Captivate in Articulate

[daveperso]

I have actually been recommending people stick with Captivate 3. Captivate 4 movies cause audio issues with the Presenter player plus you can't control their playback with the Presenter controls.

[heather]

Originally Posted by daveperso

I have actually been recommending people stick with Captivate 3. Captivate 4 movies cause audio issues with the Presenter player plus you can't control their playback with the Presenter controls.

Whoa! What? I used Captivate 3 at my last job, but am just about to purchase Articulate and Captivate at my new job, which means I'll be getting Captivate 4. With swf files created in Captivate 4, I can no longer control the swf with Presenter's controls?!

Is it because the Captivate control bar is required with the Captivate 4 swf, now that Captivate 4 files are back to being one swf file? If not that, why can't Presenter control Captivate 4 files? AARGGGG! <that's me annoyed on Wed morning...you should hear me on a Monday>

Maybe I can buy Captivate 3 on EBay or something and then pay the upgrade price if they ever get this fixed. How are other Articulate/Captivate people handling this change?

Heather

[tloh]

It looks like this topic will be recurring more and more as people look to upgrade to or purchase the latest version of Captivate 4.

I too am curious as to how the audio issue will be resolved.

~ Tzuliang

[danl]

I've looked through this entire thread and haven't seen anything on my particular issue, so I thought I'd post this question.

I have interactive Captivate4 SWF files that need to be accessed from within Articulate (5.2). This are of CAD interactions, so they are larger than the maximum embeddable 720x540 size. I want them to appear instead in a separate browser window.

This all works fine, but the pop up windows is not re sizable. The SWF files are shot at 1024x768, and with the Captivate wrapper they even larger. For our particular client, I want the browser window to open at 1024x768 and be re sizable so that viewers can make adjustments if they have larger monitors.

It seems that the answer lies with correctly setting the parameters for the writeSwfObject function within zoom.html, but I can't find documentation of these parameters anywhere and trial and error isn't doing it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Justin]

Originally Posted by danl

I've looked through this entire thread and haven't seen anything on my particular issue, so I thought I'd post this question.

I have interactive Captivate4 SWF files that need to be accessed from within Articulate (5.2). This are of CAD interactions, so they are larger than the maximum embeddable 720x540 size. I want them to appear instead in a separate browser window.

This all works fine, but the pop up windows is not re sizable. The SWF files are shot at 1024x768, and with the Captivate wrapper they even larger. For our particular client, I want the browser window to open at 1024x768 and be re sizable so that viewers can make adjustments if they have larger monitors.

It seems that the answer lies with correctly setting the parameters for the writeSwfObject function within zoom.html, but I can't find documentation of these parameters anywhere and trial and error isn't doing it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You can specify the dimensions of a movie that opens in a new browser window but you can't specify if the browser window will be resizable or not:
Configuring Flash Movie In New Browser Window

[Learning Designs, Inc.]

Is it even possisble to use the "right click" feature during a Captivate video that has been inserted into Engage Media Tour? We're trying to train users on a new software program that uses the right-click feature. Since Captivate has been converted to a flash file, does this mean the right-click feature is forever disabled?

[danl]

It *is* possible to maintain the right-click functionality within a Captivate video that has been converted to flash. The trick is to prevent the flash player from treating the right click as a command to bring up the flash context menu.

I don't know how the Engage Media Tour works, but to make this work in a pop up window within an Articulate Presenter training, I made modifications to the zoom.html file. Note I was using Articulate Presenter 5, not the newer version. This file is used within Articulate whenever a flash video plays. The default version that ships with Articulate creates a pop-up window that appears wherever it wants to, cannot be resized, and doesn't do anything about right-click. The original used the writeswfObject function.

My modified version uses the SWFObject function. Here's the code that at least worked for me. Warning that this code isn't particularly clean, but hopefully you'll get some ideas to solve your problem! D.


<HTML>
<HEAD>
<!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->
<TITLE>Interactive Video</TITLE>

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" SRC="flashcommand.js" TYPE="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="standard.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<SCRIPT>
var g_oZoomInfo = window.opener.g_oZoomInfo;
</SCRIPT>
<HEAD>
<!-- *********** HERE IS WHERE THE RIGHT CLICK AND SCREEN SIZE IS FIXED **** -->
<BODY marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" onload="RightClick.init(); self.moveTo((screen.availWidth-1024)/2,(screen.availHeight-768)/2); self.resizeTo(1024,768); " bgcolor="#F5F4F1">
<div id="CaptivateContent">&nbsp;
</div>
<SCRIPT>

function ShowImage(strFileName)
{
document.write("<img src='"+ strFileName + "'/>");
}

function ShowSWF(strFileName,myWidth,myHeight)
{
var so = new SWFObject(strFileName, "Captivate", "100%", "100%", "8", "#CCCCCC");
so.addParam("quality", "high");
so.addParam("name", "Captivate");
so.addParam("id", "Captivate");
so.addParam("wmode", "opaque");
so.addParam("bgcolor","#F5F4F1");
so.addParam("menu", "false");
so.addParam("menubar","1")
so.addParam("scale", "noorder");
so.addVariable("variable1", "value1");
so.setAttribute("redirectUrl", "http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash");
so.write("CaptivateContent");
document.getElementById('Captivate').focus();
document.Captivate.focus();
}

function Zoom()
{
var strFileName = g_oZoomInfo.strFileName;
var myWidth = g_oZoomInfo.nWidth
var myHeight = g_oZoomInfo.nHeight
var myBrowserOptions = g_oZoomInfo.strBrowserOptions
var myContainerType = g_oZoomInfo.strcontainerType
var strExt = "";
var strOptions = "width=" + g_oZoomInfo.nWidth +",height=" + g_oZoomInfo.nHeight + ", status=0, toolbar=0, location=0, menubar=0, resizable=1, scrollbars=1";
<!-- alert("Height="+myHeight+" Width="+myWidth+" Browser Options="+myBrowserOptions+" ContainerType="+myContainerType); -->
strExt = strFileName.substr(strFileName.lastIndexOf("."));
strExt = strExt.toLowerCase();
if (strExt == ".swf")
{
ShowSWF(strFileName,myWidth,myHeight);
}
else
{
ShowImage(strFileName);
}
}
function RemoveFolder(strPath)
{
var strResult = strPath;
var nPos = -1;
var nPos2 = -1;
nPos = strResult.lastIndexOf("\\");
nPos2 = strResult.lastIndexOf("/");
if (nPos2 > nPos)
{
nPos = nPos2;
}
if (nPos >= 0)
{
strResult = strResult.substr(nPos + 1);
}
return strResult;
}
Zoom();
</SCRIPT>
</BODY>
</HTML>

[NYC_Chris]

I have a captivate movie inserted into presenter, not a pop window...Is there anyway to get the right click in the captivate working again if it is inside Presenter?

[danl]

Sorry, have no idea on this one. I'm guessing that the "flashcommand.js" file controls this, as it has functions for just about everything that Presenter does with external content, including a call to WriteSWFObject. But that said, the key to the above code working was the fact that you could set parameters when the new window opens specific to that window; not sure how you'd trap the right click in that case. It's possible you could do this with whatever first launches your presentation, but I've no idea where that lives. D.

[Travis Smith]

Just curious, what is the ideal project size to produce in Captivate to maximize the Look in Articulate allowing room for the Captivate skin and play controls?