Inspiring

Answered

Object report?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 2, 2017
3 replies
553 views

Is there a way to export a report that details objects and their properties from a captivate project file? For example, I wanted to have a view (textual report) of all the text captions in a project file and their fade in and out properties. I thought this tool would be useful for many objects and many properties on the object.

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Correct answer Lilybiri

I never felt that necessity in all those long years I have been using Captivate intensively.

Objects are styled with Object styles, which are part of the theme as are the master slides and the skin. Which other properties do you want to see? Fade in/out is very 'old', and it is part of the object style. I try to have a consistent design by creating a custom theme with a custom theme color palette.

There are several ways to have an overview:

Branching view panel

Advanced Interaction panel

File Print, with several possible outputs (handouts, lesson, step-by-step, Storyboard)

Maybe I don't understand what you really want to have in such text. With HTML output, you have the CSS files, the JS files. Effects are stored in XML files. Can you explain so that I discover what I missed all those years?

danielb51742821Author

Inspiring

I accidentally hit the correct answer on this issue. My question is answered (the report does not exist), and you do understand my request, but I think you are over looking the importance of this feature.

Let me explain a little more. First, any object created from the object style manager can be over-written with brute force. With this fact in mind, I cannot rely on the object styles.

So in this scenario at this point, we have added, lets say, a text caption and applied a style from my available styles. Now a developer on this project added 50 more text captions. The developer has adjusted the fade in on many of the 50 captions. Which one's? A report would help me to find them and save time viewing each one individually.

Other 'ideas' off the top of my head would be to include slide numbers for each object, coordinates, size (w/h), applied style (with or without the '+'), and timing stats (Appear after, start, Display for). Maybe even include effects applied to objects.

Overall, this would be a great 50,000 foot view and a good tool to keep constancy within a project and identify errors.

Lilybiri, you have helped me so much in the past. Please don't take this the wrong way, but if fade in and fade out on the properties panel of many captivate objects is 'old' and lets say 'outdated', why does it remain on the properties panel?

Lilybiri

Legend

I never override an object style, maybe my history of having written too many courses with desktop publishers is the cause of that. If you once had to change a little feature of an object style, in a big course, and you have to do that individually for each object, you would understand what I mean. It is so easy to make such changes, just by updating the Theme, no way to do much manual work.

Fade in/Fade out feel outdated to me in most instances, because they don't add anything to the goal of an eLearning course. But they are part of the Object styles. That is not the case for Effects. Please, indicate in the Object style that you want that fade in/out if the client likes it, don't do it with the Properties panel.

Can you imagine the size of such a file, how will you manage that? Really, you cannot convince me. I have a lot of feature requests logged, but cannot see how this would help me for a project that I create with my usual work flow: set up storyboard, create custom color palette and theme (with all necessary object styles), set up guides for design consistency, structure the Library and import all assets to the Library (I use layered Photoshop files whenever possible and import those, create audio files in Audition and use a good labeling system, same for SVG's in Illustrator), use my labeling discipline, reuse shared actions and variables. Changes to a project are just a breeze in that work flow. I simply don't see how such a large text document would improve that work flow.

Just a conclusion: please, give your developers a better training about good practice.

danielb51742821Author

Inspiring

I think it'd be cool to have an interface that allows the developer to select what they want in the report (what type of objects, what types of properties to include, and/or a range of slides for the report to include)). If not all is selected, it seems the report will be lighter in weight.

Either way, Captivate doesn't have it.

PLease again, no offense, but my goal was not to convince you or help you. It was more selfish. I want to help me. Thanks for your time. Maybe in a few years we'll see something like this. Also, "good practice" is useless if there are tools available to not follow the good practice. And also with that said there may be good reason to not follow the object style (for example, add a little more fade on one object and not all), but good to know which ones have deviated from the object style.

LilybiriCorrect answer

Legend

I never felt that necessity in all those long years I have been using Captivate intensively.

Objects are styled with Object styles, which are part of the theme as are the master slides and the skin. Which other properties do you want to see? Fade in/out is very 'old', and it is part of the object style. I try to have a consistent design by creating a custom theme with a custom theme color palette.

There are several ways to have an overview:

Branching view panel

Advanced Interaction panel

File Print, with several possible outputs (handouts, lesson, step-by-step, Storyboard)

Maybe I don't understand what you really want to have in such text. With HTML output, you have the CSS files, the JS files. Effects are stored in XML files. Can you explain so that I discover what I missed all those years?

Paul Wilson CTDP

Community Expert

I could see how that might be useful, especially if you were trying to ensure consistency across an entire project. To my knowledge, there is no report or function for this but you could submit it to Adobe. Perhaps it might end up in a future release.

http://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

Paul Wilson, CTDP

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