Comments on: New: LegacyCaptivateLoader class

By: Philip

Philip — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:20:39 +0000

Hacks are certainly a way of life with Captivate (so far, anyway). It makes sense, really, because many of us are using Captivate in ways the Captivate creators/developers hadn’t thought of or intended. From what I’ve heard, the Captivate developers like some of the things people are doing, and may try to formalize the hacks (add the hack as a feature) rather than try and shut people out. They’re certainly trying to add support for new Adobe technology such as ActionScript 3. But will today’s Captivate SWFs remain compatible with Captivate 2010? Who knows.

By: Clayton

Clayton — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:41:58 +0000

Without preloading into the player, I ended up with Captivate swfs that would start audio, but be invisible, or not start at all, and other very difficult issues. I had a player without a preloader, that loads each swf new every time you navigate to different ones, and that works fine with almost all Captivates. So the issues are related to preloading - but I do not want to give up the preloader for the player. Rather catch-22.

My biggest concern - and I don’t know if you want to respond to this here - is that there is so much hacking involved in these solutions. My organization is, at this point, rather invested in our custom player of Captivate and other swfs. What if Adobe decides to tighten-up Captivate swfs even further, or, heaven forfend, do things to make exported swf files impossible to work with?

I will create an account…

By: Philip

Philip — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:58:42 +0000

SO you use a preloader to load the Captivate SWFs into a Flash SWF AND use a Captivate preloader in the Captivate SWFs?

I hear you about the Captivate ‘question’ slides… they’re no picnic to use and I always get frustrated with them for one reason or another.

RE: the forum, you can post there, you just have to create a (free) account. Creating accounts helps me keep out spam bots.

By: Clayton

Clayton — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:42:33 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to reply - doesn’t look like I can post there, so…

The Captivates play normally outside of the custom player. I have searched up and down for an inadvertent slide advance - it is not in there. At this point, it seems swfs with “question slides” are especially prone, whereas demos are not.

Furthermore, when going back to the slides in my player, they will play from slide 0.

I think there is a conflict between the preloading I do (using a class to load all external swf files into an holder clip, then put in an array) and the Captivate preloader. Turning off the Captivate loading screen option in the Publish settings, however, causes other issues (blank captivates and audio issues).

Again, thanks for taking the time to answer.

By: Philip

Philip — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:57:12 +0000

Hi Clayton

Thanks.

RE: your Captivate problem, I posted it in the pipwerks elearning development forum.