Adobe Captivate 5: The Essentials (for Windows & Macintosh)

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

Note: This book has step-by-step instructions for developers using Captivate on either Windows or a Macintosh.