Where to design the different layouts to use for a template?
I’m an Animate (Flash) and once a Director developer. As the Flash player is coming to an end, we have decided (where I work) to use Captivate for our lesson publishing application. I have been tasked with making our template, and need to design choices that my other team members to choose from. Captivate seems to be similar to Powerpoint’s Master slide. I’m going to use responsive design with fluid boxes and I’m not sure where to design all of our possible layouts.
In Animate (Our current template) we have an Introduction slide and depending on the content we have various different layouts.
What we always have on a slide:
- The top has a title
- The bottom has the navigation and other buttons on a bar
- In between is the content
The content can layout:
- Text on the left with graphic on the right or vice versa
- Text on top and graphics on the bottom or vice versa
- All text no graphics
- Only Graphics or no text
- Video only
Do I use the filmstrip or Master slide?
If Master slide, do I design the navigation there or in filmstrip?
I posted several links, but it is weekend, you may have to wait till Monday.
You can find my website under lilybiri dot com and it has a link to my blog. Search functionality is present: look for Themes, object styles, fluid boxes.
In this portal I blogged a lot about quizzes. Look for ‘Submit Process’ where I explain the embedded objects on quizzing master slides.
Have a look at these links:
http://blog.lilybiri.com/challenges-for-starters
http://blog.lilybiri.com/whats-in-a-theme-a-template
http://blog.lilybiri.com/tips-for-fluid-quiz-slides
http://blog.lilybiri.com/fluid-boxes-and-master-slides
http://blog.lilybiri.com/guides-and-fluid-boxes-best-buddies
http://blog.lilybiri.com/responsive-projects-object-styles
http://blog.lilybiri.com/theme-colors
https://elearning.adobe.com/2019/02/captivates-quizzes-2-submit-process/
There is a bit of confusion about terminology. I will post a link to one of my posts where I explain the difference between a Theme and a Template. The last is bit buggy at this moment, but in most cases a custom Theme is all what you need.
A Theme has different components: Theme Colors Palette, Object Styles, Master slides, Skin and Recording defaults (if you need them). I have multiple articles written about them.
A Captivate is a lot more powerful than the more simple PPT master slides. Most trainings I coach for intermediate or advanced users, need to start with explaining Themes because the majority of developers seem to ignore their power.
To answer your question: start with the color palette, set up object styles in collaboration with master slides. Start from the Blank theme included with Captivate because that one has the 6 master slides which are necessary in each theme: Blank, 4 Quizzing master slides (although you will not be able to use Likert in Fluid Boxes) and the Results slide. Do not delete anything on those master slides because they have a lot of embedded objects with built in functionality.
You can add as many content master slides as you want.
Please, even though you are an experienced Animate user, Captivate is more like a multi-featured swiss knife. What I explained about master slides and object styles is closer to InDesign. I will post links in another comment (could be delayed because of moderation).
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