Can Presenter 10 publish a stand-alone .swf file?

[Guest]

I need to embed a published Presenter file into a Captivate file as an animation. With Presenter 8, the published .swf file cannot play without the resource folders/files, and therefore it does not work in Captivate as an animation. To get around this, I used a launch button with Java script to open the published Presenter file in a separate window, and I included all the resource files in the Captivate file's published folder. The only problem is that when the Presenter lessons are played on the LMS, the learner sees an error message that the player cannot communicate with the LMS--which it doesn't need to. The Presenter file does not have a quiz, only the Captivate file which serves as a wrapper for the Presenter lessons. (The lesson will play on the LMS if you click Cancel on the error message.)

I thought I read somewhere that Presenter 10 creates a stand-alone .swf file and wanted to verify this. Maybe upgrading would solve my problem.

[Guest]

The error message on the LMS is: "Error initializing communication with LMS.'

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Yeah, Presenter doesn't really work when importing into another application. Taking a Captivate SWF and embedding it in a Presenter presentation works great, but not the other way around. Could you take the Captivate SWF and put it in your Presenter presentation and then uploat the Presenter piece to the LMS? Could they go up as seperate objects (one from Presenter and one from Captivate)?

[Guest]

Thank you, Jorma. That would work, but I need a single course file with multiple lesson files, and I need the knowledge check to be in Captivate. I think if I embed the Captivate quiz file in Presenter, it won't be able to communicate the learner's score to the LMS. Also, if I combine all the Presenter lessons into a single file, it will be extremely large and hard to work with. I may have to do it that way, though.

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Presenter and Captivate have the same quiz engine so you should be able to create your quizzes in Presenter the same way you can in Captivate. Can your LMS not take the Zip of the published Presenter presentation?

[Guest]

Yes, I can upload a zip of the Presenter presentation to the LMS. I think my biggest challenge is the size of the Presenter project if I combine it all in one file. I wonder if I can publish separate Presenter files and insert the published Presenter lesson files into one Presenter file. I know you can insert Captivate .swf files, but don't think you can insert .swf files from other Presenter projects.

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Since Presenter doesn't output as a single SWF file, as you have seen, I'm not sure of the viability of embedding presentations within presentations. In fact, I would put that category of: If it's not impossible, it's close.

I also don't believe that you would gain any file size benfit from combing multiple presentations rather than having one large one. I also don't see the downside to mulitple shorter/smaller presentations, but I don't know your LMS or what it requires.

[Guest]

Our LMS only lets us upload one file per course, other than printed reference documents. I think I've found the solution, a very simple one. After I've verified that it works on the LMS, I will post it here. Basically, I just need to point to the index.htm start file in Captivate as opposed to SCORM.htm. Then the LMS won't be trying to obtain SCORM data from the Presenter lesson files. Thank you for looking at this issue and providing suggestions.