Intelligent Print Widget for Adobe Captivate 4 and 5

What does it do?

This print widget will print any slide from Adobe Captivate 4 (AS3) or Adobe Captivate 5. It will also always force the print to landscape mode without the user having to select it in the print dialog. Another clever thing is that it will automatically rescale the printed slide so it will fit on the paper selected in the print dialog box. The rescaling is done dynamically and will keep the original proportions and adjust to whatever papersize the user selects (or the default size if the user justs clicks ok) in the print dialog prompt.

The widget is “plug & play” – no need to define any parameters or set up anything. The widget will do it all automatically. Simply add the widget to the slide or slides that you want to allow the user to print and that’s it.

Print Quality:

The widget will treat the content to be printed as a bitmap image. The quality of the print is limited by the printing abilities that Adobe Flash have. Please try out the demonstration below to ensure you are happy with the quality.

Requirements:

Adobe Captivate 4 or Adobe Captivate 5 is required. In Adobe Captivate 4 you will need to publish your project as AS3.  

Demonstration:

Click here to see a demonstration of the Intelligent Print Widget. The demonstation is of the AS2 version for Adobe Captivate 4, but the functionality is exactly the same. The demonstration project is 900 px by 555 px.

Buy the component (US$ 10):

If you are looking for the AS2 version for Adobe Captivate 4 that can be found here.

Download package contents:

The zip file contains four (4) individual Print widgets.

captivate5PrintWidget(dontPrintPlaybar)
captivate5PrintWidget(printPlaybar)
captivate5PrintWidget(dontPrintPlaybar-noIcon)
captivate5PrintWidget(printPlaybar-noIcon)

The difference between the four widgets is that one widget will print everything including the Captivate playbar and the other widget will only print the content on your Captivate stage.

The widgets that have “noIcon” in their name are transparent and do not have a button. This is because you can then place the widget on top of your own button graphics inside Captivate. Make sure that the widget is the top layer in the timeline when you are doing this. If you place it on top of a button thenplease note that the buttons over states will not work.

Other information:

The widget has been tested with Internet Explorer 7 & 8 and Firefox 3.5 and works perfectly well. If you are unsure if your browser supports it then try the demonstration link above. If you can print from the demonstration then the widget will work on your system.

Some people have had problems with printing to Network Printers with the AS2 version of the widget. I have no explanation or solution to why this is happening, but I have not encountered the problem myself. I am able to print from Network printers without any problems.

Email Reporting Widget (AS3) for Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5

What does it do?:

The Email Reporting Widget for Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5 will automatically send an email with quizzing, access and other information to an email-address that the developer specifies in the widget parameters. The Widget uses a PHP script to send the email in the background and the user will not notice or need to take any action in order to send the email.

How does it work?:

The developer inserts the Email Reporting Widget either on the quiz summary slide or on any slide after the quiz summmary slide. You could also use this widget to record access data and time spent in a project without quizzes. In that case simply insert the widget on your last Captivate slide.

The widget parameters tab contains three required fields:

The Recipient email field defines the email address where you want the Widget to send the email.

The Email subject field defines the subject of the email.

The Sender email field defines the from email address that will appear in the email you receive.

Once you have set up these parameters and inserted the widget then the final thing you need to do is to add a Text Entry Box in your Captivate project where the user can enter his name / employee number or other type of ID so you can identify the user. The Text Entry Box needs to be associated with a variable called v_email.

This concludes the work you need to do in Adobe Captivate. The next step is to publish your project and then manually copy the sendmail.php file to the directory where you published your files to. Upload all files to your webserver / LMS that runs PHP and you are all set.

Demonstration:

Since the widget sends email I cannot provide a live demonstration. However here you can see the output recieved by email after the widget is inserted in a project.

Requirements:

Adobe Captivate 4 or Adobe Captivate 5, minimum Flash Player 9 and PHP installed on your server. Your Adobe Captivate 4 project needs to be published to AS3.

Test package to verify the widget will work for you:

In order to make sure that this widget will work on your system / setup you can download a special test package here. This package contains a Captivate project, some Flash coding and a PHP file. All you need to do is to edit the PHP file and insert your own email address and then upload all the files to the server / LMS where you intend to run your Captivate project from.

Limitations:

As far as I am aware of there are no know limitations of this widget other than the fact that you server needs to run PHP. Most webhosts already have PHP running on the server.

In addition to this – prior to buying the widget you should have (hopefully) used the test package to see if your server would send you an email.

Package contents:

One widget for Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5, two PHP files and help document.

Buy the Widget:

Prior to buying please make sure that you have used the test package to ensure the widget works for you!

Single User Licence (US$ 35)

The single user licence grants you, the Purchaser, a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to make use of and display the product that you acquire but limited to either your own personal use or for projects within the company where you are employeed.

You are allowed to use the product as many times as you like for personal use or for projects within your company / organization. However, if you use this product in a one of your projects with the intent of resale to a client outside of your company / organization you are required to repurchase the product the appropriate number of times or purchase an enterprise license.

Multiple User Licence (US$ 175)

The multiple user licence grants you and any number of employees of your company / organization, a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to make use of and display the product that you have acquired to either your own personal use or for projects within your own company.

You are allowed to use the product as many times as you like for personal use or for projects within your own company / organization. However, if you use this product in a one of your projects with the intent of resale to a client outside of your company / organization you are required to repurchase the product the appropriate number of times or purchase an enterprise license.

Enterprise License (US$ 500)

The Enterprise Licence grants you and any number of employees of your company / organization, a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to make use of and display the product that you have acquired to either your own personal use, for projects within the your company or for projects with the intent of resale to external customers without limitations.

Frequently asked questions:

Question: When I insert the component in Adobe Captivate all I see is a blank box. Is that normal?
Answer: Yes that is perfectly normal. In Edit view in Adobe Captivate all you get is a blank box. It will also be blank when the user runs your project since the widget only affects things in the background.

Question: Can I capture the individual answers to each question in Captivate with this widget?
Answer: No. The widget will capture the overall quiz scores and properties but not the individual answers to each questions.

Question: What’s all this license stuff? I just want to use it in my projects?
Answer: The license stuff is actually pretty simple. If you want to use this component in your projects (personal or professionally) then in 90% of the cases you just need to buy the Single User License. This license can be used by you in any number of projects for any number of users. The projects can be personal or for the company where you work. However, the projects need to be used internally in the company where you work. You cannot add this component to a course / project that you intend to resale to an external client. In that case you would need to re-purchase the Single User License again per external project.

The Multiple User License is just like above, but here all your developers in your company can use it. What if you are only 3 developers? Well then just buy 3 x Single User Licenses. If you are more than 5 people that needs to use it then the Multiple User License is cheaper for you.

The Enterprise License gives you the right to use the component in all your courses – internal or external, resale or giveaways you name it.

Question: Can I use this component together with the TOC in Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5?
Answer: Yes that is no problem

Question: Can I use this widget in projects that are using the Aggregator.
Answer: Yes that is no problem but the widget will not be able to aggregate scores from multiple quizzes if they are published in separate SWF files.

Question: Can I use this component in a course delivered through an LMS?
Answer: Yes provided that your LMS runs from a PHP enabled server.

Question: I cannot see the Widget Parameters tab when I have inserted the widget in Captivate.
Answer: Chances are that you imported it as an “Animation” by mistake. Try and import the widget again as a widget.

Question: What if I buy it and it doesn’t work. Can I get a refund?
Answer: No if you purchase the product you can’t get a refund since it’s a digital delivery. The component has been tested extensively on all types of systems, browsers etc. without any issues. If you are unsure if the component will work for you or not then use the Test Package provided for download further up in this post to make sure first.

Question: Can you help me install PHP on my server?
Answer: No unfortunately not. There are people way cleverer than me that can do this for you.

Question: I would like to have some modifications done to the widget – is that possible?
Answer: Sure thing – just send me an email through my sites www.cpguru.com contact form and we can work out the details.

Hide TOC Duration Widget for Adobe Captivate 5

What does it do?

When you insert this widget in your Adobe Captivate 5 project it will hide the total duration shown in the TOC.

Demonstration of the widget:

Requirements:

Adobe Captivate 5 and a project that uses the Table of Contents (TOC)

Download the widget:

If you found this widget useful feel free to make a donation ;o) If you would like to see which other Widgets for Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5 I offer then click here.

Tutorial: Adobe Captivate 5 – Combining a Standard and Conditional Action in one Advanced Action

The ever active Lilybiri have published yet another tutorial.

This time the tutorial shows you how to combine a Standard and a Conditional Action in one Advanced Action in Adobe Captivate 5.

You find the tutorial by following this link.

You can follow Lilybiri on Twitter here.

Tutorial: Adobe Captivate 5 – Video tutorial: Advanced conditional action for customized feedback

Lilybiri have created a yet another great tutorial in the Adobe Community Publishing. Lilybiri is a very active contributor on the official Adobe Captivate forums, on Twitter and on the Adobe Community help. I recommend that you start following Lilybiri on Twitter if you are interested in Adobe Captivate content. You can follow Lilybiri on Twitter here.

The tutorial is an introduction to conditional actions in Captivate 5 and the use of the new interface. You’ll create one advanced action to show customized feedback based on the score of a quiz. The workflow will be illustrated by a Captivate-SWF. The tutorial also include sample files.

You find the tutorial by following this link.

Loader Widget for Adobe Captivate 5

This widget will allow you to load SWFs into your Adobe Captivate 5 project on demand. This will help circumvent a problem that Adobe Captivate 5 have when it comes to handling some inserted animations in a Captivate project.

In many cases if you insert an AS3 SWF into a Captivate project then the SWF will load and commence playback on slide 1 of your project even though the SWF is not show until say slide 5. Futhermore a lot of people have been experiencing problems when inserting Adobe Captivate generated SWFs into a Master Adobe Captivate project. The problems they are experiencing are typically voice-over / audio playing on top of each other, clicking sounds from demonstrations and just generally weird behaviour.

Demonstration:

To see a demonstration of the problems described above click the image below.

Test package:

A test version of the widget is available here. The idea is that you can download this test version and try it in your project and verify that it works for you before purchasing the full version of the widget.

Buy the widget:

An email with a download link will be sent to you directly after payment. If you do not receive the email please check your junk mail folder.

Limitations:

The widget will not work with projects published to Adobe Connect Pro due to a limitation in Adobe Connect Pro’s ability to handle external files properly.

The widget will not work for projects published as EXE files. I am not sure if it will work for projects published as a Mac app.

You will not be able to see the loaded SWF on the stage in Captivate. However you will be able to get the SWFs to display in preview mode (F4 & F8) in Adobe Captivate. Details about how to do this is included in the help documentation for the widget.

Some LMS’s might  complain about “Undeclared resources” if you use this widget. This is because Captivate does not know you are loading external SWFs. Captivate only knows the widget and therefore it cannot add the resources in the imsmanifest.xml file. The help documentation shows how you can add the external SWFs into the SCORM manifest yourself.

I have tested this widget extensively and have not yet encountered any problems. I have had two people beta-testing the widget as well in order to indentify all possible problems.

So far the widget have worked fine. I have used it in projects published to a regular webserver, an LMS and locally on my PC. I have loaded Flash generated SWFs and Captivate generated SWFs. The Captivate SWFs have contained voice-over audio, videos and other interactive elements and all worked fine.

However – be sure to download the Test Widget and try that out before purchasing. Perhaps you are using Adobe Captivate 5 in a way that I haven’t even thought of.

Envato Birthday Bundle 2010

The Envato network is turning 4 years old and have launched a special birthday bundle comprising of files from all of their marketplaces.

Envato is a network of sites where developers can sell stock files. They run marketplaces such as Activeden.net (flash files), Graphicriver.net (graphic files), Audiojungle, Videohive an much more.

This birthday bundle contains 50 files with a regular value of more than US$ 400. The great part about the Birthday bundle is that you get it all for just US$ 20.

Perhaps there are some files that you can use in your next Captivate project so I recommend that you go take a look. Click here or on the image above to see which files the package contains.

Note that this is a limited offer that will expire on August 24th, 12:00 pm Melbourne Australia time.

/Michael

New widget for Adobe Captivate 5 released tomorrow (hopefully)

The past week I have been working on a new Widget for Adobe Captivate 5. The widget is a new Loader Widget for Adobe Captivate 5 similar to the Loader Widget I have for Adobe Captivate 4 AS2.

A lot of people have been experiencing problems when they load Captivate SWFs into a “master” Captivate project. The problems are that any animations will start to play on slide one of your Master Project even though they shouldn’t be displayed until for example slide 5. This also means that you can experience problems with audio from imported Captivate SWFs playing together at the same time messing up your project.

I thought I had it all figured out but one of the people that have been beta-testing the widget just got back to me with a new issue. The problem is that it is insanely difficult to unload assets/SWFs from Flash in AS3 and therefore loaded Captivate SWF’s with multiple slides containing audio will not unload properly.

Hopefully I am able to sort this issue out tomorrow and make the widget available here on the site.

/Michael

Adobe Captivate Exchange yet again..

I just saw the Whyves posted a blog post about the Adobe Captivate Exchange on his blog. He is complaining about the long approval times of widgets and I can only agree.  I posted about it myself back in April 2009 where I had been waiting for getting some of my widgets approved for ages.

Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5 gave developers the possibility to create widgets to enhance the capabilities and functionality of Adobe Captivate. This in itself is a great feature and something I personally use quite a lot. As you probably already know I also post widgets for download for free or for sale for a small amount here on my blog. The only way that I and other widget developers can spread the news of these widgets is by using the Adobe Captivate Exchange. However, if the approval times are so slow as they are then the Exchange practically becomes useless.

The Adobe Captivate Exchange was updated on  26 & 28 of July 2010. I had 4 widgets approved so I should be happy. The four widgets were uploaded to the Adobe Captivate Exchange by me on November 2009, December 2009, March 2010 and April 2010 so the worst-case scenario was 8 months approval time and the fastest 3 months. That’s just not good enough. 3 months is way to long – 1 month should be sufficient to look over the submissions and post them to the Exchange.

Worst of all is that in this recent update Adobe missed 3 of my widgets that I had hoped to get approved. Two of the widgets were widgets for Adobe Captivate 5 and it would have been great to have these approved now that Adobe Captivate 5 is live. The last widget is my Domainlock widget for Adobe Captivate 4 – this was uploaded to the Exhange in August 2009. This particular widget has been flagged as “Status: In QA Process – Our QA team is now testing your Exchange upload. You cannot modify your upload at this time” since October 2009 –  That’s a pretty long Q&A process ;o)

Here are the update dates for the Adobe Captivate Exchange for the last two years:

11-september-2008
19&20-may-2009
14-october-2009
26&28-july-2010

Lets get the wheels turning a bit quicker to benefit everyone using Adobe Captivate. A living marketplace for Widgets and other Captivate resources is a great way to keep the Captivate community and developers happy and frankly a great product like Adobe Captivate deserves it.

/Michael

Widget Factory 5 released!

Tristan Ward from Infosemantics have released the latest version of Widget Factory. Widget Factory is an API that is extremely helpful when developing Widget for Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5.

The new version of Widget Factory is now fully compatible with Adobe Captivate 5 but also contains a bundle of great features that will speed up the widget development process tremendously. Furthermore the API will allow you to make widgets that are compatible with Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Captivate 5 in the same development process due to the new “Captivate version checking” capability.

If you plan on developing widgets on your own I highly recommend that you download the Widget Factory 5 API as soon as possible.

You can download the API here.

Extensive documentation on how to use the API can be found here.