Adobe Announces Captivate 5 & eLearning Suite

Looks good thus far.

I'm interested to see what new features are there for the whole suite beyond the UI Changes/Mac compatibility in Captivate 5, which seems to be the only things being mentioned on blogs/news sites thus far. The UI changes, whilst they look very useful, at the moment don't seem to justify the price of the upgrade alone.

Any chance of providing us with a more detailed new feature list/improvements you've found?

Couple of my queries about the new e-Learning suite:

• What new stuff is in the CS5 versions of the rest of the suite beyond Captivate?
• For Captivate, are there any new abilities for text animations, captions and the like? I noticed in your preview video that there was a 'Caption Widgets', 'Button Widgets' etc in their respective properties windows, what do these do?
• Has there been any improvement to the advanced actions section and interaction?
• Any new features/modifications to widgets?
• Any new quiz, scorm and reporting functions?
• Do you still have to have that ugly menu system stuck on the side of the screen when using aggregator? (pet peeve )
• How does it run speed wise? Glad to see it has been rebuilt from the ground up. The jump from CS3 to CS4 was amazing speed wise.
• Does it still 'bitmap' text when you add lists? (In CS3/CS4 when you'd add a list to a caption, the text would go from being aliased text to an aliased text. This was because as far as I understand, Captivate used to save every caption as a bitmap image, which used to contribute to the bloat)

Thanks, I look forward to tinkering with the trial version. (The live PSD integration should be particularly useful!)

Iso,

Thanks for your interest. There are quite a few new features in both eLearning Suite 2 and Captivate 5. I'd be reticent to suggest that its all about the UI, in reality the UI is all about productivity. You might start with the Human Factors International study. They found very significant gains in productivity, due both to the enhanced UI and to the new productivity features, like Object Styles.

You can see great overviews of the products here;

http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/

http://www.adobe.com/products/elearningsuite/

I've placed several online pre-recorded seminars that you can use to learn about the details. Each is about 1 hour long.

What's new in Adobe Captivate 5

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=register_no_session&id=1607945&loc=en_u s

Adobe Captivate 5 for Mac

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=register_no_session&id=1607950&loc=en_u s

Getting Started in Adobe Captivate 5

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=register_no_session&id=1607939&loc=en_u s

What's New in Adobe eLearning Suite 2

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=register_no_session&id=1609160&loc=en_u s

Adobe eLearning Suite 2 for Mac

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=register_no_session&id=1609163&loc=en_u s

Getting Started with Adobe eLearning Suite 2

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=register_no_session&id=1609157&loc=en_u s

I'd say the highlights for eLearning Suite (beyond the amazing new features in the CS5 products) is the amazing new round-trip and file management / awareness features. Media synching - notifications of media altered / updated - is very cool. Exporting an audio file to Soundbooth with markers, and returning with slide associations back to Captivate, very cool. Headless Cp style screen capture from Flash, very cool. Complete roundtripping with Photoshop, including layers and comps, very cool. eLS2 is very addictive - once you start, you'll find it almost impossible to work without all the integration.

Hope that helps,

Allen

Is there a release date for the eLearning 2 yet?

Susan Wright (Equilady)

http://www.equilady.com

Thanks Allen,

Those videos were a great indication of what improvements there are over C4. I'm actually very impressed with the amount of new features. Now I just need to try out the end product. Any chance of a 30 day trial?

Just for you Iso. -

Nah, we'll give a 30 day to trial to everyone. Here's a link where you can sign up for a notification when the trials / final software ir ready - about a month now. (Probably mid June). The amazing thing about the videos is that honestly i could do another 10 hours and not cover anything. I'll keep working on them and posting as constantly as possible. Keep an eye on the Captivate Blog to see the latest updates. (Or the New eLearning Channel on Adobe TV)

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?loc=en&name=cp5trial_notify

-- Allen

Thanks again Allen.

Any idea on the upgrade policy? I've recently started a new job in a very security concious company and it has been quite a lot of time and effort to go through all the hoops to acquire the software I need, the main part of which was going to be the first eLearning Suite.

They haven't ordered it yet luckily, but were hoping to do so within the next month. If they go ahead and order it before mid june or the release of CP5 and ES2, is there any sort of free upgrade policy? Or should we be cautious and hold out until release?

Thanks.

Iso -

I sent you a private message.... hope to hear from you soon!

Anthony

I enjoyed your demos. I was wondering in the Mac version if you can import Keynote slides like PowerPoint?

Regards,

Kevin

I saw that Captivate 5 has round trip to Soundbooth CS5 when installed from the eLearning Suite, but we already have the full CS5 Masters Collection with Soundbooth CS5 installed...  so will Captivate see that Soundbooth is installed to use? I can't imagine needing to install two copies of Soundbooth and the other suite software on the same PC (if that is even doable).

Hi there,

When you install Captivate 5 from eLS, the Installer will take care of the products already installed so Soundbooth CS5 or other products which are already installed will not be installed twice.

Once Cp 5 is installed Roundtripping workflows with Soundbooth work.

Check out the Roundtripping workflows with Photoshop and Flash. Let us know when you try these workflows.

-Ashwin Bharghav B

What about when you have the CS5 Master Suite installed and purchase

Captivate 5 alone, will it see the other products for round trip editing too?

Hi,

When Captivate is installed as standalone (not part of eLS) then the usual editing workflows in the library with the desired application (in this case its Soundbooth CS5) works.

When Captivate is installed as part of eLS then the Dedicated Roundtripping workflows with Soundbooth CS5, Photoshop CS5 and Flash CS5 happen.

You can find more information on the Roundtripping Workflows here

-Ashwin Bharghav B

Ok, thanks for the info.