Adobe Captivate 4: It's True, You Can Get the Closed Captions Panel to Open By Default!

by Kevin A. Siegel

If you've spent any time adding closed captions to your Captivate project, you have probably already noticed that the closed captions are hidden by default. Once the lesson appears on your customers screen, the CC button on the playbar has to be clicked by the customer before the closed captions will appear.

What if you want the closed captions panel to be open by default? That's an interesting problem because there is no option within Captivate (not the Preferences and not the properties of a skin) that you can select that will force the closed captions to appear automatically when the lesson first opens.

So what's a developer to do? Read on...

Create an Action

In Captivate, you can create an action that will force the closed captions to open automatically. While creating Actions might seem daunting if you aren't a programmer, this one is very simple.

1. Choose Project > Actions to display the Actions Dialog.
   
   
2. On the Advanced actions tab, select Create a new action from the Edit/Create action drop-down menu.
   
   
3. Type the name of your new action (in the example below, the action was called CC) and click the Save button.
   
   
   
   
4. Double-click Add Statement.
   
   
5. Double-click Statement.
   
   
6. Select Assignment.
   
   
   
   
7. Select cpCmndCC from the list of actions.
   
   
   
   
8. Select Value from the next list that appears.
   
   
   
   
9. Type 1 into the value field (1 means "yes," or "true," and 0 means "no" or "false.")
   
   
   
   
10. Click the Save button to save your new action.
    
    
11. Click the Close button.
    
    
12. Show the Properties of the first slide.
    
    
13. On the Slide tab, select Execute advanced action from the On slide enter drop-down menu.
    
    
14. Select CC from the Action drop-down menu.
    
    
15. Click the OK button.
    
    
16. Preview the project.
    
    Assuming you are using a project that has a skin attached (Project > Skin Editor), the playbar has the closed captions option enabled, the CC panel will automatically open on your slide.
    
    
    

***

 

Need to learn the basics of Adobe Captivate 4 fast? I have two live, online classes that will have you creating killer eLearning lessons with Captivate in a few short days. Click here for more information about my Captivate beginner class. Looking for more Advanced Captivate 4 training? I've got you covered. Click here for more information.

***

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/iconlogic.

Comments

[Nicola]

Are you able to add a form that contains space for an email address on the first slide so that the viewer has to enter a valid email address before viewing the video?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Nicola