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K
K23391962yip2
Participant
March 23, 2023
Question

Is there a performance difference between a published responsive vs non-responsive project?

  • March 23, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 177 views

Hi,

 

Right now, our users access our published content only using standard PCs/laptops.  There is no use case where a mobile device would be used.

 

Unless there's some funky reason not to, everyone I work with is assuming the responsive option is best as it allows for more future flexibility. 

 

Is this an accurate assumption?  Or is there any performance difference between a responsive vs non-responsive published project?  

 

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    K
    K23391962yip2Author
    Participant
    March 24, 2023

    Thank you to Rod and Lilybiri for the excellent replies.

    You have provided much needed clarity on this topic for me, and by extension the team I work with!

    Kevin

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    March 24, 2023

     Glad we could help with this clarification. I am sure more users are wrestling with a similar question, because of all the hype marketing about responsive projects. Beware: they can be very useful, but not for every training course. Smartphones are great for very short, JIT instructions, not for more in-depth and longer courses.

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 24, 2023

    Responsive and non-responsive course outputs are both HTML5, so the performance at runtime is more dependent on the device playing the content.  Both should be somewhat similar.

     

    As Lieve points out, responsive projects have certain limitations in terms of what you can do with the content.  And in reality, unless your courses are more likely to be consumed by mobile phone users holding their device in portrait mode, there is very little reason to use responsive format in my experience.

     

    What you WILL likely find to be the biggest downside of building a responsive course is all the extra time it takes to create one when compared with non-responsive.  Many developers feel that it can take two to three times as long.  Since the vast majority of target users are still likely to be consuming course content on personal computers, it doesn't seem worth creating responsive unless your use case is very different.

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    March 24, 2023

    As you could detect from my first answer, I largely agree with Rod about responsive projects.  Captivate has in reality two ways to create responsive projects, but the oldest way is barely visible in the marketing for the application because that is all about Fluid Boxes, forgetting to mention the many limitations which I mentioned before.:

    • Breakpoint views is the oldest method, has less limitations but takes indeed about 3x working hours compared with a non-responsive project. It seems to be ignored, but should be the way to go if you want full control as developer.
    • Fluid Boxes: takes less working hours, once you have mastered the workflow and are aware of what is possible and what is prohibited. Even though I have two decades of experience with Captivate it took me at least 3 months before I felt comfortable using Fluid Boxes. Forget the marketing slogans that it is easy, because it is not.

    An older article I wrote when Fluid Boxes workflow was released in 2017. It starts with a recommendation to use scalable HMTL output unless you really need a project which will mainly be used in Portrait mode on smartphones. Indeed, I am repeating the recommendation by Rod.

    https://blog.lilybiri.com/fluid-boxes-or-breakpoint-views

     

     

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    March 23, 2023

    Since I have been asked only rarely to develop a responsive project, my answer may not be very relevant. I always publish a non-responsive project as rescalable. They can be viewed on all devices, but only in landscape mode.

     

    Reason: there are a lot of missing features and flexibility when creating a responsive project with fluid boxes: main master slide cannot be used, you cannot time any object for the rest of the project, you cannot use stacked objects in normal fluid boxes (static fluid boxes are not really fluid), you cannot use slide video in a fluid box, you cannot use 360slides....etc.

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