’t expect that it ever will be included in that subscription. You could argue that Creative Cloud already has major differences from one application to another. Take Lightroom for example; if the interface was completely aligned you wouldn’t need Photoshop and vice versa. The interface is different between these two apps and they should be. Each one performs a unique set of functions. I cannot think of another Creative Cloud app that performs the same or similar function as Captivate so to me it makes sense that the interface is different.

When it comes to performance I find that this is more a function of what hardware has been selected by you or for you. I remember when I worked for an organization where the hardware wasn’t something I selected. I got the standard PC that all other knowledge-based workers received. It didn’t have enough memory, the CPU was less advanced, it used a standard hard disk drive and the applications were locked down without being able to run with administrator privileges. Another area of concern was that the IT department mapped my user files and folders to a network share, which meant that my cache and published files and folders were never really on my local hard drive. This caused major performance problems. I eventually got these issues resolved but it took many months.

I see this as less an issue of the software and more an issue that is systemic of working within a corporate IT environment. Sure the IT department needs to be concerned about granting too much access to users but they take it too far. Since becoming freelance I no longer have performance issues. I purchase my own PC, I pay extra for all the performance upgrades and I do not fall prey to the dogma that in order to be a creative person I need to have a Mac. That may have once been true but I don’t believe it’s true any longer.

For me, the timeline is as accurate as I need it to be. You can control your object’s start or end points on the timeline down to the tenth of a second. Again, I don’t believe that the timeline in Captivate needs to be more like timelines found in other Creative Cloud apps since Captivate’s purpose isn’t the same as these other apps. In fact with the additional of the effects in the timeline, I can’t imagine any improvement other than to make some of the timeline controls a little larger. They were fine in Captivate 5 when my screen resolution was 1366 x 768, but now I run 1920 x 1080 so these controls are little small. Incidentally, on a Windows PC, you can modify the setting DpiAwareness from 0 to 1 in the Captivate.INI file if you are using display scaling. It really helps make the interface look and perform much better.

Paul Wilson, CTDP

Lilybiri

Legend

Will give this a shot. Most Captivate users do know that I always give my honest opinion, talk in my blog about the good and the bad. I do agree with some of your criticism, not with all of it. Let me follow the same structure:

The UX? I do work with Captivate since version 1 (was MacroMedia) and have a pretty good memory about the changes in the versions. The day that the UI was aligned with the 'global' Adobe brand, which was indeed with version 5, I was very happy! I just regretted not having more tools integrated in the (vertical) toolbox, and the absence of a context-sensitive bar on top. All was embedded in the Properties panel, which grow too big when later versions were released. Being able to customize, to use workspaces, to have the panels opened for the active work flow I was involved with made the developing a lot easier than in version 4. When Themes got their full functionality (Captivate 6), it took some time to change the previous work flow, but with the arrival of shared actions, and the possibility to copy objects with advanced actions attached to them made the old-fashioned (and problematic) templates almost superfluous (see What's in a Theme - a Template? - Captivate blog). Captivate 7 had the nicest UI, it was possible to minimize panels to icons (like PS, AI...). The biggest problem was that Properties panel, too long, lot of scrolling, cumbersome. The most unhappy day in my CP-past was the new UI and UX appearing with CP8. Total lack of consistency: Big Button Bar that looks outdated, takes up too much real estate and cannot be moved. Still today I wished to have the old Toolbox back. In Expert UI you can still create workspaces and make panels floating but there is no way to minimize a panel to an icon, which means that the central stage window is very limited in size since both vertical docking stations always keep their width. Customisation was discouraged, or even became impossible. Shortcut keys were lost. The Insert menu, traditionally used for inserting everything was reduced to a couple of options, everyone had to use that BBB. You can feel that even after 3 years I still dislike the present UI and I spend daily hours in Captivate. It is a relief when I can work in Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, InDesign (I hate the Acrobat UI as well). Never did like the Flash, now Animate UI neither, sorry.
Performance The last released 9.0.2.437 was less sluggish, with exception of responsive projects even on a very performant system. I learned to restart Captivate several times a day, and clear the cache whenever possible. Since I also spend time on forums for other Adobe apps, that complaint is also heard in those forums. Captivate still has no way to use the GPU (as is the case for other apps), nor the touch screen (except with Captivate Draft). I am not a programmer, but suspect that under the hood Captivate is pretty complicated, it has to focus on so much with all its features. Improvement performance would be welcome however.
Timeline: here I tend more to disagree. You cannot compare the timeline of a pure video app, nor the timeline of Animate (with its child timelines....not the correct term) with Captivate's timeline. I recently wrote a sequence of 5 articles about Captivate's timeline. I just wished the cursors in the timeline were not so tiny on a retina screen (typing on a Surface Pro screen), and that more shortcut keys would be added.

The marketing people will know better, but for Captivate it seems more important to 'look' easy for newbies than to offer the features/enhancements wanted by the 'real' professionals. Maybe the big majority of CP users is not on the same level as for other Adobe apps? Being just a user, can only guess. I still find it superior to the competitors because of its integration with other Adobe applications (something that is never mentioned in publicity): Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, PhoneGap. Fluid boxes first appeared in Dreamweaver (if I'm correct), wished we could have an easy way to integrater output from Character Animator and for JS integration as well.

Just my (too long) 2 cents

ray.boehmerAuthor

Known Participant

UX: Yes, I think that we are in pretty good alignment with the UX. I think some folks are confusing the functionality of the UX with the functionality of the app itself. Some have said that the apps have different purposes so they should have different UX. But that doesn't mean they couldn't still ALL have the ability to shift from light to dark mode. Or that clicking on a modal value and dragging up or down would allow to change that value. Or moving the mouse away from the modal dialog and over the stage would change focus to the stage without having to click on it first. Or adding more contextual functions to right clicking, like swapping graphic elements.

Whether or not pro usability features like that are needed in Captivate vs. Adobe CC apps is a matter of opinion; but there is no reason why they couldn't be there for professionals who might expect them. And they would make everyone more productive.

Timeline: My problem with the timeline is more centered around its awkwardness, not with its funtionality. I know it doesn't have to drill down and allow for all the power of AE or such. But I'd like to be able to drag a bar up and down in the stacking order without having it change the duration based on whether I accidently drag it up and to the left or right.
I use keyboard commands most of the time anyway, but its still awkward. The zoom range is limited too which doesn't allow for too much precision.

Lilybiri

Legend

Since the timeline is not for the whole project, but per slide, I don't see why it would need more zoom possibility. I rarely have slides with a duration of more than 1 minute and I drag the Timeline out of its docking station when needed. I try to avoid dragging whenever possible on the timeline, but shortcut keys and the right-click menu. Since the Mac version appeared focus is too much on mouse movements and clicks, which is very tiring.

There is an Expert UI, but its customisability has been reduced compared with version 7. As long as there are no more real professional CP-users (spend some time on this forum and you'll understand), focus will not be on that feature.

Loss of focus, is indeed a real pain, and I also often miss the so handy Hand tool, typical for most Adobe applications. I hope that you have a US keyboard, because on an AZERTY keyboard you lose a lot of shortcut keys as well, and there is no way to customise the shortcut keys. Since onlh a minority of CP-users do have a different keyboard, I have not much hope for improvement neither.

urbangeo23

Known Participant

I am afraid that I have totally agree with you. There are also some bugs that have been there for while .. and it does not seem that Adobe wants to fix them. For instance on my Mac Captivate refuses to acknowledge the existence of Microsoft Office .. no matter what I do. It was like that with version 9 and it still is with 10 (2017). Despite several attempts to receive answers from Adobe .. nothing. Too bad because Captivate is really what you say .. a great tool with great potentials. Let's hope Adobe will listen .. but I am not holding my breath. Thanks for posting this very clear and constructive criticism.

petern33480613

Inspiring

Ray.

Well put, and I agree.

The two main points I have always had issue with are the User Interface and the general sluggishness.

The interface does work, it is functional, but it is grim and labour intensive.

The sluggishness does not seem to improve much even with upgrades to PC hardware and memory.

I was hoping that 2017 would have brought some improvement in at least one of these areas.

As a user who does not at the moment need Responsive projects, I will not be looking to upgrade from CP9 to CP2017 as there does not seem to be any major improvement for how I work.

I'm now looking forward to CP2018...!

Peter

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