Getting help for Captivate 12

[RabidSquirrelNinja]

Hi all,

I am actually pretty excited about Captivate 12 but I am quickly growing dismayed with the level of assistance I can find. When looking for more information here or on the eLearning site, I am inundated with Captivate < 11 questions and posts. For anyone makine the jump you know that these dicussions just don't carry over.

Am I missing something? Has anyone been able to locate:

• Discussion board filter for only Cp 12 content
• Feature Roadmap
• CP11 to CP12 How-to comparision? (i.e.: you did it x way in 11, you'll do it y way in 12)
• Advanced user guides

I think there are some positive advances that Cp has implemented but certain "classic" features which have just.... vanished? Or maybe they haven't? I dont even know what I don't know! 🤣

[Lilybiri]

All the knowhow that has been built up in two decades of Captivate, blogs, videos, documentation, ... is simply lost at this moment. It may take years before this has been repeated for the new version, where almost everything has changed: terminology, features, workflows. It is really a nightmare at this moment, one I feared would happen when I did experience the first  views of version 12 in 2019. 

There are some nice new features, but personally I am unable to recreate any of the requests by clients in this new version. Even trying to reproduce a simple responsive project created with Fluid Boxes described in this post was a failure:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/classic-captivate-vs-charm-test-case-responsive-project

I uploaded a comparison between CP11 and CP12 for using Bookmarks to the eLearning community, will be followed by multiple posts. Bookmarks is a feature which seems to be extended in the new version. I just wanted to publish something positive. The conclusion is however not positive for the new version, where it is impossible to create dynamic bookmarks. That makes me reluctant to continue the exploration. 

CP12 has indeed lost so many features which were always available in Captivate. At this moment I cannot use it for real development. 

As for advanced user guides? Do you know that the Hand tool is available now in CP12? It is one of the features I have requested since over 10 years? But it is not visible in the UI, you need to know the shortcut key (space bar) which is also used in Photoshop to use it. That is a positive point, but why hide it?  Quizzes have some improvements, but we miss question pools, CSV/GIFT import?

Software simulations are the only ones which are recognizable because they fully mimick the old workflows but nothing has been innovated really. That feature even kept the 'old' terminology. As a trainer/professor/coach this doesn't feel very comfortable, mixing old and new....

My blog has 3,000,000 page views, none of the posts are valid for CP12.  Who expects that I will restart the same work which implicates thousands of hours of free time?

[Lilybiri]

Here is a link to the blog post where I compare Bookmarking in New and Classical Captivate. It is on my personal blog, because the one I uploaded to the eLearning community is waiting for moderation, which can take up to several weeks:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/bookmarking-in-captivate-classic-and-new-introduction

[kdmemory]

In the support communities there should be two forums. One for Captivate up to version 11.8 (Classic) and another for Captivate 12 and potentially higher. Like there are two forums for Lightroom ecosystem (cloud-based) and Lightroom Classic. Both Captivate branches are completely different and - though for the same purpose namely E-learning authoring - they can't be put into the same bag.

But it is not for us, the users, who have a say about this. So we get into this frustrating situation where most longterm users of Captivate tend to not to agree with the new kid on the block. That's understandibly bad for new users who like the new Captivate.

And further there are not too many trained users who have become so familiar with the workings of the new Captivate that they can offer sufficient know-how for all kinds of dead ends.

For now we have to help ourselves and practise, practise, practise. Maybe then new Community Experts will arise. The Adobe User Guide for Cp 12 is actually not too bad.

[Lilybiri]

Two years ago I asked to have two forums. I got the promise that it would be the case, but like so many promises it didn't happen. I asked for more assistance from staff members for questions about the new version, but it didn't happen of course. Personally I kept my promise to continue helping with questions about Classic Captivate. I also vowed not to help with the new version, which is at this moment too limited for the type of consultancy jobs I get. Like they broke the promises, I broke my vow because I feel too sad when so many questions are left without answer.

@kdmemory  Since you feel to be an expert in the new version, and even like the User guide, why don't you provide more answers, and log all the typos in the user guide. I do that. When the guide points to the left toolbar but the button has to be found at the bottom right: is that a useful indication?

Please, go ahead. I will not answer any question about CP12 in the future. You are forgetting a big audience; those who need to have explanations about the changes between the former versions and this 'new' version. Personally I see the new version as Rise from Articulate, but not a replacement for a professional eLearning tool like StoryLine.  I have been following the evolution of XD, which uses the same UI as the new Captivate. Can you explain why XD is no longer developed?  

How many years will it take before a generation of CP12 experts will rise?  My blog was started in 2008 because I regretted the lack of support from the User guide at that moment. Who will do the same for version 12? 

[kdmemory]

Lilybiri: Please don't let me be misunderstood! I'm not saying or claiming to be an expert in Cp12. At least not yet. What I was saying: "For now we have to help ourselves and practise, practise, practise" that includes me. Only I try to build up a positive attitude towards the new things and shed - to a degree - all those negative and sad emotions about the loss of the old things. Which of course I share with you - to a degree - and I agree that for now the new version is not ready yet for the kind of consultancy jobs I get as well.

[Lilybiri]

I doubt there are even CP12 experts around... 

Both versions need to be supported. My planning was to support the Captivate Classic users in the first place (although 11.8 introduced bugs which didn't exist in 11.5) and try to create some 'update' tutorials from Classic to the New version for the use cases where that was possible. My first trial with the simple responsive project created in 11.5 to create from scratch in version 12 failed completely. I had more crashes with CP12 than I ever had in all previous versions over almost two decades. Now I published just an intro to a comparison about using Bookmarks in both versions. I have been exploring that feature during several weeks. It is one of the improvements in version 12: you have the possibility to use bookmarks on each content slide, whereas that was only the case on slides with a slide video in previous versions. I had again lot of issues, because I really wanted to use Video Demo. It took a week to find the origin of those crashes, which appear to be linked with the fact that my Surface Pro has two cameras, although I never use a webcam to capture myself in a Video Demo. The published post, meant to communicate my experiences will be split over multiple articles. Too bad: as I already mentioned during beta, there is still no way to have a dynamic bookmark in version 12. You can see what I mean by a dynamic bookmark in the Captivate tutorial included with the post. In the real world, when reading a real book, it is a bookmark you will insert on the page you leave to make it easy to retrieve that page on the nex reading session. It is a breeze in Captivate Classic using micro-navigation.

https://blog.lilybiri.com/bookmarking-in-captivate-classic-and-new-introduction

I write this to prove that I want to see the positive sides of the new 'kid' (which has many problems with trying to take its first steps). Most users do label me as a Captivate expert, but all the reasons why I choose for Captivate in the past are gone now: reusability, customisability, collaboration with other Adobe applications, flexibility. 

Please, practise but don't forget to log all the typos and missing features in the user manual. Bookmarks are mentioned as triggers, but did you find something else about them?