Making Customized information for your Adobe Captivate 2 project

If the project information button on the playbar always irritated you? Did you want to show your customized project information on click of the information (i) button on the playbar of your Adobe Captivate 2 project?
If yes, then I am going to tell you how you can customize the project information shown on click of the 'i' button on the playback control, you may show your company's logo there too :)

Note that the following tutorial requires Flash 8 and knowledge and expertise in working on Macromedia Flash 8.

We will achieve this by modifying the _skin file.

First open the 'default' skin file in Flash, it is named 'cpPlaybar.fla'. It is kept at the location 'C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 2\Templates\PlaybackFLA' folder. Note that if you have installed Adobe Captivate at some other location, then locate this file by following the folder structure mentioned above.

Now create a new symbol (movieClip) [Press Ctrl + F8], give it name 'projectInfo'

After this design the information as you want to appear in your project, may be something like the following:

Drag and drop this movieClip onto the main timeline in a new layer. Give it the instance name 'projectInfo_mc'. Write a ClipEvent Load function for this as follows:

onClipEvent (load) {
this._visible = false;
}

Also write

on (release){
this._visible = false;
}

[Note you can choose to put a button inside this movieClip also, which will hide this movieClip]

Now from the library open the symbol named 'pbcBtnInfo'. In the timeline you will see three layers. Open the actions on the actions layer in the actions panel. You will find the onClick action event code here. Copy and paste the following code there (remove the original code):

var btnTipsId = 9;
function onClicked(){
var myInfoMC = _parent._parent.projectInfo_mc;
myInfoMC._visible = true;
var stageHeight = Stage.height;
var stageWidth = Stage.width;
myInfoMC._x = (stageWidth - myInfoMC._width)/2;
myInfoMC._y = (stageHeight - myInfoMC._height)/2;
//_parent.onPBCBtnClick("info");
}

Save this FLA with a new name (say, cpPlaybay_new)
Now open the publish settings and in the 'Formats' tab change the path of the .swf to only the [name].swf, so that it is published at the same location. Publish the SWF. Keep the rest of publish settings as it is.

Now copy the published SWF file to the following location:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 2\Gallery\PlaybackControls\SwfBars

Finally, inside Captivate open the skin editor (Project -> Skin...)
From the 'playbar' drop down combo box, select the SWF which you created. Thats it, you are done, now publish the project from Adobe Captivate. Following image shows how it will look on click of the information button:


Important : Few of the new transitions available in Flash 8, Filters, and/or new text rendering options may not be supported here. If you face issues, make your playbar as Flash player 7 SWF by changing the publish settings. If you face any issues implementing the above please leave a comment.

Using old-style playback controls in Adobe Captivate 2

Though in the latest release, Adobe Captivate 2, you can customize the playback controls, you may be wondering that whatever happened to the old-style playback controls (which were available in Captivate 1.01).
So, those are still there in Adobe Captivate 2 also (really!)

To use old (Captivate 1 style) playback controls, do the following:

1. Open the Skin Editor (Project -> Skin...)
2. From the 'Skin' Drop down combo box, select 'BMP Playbars'.
3. Now from the 'playbar' drop down combo box you can select any of the playback controls which were there in Captivate 1.01

Multiple SWF files Vs Single SWF output

Macromedia Captivate 1.01 always used to generate only one SWF file as the output, but in the latest releas, Adobe Captivate 2, the output consists of two SWF files. One xxxxx.swf and another xxxxx_skin.swf. Though this allows users to add customised borders to their projects, it is often annoying for those people who take the captivate output files and put in to their (other) framework(s).

But generating only one SWF file as output is not that difficult. It can be achieved in two very easy steps:

1. Open the skin Editor (Project -> Skin...)
2. From the 'Borders' Tab, Deselect 'Show Borders'.

Doing the above two steps will result in only one output file which will include the playbar. However, it will overlap some part of the content.

If you wish that your playback control should not overlap the content and still output is one file, then do the following steps:

1. Turn off the borders (as explained above).
2. From Project menu, open 'Resize Project'
3. In the 'Resize project' dialog, Increase only the height by 20 pixels.
4. In the group below (left hand side, 'if new size is lager'), select 'Keep project the same size and fill bg with color' and selct a color.
5. Select the position of project as top center.
6. Do not rescale any objects

In the above way, your output will only be one file and still will include the playback controls and the playback controls will not overlap the content.