by Kevin Siegel
I'm attending Adobe's Learning Summit in San Jose right now. RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist just wowed the crowd with a sneak preview of the upcoming Adobe Captivate 5 for the Macintosh.
Here are some of the highlights:
I'm attending Adobe's Learning Summit in San Jose right now. RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist just wowed the crowd with a sneak preview of the upcoming Adobe Captivate 5 for the Macintosh.
Here are some of the highlights:
- Captivate
is being recreated from the ground-up. The new software is being
written in C++ instead of Delphi (which was the programming language
used for the other versions of Captivate). As a result, the Macintosh
and PC versions will be the same.
- Captivate 5 works natively on a Macintosh. If you are a Mac fan (like me), this is a huge, huge deal! Sweet!!!!
- Captivate 5 features the same common user interface as the
other Adobe applications. For instance, can dock panels anywhere on
your screen. Once you set up your screen the way you like, you can save
the environment as a Workspace. From that point forward, you can
quickly switch between one Workspace and another.
- There won't be any dialog boxes in Captivate 5. For the first
time, you will use pods (available in your workspace) to change the
properties of selected objects.
- While recording, you will now see a countdown (3-2-1) just
before the recording begins. Nice improvement since in the older
versions of Captivate you weren't always sure when the recording
process actually began.
- For the first time, you can work in one Captivate project,
open another or create a new Captivate project and move content between
the open projects.
- Improved Photoshop support. While you could import Photoshop
files and include the layers in Captivate 4, the process has been sped
up so much that if you blink you'll miss it. This is a nice improvement
over Captivate 4.
- Insert multiple Question slides at the same time. The improved Question Types dialog box got the biggest applause during RJ's presentation. You can now elect to add 3 Multiple Choice questions, 2 True/False slides, etc. Anyone who has had to add question slides, one at a time, knows how cool this new feature is.
***
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***
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Hey Kevin. Thanks for the tantalizing update. But what are "pods"?
Posted by: Bob Cunningham | November 09, 2009 at 03:02 PM
Kevin,
In regards to the countdown...hasn't that always been a feature at least since captivate 2?
Do you mean it works better?
Posted by: david b | November 09, 2009 at 06:00 PM
The countdown only appears in CP4 if you include narration. In CP5, the countdown begins even if you elect not to record narration.
Posted by: Kevin Siegel | November 09, 2009 at 06:13 PM
I kinda new here. Please allow me to learn in this thing.
Posted by: paper writers | November 11, 2009 at 02:54 PM
Any info about a release date?
Posted by: ldumitre | November 18, 2009 at 11:11 AM
Any word on .f4v support and improved integration with flash?
Posted by: Steve | January 29, 2010 at 01:28 PM
Will it be compatible with 64 bit operating systems. CS4 doesn't run properly on my new computer and I actually might need to go buy an old computer just to run Captivate. Do you know if this problem is fixed and also when the new version will be released?
Posted by: Alicia | February 23, 2010 at 09:02 PM
Kevin,
Do we have better scripting support in Captivate 5. Captivate 4's scripting while helpful is very cumbersome. Also, are there any improvements with Powerpoint integration.
Posted by: Rajat | April 27, 2010 at 09:50 PM
Kevin, you've mentioned it has been re-written in a different programming language. Have you noticed if that has influenced file size? As you may recall, there has been concern about the relatively bloated SWFs Captivate creates
Posted by: Account Deleted | May 06, 2010 at 02:45 AM
The countdown is not a feature... it is a huge annoyance - imagine this: you have a project with hundreds of slides and you are going thru trying to record audio for each... you find a quiet place, eliminate all background noise and are ready to tear thru your audio recordings... except, for each and every single slide, you have to wait 4 seconds (3...2...1...0 = being recording).
Oops, you make a mistake in your recording... wait 4 more seconds... didnt like that take? 4 more seconds. I'm thinking of switching back to CP3 just to get rid of this "feature".
That there isnt an option to disable this is absurd!
Posted by: Captivate 5 is annoying | July 09, 2010 at 03:39 PM
I think the counter is a good thing and gives the novice the chance to get really ready (it's something you'll find in Camtasia and has always been missing in CP). However, the ability to disable the counter would be nice and is something I will add to the wish list for the next release of CP.
Posted by: Kevin Siegel | July 19, 2010 at 11:12 PM
Hello
Thank you for the information in your article. It is very informative.
Michael Peters/
Posted by: peter | September 21, 2010 at 08:42 PM