Questions re: the future of Captivate (CS6, Flash, Accessibility, etc)

Report · Mar 28, 2012

Greetings all you Captivaters! First post in this forum but frequent lurker. I have some questions re: Captivate but before I do that, I will explain what I do and what my situation is.

I just started working for a very large MN State Agency as a Supervisor of our Training, Technical Assistance, and Communications team within the Disability Services Division (DSD). Coming into this position, I noticed the need to retool our dev tools and being a long time user of Adobe products (PS, ID, DW, Flash, Illustrator, etc), I want to use these products to produce online learning products that meet our business needs. Previous to my arrival, we farmed stuff out to local consultant firms or used products like Tegrity to deliver these online assets. However, I want us to be more of a production team as opposed to farming stuff out. I am looking at the E-Learning Suite as a suite that can meet our needs. My initial idea was to use both Captivate and to Dreamweaver (along with the other applications) to be our main development tools. I am currently working on a project using a demo version of Captivate to produce a simple online learning module as a way of testing Captivate and to build a case for purchasing E-Learning Suite.

My questions about Captivate involve:

Future of Flash: With the death of Flash on mobile platforms (for the most part) and questions about the future of Flash, how is Captivate going to evolve in being able to publish into different formats (ie HTML 5)? I don't want to invest our funds on a product that doesn't have long-term viability.

Accessibility: Being that we are Disability Services, we have a higher expectation of producing highly accessible products. I understand that Captivate can produce 508 compliant products, but I have not yet tested this with our staff/end users with various sensory disabilities. I do understand that using HTML/CSS/XML (Dreamweaver) in some cases will be our best option, but I am doing some research on this. What has been your experience with producing accessible products with Captivate?

CS6: Is there a new version of Captivate coming out with the launch of CS6 or will 5.5 be the version for the foreseeable future?

There are other teams in our agency using older versions of Captivate and are wanting to upgrade to 5.5, there are other factions that use Tegrity, Dreamweaver, and other applications like Camtasia. I am wanting to position ourselves using the best products for the future as we change from a pass through to more of a production team. This will involve building our technical skills so that we will be able to effectively use these products and if we are going to do this, again, I want to position ourselves with the best product(s). Adobe is my choice due to the quality products they put out but Captivate has me scratching my head a bit.

I would love to hear from fellow Captivaters about their knowledge about the questions listed above. Thank you for any input you have and I look forward to discussing these issues. Keep in mind I have been doing research on these issues but would like some supporting info from those on the frontline who design and develop elearning products using these tools.

Report · Mar 28, 2012

Welcome to our community!

I'll try taking a stab at a few of these. I'm sure others will chime in as well.

motay86 wrote:
Future of Flash: With the death of Flash on mobile platforms (for the most part) and questions about the future of Flash, how is Captivate going to evolve in being able to publish into different formats (ie HTML 5)? I don't want to invest our funds on a product that doesn't have long-term viability.

There is currently a public beta test of an HTML 5 converter for Captivate. Visit the link below for more on that:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/captivate_html5/

CS6: Is there a new version of Captivate coming out with the launch of CS6 or will 5.5 be the version for the foreseeable future?

I've never known Captivate to share anything WRT timelines and releases of CS6. Certainly there are special connections that Adobe builds in for working with Flash and Photoshop, but aside from that I don't believe CS6 drives any development with Captivate. It certainly appears to be very siloed as far as the dev teams go. I am aware that Adobe are working on a new version. But aside from the awareness, cannot say or even begin to remotely speculate when that version will be generally made available for public consumption.

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Mar 28, 2012

Hey Rick...thanks for the response. I was aware of some of the HTML converters but at this time, this isn't a complete product as Captivate loses much of the interaction elements and I imagine strips some of the SCORM capabilities as well. I was wondering about conversions within Captivate that were native and not work arounds.

I had searched for info re: Captivate 6 and found nothing so your insight on that makes me feel more comforatable about the fact that there reall IS no news on the development of the new Captivate. Unless of course one of the developers working on this happens to see this post and gives us a little nugglet to chew on. Now wouldn't that be nice?

Report · Mar 28, 2012

Adobe have already clearly signalled their entry into HTML5 publishing with the BETA of the HTML5 converter. All of the Rapid Elearning Authoring tools are scrambling to provide HTML5 output in either current or next versions. You can bet on the next version of Captivate not wanting to be left out. That would be commercial suicide in the current market.

If accessibility is a huge issue for you (which it would seem to be) then you are wise to do a lot of testing before committing to any tool. The more complex an interaction or course becomes, the less likely it will be 100% accessible. It's always a trade off. I think you need to be VERY clear exactly what level of accessibility you intend to aim for (yes there are several specific levels defined by the W3C) and then try to find a tool that complies with that level. There will be very few if any that deliver the top level.

Adobe has the practice of beginning work on the next version of an app even before the last one ships. So since Captivate 5.5 was released in June last year, you can bank on the fact that Captivate 6 is well along in development. No release date has been given on any Adobe site I've seen.

Captivate is currently the market leader in the e-learning space. But there is some stiff competition at present for HTML5, and new tools coming online all the time. I'm personally backing Captivate because it has always allowed me to do what I needed (or at least close to it).

Report · Mar 29, 2012

Thanks for your analysis Rod...anything having to do with HTML 5 is a scramble at this point so I understand that will be ongoing for some time. I beleive in Adobe as a dev tool developer and also think that hitching my wagon to Captivate and having Dreamweaver there to help us address those online assets that require a higher level of accessibility will be the ticket. We shoot for 508/WCAG 2 AA level for accessibility but the WCAG AA level doesn't always get met but the 508 is mandetory. A nice resource we have is someone on our team who has a visual disability and uses JAWS as her AT. She will be a great resource as we test these environments and I can get immediate feedback from her re: the accessibility of our e-goodies.

Again, I have used Adobe products for most of my geeking life and I have confidence that Captivate will continue to evolve into a a more robust dev tool that continues to increase it's utility as well as create increasingly accessible products. So, at this point, I beleive that Captivate does have a role in our workflow...but the extent is the question mostly because of Flash. Again, since Captivate is so tied to Flash, I wonder how this will impact the ongoing development.

I will be interested to see where this goes. Thanks for all of your insights and I enjoy the conversation.

Report · Mar 29, 2012

motay86 wrote:
Hey Rick...thanks for the response. I was aware of some of the HTML converters but at this time, this isn't a complete product as Captivate loses much of the interaction elements and I imagine strips some of the SCORM capabilities as well. I was wondering about conversions within Captivate that were native and not work arounds.

My understanding is the loss of functionality is more a limitation of HTML5, not the authoring or conversion tools. But I admit I haven't done much research on it.

With the general ubiquity of desktop/laptops in the corporate environment, Flash isn't going away anytime soon, in my opinion. Mobile is cool and the new shiny toy, but it's not going to be the be-all and end-all of eLearning (again, my opinion). There's absolutely a place for mLearning, but that place is not 100% of the eLearning space. Again, my opinion.

At least not until we're all carrying cellular tablets or eyeglass HUD systems

Report · May 09, 2012

I have used Captivate since it first came out and it wa the first tool of choice for LMS Driven learning content.

I have been playing with Articulate Storyline for the past few days since it was released and it had raised the bar completely.

It seems Articulate listened to the Elearning community and provides a tool that meets and exceeds all expectations.

My concern with a lot of Adobe applications and especially Captivate is that Adobe ( I feel ) does not listen to the general user, but seems to listen to Corporate influences to determine the functionality of its products.

Look what happened to Director........someone decided that Flash Professional would do what Director did, but no one asked us that used it...

Many of the features in Storyline are features I have been screaming at Adobe to provide in Captivate for years.....

I hope Adobe listens, as Storyline will be the application of choice for Elearning content deployment very quickly.

I want functionality that is user friendly and does what I want it to do. I do not want an application that simply shows me how clever the software developers think they are.

Report · May 09, 2012

I've had the privilege of watching BETAs for both Cp6 and Storyline. Don't be too quick to write off Captivate.

I would agree with you that in the past Adobe has been guilty of not listening to their community, and there will always be things we might feel they should build into the product that don't make it.

I was the one that started up the Captivate 6 IdeaScale site just after Cp 5.5 came out to push for specific enhancements and to give the Captivate community a more visible voice outside of the Adobe forums. I did this with full approval from Adobe. They were just as interested as I was to see what people would ask for.

I'm bound by NDA not to tell you what will be in this next release, but I CAN assure you that Articulate is NOT the only company that knows how to listen to its user base.

Report · May 09, 2012

thanks for the reply.

I was not trying to write off Captivate at all to be honest, but I was simply trying to explain that Adobe took their eye off the ball for a while.

I use the Master Suites, and I am considering the CS6 Master Suite, and then purchase Captivate CS6, if and when it meets my needs.

I currently have Captivate CS5.5 as my main tool, but, I was pointing out that Storyline has jumped Captivate, for the moment

Report · May 09, 2012

I also see Storyline as a very promising tool. It's getting a lot of airplay at the moment because of the release and I think it has taken a flying leap over the other competition out there, including its own sister product Articulate. In fact, I'm very interested to see if Storyline canibalizes sales from Articulate, not just Captivate. I can't see how it wouldn't do so.

Having looked at both products though, and putting aside some of the glossy gimmicks that I think will get old quickly, I still think even Captivate 5.5 has an edge on Storyline. But that's just my view.

We should never forget that this is version 1 of a new product, being compared to version 5.5 of Adobe's e-learning flagship. The fact that it is being compared with Captivate at all is quite an achievement in my view. Where would it be by now if it were version 4 or 5 with the featureset it has at version 1?

I think the next year or so is certainly going to be an interesting time to be an e-learning developer!

Report · May 09, 2012

my co-worker forwarded this podcast link to me today, where articulate storyline, articulate studio, captivate, and lectora are all discussed.

Granted, it's kind of apples and oranges since storyline is new and Cp6 is still in development, I thought it gave a pretty objective view on which authoring tool excels in which area -

http://elearninguncovered.com/2012/05/our-thoughts-on-articulate-storyline/

bottom line, storyline does some things very well, but the speakers think other tools do some things better.