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Anonymous
January 25, 2016
Question

Captivate 9 responsive rendering issues

  • January 25, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 590 views

Hi all,

I'm nearing the end of my trial period for Captivate 9 (on a PC). I need to jump ship from Articulate Storyline, I'm solely interested in creating responsive courseware. I've spent many hours over the last few weeks testing things out. I've got a pretty good handle on doing the things I need to though I found it tricky at first to get my head around positioning objects (not so much across the different breakpoints, but more rather between the breakpoints).

There are massive projects on the horizon, I need to make a call to whether Captivate is the right tool. I'm a bit nervous because...

1. Images/text very close to the edge of the stage are not displayed or cut off. I've checked and double checked my slide and device height. I've tried this on multiple occasions. As a test I dumped my slide (same dimensions etc) into a non responsive project. It rendered perfectly. I can't achieve this in a responsive project.

2. Browser inconsistencies. I've had bits and pieces of text cut off in IE, it's an easy fix but jiggling round with the text box back in the project. I've only tested this with the browsers on my PC (IE and Chrome). Sometimes this happens across breakpoints which makes it more painful. We're moving to a BYOD, I know there's going to be significant testing across browsers/devices. I am across some of the tools and methods to do this (eg, Edge Inspect)This has happened a few times in projects with only three or four slides, our proper courseware will be significantly bigger. I'm worried this with be a serious issue on a much grander scaled.

Has anyone struck #1?

For #2 - does anyone have any insight to how painful browser inconsistencies are in Captivate 9?

Other than that I'm quite impressed with Captivate, I particularly like the advanced actions. Thank you in advance

Ben

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    3 replies

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 25, 2016

    Personally I think you should be considering whether going responsive is the right decision first. 

    Are you REALLY certain that your projects NEED to be responsive?  How did you prove this was the best way to go?

    I see a lot of developers diving into responsive projects as if they MUST be somehow better than going with ordinary scalable HTML5, but there are many types of e-learning that are never really going to be practical in all sizes of viewport, and building responsive projects requires quite a bit more effort and time in development.

    For my money, I would never go for responsive unless the reasons for it were so compelling as to totally negate the reasons against it.  And there are plenty of downsides with responsive.

    Anonymous
    January 27, 2016

    Hi Rod,

    Thanks for your reply.  My research indicates users are consuming a considerable amount of elearning out of the workplace. I hear anecdotally much of this on the commute to and from work. I think this to be true but I'm taking steps to test this assumption. I've also trialed a range of off the shelve offerings (for example, lynda.com) that render beautifully on all devices tested and provide a sleek user experience. This has pushed up expectation for better or worse, I think that's fair enough. My view is it's 2016, content should render to the size of the users device.

    Pragmatically it easier said than done and I don't want to tie myself in knots developing in WYSIWYG type tools or the like. I've started looking at a few other responsive authoring tools offering. The responsive element is quite quick and easy to set up across breakpoints but the tools doesn't pack the punch of Captivate.

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 27, 2016

    I think you may be missing the fact that Lynda.com and most of these other courses that people consume on mobile devices are based on video. 

    Mobile devices are actually quite well set up to display video.  The device designers KNOW people want to consume a lot of video.  

    But videos are not interactive and neither are they actually responsive.  They just resize to fit the screen with their normal aspect ratio in much the same way as Captivate's Scalable HTML content does. Trying to create interactive courseware in true responsive design where the course objects are capable of independently change size and orientation is a very different matter.

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