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A
Anonymous
June 1, 2009
Question

ongoing debate re: .swf files....

  • June 1, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 500 views

Good Afternoon All,

I am hoping that folks here can help me with an ongoing debate.

One of our teams develops CBT content in Dreamweaver and my team uses Captivate.  The Dreamweaver developers claim that they can build better, more efficient, smaller .swfs than we can with Captivate.  I do not see that as being likely, however, I would like to gain some expert insight before pointlessly debating the issue yet again.

So, my question is:

Is there a fundamental difference between .swf from Dreamweaver and .swf from Captivate?  OR Can I build a 'better' .swf in Dreamweaver?

I am not dealing with content, just the .swf itself.

Any and all input will be appreciated - I just want to put this to rest so we can concentrate on development.

Thank you,

Norm

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Captiv8r
    Captiv8r
    Legend
    June 2, 2009

    Hi Norm

    From where I sit it would seem you are comparing Spiders to Hedgehogs here. I know Dreamweaver may be used to insert SWF content into an HTML page. I know Dreamweaver is used to create and maintain HTML pages and Web Sites, but this is the first I've heard of it being used to create eLearning SWF output.

    Then again, I learn something new every day and I never claim to know all there is to know about anything. So it's possible that it actually *IS* capable of creating this type of output.

    It would seem a more logical argument if your co-workers were saying *FLASH* would do things easier. Even then, I might tend to disagree. I think Captivate allows you to create output in days that may take a Flash developer weeks to accomplish.

    Cheers... Rick

    W
    www_cpguru_com
    Inspiring
    June 2, 2009

    I never heard of Dreamweaver being able to produce SWF outputs either but then again I may be wrong. Perhaps they were thinking of Flash and then embedding the content by using Dreamweaver just as Rick said.

    There is no doubt that you would be able to produce much lighter swf's by producing directly in Flash. The Flash compiler engine is much more efficient than the one in Captivate. Captivate also adds a lot of extra stuff in your swf's.

    If I were to make a single page in Captivate and the same page in Flash the latter would probably be 20% of the Captivate swf size. However, Captivate exports a lot of things on the first slide so if you have a project with say 20 slides then the difference wouldn't be so big. Still I would think that the Flash swf would be less than 50% of the Captivate swf for such a project.

    The major difference is the developing time. To develop a 20 slide course in Captivate can take 2-3 hours. To develop the same course in Flash can take 2-3 days.

    /Michael

    Click here to visit the www.captivate4.com blog

    A
    Anonymous
    June 2, 2009

    Hi folks,

    As somebody who works for a company that creates software that integrates with Dreamweaver, let me assure you that - out of the box - there isn't any way of creating Flash output in Dreamweaver. You can integrate code that will ouput to Flash (we do this with our Dynamic Web Charts extension) and there used to be a feature called Flash Elements which again would generate SWFs but this has been removed from the product.

    <a href="http://www.webassist.com/software/dynamic-web-charts/">Learn about Dynamic Web Charts</a>

    They have to be talking about embedding Flash content intoan  HTML page(s) here.

    Best - Mark

    <a href="http://macrofireball.blogspot.com/"><strong>Visit the macrofireball blog</strong></a>
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