Navigation in Adobe Captivate Prime is Stunningly Difficult

[rgeorgebauer]

Went out on a limb recommending Captivate (latest rev) and Captivate Prime as a eLearning solution. Absolutely stunned to find that a 6-year old program has "disappearing" slide navigation, and the recommendation is to render the file as a SWF format--on a Captivate Prime server. Other issues with font retention, substitution, lots of twerks and bugs to iron out, a 12-step checklist of things you have to tweak before you post to Prime. Really stunned that this product is in the Adobe product line, or that it is cared for as badly. We are trying to get help on these matters, but a 3-month job has now run into 6 months and my management is wondering why we did not go with Articulate or even a simpler LMS. 

I don't know what to tell them. Our training provider seems to only want to sell us more training, and the individual bugs are as surprising to them as it is to us. But, in stellar software industry fashion, I am supposed to believe that the next version of the code is going to fix all this. I thought Adobe abandoned Flash/SWF format years ago (or at least I read this), but now I am being told to use SWF, even if it causes lost of problems for publishing to Prime in the first place. I have never seen navigation that makes it easy to skip a module to the next module, and yet is incapable of simply advancing one slide to the next sequenced slide. No learning paths, branches, gamification--just simply, basic stuff. 

I have 5000+ contacts at LinkedIn, and I really don't want to share this with the world, but this just staggers the imagination that a program out on the market for so long would be so buggy. 25 years LMS experience, 20+ elearning authoring experience, several master's degrees, no fool. Tell me that something is wrong here besides me, because all of my management currently feel the same way about this condition. 

Rick (Colorado)

[Stagprime]

I am perhaps a bit lost on sorting out some terms here.

We are trying to get help on these matters, but a 3-month job has now run into 6 months and my management is wondering why we did not go with Articulate or even a simpler LMS. 

Your post title clearly addresses Captivate Prime which is, in fact, an LMS, but you are posting in the Captivate forum rather than the Captivate Prime forum and the quote above indicates management wondering why Articulate was not a choice...

But you also reference both Captivate and Prime together as a solution in the first sentence but one does not require the other. Captivate can be used with other LMSs and other authoring tools can be used with Prime.

These are apples and oranges. To my knowledge, Articulate does not offer an LMS. Their products are authoring tools not LMS platforms.

Adobe has both:

Captivate - the authoring tool

Captivate Prime - the LMS

they are easily mixed up from a nomenclature standpoint.

This is just a user forum where other users may be able to offer suggestions if there is a direct question.

I guess I am just curious about the true problem - is it a Captivate issue or a Captivate Prime issue?

Someone here should be able to help if it is a Captivate authoring tool issue. 

Oh - and for what it is worth - my advice is not to publish as SWF.

[rgeorgebauer]

Stagprime:

thanks for the guidance. I will look for a better place to move this comment to. I agree with your guidance on SWF, which is why I found the Adobe recommendation to use SWF as a work-around for a Prime issue (in this case, you have to go back to the object, re-eddited it in captivate, to get it to have navigation in Prime); so while your initial observation about what bucket this is I appreciate, one of the reasons we went with this solution was the integration between the two products, of which I am now a bit suspect. 

But thanks for the recommendations. I am trying my darndest to make this work. 

rick

[Lilybiri]

I could move your ideas to the Prime forum, if you agree... It may be read by the responsibles of Captivate Prime in that case. This is the Captivate forum, mostly populated by Captivate developers.

BTW as Captivate developer it has been at least 5 years since I published to SWF for the last time.

[RodWard]

rick@tunespeak,

If you could detail exactly what problems you are having, it's possible that someone here may be able to help you.  We've all heard stories about Adobe Support people giving advice that clearly shows they do NOT actually know the product.  Anyone telling you that you should publish to SWF would have to be viewed with suspicion given that most web browsers now will not play SWF content and any that do are being deprecated very quickly

We are all Captivate users on this forum, but we are not necessarily Captivate Prime users.  Your screenshot seems to indicate it is showing a Captivate Prime interface component.  May I ask, is the problem you are having something related to being able to move from one Captivate learning module to the next one?