Captivate projects don't start with you firing up Captivate, capturing a bunch of stuff, and then editing the results in Captivate. Instead, think about the purpose of the capture, what needs to be captured, what assets need to be added to or created for the capture, and how the final product will be delivered. Captivate was designed to help you through this process. The purpose of the capture is critical. There are three capture modes in Captivate (Figure 1.1), and each is designed to meet the unique needs of a capture's purpose:
Figure 1.1. The capture mode determines the tone and the approach to the entire development process.After the capture is created, Captivate returns you to the Captivate work environment. This is where you can add sound, text, questions, video, and other content to each slide captured. You can also change the timing of each element on a slide and determine how it appears on the slide using special effects. In fact, if you have experience with Macromedia Flash MX 2004, you can even edit the slides in that application to take full advantage of its features. You don't have to use Captivate to create content. If, for example, you use the tools in the MX Studio 2004Fireworks MX, Freehand MX, and Flash MX 2004you can create slide content ranging from movie controllers to Flash Video in those applications and easily add it to your Captivate presentation. In fact, you can create images, buttons, and other interface elements in most imaging and drawing software. Add to that the capability to import PowerPoint slides directly into Captivate, and you quickly realize there is a serious amount of power under Captivate's hood. Finally, you need to determine the media to be used for the final movie. Captivate enables you to create content CDs, the Web, kiosks, users' computers, Breeze, Microsoft Word, and even email. |