Merry meet again, fellow RoboNetizens!
I suppose it is the nature of a wizard to continually walk in multiple worlds. And it is in multiple worlds I seem to find myself recently! What in this world am I referring to? I'm referring to the worlds of RoboHelp and Captivate. You see, I just celebrated an anniversary! Yes, one year ago last May, I entered the realm and role of being a certified RoboHelp and Captivate instructor. A direct side effect of this has been noticed by a few of you. I'm talking about the sporadic nature of the monthly scry. I'm often so busy with travel and training, I simply don't seem to have the spare time necessary to devote to making these happen on a regular cycle. This is why you now see them appear two or three at a time. (Just in case you were wondering.)
So what's all this about "Captive Content"? Have you captured text or what?
What I'm referring to here is blending Captivate content with RoboHelp output. Occasionally I notice posts asking exactly how to accomplish this. Hence this article.
A brief Captivate primer
For those of you that may be unfamiliar, Captivate is another way cool Adobe product. Actually, like Gandalf the White, it had a former life where it was known as something different. For Gandalf, the name was Gandalf the Grey. For Captivate, the name was RoboDemo. As it turns out, RoboDemo is the reason Macromedia acquired eHelp. They badly wanted RoboDemo. But I digress...
What does Captivate do? Well, in a nutshell, it records the screen activity. Of course it does much much more than that, but it's base function is to take automatic snapshots of the screen as you demonstrate an application. Then, through the magic of mouse movement and rapidly changing slides, the illusion is that you have a fluid movie that can be watched by the end user. These are known as demonstrations. Captivate can also create simulations, where the end user has to click and interact before the movie will proceed. But in a nutshell, that's it!
Why do we care?
It's quite common to use Captivate in conjunction with RoboHelp in order to provide comprehensive assistance for the end user. For example, why just capture screens and type explanations, when you can just show them a movie? The movie can also contain audio!
How to insert the content
Essentially you have two different ways to insert this content into RoboHelp HTML. Thinking about it, Captivate is capable of creating a few different output types, so I will need to provide a brief overview of two of the most used types.
When you use Captivate to produce output, you have several choices as to the output type. The main two types are:
.SWF format
.EXE format
With this format, you end up with a compiled ShockWave Flash object. The .SWF file. (Just in case you failed to notice that, .SWF is an acronym representing "ShockWave Flash". While this format can be linked to directly, it's typically preferable to use an HTML page to display the file. This is because if you link directly, you have no control over what size it plays back for your user. The size will be determined by whatever size their browser has been configured prior to opening the movie. This may not provide the optimal viewing experience for your end user, as things become difficult to read.
Enter the "companion" HTML page. When you publish from Captivate, you have an option for creating an additional HTML page. This results in two different files. One is the "raw" .SWF file, while the other is the "companion" HTML page. The intent is for both to be placed on a web server, then the user is provided a link to the HTML page. Code inside the HTML page specifies the size at which the .SWF object should appear. This results in displaying the movie exactly as you authored it. For anyone having issues visualizing this, think about how RoboHelp HTML handles images. It typically sets the size the image will appear. If we let the browser scale images, they don't typically look too good. The same holds true for Captivate movies.
If you publish in .SWF format, you are depending on your end user to have the Flash player installed on their systems. Or the Flash helper object installed and available for the browser to call.
With this format, you end up with a single .EXE file that can be distributed. However, you should note that there are three different types of .EXE files. One each for Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems. The difference here is that with the .EXE format, we have no concern as to whether the end user has the Flash player installed. This is because the Flash player is actually included inside the .EXE.
Decisions decisions...
Now that we know what the different output formats are, it's time to decide how to actually insert some of this inside a RoboHelp system. As RoboHelp HTML is, well..., an HTML based system, I'm going to crawl way out here on this shaky little limb and make an assumption that you are probably going to be using either the raw .SWF or the combination of the .SWF and the Captivate created HTML page.
.SWF combined with Captivate created HTML page
Right click the desired folder inside RoboHelp HTML and choose Import... from the context menu.
Ensure the "Files of type" field at the bottom of the dialog are reflecting HTML files.
You then navigate to where the files are stored, select the desired file and click the Open button.
At this point, the HTML "companion" page as well as the .SWF are brought into the RoboHelp project. You then treat the HTML page as you would any other HTML topic page in your RoboHelp system.
.SWF only
This option allows for inserting a smaller Captivate movie within the content of an existing topic. Or, you could create a totally new topic page devoid of content, then place the .SWF inside the page. You might choose this option if your movie is rather large (from a viewable size perspective).
Click the Insert RoboDemo icon inside RoboHelp HTML.
This should open the RoboDemo Movie dialog where you can browse to and select the movie of your choice. However, if you cancel the dialog and click Insert > Multimedia... you will find that these two dialogs are suspiciously similar. I bring this up because if the movie wasn't created using what RoboHelp HTML believes was RoboDemo, it may balk at you and refuse to allow you to insert the file. In this case, you would need to resort to the other method.
Once you have selected the file and click the OK button, it is then inserted into the topic page. The main difference between using the HTML "companion" page Captivate creates and this method, is that with the Captivate generated page, the object code is inserted by Captivate. Using this method, RoboHelp HTML is inserting the object code.
That wraps it up for this month.
Until next time... Namasté and Merry part!
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