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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Mac Authoring Tools - Help Needed

I was just asked a question and was a bit at a loss for a response. This organization predominantly has Macs and would like to use something like Articulate or Captivate to:
"convert our existing Powerpoint trainings, include quizes, track responding, track time spent enaged, insert Quicktime movies and deploy via the web."
For so long, Adobe has had products on both Mac and PC, I assumed that Captivate had a Mac version - but I didn't find one.

Any suggestions?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

They might be able to do a lot of what they want with Keynote, a PowerPoint-like program included with the Mac. Keynote opens PowerPoint files and exports to Flash.

Keynote also lets you make anything clickable. This means they could create branching simulations, quizzes that have learners click on parts of an image, and similar techniques that go beyond the Next button and standard multiple-choice questions.

Unfortunately, there's no way that I know of to do a drag & drop exercise, but you do have simple effects animations based on object builds (fade in, slide out, etc.).

You can embed Flash movies within the Keynote Flash. I suspect you could also embed Quicktime movies.

I use Keynote to create small Flashes that I embed in HTML materials. You could also use it to build an entire course, including the nav. You'd have to build the first one from scratch, but once you have a structure you like, you can save it as a template.

I don't know how they could handle the tracking they want. It's possible someone could decompile the Flash and SCORMify it, but I'm not at all sure.

In the next week or so I hope to post a summary of tips on using Keynote to build elearning. In the meantime, there's a very simple Keynote Flash in this blog entry:

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/?p=63

It's quite basic, but it was also very easy to put together.

Cathy

Anonymous said...

Gabe and I were just talking about this yesterday. He's going to write a post on Articulate and Mac users.

Anonymous said...

Anyone interested in a mac version should submit a feature request http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
We are currently looking into features for Adobe Captivate 4 and I personally would love to see this one happen ... but it really depends on the users and how much interest is really there. Even though I keep seeing the question pop up here and there, we are not getting many requests for it ...
Greetings,
Silke

-- said...

I did not know about the Keynote-to-Flash-Export. Thank you for the tip.

Since you can install Windows on the new Intel-Macs I would use 'Boot Camp' or 'Parallels Desktop' and stick with Articulate or Captivate.

Caspar

Gabe Anderson said...

Like Caspar said, Parallels + Articulate will work great. We have a number of customers already doing that (see threads here and here).

As you'll see in that first forum thread, someone also suggested VMWare's new Fusion product, too.

As Tom said, I'm planning a blog entry on this topic since we've always had a lot of requests for a Mac version of our products.

Unknown said...

I am running Parallels (Windows) + Captivate on my Mac and it is working great. It is so easy to ALT + CTRL between the two that is only feels like you are working in one environment.

Anonymous said...

Silke

You're not seeing any interest because Adobe is not interested in Mac users.

Most of the people gave up on Adobe delivering anything other than a minimal core product range on the macintosh.

Look at Acrobat

John

Gabe Anderson said...

I just published this guest blog entry on the topic from one of our customers:

An Apple a Day Doesn't Have to Keep Articulate Away

Darius said...

Have you considered QWAQ forums?
http://www.qwaq.com/qwaq_forums.html

Unknown said...

May be you shall get latest on the story on either www.digg.com or web design company blog section.....Thanks

Anonymous said...

I am using Parallels (Windows XP) to run Captivate 3 on my Mac. Does anyone know how to export a storyboard to Microsoft Word 2004 (Mac)? Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Why not just use ViewletBuilder from Qarbon? They have had a Mac version for years and are SCORM enabled. I am told their version 6 is close to release.

http://www.qarbon.com/presentation-software/viewletbuilder/index.php?os=mac

Anonymous said...

From Articulate "

Thanks for the feedback. I assume you're referring to this blog entry?

http://www.articulate.com/blog/how-to-run-articulate-on-macs/

Many of our customers do use our products successfully on Macs using
Parallels, VMWare Fusion, etc.

We haven't announced plans for a native Mac version and it's not likely that we will anytime soon.

Sincerely,

Gabe Anderson
Director of Customer Support
Articulate- Empowering Rapid E-Learning
www.articulate.com "

So with Articulate out of the way and Adobe just producing Presenter in a Windows version what is stopping somebody developing something for we Mac users ????

Matthew said...

I have just been through exactly the same thing! Switched to a Mac a month ago and realised that I couldn'y live without Captivate CS4!

Here is a post I wrote about how Captivate performs using VMWare Fusion:

http://www.matthewbibby.com/blog/captivate-cs4-on-a-mac/

Jason Cronkhite said...

Does anyone have experience using Adobe Presenter and Captivate? If so, what are the major difference/benefits?

Thanks,

Jason

Tony Karrer said...

In terms of Captivate and Presenter, I assume you've look at the information from their site? Maybe ask a bit more specific question?