What if Cp 12 just made a square project? It could solve so much!

[Lisa31013337pg2c]

I am a new user, so you will either have to forgive me or celebrate me here with this idea 🙂

PPTX and 16:9 was made at a time when people were consuming things on desktop screens. IMO, this shape is out-dated, because SO MANY folks consume their media on tablets or phone, which do much better with a square format.

Even in giving Zoom workshops, I now use square slides because it is more efficient for screen real estate.

If Cp would create a square project, it would solve all of this madness about responsiveness across devices--we'd create one project, it would be square, and it would work well on all devices.

I mean, think of all the glitches that are being caused by things rendering differently in the different device-viewing modes... and all the money and grief Adobe is spending trying to make responsivesness across layouts work, and all the limitations it puts on the creators, and on the learners...

What do others think? And do the Adobe decision-makers read this forum?

[Lilybiri]

Only a minority of eLearning courses are developed really with mobile devices in mind, contrary on what the new Captivate 'thinks'. There are several reasons, on which I will not expand here. For me as former professor the main reason is that not all eLearning content can be consumed on small smartphone screens, for companies there are a lot of security reasons. 

A responsive project has no fixed resolution at all, not even a fixed width/height ratio. Why would someone use a width/height ratio of 1/1 which is not fitting on any screen: desktop monitor, laptop screen, tablet screen, phone screen.  I don't see that at all as a good idea, sorry, but I am know for being always honest (reason why some call me to be rude).

My focus is still on non-responsive projects, in a width/height ratio which fits as closely as possible all landscape screens. I publish them as Scalable HTML, which means that they'll adapt to any browser resolution (which is much more important than the screen resolution). You can have a look at the links to the tutorials I have everywhere on my blog, they all link to scalable output in landscape format. 

If you really want to get rid of the limitations of responsive projects, create a project with CP2019 in square format, publish it with Scalable turned on and view the result on multiple devices. I bet you will not like the result.

Sorry, you may not realize that I am Lieve Weymeis in the eLearning community, here is a link to a blog post with a link to a scalable HTML output:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/intro-to-tracking-states

There is an embedded output in an iFrame, but use the link to access the Scalable version.

[Lisa31013337pg2c]

Thank you, Lieve - Your patience with all of the questions is so appreciated. 🙂  I do not find you rude - tone is always difficult on text/chat and I very much appreciate your wisdom, I am grateful to learn from you! Plus, you speak 3 languages and this is impressive--so if a nuance is lost here and there, no problem at all!

Cp 12 is the only reference I have - I do not know 2019, though I hear a lot of people here saying that they will stick with it and not use Cp12 just yet--but 2019 ould be a huge learning curve for me right now and I don't know that Adobe will continue to support it - so my thinking has been, make friends with Cp 12 from the start, and learn and grow with it.

I guess one thing I notice is that in Cp 12 the video screen/block/whatever it's called really wastes a lot of real estate. Here are 3 screenshots of Desktop, Table, and Phone view. Such an amazingly sad loss of screen space - and as far as I can tell, we have no way to make the video larger and the screen space waste less. I am trying to attach three screenshots, let's see if it works! 

 

 

 

[Lilybiri]

I really don't understand why Slide video is not allowed to fill the slide as it used to be  in previous versions. Lot of the design layouts do waste a lot of real estate, but for video it is crucial to have as much space for the video. I know that you have a preference for square video (not my preference) but the big majority of video has been created to be viewed in landscape mode. In CP2019, last versions, it was possible to override the limitations in control in responsive projects (I have created some responsive projects to test out all the functionalities and for my blog - if I remember well StagPrime didn't use responsive projects which is not a criticism at all, very understandable). Overriding happened to allow slides which had best to be played in landscape mode, by using Position Properties. I explained that workflow in (sorry again) a blog post and found it a great solution. Trying to push those videos as is the case in CP2023 is fit only for very short and not so important videos. Of course my opinion. Here is that blog post:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/fluid-boxes-and-interactive-video-position-properties-panel

@Lisa31013337pg2c  My apologies to be back to another lost functionality. I understand that you don't want to learn to use CP2019, but with all your involvement and the skills you already have, I fear that CP2023 feels like a non-fitting pair of shoes because your size is not available anymore.  BTW this forum is a lot easier to have inserted screenshots (and video) as you may have experienced, compared with the eLearning community and you also know now what I meant by 24/7 moderation here compared with the eLearning community moderation.

[Stagprime]

Yeah - video not so hot when you switch to portrait view...

Not sure why eLearning Community has to be so much different than here...

I submitted a logic puzzle a couple weeks ago for my game and puzzle series and it still isn't approved.

All the students who post there for their homework assignments - I hope they aren't marked late when they fail to appear on time.

[Lilybiri]

@Stagprime Sighing... I feel often like 'Don Quixote' battling the windmills in the eLearning community.

I am (moderator) on these official Adobe forums since many years, and we are a whole group of moderators taking care of detecting spammers, moderating rule breakers, editing wrongly formulated titles. This cannot be done by one person as they try in the eLearning community, where they have a lot more to moderate.  After more than 5 years of struggling, I invite users who really want to get answers to questions, to this forum where at least they'll not to wait a week before their question appears, and another week before an answer is approved as happened a while ago. Moreover a user doesn't get notifications in the eLearning community when an answer is posted as is the case in all social media. I will not expand on that stupid scoring and badge system... which seems to be appreciated by some but to me is just childish. At my age I want to be treated as an adult, the way I treated all my 

I posted a discussion a week ago, to ask where exactly they expect bug reports: on UserVoice, Allegiance or by mail? That is still not clear to me, and I wonder who is moderating there?

[Lisa31013337pg2c]

Thank you Lieve! 

You might give me too much credit for skills. I have lots of teaching and pedagogical experience, but truly zero course-authoring software exerpience, and the most technical thing I can do is make cartooney instructional slides and videos for teaching and workshop presentations.

Now I am changing the course of my career to bring my teaching/coaching material into interactive online course format, and I so dearly hope that this software can do what I envision it to do. Really all I want to do is:

a) Have my cartooney instructional videos, with my own voice-over narration, to impart material to the learner.  (I like square, but I will let go of that if I need to--I am not stuck on it.)

b) Obviously, a course with 1 hour of video content is way too much all at once, so I want to intersperse the material with a quiz, a worksheet, a drag-and-drop, a click-to-reveal, and so on, every 3-5 minutes or more frequent. I want these little interactions to be mandatory, so that the learner must do all of the course, and in order. (And yes, per Chris and/or Stag's input, I will happily split into smaller modules--but even in those smaller modules, say 10-15 mins, I would still envision this same format - my teaching videos, interspersed every 3-5 minutes with an interative element.)

c) I cannot use 2019 beccause I have an M1 chip computer and 2019 repeatedly crashes on it.  Also I am pretty sure they will be sunsetting 2019 and focusing on making this new Cp 12 useable, so I don't mind a -bit- of frustration now... as long as it is not too difficult for too long--because I just want to build and sell my course, darnit! 🙂 Of course I understand those of you who are already proficiant in 2019, that you would keep using it until Cp 12 is good to go! But for me to build my new career path on software that is likely on its way out soon, doesn't feel wise

What is keeping me from being able to use Cp12 right now is:

a) videos won't even upload to Cp but even if they do, they show up very small on the screen, whether 1:1 or 16:9

b) the lovely quizzes and widgets are all VERY buggy - and I am dearly hoping that this will be fixed, and SOON, or else Cp 12 is simply unuseable for anyone, not just me!

c) Re-creating my slides within Cp 12 doesn't even seem possible because even somethign as simple as having one Cp slide which is nothing but a PNG image, is not possible.

So I am feeling very stumped. I find it impossible to imagine that a professional course-writing software such as this is incapable of performing what I want it to, because my needs seem simple.  "I bring the video, Adobe brings the quizzes."

Am I missing something? Are there any Adobe engineers who read this, so that maybe they also could comment? And to those who mentioned other programs (Rise, was that Stag or Chris or someone else?), do you thin kI would just be up against the same thing? There is always Articulate 360, but I understand that this program is also an ENORMOUS learning curve. I really feel like I have hope for Cp 12. Please let it be so... 🙂

I am grateful for you all, and I hope we can all help each other to become good Cp12 users, and not to hate ourselves too much when things don't work! (I know that I always blame myself and assume that I must not be "getting it"... when in fact obviously the software is just really unfinished as yet.)

-Lisa

[Lilybiri]

@Lisa31013337pg2c Do not underestimate your skills. Having pedagogical experience is IMO VERY important (I don't scream a lot) and much underestimated. I have been a university college professor, but have also coached a lot of trainings for adults in companies, or who were unemployed and looking for new skills (last training for those I had 7 nationalities in my class and I spoke in 5 languages).

From what you wrote here and in other threads, I would recommend to look out for really good interactive tutorials (not Youtube video) to try to get some grip on the translation from written courses over presentations to really interactive courses. I have started that process in my career since 1990: I created presentations before PPT existed (MS screwed everything, not only presentations), than switched to interactive eLearning assets around 2003. I learned a lot (as usual) from the feedback of my students. I never regretted my choice for Adobe Captivate in 2003 when I explored the available tools, but I would never choose if it had been CP2023. Sorry, I know that the Adobe team has worked hard on this new version, but it is not (yet?) the tool to create the courses I have in mind, or my clients have in mind.  It is meant for another group of developers at this moment, and hope it will  be appreciated by them after some bugs have been fixed.

This forum offers the possibility to contact me privately if you want to discuss more.

[VideoPep]

Hi Lisa,

Can you try unchecking Autofilt from Properties under Alignment and spacing. Then try chaing Content block size by dragging the Content block handle. You might want to latter try aspect ratios according to aspect ratio of your video.

[Lisa31013337pg2c]

Video Pep thanks for the idea! The engineers are already working on making the video fill more of the wscreen, which was the big issue. for come reason, videos would only show on a tiny portion of the screen. If they solve this, then my problem is solved! 🙂 Thanks again!

[Stagprime]

Regarding the square idea

I personally would much rather have a project that filled my screen as much as possible with small bars top/bottom vs square and a huge bars side/side or all on one side.

That said...

I seems plausible to me that if you crafted/configured the responsive authoring tool to always scale 1:1 based on the shortest side and with the remaining width/height - "responsively" fill in with the TOC - it could work.

Me: I am a non-responsive creator all the way and, like Lieve, - I will simply choose to scale if needed.

I've made some projects intended for mobile and in those cases, I simply picked dimensions for the stage appropriately, put less on the screen, and made buttons a little more "fingertip friendly", etc.

I, too, will be sticking with 2019 until the non-responsive side of version 12 is complete. Extreme loss of flexibility in responsive authoring - in my view.

I hear lots of hype about Rise... Lots of people excited that Adobe now has something to sort of match that if I can really say that... I don't author with Rise, so cannot speak about it directly, but I am very unimpressed with courses I have taken as a student that were made with it.

[Lisa31013337pg2c]

Stagprime, what do you think of all of that blank yellow space, though, on my screenshots? (Yellow is just the slide backgroudn I have currently on my draft) So much wasted real estate there, in 16:9 in these photos but als 1:1 not shown in these photos, on all three devices.  Do you think there is a way to control the amount of screen that the video takes up? 

(Think this is a valid thing to report to engineers? Seems like it from my point of view.)

[Stagprime]

I don't care for all the blank space either - particularly on desktop.

Big obstacle there - however - is scaling a video all the way to full screen could cause it to be overly pixelated.

Whenever I created something that I needed to scale - I tried to make according to the larger size requirements. Generally speaking - I can scale down and keep it looking good better than I can scale up and keep it looking good. Less of an issue if you're working with graphics and have SVGs at your disposal.

I have v12 on my computer but I have not played with it a great deal since I really don't need/want it for anything. I mostly play with simple things, get frustrated, and go back to work. In my environment, it is not a production-ready application.

[sabre123]

I mean, think of all the glitches that are being caused by things rendering differently in the different device-viewing modes

By @Lisa31013337pg2c

This has been an issue since the dawn of responsive web design. You lose a ton of control in terms of placement/alignment and scale, and some people can live with this more than others. It's not technically a 'glitch.' I am in the camp of not liking the loss of control. For that reason as well as others, I will stick with CP2019 as long as possible. 

The lessons I create now are set to Scalable HTML content on publish as @Lilybiri  and @Stagprime have mentioned. I use a homegrown LMS, and within the CSS I have the maximum dimensions set to the actual project dimensions, so it will scale down to fit tablet and phone viewports, but never get larger than the project dimensions.

Will the learner have a bad experience taking my training on a phone in portait mode? Absolutely. Landscape is not horrible if you have good eyesight.