My favorite method for learning new or enhanced software product is through project development. I find it difficult to master new enhancements working with each in isolation, so I have a tendency to add as many of a software tools enhancements to a single personal learning project as possible. This way I can study the effects the new feathers have on each other and older features.
For the new Captivate 2017 release I took a very text intensive tutorial created in Captivate 7 a few years ago and migrated up versions until I reached Captivate 2017. I then removed the depreciated features, converted the file to a responsive project, and took advantage of several of the new and enhanced features.
My testing process taught me a number of lessons, some of which are documented in the following table.
| Enhancement | Finding(s) | Lesson Learned | |
| Converting from Captivate 7 to 2017 | Project needed to be converted to 9 before migrating to 2017. When converting from 7 to 9 Captivate converted the content, but then froze. After doing a force quit the converted project loaded without any issues and Captivate worked fine. | Do not skip product releases when migrating a project to a newer version. Depending on the features used in the original project, there could be a fair amount of content change required.
Projects no longer work with Apple iBooks (functioned through the initial release of version 9). Widgets created with Captivate projects no longer function when upgraded to 2017.
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| Converting a non-responsive project to a responsive project | When converting a non-responsive Captivate 9 project to a responsive 2017 project the Fluid box tool is hidden. | Captivate 9 projects must be saves as 2017 projects before converting to responsive projects for the Fluid Box tool to be activated. | |
| Converting a responsive Captivate 9 project to a responsive 2017 project | 2017 mobile preview mode is not converted and the Fluid box tool is not available. | This feature works best with new projects. Converted projects need a great deal of modification to display properly across devices, and it is best to use Breakpoint Mode instead of Fluid Boxes for converted projects. | |
| Visited State View | The built-in visited state for button reduces the amount of interaction coding that was required in earlier versions. | ||
| eLearning Assets | Some of the eLearning assets proved in versions 9 and 2017 reduce development time.
For the sample project I used one of the responsive theme assets as a basis for the slide layout, and an Interaction package for an examples page. |
Some tweaking is required when resources are added to an existing project. | |
| Editing SVG files | The editing and setting the size of SVG files is very easy in this new release. Simply select the image in question on the slide and Style menu will display edit options. | ||
| Text-to-speech | Additional voices and languages have been added. | Text-to-speech voices need a separate download and installation if the software is retrieved from the web, and from a subfolder if a software CD was used.
When developing text scripts, it is best to decrease the amount of punctuation used. |
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| Uniform text scaling | Provides uniform scaling of text across devices, and a variety of minimum Font Sizes can be used within a project. | The feature must be set on each slide in a responsive project.
It is important to set the minimum text size when using this feature. |
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| Creating a new responsive project | The Fluid Boxes tool works well with a new project. I created a new project template using Fluid Boxes to layout the content and then copied content from an older course into the new template. The tool actually saved me a fair amount of development time. | Use Fluid Boxes only with templates designed to take advantage of the feature. |
If you would like to explore how I implemented some of the features noted in the table as an end-user, view a non-responsive version of my test project at http://joannmajor.org/DesignProjects/Multimedia%20Designs/FormativeActivities/
Very informative.
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