Can I create software simulations as a responsive project?

[Discerner]

Let's say you create Software Simulations. (You set up your desktop, bring up the software that you'll be capturing, and then go for it.) Then, let's say you have a need to also create Responsive Projects (for mobile devices).

Is there a wizard that helps you do both at the same time?

Can I capture a software simulation and then 'SaveAs' a responsive type later?

If it cannot be done now, will it be available in a future version? And,

If you were tasked with making Software Simulations, responsive, what are the steps you would need to use now?

[Lilybiri]

First the bad news: No, you cannot save a normal project as a responsive project, and I doubt it will ever be the case.

Second the confusing news: it is not easy to find how to capture a software simulation immediately as a responsive project, not in Captivate 8 nor Captivate 9 (although I begged to add a more obvious way )

Third the good news: you can create a responsive project that has software simulation slides if you know the work flow

• set up a responsive project from the welcome screen, choose the resolution of the breakpoint views
• click on the Big Button labeled 'Slides' and choose 'Software Simulation'
• you'll now be able to capture the simulation, and Captivate will even zoom in on what it esteems to be important for the Mobile view (you can edit later on).

[MarkWFD]

Hi

When you do a responsive simulation how do you deal with the fact that when it goes into FMR mode and it creates a slide that does not have the 'use a portion of the background image' option? This seems to be a major obstacle to the responsive simulations.

Any suggestions welcome!!

[Lilybiri]

Even for other output I try to avoid FMR slides as much as possible. Often you can replace mouse movements, dragging by other solutions like clicking in the scrollbar instead of scrolling.

It is not only the 'use a portion ...' that is missing, FMR-slides don't work that well for HTML5 output, I mostly replace them by cpvc-slides. You could then edit the video for each breakpoint, using the Pan/Zoom from the video editor. It will be a lot of work though.

[MarkWFD]

OK - thanks for your thoughts

M

[Discerner]

Thank you.

[MarkWFD]

Just out of interest do you use responsive projects for software simulations much? I like responsive projects a lot for softskills, compliance, scenario and quizzes. However, I have largely reverted back to the traditional 'software simulation' approach (including a publish to HTML5 of course) for systems content. I find this generally shows well on tablets and obviously it will show (although it will be rather small) on mobile. Clients have told me the 'jumping around' that you tend to get with the responsive mobile view is disorientating for users and whilst this can be smoothed out by cpvc slides etc - as you say that's a lot of work/expense for clients. I'm not sure how many people currently look at software training on mobiles anyway. Just wondered what your thoughts on this were - and anyone else who has a view on it!

Mark

[RodWard]

I personally don't see any good reason trying to use a responsive project for delivering a software simulation.

And unless you are building a software simulation of a phone app, I don't see the point of making one for that size viewport.

If the client cannot see this logic, I would (at the very least) try and steer them towards using Video Demo rather than software simulation screen capture.  And I would first create a short demonstration of what this would look like and ask them to view it and complete the task on their own mobile phone to personally sample the futility of it all.

[MarkWFD]

Hi again Rod

I just wondered if your opinion on this has changed with the advent on Captivate 2017? Are there any new features that make it viable to deliver a software simulation via a responsive project. As far as I can see the problem issues look pretty much the same and it is still better to create systems content as a software simulation rather than a responsive.

Thanks for your thoughts

Mark

[RodWard]

I don't see that much has changed really.  The Fluid Box concept is great for free-floating objects that you want to rearrange themselves on the screen without having to stress about positioning.  But I still think there are going to be a lot of people that find the somewhat random nature of how those objects move around can be annoying.  (In case you hadn't noticed, some e-learning designers are control freaks.)

Software screencaptures are just raster graphics, not vectors.  So they're fixed in aspect ration and any attempt to stretch them in either direction is going to cause them to look awful.  Why bother.

I still believe most software simulations are only ever going to look best in Landscape mode on a screen about the same size as the learner is likely to use the software.  For my clients that would always be a screen at least 1200 pixels wide.  If your software is built for a mobile device, then by all means make it play on a mobile device sized screen.  But even if that software happens to be responsive, trying to create a screencapture tutorial for it that replicated the responsiveness would require almost as much work as building the software itself.

The only time I have ever created a software simulation that required Portrait mode view was several years ago when I created a tutorial for a software app that was supposed to be used by Field Service Technicians on their PDA or Smart Phone.  The app didn't have the option of turning it to Landscape mode.  It was purely Portrait.  So even there, it would NOT have made sense to do it as Responsive.

I realise that Adobe is pushing Captivate's responsive design capabilities as THE way to build e-learning, but I've had a poll on my website now for just over two years now to gauge how many Captivate authors ACTUALLY have responsive HTML5 as their primary elearning output and the percentage after just over 800 people have voted is still less than 10 %. 

Here's what it looks like right now.

In case you were wondering, the percentages were showing almost identical to this after the poll was up for just a few months. Responsive HTML5 has only increased by a couple of percentage points in the past year.

So, based on what I'm seeing, my belief is that there's a lot more TALK about Responsive HTML5 content than there are Captivate authors actually out there creating courses with it.

Here's the page if you want to add your vote:

http://www.infosemantics.com.au/node/598

Now that Captivate 2017 has upped the responsive ante a bit with Fluid Boxes, it might be time to revisit this poll and see whether similar figures emerged over the coming 6 months or more.

[MarkWFD]

Thanks a lot Rod.

That's really useful. I train Captivate a lot and delegates are usually initially very keen to find out about the responsive capabilities. However, most of them have been tasked with creating systems content so they quickly revert to using non-responsive - often still outputting to both HTML5 and Flash as they are locked-in to old browsers

[MarkWFD]

By the way. Surprised and interested to see so many votes for .exe

[RodWard]

Yes, I was also quite shocked to see so many people vote for EXE initially and fully expected it to be an aberration that was corrected over time.  But I was wrong.  EXE has remained at over 30% for the entire duration of the POLL timeframe.

Who knew??

[RodWard]

Yes that has been my exact experience as well.

It seems that Adobe believes people will BUY Captivate if they believe it has the best Responsive Design features of any authoring app available, and that's why they seem to have blown the entire development budget for the past 18 months or more on little more than this one area of Fluid Boxes.  (I'm not seeing any evidence of huge progress in other aspects of the application.)

I'm sure their marketing research confirms this was the wise thing to do, and they may be right.

However, my e-learning author gut is telling me that most people who DO buy Captivate are NOT going to use Responsive as their PRIMARY output.  They just want to have the option of using it IN CASE they need it one day.

It's the same logic that makes people buy sports cars that can do 200 mile per hour, or 4x4's that could climb Everest, and then never take them out of the city.

[Lilybiri]

I know you are chatting with Rod, hope he is not angry that I want to pop in.

Although I agreed with Rod until 18 months ago, situation seems to change. I never had any client asking for responsiveness until this last period. Probably the continuous process of eliminating Flash is playing a role. My most recent jobs all were for responsive projects.  Not specifically for software simulations, true. Moreover clients don't always realize that a responsive project needs a totally different approach and a lot more developing and testing hours. The approach with Fluid Boxes can be an easy work flow but has its limitations as Rod correctly points out. For simple projects, with lot of text (too much eLearning like that is still required) FB's will certainly save a lot of time. But I am very happy that it is still possible to use the 'older' breakpoint views approach, because for more control about layout differences this is still required including the amount of working hours. BTW: those clients were not in my home country, most were in USA. I suspect a lot of differences depending on the location. Belgium is certainly not yet asking for responsiveness in eLearning.

About software simulations: no FB's of course. Requirement to keep to one orientation (landscape) is also needed. I see some possibility if that type of JIT courses have focus only on mobile devices. For that reason it would be nice to be able to develop bottom up (from smallest browser resolution) instead of top down (from primary view). That type of course sholdn't be used on desktop/laptop.

Just my 2cents

[sdwarwick]

These statistics may be biased by what community is being polled.     It may be that outside of current captivate users, the responses would be far different,  and is what drove the development teams.   

[RodWard]

I AM thinking of putting up another poll now that Captivate 2017 is out,

But the only people that participated in that Poll were Captivate users of versions 7 through 9,  And I checked the poll regularly to see if the percentages were altering in any significant way.  They were very consistent over the entire two year period. 

So like it or not, I have to conclude that the numbers are going to be very close to reality.  I think Responsive Design has been a lot LESS popular than most people realise.

[sdwarwick]

Sorry, I may not have been clear.   I meant to say people outside of the captivate community.  I'm not sure that there is a website designer that can still operate non-responsive,  and it seems like most alternative forms of eLearning delivery accommodate widely varying pixel ratios and dimensions, including the pure talking head video folks.  

To the extent it might be possible to reach the larger eLearning community,  a poll might show different results. 

[RodWard]

I now get what you mean.  However, for any poll on my own website I'm pretty much ONLY interested in the folks that would be using Adobe Captivate.  My whole website is more or less intended to be for them.