Create your first Adobe Captivate project

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In this section, you will get started with creating your first Adobe Captivate project. We will also cover introductory concepts such as applying themes to your project and downloading assets that you can use in your project. Before winding up this section, we will preview the progress that we have made and publish the project.

Assets and samples

The procedures in this document require you to use assets such as images and sample Adobe Captivate project files. You can choose to use your own assets and samples. However, it is recommended that you download and extract the following zip file to your computer:

create-your-first-captivate-project.zip

Create a blank project

So let's get started by creating a blank project in Adobe Captivate.

  1. In the File menu, choose New Project > Blank Project.

  2. In the New Blank Project dialog, you can choose the dimensions for the project. Let's use the default dimensions.

    Click OK.

A new blank project is created with a single blank slide.

 

For more on creating Adobe Captivate projects, see Create different types of projects in Adobe Captivate.

Apply themes

Themes help your project look better with coordinated colors, well-planned layouts for slides, fonts, and effects. A default theme is applied to every project in Adobe Captivate.

Let's apply a new theme to our project.

  1. Click Themes in the toolbar.

  2. In the drop-down list, hover the pointer over each theme to view the name of the theme.

  3. Choose the Blank theme.

  4. Click OK to apply the theme to all the objects contained in the project.

The Blank theme is applied to your project.

Note:

At any point, when you are working on your project, you can go ahead and apply a new theme. Adobe Captivate will apply the effects of the theme to all the objects current in your project.

Now that we have the project setup with a theme of our choice, let's add objects to the introductory slide of the project.

 

For more on this topic, see Work with themes in Adobe Captivate.

Add text captions to a slide

Our project should have a title and the best place to do that is on the introductory slide.

So, let's add a text caption to the first slide.

  1. Click Text in the toolbar and then choose Text Caption.

    The new text caption is placed on the slide. Also, the placeholder text is selected by default so you can enter the required text.

  2. In the text caption, enter the following text:

    LUNARSHPERE STUDIOS

  3. Click anywhere on the blank portion of the slide to exit the editing mode of the text box.

    When you hover the pointer over the text box, the cursor turns into a hand.

  4. Select the text caption and drag it to the upper-left corner of the slide.

 

To know more on this, see Edit and create text captions with Captivate.

Add interactivity to objects on a slide

On the introductory slide, we want the user to explicitly select an option to start the presentation.

For that purpose, we will add an interactive button to the introductory slide in our project. When the user clicks the button, the presentation will advance to the next slide.

  1. Click Interactions in the toolbar and then choose Button.

    The new button is placed on the slide.

    You can also change the properties of a button, like its text and interactivity in the Properties Inspector.

  2. Click Properties right corner of the toolbar.

  3. In the Properties Inspector, go to the Style tab.

  4. Go to the Caption field and change the caption of the button to Start.

  5. The default On Success action for this button is Go to the next slide.

    Let's retain the default action.

  6. Select the button and drag-and-drop it to the lower-left corner of the slide.

 

For more on this, see Add interactive buttons to your Captivate projects.

Add images to a slide

The introductory slide of our project currently has a text caption and a button. But the slide looks a little blank right now. So let's improve its appearance by adding an image.

  1. Click Media in the toolbar and then choose Image.

    A dialog box is displayed that allows you to select the image file from your computer.

  2. Ensure that you have downloaded and extracted the zip file included with this course.

    In the extracted folder, navigate to the assets subfolder.

  3. Choose the file intro_image_right and click Open.

    Note:

    To maintain the aspect ratio of the image, keep the Shift key pressed while your resize the image at the corners.

  4. Use the handles on the image object to resize the image so that it fits within the slide.

  5. Select the image and drag-and-drop it to the right side of the slide.

The introductory slide is done for now.

However, the appearance of the text and the button is not appealing. We will improve them in later sections of this tutorial that deal with text and buttons in more detail.

 

To know more on working with images, see How to use images and rollover images with Captivate.

Add free eLearning assets to slides

Your license of Adobe Captivate gives you access to more than 75,000 eLearning assets that you can freely add to your project. In this section, we will learn to navigate the eLearning assets interface and find an asset that we will add to our project.

When you start a new project, the project is created with a single slide. In our project, we have used it as the introductory slide. Let's add a new slide to our project. After this, we will add a free eLearning asset to the new slide.

  1. Click Slides in the toolbar and then choose Content Slide.

  2. To add an object to the new slide, ensure that the slide is selected in the Filmstrip on the left.

  3. Click Assets in the toolbar and in the My Assets dialog box, navigate to Get Free eLearning Assets.

  4. The Adobe Captivate Asset Library gives you access to a many free assets that you can add to your project.

    They are grouped into two categories:

    • Templates: Buttons, interactions, layouts, and themes
    • Characters: Photo realistic and illustrated characters.

     

  5. Hover the pointer over the Characters category, point to Photo Realistic, and then click Business.

    For our project, let's use the character Evelyn 5.

  6. Click Evelyn 5 in the upper left corner of the list of characters.

    Note:

    The position of these characters may change as more characters are added to the library. For this tutorial, you can pick any photo realistic character in the business subcategory.

    The list of different assets in the Evelyn 5 character are available for you to download.

  7. Click the first asset in the Evelyn 5 character.

  8. Click Download.

    When the download is complete, the Download Status dialog gives you the location in Captivate where you can find the newly downloaded asset.

  9. In the My Assets dialog box, click My Assets.

  10. In the Category drop-down list, choose Business.

    Remember that the Evelyn 5 character is in the Business category.

  11. Click the first character pose and ensure that the Full size is selected.

  12. Click OK to add the character to the slide.

  13. Reposition the character to the lower left corner of the slide.

Add a simple quiz to the project

Adobe Captivate provides the capability to easily add quizzes to your project. Create the quiz questions, and Captivate will handle the scoring for you.

As we build out our first project, let's add a simple True / False quiz question.

  1. Click Slides in the toolbar and then choose Question Slide.

  2. In the Insert Questions dialog box, select the True/False checkbox and click OK.

    Captivate adds two slides to your project. One slide for the question and the second slide for quiz results.

  3. To enter a question, double-click inside the area that displays the following placeholder text:

    Type the question here

  4. Enter the following question:

    You can add one image to a slide in Captivate.

  5. To tell Captivate the correct answer, double-click the radio button next to False.

The quiz is now added to your project.

 

You can learn more about quizzes in How to set up question slides with Adobe Captivate.

Preview your progress

As you build your project, you can preview your progress.

Click Preview in the toolbar and then choose Project to preview the entire project.

The Preview window displays your project in preview mode.

Publish your project

After you are done creating your project, you will need to make it available for your users. To do this, you will need to publish your project. Adobe Captivate allows you to publish your project to multiple output locations:

  • Your computer
  • iOS or Android
  • Adobe Connect
  • Adobe Captivate Prime

To test out our project, let's use the Your Computer option.

  1. Click Publish in the toolbar and then choose Publish to Computer.

  2. In the Publish to My Computer dialog box, change the Project Title to:

    Adobe Captivate: A step-by-step guide

  3. Ensure that the Output Format is HTML5 and click Publish.

  4. Click OK to view the output.

The output of your project is displayed in your default browser.

Notice that you need to click the Start button on the first slide to progress. Also, if the Quiz results are displayed on the last slide.

You have created your first project and are on your way to building eLearning solutions using Adobe Captivate.

The remaining sections in this tutorial will go into the details of the concepts that we have covered here.

 Adobe

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