Summary: Use the Articulate Web Object to integrate Captivate 5 into Articulate Presenter.
Difficulty: Easy
One of the unique features of Articulate Presenter is the ability to insert HTML based learning objects into a course. You do that via the Web Object insert feature in the Articulate Presenter menu. It allows you to insert most formats or movie types provided that you can view them in a regular browser.
The latest release of Captivate no longer allows you to use ActionScript 2 which means that if you use Articulate and Captivate 5, you’ll need to stop using the Articulate Flash Movie tool to integrate Captivate content. Articulate Studio is written in ActionScript 2 and Captivate 5 uses ActionScript 3.
So one nice workaround to the issue is to use the Articulate Web Object . It works pretty well as this demo shows:
There are some limitations with this method so be sure to check out the Notes section at the bottom of this article.
How Do You Do It?
Web objects look better if you don’t have scroll bars around the sides and they are centred on the screen. To ensure that Captivate web objects look ok it is a good idea to fix the resolution of the Captivate movie at slightly less than the 720 x 540 pixel resolution of the Articulate slide in Presenter.
My tests showed that you should be aiming for a Captivate resolution of about 700 x 495 pixels.
- If you are creating a new project, set the resolution in the opening dialogue screen. If your project already exists, click on the Modify tab and select Rescale Project. Make sure you uncheck Maintain Aspect Ratio.
- Publish your project in Captivate to Flash using the Output Option Export to HTML. (Click image to enlarge)
- Navigate to your published folder and rename the HTML file to index.html
- Open PowerPoint and from the Articulate menu choose Web Object.
- Select the folder with your Captivate files and display in Full Slide. (click image to enlarge)
- Go to Player Templates and choose “Lock presentation at optimal size”.
- Publish your Articulate presentation.
This is to ensure that your Captivate will fill the Articulate slide, even if the user opens up their browser to full screen.
Notes
- You will not be able to control the Captivate movie from the Articulate player. So you may want to use the Captivate skin and embed that in the Articulate player.
- Because it is a web object, it will not necessarily fit into the Articulate window as nicely as when you are embedding Flash. Hence the importance of setting the Captivate resolution before importing.
- You will not be able to link directly from the web object to another slide. This means that users could skip the slide without viewing all of the slide content.
- Captivate 5 also makes it impossible to embed Engage ’09 content. This method does work with Captivate 4.
i clicked on “view demo” but saw an incomplete articulate presentation.
Great blog post, David, thank you very much. I needed to have this resource for future use.
The “view demo” worked just fine for me, and I’m glad to see you are remembering “Diana’s birthday”. Smart fellow! :-)
Keep up the great work. The Articulate Community support is something I can always count on to be there for me.
@jenisecook
Oh, and from @jeanettebrooks via Twitter, here is Brian Batt’s Screenr.com video on the same topic (he’s @articulatebrian on Twitter):
http://screenr.com/QF0
Once again, Articulate Community support/customer service, rocks the world!
@jenisecook
I agree with the others, thanks for the tip. I was running into the same issue when using content generated by MapCap Mimic V5.
Kyle
@fbtrainer
[...] Using Articulate Web Objects and Captivate 5 [...]
So, why do not remain with Captivate 4? :)
How do you handle multiple captivate 5 movies as web objects? I have 18 to use in one Articulate presentation.
Hi Lynn, Just place each of your Captivate movies in a unique folder with the appropriate index.html file. Make sure that each folder has a different name. Then insert your web objects in Articulate Presenter as per normal. Each web object will show on a different slide. Hope that helps.
Thanks for the tip – it almost worked for me. I could preview the imported Captivate web object fine while I was still in Presenter, but when I published it, the slide came up blank and I received some pop ups of scripting errors too.
Hi Tim, Web objects are often blocked by browsers when you view locally. If you load your files onto a server, you’ll probably fine that everything works fine. Funnily enough, when you publish to LMS and view the output locally, your web object will also work so that might be a quicker way to see that all is ok before finally publishing online. Regards,
I have the same issues as Tim. As of the file being published it appears as a 5sec slide without any content. To have it work, do you suggest to upload all on a server (any preference ?) prior to publishing ?
Hi Kim, Thanks for your question. I think if you test with any web object, you will find the same issue. Web objects generally don’t show up properly in presentations that you publish on your own computer. However, if you upload the published files (player folder, data folder and the player.html), you should find that your web object plays fine. Your web object files actually copied automatically into your Articulate data folder so there is no need to worry about adding those files too. Like I suggested to Tim, you could just try publishing to LMS on your own computer and then viewing those files via player.html or via the Play Presentation on the Publish Successful dialog box. Even though you have published to LMS, the presentation should play fine and as you expected. Once you are happy with your presentation, publish to the Web, and then upload to your server. (I am assuming of course that you are not intending this to go on an LMS. If you want to go on an LMS, choose the LMS option of course. Either way, it will play fine). Finally another thing to bear in mind is that sometimes web objects take a little time to load, particularly if is a large Captivate file. Remember to put a warning on the slide that learners may need to wait a few seconds before the video loads.
it works not so fine.
i did as above described. in preview the slice, it works fine, until i abort the running swf.
then a script error exists.
line: 53
sign: 3
error: object needed
code: 0
when i publish the whole presentation, it shows me an empty slice instead of the swf file.
cu
klaus
reason found !
insert navigation bar into swf and all works fine
I have successfully imported Captivate 55 html files into Articulate, but when the Captivate file is done playing, I receive a Script Error message indicating :
Line: 5
Character: 3
Error: Object Required
Code: 0
URL: file///C:/Users/muths/AppData/Local/Temp/Articulate/presenter/App0DDA7/data/webobject_slide4/index.html
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?
Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks
We are having the same issue.
We get the scripting error – Object required.
Any suggestions would be great!
Thanks!
Thanks for posting this solution. I don’t want to show the Captivate playbar in the item I embed into the Articulate project. In Captivate I set the show playbar variable to 0 to turn it off. When I run the Articulate project, the Captivate playbar doesn’t show but there is a gray space where it would have been.
How can this be eliminated?
Hi Dan, Not sure. Have you tried changing the resolution in Captivate 5. In my example, I had a resolution of 700 x 495 but if you are taking off the playbar, then you might need to go for a greater height value to compensate, maybe something like 700 x 510 ? Regards
I used this process and it works greta for me but when I sent it out for review soe people see a blank screen (the demo never plays). One person received an Adobe Flash Player error stating:
The following local application on your computer or network – it lists a file location
is trying to communicate with this Internet enabled location – it litsts another file location
To let this application communicate with the Internet click settings …
The person followed the isntructions to no avail. Any ideas why it might work for some and not others?
I used this process and can view the demo after I publish to Articulate. I am having some user issues though. I have some users who just get a blank screen. I have one user that received an error message stating “the the following local application on your computer or network C:\documents%… is trying to communicate with this internet enabled location: C:\documents and settings …”
These same users are able to view another demo that was previously published using an older version of Captivate (inserted as a flv).
Are you aware of any settings that must be enabled that could possibly block the Captiavte piece from running?
Hi Vicky, If you publish your presentations to the Web (as per the Articulate publish options) web objects will generally not work when viewed locally (except on the author’s machine). That goes with all types of web objects and not just with Captivate. Your FLV captivate movie from the older version of Captivate may have been inserted as a Flash movie so would not have met the same issue. However, once you have published to the Internet (or Intranet) you should find that the web object does play normally. If you want your web object to work locally for other people, you could try publishing to LMS and instructing users to launch the presentation by clicking in player.html, or publishing to CD. I am not sure if that will work for you but it is what I would try first. Hope that helps.
Hi Dave,
I am using a trial version of Captivate 5.5. I followed your instructions above and saved the HTML file as Index.html. However, when I tried to insert the file as a web object, Articulate gives me the following message “Could not locate ‘index.html’ or ‘index.htm’ in the specified folder.”
I have tried to make the change several times and can’t figure out why such a simple change isn’t working in Articulate.
Any ideas about what I might be doing wrong?
Alicia
Figured it out! It was a simple file extension issue.
Great. It is always nice when you can find the answers to your own questions !
If I create a Captivate demo and insert it into an Articulate presentation (as you show in the demo), when I publish the Articulate file and host it on SharePoint, will it still work?
In other words, will the captivate demo run if the published articulate presentation is on MS Sharepoint?
Hi Justin, I see no reason why it shouldn’t work on MS Sharepoint. You’re just using a regular HTML object and whenever you publish in Articulate, your web object will be embedded into your presentation like any ordinary web page. If Captivate 5 works on Sharepoint by itself, it will work as a web object in Articulate. Regards
Hi,
Starting from the question of Justin, i’m folowing your tips to insert the web object and i’m publishing the articulate as LMS files because our contents are deployed thru moodle.
My question is, when publishing the articulate we can choose any of the options (LMS, WEB, etc) and your tip should work, rigth?
Because when i test in my PC everything is fine and then when i send to the user to test, the captivate files does not open.
I’m working with captivate 5.5.
If you could help me would be great.
Many thanks
César Messias Rabino
Hi César,
You might be hitting a general issue with testing web objects offline: they won’t always open. You don’t say how you are sending the user your presentation to test. If you put your presentation online, then you won’t have any problem, either on a regular server or an LMS. Hope that helps.