captivate v : attract; cause to be enamored; "She captured all the men's hearts" [syn: capture, enamour, trance, catch, becharm, enamor, beguile, charm, fascinate, bewitch, entrance, enchant]

English

Verb

1. Attract and hold interest and attention of; charm.

Adobe Captivate is an electronic learning tool for Microsoft Windows which can be used to author software demonstrations, software simulations, branched scenarios, and randomized quizzes in .swf format.

It can also be used for screencasts, podcasts, and the conversion of Microsoft PowerPoint presentations to the Adobe Flash format.

Features

Captivate builds and edits interactive software demonstrations, simulations, podcasts, screencasts, games, program demos and lessons. For software demos, it can either record in real time or use a smart event-based screen capture that snaps a sequence of still images and then builds mouse movement simulations to create the appearance of a running program. By using Adobe Flash Tweening technology, Captivate is able to create screencasts in a much smaller filesize than needed for a real full-motion screen capture movie.

Captivate users can edit Captivate presentations to add captions, clickable hotspots, text entry boxes, rollovers, videos, etc. Authors can edit the content (including mouse pointer path, position, image) and change the timing for each item to appear and disappear. The hotspots can branch to other slides in the presentation, or to outside webpages. E-learning authors can also provide multiple levels of feedback using multiple interactions per slide.

Captivate supports the import of still images, PowerPoint, video, .FLV, and audio tracks onto any Captivate slide.

Captivate also supports 508 compliant (Accessibility) output and SCORM, AICC (CBT) and PENS (software) to track score data in LMSs (Learning Management Systems).

History

While the product started out as a pure screen recording utility known as Flashcam (Nexus Concepts 2002), it evolved into an E-learning authoring tool after San Diego-based eHelp Corporation acquired Flashcam and released it as RoboDemo. Eventually, software firm Macromedia acquired eHelp to gain RoboDemo. Shortly before Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia, they changed the name of the product to Captivate.

Versions

• Adobe Captivate 3 (July 2007) New features included multimode recording, automatic rerecording, XML export/import (XLIFF) for localization, find and replace, audio recording with preview, randomized quizzes, answer shuffle, new question types (sequence/hotspot), PPT import with animations, rollover slidelet, and slide transition effects. This version has a Adobe Captivate logo preloader added to the beginning of all simulations, but this can be changed to a generic preloader.

• Adobe Captivate 2 (October 2006) New features included branching view, simulation wizard, library, interaction dialog, zoom, skins and menus, Flash Video (FLV) support, export to Flash 8, step-by-step documentation output, customization options, and PENS.

• Macromedia Captivate (October 2004) New features included timeline, audio editing, demonstration and simulation recording modes, customizable quiz questions, export to Flash MX 2004, smart full motion recording, 508 compliance, SCORM 2004, and Breeze integration.

• RoboDemo 5 and eLearning Edition (Fall 2003 by eHelp Corporation) New features included tighter integration with Flash via FLA and SWF import, full-motion (real-time) recording, SCORM 1.2., video import, multiple copy/paste, undo, shortcut controls, grid, alignment toolbar, filmstrip view, background audio, animated highlighters, and project resize.

• RoboDemo 4 and eLearning Edition (Spring 2003 by eHelp Corporation) New features included AutoText Captions, Animated Text Effects, PowerPoint style interface, publish as email attachment, customize capture key, SCORM, Quiz question slides, support for Questionmark Perception.

• RoboDemo 3 (Fall 2002 by eHelp Corporation) New features included Powerpoint and AVI import, interactive text entry boxes, interactive click boxes, JavaScript options, and scoring.

• RoboDemo 2 (May 2002 by eHelp Corporation) First version with major FlashCam bug fixes (therefore it was called version "2").

Related file formats and extensions

Comparable software

Camtasia Studio and Wink, MadCap Software Mimic are similar programs available for Windows and Linux. Wink is freeware that allows for export to EXE, PDF, HTML, or PostScript as well as SWF. These programs can only generate screen recordings and are typically not used for interactive simulations.

See also

• Adobe Flash
• Screencast

External links

• Adobe Captivate Official Page
• Adobe Captivate Developer Center
• Adobe Captivate Exchange
• Adobe Captivate Accessibility
• (Captivatebrasil Group in Brasil)

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