Short Update

Hey all!  It's been a while since I've had the chance to post anything on this blog.  I'm back at it after the birth of my new baby and having minor surgery to take out my appendix!  I know... what's up with that?  


Anyway, I plan on posting a bunch of cool Captivate eLearning tips and tricks in the coming months so, stay tuned!


~Chad A. Luke

Persistent Animations In a Captivate Project

I know that all of us care a lot about the function of a computer-based training when building an e-Learning module.  I certainly do and I also care a lot about presentation.  Let's face it, if it looks like crap, people are gonna 'check out'.  So, my intent with a lot of the upcoming post are going to be foucused on some of the little things that will, hopefully, ease your pain as an e-Learning developer and help you make some really cool CBTs.


Let's begin with one of my favorite discoveries.  I wanted to make a CBT that had a persistent animated background.  The problem I was running into was my animation spanned the entire stage so, if I set the property to run for the length of the project, it placed it on top of everything.  Obviously this is a problem.  The other issue was, if I placed it as an object on the stage, it reacted with the playhead.  So, if I had a button that stopped the playhead, my animation froze.  Does any of this sound familiar?


I thought so.


Here's a very quick tutorial on what I did to overcome these issues and create a really cool GUI for my e-Learning module.  Most of this is done in Flash CS5.  I will also include an example to show the results.


Step 1: Import FLV file into Flash via File/Import/Import Video...
Step 2: Make sure that the video is imported as a Movie Clip - here's how:

• Locate your FLV file.
• Select Embed FLV option.
• Click NEXT.
• In the Embedding screen make sure to select Movie Clip (not Embedded)
• Click NEXT.
• Click FINISH.
• NOTE: if you want the backround to just continue looping, there's no need to write any ActionScript commands at all.

Step 3: Export movie to SWF via File/Export/Export Movie...
Step 4: Import the animation into your Captivate project.



That's it!  Pretty Simple.  

Thanks!

~ Chad Luke