Authorware VS Captivate

[Soothing_thinker16B8]

I was an Authorware user, but now that Authorware has been discontinued by Adobe I am forced albeit kicking and screaming to go to Captivate 3.0. My first impression of Captivate is that it is not as flexible as Authorware.
In Authorware a user could place an object in a frame and move the object to create motion. From what I understand about Captivate, a user must first make a flash file for the object motion and then place that on the frame. Which means users of Captivate must also know Adobe Flash. Now users have to purchase and learn two products to replace one, that's a win win for Adobe.

Is there a way to create motion in Captivate without using Flash, say moving a ball from point A to point B without creating it in Flash first and then loading it into Captivate?

[Captiv8r]

Welcome to our community, russcub

Actually you can do that with a bit of creative manipulation. I just replied to this type of question in another thread a couple of days back. I'll put the link below. In that thread, I also provided an example and a downloadable file to examine.

Click here to view the thread

Cheers... Rick

[Soothing_thinker16B8]

Thanks for your reply Rick, but when your trying to demonstrate the difference in the way monocodil and polycodil obects attach themselves to an agent, text doesn't work. I read about animated text in the User's Guide pdf. This is something that I could do in Authorware easily, that is totally lacking in Captivate 3.0. Captivate is too static of an application to do my type of work in.

[Newsgroup_User]

> Thanks for your reply Rick, but when your trying to demonstrate the
> difference
> in the way monocodil and polycodil obects attach themselves to an agent,
> text
> doesn't work. I read about animated text in the User's Guide pdf. This
> is
> something that I could do in Authorware easily, that is totally lacking in
> Captivate 3.0. Captivate is too static of an application to do my type of
> work
> in.


Yes it is, but it's getting better.

Meantime you *can* create your animation fairly easily in Flash, then import
it. Not ideal, but then you really need to do that too in Authorware as soon
as you need rotation, tweening, scaling or anything else beyond simple
motion.

Steve


--
Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
European eLearning Summit - EeLS
Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
http://www.elearningsummit.eu

[Soothing_thinker16B8 · Accepted solution]

Not so Steve, to create motion in Authorware all I need to do is drag a motion icon to the line, move the object from point a to b, and tell it how fast to move in the motion icon's property box without "creating the animaition fairly easily in Flash". The animation was created and self contained in the application that created it, and is not dependent on another application. Yes you can import Flash as well as a number of other types of media into Authorware.

It seems to me that you have replaced an application that was the gold standard for CBT creation, with a sub-standard one that is cumbersome to use for anything but software simulations and quizzes, but that is just me.

[Newsgroup_User]

> Not so Steve, to create motion in Authorware all I need to do is drag a
> motion
> icon to the line, move the object from point a to b, and tell it how fast
> to
> move in the motion icon's property box without "creating the animaition
> fairly
> easily in Flash".


Yes - if all you want to do is MOVE the thing, but not if you need to
rotate, scale, tween or anything.

> The animation was created and self contained in the
> application that created it, and is not dependent on another application.
> Yes
> you can import Flash as well as a number of other types of media into
> Authorware.
>
> It seems to me that you have replaced an application that was the gold
> standard for CBT creation, with a sub-standard one that is cumbersome to
> use
> for anything but software simulations and quizzes, but that is just me.
>

I didn't replace anything, by the way :-).

I'm one of it's biggest fans, but Authorware is a LONG way from a gold
standard. It has SO many problems - no decent way to dynamically format text
at runtime, no way to scale content, archaic web player, ancient interface
and I could go on for hours more about issue with Authorware. It was time to
either rebuild it form the ground up or move on.

Steve


--
Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
European eLearning Summit - EeLS
Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
http://www.elearningsummit.eu

[Newsgroup_User]

There's absolutely no doubt that Captivate does not have all the features
and functionality of Authorware. Anyone who thinks differently has been
misinformed. For developers with advanced requirements, you need something
other than Captivate, but for many people Captivate has all they need for
many, most, even sometimes *all* of their eLearning needs.

Take a look at this article - it should help identify some of the strengths
and weaknesses of Captivate:-

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/captivate/articles/authorware_cp3.html


Steve


--
Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
European eLearning Summit - EeLS
Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
http://www.elearningsummit.eu

[Guest]

Actually Adobe still has Authorware 7 that you can purchse. They have not discontiuned the program.

[Newsgroup_User]

> Actually Adobe still has Authorware 7 that you can purchse. They have not
> discontiuned the program.


:-)


It's 5 years old. Adobe announced End Of Development for Authorware close to
a year ago. They may still be selling it, but Adobe made it clear they are
not developing Authorware any further - so it's as good as a dead product.

Steve


--
Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
European eLearning Summit - EeLS
Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
http://www.elearningsummit.eu

[tomlittlemore]

I have found this thread most interesting. I am an Authorware user as well. I have been uncertain as to what direction to go since Adobe announced the end of Authorware development. I develop CBT and Instructor led CBT training. I have used Authorware in the past. I have a project coming up that will be an ongoing project for CBT on the web, and in certain instances, standalone CD/DVD. So I decided to go back out and take a look at what other products are available. I can honestly say I don't have the same confidence with Captivate as I do with Authorware. Steve you seem to be very knowlegable, what direction would you send someone in to make an informed decision?

Tom

[Newsgroup_User]

>I have found this thread most interesting. I am an Authorware user as
>well. I
> have been uncertain as to what direction to go since Adobe announced the
> end of
> Authorware development. I develop CBT and Instructor led CBT training. I
> have
> used Authorware in the past. I have a project coming up that will be an
> ongoing project for CBT on the web, and in certain instances, standalone
> CD/DVD. So I decided to go back out and take a look at what other
> products are
> available. I can honestly say I don't have the same confidence with
> Captivate
> as I do with Authorware. Steve you seem to be very knowlegable, what
> direction
> would you send someone in to make an informed decision?

Tom, I've been using Authorware daily for a little over ten years - so I
probably know it as well as anyone might. There is no doubt whatsoever that
Authorware is orders of magnitude more powerful than Captivate. So without a
doubt, Captivate will not be a satisfactory substitute for many Authorware
users.

But remember - many of the people who have been using Authorware for a long
time are what has become affectionately known as 'icon draggers'. The put
together simple, or in some cases remarkably complex courses with little or
no scripting. Many of these users will be able to move to Captivate and,
after a little acclimatisation, continue building courses that are
essentially similar to what they have been doing.


Here's what I have been recommending over the last year.

--
Captivate is a good product for the niche that it works within - software
simulation and scenario-based learning. It has serious shortcomings for
those who are used to advanced features, but for many it is actually
sufficient for their needs.

--
Adobe's recommendation is that if you need the power of Authorware -
specifically the need to use x32, u32, ActiveX, serial port integration,
lots of external content, access to system-level features and functionality,
local file system access and manipulation etc, then you should look at
Director. A new version of Director has just been released, and there is
every reason to believe that, at least in the near term (let's say 5 years)
that Director will continue to be solidly supported by Adobe.

**personally I have no intention of using Director unless I have specific 3D
needs.**

--
Flash is a powerful tool, that has become a favourite for many eLearning
developers. It has most (not all) of the power of Director. It lacks assess
to dlls, ActiveX, local file system etc. It has limited access to external
content (look at how Authorware and Director can essentially be conduits for
any file type you can imagine). But many of those shortcomings can be
overcome if you are willing run local files instead of web-based files, and
use tools like Swift to extend the features of Flash (if I got the product
name right, it gives access to DLLs and other things that let you extend
Flash's capabilities similar to X32, u32 etc in Authorware/Director).

Flash can be used as a container for Captivate. It can also be used to
create extra content that can be imported to Captivate. So if you choose to
use Captivate and run into limitations, you can combine it with Flash to
extend it. Note that you can also drop Captivate in to Director (and
Authorware) if you need to ;-)

Flash is much more complicated to use as a development tool than either
Captivate or Authorware .. at least, it is a lot less approachable to the
'icon dragger' type. But for many it will be acceptable to have the icon
draggers create some content then pass it to Flash developers to add more
complex interactivity etc.

--
Flex is Adobe's new baby. Put very simply, Flex is Flash without the
timeline. So it's a pure application development tool, akin to Visual Studio
(no I'm not saying they are just the same!!!). It has some cool things that
Flash hasn't got, but for the purposes of this conversation, lets just call
it Flash without the timeline.

What I like about Flex is the lack of timeline. But to get the best out if
it, you really have to be a more of a code head, and definitely not the
'icon dragger' type form Authorware. As with other tools listed, Flex can be
a container to other content - you can drop in Flash content, and it should
be able to work as a container for Captivate. Captivate and Flex don't talk
too well today, but Adobe seems to have an aggressive approach to developing
Captivate, so I'd expect better integration between the two in the next year
or two.

--
AIR is Adobe's newer baby 🙂 AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). Simply put,
AIR allows you to create a swf-based executable file that runs within a
desktop runtime. You can use Flex, Flash, Dreamweaver (probably some other
things too) to create AIR output. I'm most interested in using Flex to
create AIR content.

---
Adobe has some exiting things going on in beta and pre-beta right now. One
is a tool called Thermo, which enables your designers to create interfaces
in PhotoShop or Fireworks, then drag them into Thermo, and using a wysiwyg
editor, your developers can quickly convert that interface into a Flex file
that recognises text boxes, scrolling panels etc. There's some cool
demonstration on Adobe Labs and YouTube that explain this better than I do
🙂 http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2pgnNSpi_M

---

So why do I care so much about AIR and Flex?

Adobe has announced the Open Screen project
http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2008/04/the_open_screen_project.html
http://www.flashdevices.net/2008/05/adobe-announces-open-screen-project-pcs.html
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/faq/
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/

This aims at creating unified players for desktop and mobile devices
(phones, PDAs, embedded devices etc) so that a single source file can be
used to deliver content that looks and works across all the different
devices. This will allow Flash, Flex and AIR content to be developed that
runs anywhere.

OK I know there has been similar promises in the past, but browse the links
above and you can see who is involved (not just Adobe!) and see how
seriously it is being taken.

My gut feeling is that Adobe is going to put more into Flex/AIR over the
next few years than into Flash. Hence I am leaning towards Flex.

Also, if you want your content to automagically reflow when delivered to
mobile devices, like a good web site will, then Flex is designed to handle
this easily.

-------------

So my final answer to you.

My recommendation today is

- Use Captivate where you can.
- Extend it with Flash if necessary
- Bring it into Flash if you need to extend it further
- Consider bringing Captivate content into Flex ... but at the moment that
has some caveats. Communication between Flex and Flash is not easy.
- Plan for mid-term (one or two years) improvements to Captivate/Flash/Flex
that will make all three work better together.
- Plan for all of your content becoming easier to build for mobile devices.



So the toolkit becomes Captivate > Flash > Flex. Depending on your needs,
current skills, longer term plans etc you may find Captivate does all you
need. Or you may find Captivate_Flash does everything for you. Or you may
find you need to dump both, roll up your sleeves and start utilizing Flex
right now.

---
OK this is long enough. I'm sure you have a ton of questions if you've
managed to read this far. I'll do my best to answer them, but be aware that
I am out of town for the next two weeks. I'll try to respond but that
depends on what internet connections I have. Feel free to mail me privately
if you have burning questions.

Hopefully others can chime in too.


Oh - also you should consider attending at least one eLearning conference to
get a better feel for what the industry is doing. My opinion is not the only
one out there. I didn't touch on Web 2.0 technologies, for instance :-)

Steve


--
Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
European eLearning Summit - EeLS
Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
http://www.elearningsummit.eu

[tomlittlemore]

Great feedback. Yes I will have questions once I digest what I have just read.
One of my biggest concerns with captivate was quizzes and tracking abilities. How does it measure up to tracking the user and documenting the user's progress throughout a lesson and or quiz?

[Newsgroup_User]

> Great feedback. Yes I will have questions once I digest what I have just
> read.
> One of my biggest concerns with captivate was quizzes and tracking
> abilities.
> How does it measure up to tracking the user and documenting the user's
> progress
> throughout a lesson and or quiz?
>


Not close, but there is some. Take a look at my article on the dev center
for some brief info on the outline view which shows you some of the power of
the tracking.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/captivate/articles/authorware_cp3.html



Steve


--
Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
European eLearning Summit - EeLS
Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
http://www.elearningsummit.eu

[JLRiley]

This was some discussion and it leads to areas that developers always talk about and that is what is the best tool. It always seems to me that NO one tool can do it all especially if you have training/marketing etc. that is complicated and you want more realistic interactions.

For those of us who do not have a programming or icon dragging background and who do not have access to more sophisticated tools, there needs to be simpler methods.

For those who read this post but want a simpler answer, I setup whatever motion I want in powerpoint and then use the motion recording feature of Captivate. I use a custom size movie that only captures the motion and either import it as a powerpoint or click the run button in powerpoint and record in captivate. This gives me the option of having a .SWF to import that can either be an animated slide or just an animation on a slide. I have created some very interesting effects that give the visual I want without knowing Flash or anything else.

It's not sophisticated but for those of us who only have simple tools (read small budget) it does work.

[Captiv8r]

Hi JLRiley

Good stuff! I like your approach.

For anyone else reading this thread, I have a simple question. Why is it that when a company advises that they will not be enhancing a product further, that so many behave as if the product suddenly stopped working and they have to immediately stop using it and clamor for something new? I see all the time where that reaction occurs and causes folks to "jump ship". The perception is that simply because no further development will occur, the product is "dead". As if by merely hearing the announcement, the product inexplicably stops running on their desktop and they must find a replacement immediately.

Just sort of wondering aloud... Rick

[Newsgroup_User]

> For anyone else reading this thread, I have a simple question. Why is it
> that
> when a company advises that they will not be enhancing a product further,
> that
> so many behave as if the product suddenly stopped working and they have to
> immediately stop using it and clamor for something new? I see all the time
> where that reaction occurs and causes folks to "jump ship". The perception
> is
> that simply because no further development will occur, the product is
> "dead".
> As if by merely hearing the announcement, the product inexplicably stops
> running on their desktop and they must find a replacement immediately.

In the case of Authorware, it has not seen any updates in 5 years.

Meantime Microsoft has brought Internet Explorer 7 (which broke some things
in Authorware web player), Vista (ditto, plus a couple of Vista-specific
issues) Service pack 2 and 3 for XP, SP 1 for Vista, IE 8 is in beta right
now. All of these OS and browser updates risk creating more and more
incompatibilities between an aging program and the machines they are
delivered to.

And remember - by the time Authorware was e-o-d last year, Internet Explorer
7 was already out, as was Vista, so the Authorware communities were already
being introduced the the possibility that Authorware really could stop
working overnight on new machines.

The other thing is that, with that constant evolution the machines running
the programs, there is bound to be a point, sometime, that Authorware does
just stop working. Some companies have many thousands of hours of training,
representing hundreds of man YEARS of development work. They have to take a
responsible approach towards ensuring that their training does not just die
over night. So they have to start using new tools now, and decide if they
want to plan to maintain legacy hardware/software just for the training
content, or ultimately make the decision to convert their existing training.

The specific issue with Authorware is that there is no conversion tool to
take Authorware and turn it into HTML or Flash or whatever. If we were
talking about, say, Robohelp files or XML files or pdf files or some other
common file format, then we wouldn't even need this conversation.


Steve

[KCWebPlaza-5meuTi]

I'm an old Authorware developer too (started with version 2). Like so many other loyal Authorware programmers, I sometimes miss it very much. I've had to come to terms that I need to move on to other software products.

As such, I try to keep abreast of the e-Learning software space that Authorware was in, and really can't yet a replacement with it's full range of capabilities. Director and Toolbook, along with other products, are options.

Bottom line is, Captivate has many less features than Authorware. The list is huge - no scripting, access to variables, integration with APIs, integration with databases and middleware, etc.

I've accepted that the features Captivate does have are fairly easy to use. In fact, Captivate is doing well for the direction e-Learning authoring is going: rapid development by non-programmers and SMEs. I try to find work-arounds for issues with Captivate, and sometimes, I simply can't offer a solution. I'd say I can do 60% of what I used to do with Authorware - but I develop that 60% very efficiently.

I concur Flash is the runtime engine of the future for e-Learning - and learning Flex, AIR, etc. are good investments.