Adobe Captivate 5: The Essentials

by Kevin A. Siegel

If you are an instructional designer or technical writer, you have no doubt spent years attempting to perfect the art of teaching programs using fewer and fewer words. If you are in the business of educating, you know how difficult this job can be.
These days, interactive lessons that can be viewed over the Internet or from a CD are all the rage.

There are many programs that can be used to capture a computer's screen, mouse action and audio. Unfortunately, the resulting movies can be huge--a five minute lesson could easily gobble up nearly 100mb of storage space on a hard drive. Downloading a file that large will take a lot of time, even if a user has a fast Internet connection. Large file sizes are just part of the problem. The movies may not be cross-platform (they may not work on both Macs and PCs). Interactivity is a feature most of the "mouse capture" applications do not support. And there are few of these programs that allow images to be imported.

This fast-paced workbook will teach you the essential skills you will need to use Captivate to develop highly interactive eLearning courses. You will learn how to:

~ Record Demonstration Videos and Simulations
~ Add Captions, Styles and Use the Timeline
~ Add Images and Drawing Objects
~ Work with Pointers, Buttons and Highlight Boxes
~ Add Rollovers and Zoom Areas
~ Add, Record and Edit Audio
~ Add Flash Video, Animation and Effects
~ Convert Demonstrations Into Simulations
~ Create Question Slides
~ Publish Projects as eLearning

254 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 15, 2010

About the author

evin A. Siegel is the founder and president of IconLogic, Inc. He has written more than 100 step-by-step computer training books, including Camtasia Studio 6: The Essentials, Adobe Captivate 5: The Essentials, Adobe Captivate 4: The Essentials, Adobe Captivate 4: Beyond the Essentials, Essentials of Macromedia Captivate, Essentials of RoboDemo 5, Essentials of Adobe RoboHelp 8, Essentials of Adobe RoboHelp 7, Essentials of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, QuarkXPress 8: The Basics and Essentials of Adobe InDesign CS3.

Kevin spent five years in the U.S. Coast Guard as an award-winning photojournalist and has more than two decades experience as a print publisher, technical writer, instructional designer and eLearning developer. He is a certified technical trainer, has been a classroom instructor for more than 17 years and is a frequent speaker at trade shows and conventions. Kevin holds multiple certifications from companies such as Adobe and the CompTIA.