Features of Adobe Captivate 9 Introduced/Enhanced in 2016

The e-learning authoring, tool Adobe Captivate 9, popular for its stunning software simulations, has been updated twice in 2016 and the versions are named 9.0.1 and 9.0.2.  Captivate 9.0.2 has had three major updates and 9.0.1 had four. As we have come to end of the year, let’s recapitulate them.

Captivate 9.0.2

1. Brand New E-learning Community Portal

Healthy competition between e-learning software providers has always benefited the e-learning community. In an effort to provide better customer service experience and engage users in the long term, Captivate has added an entirely new community portal. It’s a good step to provide engaging collaborative/social learning experience for its users. Until now Articulate’s ‘E-learning Heroes’ portal enjoyed that unbeatable reputation. Now users can access the community portal directly within Adobe Captivate 9 or from the web.

A community portal is a great place to:

• Learn about the new features of Captivate
• Get help from fellow Captivate users
• Share  best practices
• Get access to  blog posts, help documents, video tutorials, and more

Captivate users can contribute to the community portal by writing blog posts and participating in discussion forums.

2. Stock Integration

Users can now directly import stock images and videos from the assets folder along with thousands of other free e-learning assets.

Click assets on the toolbar to download or import adobe stock assets. All assets are classified into characters, media, projects, and templates. The downloaded assets will be automatically saved in the corresponding category. Check this video on how to download assets from Adobe Stock.

3. Performance Enhancements

Adobe Captivate 9.0.2 has focused more on optimizing the playback performance of projects created on various devices.

Some of these performance enhancements include:

• Multi-state objects will now load faster – interactivities will load instantly
• Images and videos in a project will load faster –the number of http image calls are minimized
• Changes in timer logic will prevent heavy load on memory and battery

Captivate 9.0.1

1. Rulers and Guides

The ‘rulers and guides’ feature has been enhanced to improve the design experience.

Rulers in Captivate ensure precise placement and measurement of objects in the design window. To view/hide rulers – Click View > Show/Hide Rulers

Users can select the unit of measurement between percent and pixels for a responsive project by right-clicking the ruler.

Guides allow users to align text and graphics. Developers can create horizontal and vertical lines using ruler guides in Captivate. Changing the color of guides is also possible.

2. Multi-state Object Enhancements

Various improvements have come to the multi-state object feature in Captivate 9.0.1:

• Retain state on slide revisit
• Customize the states of static and interactive objects
• Button and smart shapes have in-built states with associated styles

3. Device Capture Enhancements

Device capture enhancements are applicable for Mac OS, but  not Windows:

• Improvements in the gesture palette
• Depiction on timeline changed to gestures instead of smart shapes
• Timer added to show recording duration
• Alarm added to alert changes in recording

4. Captivate Draft App Enhancements

‘Draw’ shapes onscreen is merged with the ‘edit mode’ instead of the ‘gesture mode’ (Gesture mode was removed from 9.01).

Enhanced Copy and Paste now allows copying and pasting of objects from one slide to another, within a Captivate project. The two-finger swipe navigation method is added.

These are the major updates to Adobe Captivate 9 that make life easy for e-learning developers.