Branching in Adobe Captivate 4
Branching in Adobe Captivate 4:
Going Off the Straight and Narrow
Many Captivate movies follow a straight path – viewers simply move through
the frames in sequence to learn the subject matter. But you can create movies
that contain “decision points,” places where viewers have to answer a question
or make a choice, and depending on what viewers do, send them to different
places in the movie, different movies, or even other places outside the movie.
This white paper summarizes the major places in Captivate where you can use
branching and the major types of branching options available.
Hyper/Word Services
Tewksbury, MA 01876
978-657-5464
[email protected]
www.hyperword.com
April 2010
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Branching in Adobe Captivate 4
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Branching in Adobe Captivate 4
Table of Contents
Legalities ................................................................................................................. 4
Feedback ................................................................................................................. 4
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 5
Features That Offer Branching ............................................................................... 5
Captivate’s Branching Actions ............................................................................... 6
“Managing” the Branching Options...................................................................... 10
Advanced Interaction Report ............................................................................ 10
Branching View ................................................................................................ 10
Hyper/Word Services Offers…............................................................................. 13
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Legalities
The descriptions in this white paper are provided for purposes of illustration only.
Hyper/Word Services makes no representation as to their accuracy or suitability
for actual projects, or for changes or upgrades to Captivate by Adobe, nor does
Hyper/Word Services assume any liability for harm to an actual project due to
errors in or misuse of these descriptions.
Captivate is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.
Feedback
Please direct feedback to Neil Perlin at [email protected].
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Introduction
If you’re a new Captivate author, you may have two initial reactions. One is that
Captivate seems fairly easy to learn and use, at least at a basic level. The other is
that Captivate has a lot of options; a big problem when starting a new project is
deciding which options to use. This white paper looks specifically at the subset of
options that control branching.
“Branching” means a movie has decision points where viewers’ actions affect the
path through the movie. For example, a viewer chooses between two options and
then follows one of two different paths through the movie. Or consider a group of
modular training movies in which viewers’ advancement from one module to the
next is based on passing module post-tests. Viewers must take and pass module
1’s test before going to module 2. If they fail module 1’s test, they’re sent back to
the beginning of module 1 for a refresher. You can even specify different “failure
levels” and associated branching. The first time users fail module 1’s test, they
get sent back to the beginning of module 1, a second failure sends them to some
other module, a third failure sends an email to their manager, and so on…
Many movies are simply straight paths through a topic and don‘t need branching,
but branching offers enormous flexibility. The purpose of this white paper is to:

Introduce new authors to the major features with branching options.

Briefly describe the branching options.

Explain how to manage the branching options.
Features That Offer Branching
Broadly, any feature that offers choice offers branching. These features include:

Question slides, where each question lets you define branching options for
correct and incorrect answers. (“Correct” and “incorrect” have the usual
meaning of giving right or wrong answers to questions.)

Interactivity features, like click boxes, where each feature lets you define
branching options for correct and incorrect responses. (“Correct” and “incorrect” here mean responding according to rules set by the author. For
example, you might give viewers three tries to click on a menu item in an
interactive simulation. Viewers who click that item within three tries get
it “correct”; clicking that item on the fourth try is “incorrect.”)
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How Captivate presents branching options differs a bit depending on whether they
appear in questions or interactivity features but they’re all similar to the example
below, from the Options tab of the Multiple Choice Question dialog box.
Basically, these settings let you define a “right” answer – number of attempts,
here 1 – and specify what to do if the viewer gets it wrong – here, needs more
than 1. You specify the branching for correct or incorrect entries by opening the
Action field and selecting the desired action, described in the next section.
Captivate’s Branching Actions
Every Action field offers the following options:

Continue – Perform whatever action you defined as next.
This action may be on the same slide.

Go to previous slide – Go to the previous slide in the sequence.
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
Go to next slide – Go to the next slide in the sequence.

Go to last visited slide – Go to the slide that the viewer saw last.
This slide does not have to be in sequence. For example, if the viewer
is on slide 20 and got there from slide 10, this option brings the viewer
back to slide 10, not slide 19.

Jump to… – Go to a particular slide in the movie.
If you select this option, Captivate opens a field below the Action field
that lists all the slides in the format <number>Slide<name>, such as “3
Slide 3”. You can then select the slide to which to jump.
Note that this naming is accurate but not very helpful; “3 Slide 3” says
nothing about what’s on that slide. Instead, use descriptive names.
(Type them in the Label field of the Slide Properties dialog box.) For
example, naming slide 3 “Color Selection Dropdown” will show it as
“3 Color Selection Dropdown” in the list of slides.

Open URL or file – Jump to an external web page or file.

Open other project – Starts another movie.
Use this feature to create a set of modular, connected movies in order
to break a large movie into several smaller ones or to pass a viewer
from one module to another after they pass each module’s post-test.

Send e-mail to – Opens your e-mail client.

Execute JavaScript – Runs a particular JavaScript.
This is effectively a wild card; you can perform any action for which
you can write a JavaScript.

Execute advanced action – Runs the script for an advanced action
written in Captivate.
Conceptually similar to the Execute JavaScript option, except that you
write the script in Captivate itself.

Show – Shows a specified hidden object.
When you create a frame object, such as a text caption, you can choose
to hide or show it when the frame that contains that object first opens.
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To do so, create the object and name it using the Item Name option on
the object’s Options tab. The object is visible by default – the Visible
option to the right of the Item Name field is preselected – but it doesn’t
have to be. Deselecting the Visible option when you create the object
hides the object when the frame opens. Selecting the Show action then
lets you show the object in response to something that a viewer does.

Hide – Hides a specified displayed object.
When you create a frame object, such as a text caption, you can choose
to hide or show it when the frame that contains that object first opens.
To do so, create the object and name it using the Item Name option on
the object’s Options tab. The object is visible by default – the Visible
option to the right of the Item Name field is preselected – when the
frame opens. Selecting the Hide action then lets you hide the object in
response to something that a viewer does.

Enable – Conceptually similar to Show, above, but activates another
object in the project, such as a button on a frame.

Disable – Conceptually similar to Hide, above, but deactivates another
object in the project, such as a button on a frame.

Assign – Sets a specified value for a specified variable.
Variable values are typically set by the author during development of a
movie. However, this feature effectively lets viewers set a variable’s
value dynamically while watching the movie, even if the viewers don’t
know that they’re doing so, by performing some task.

Increment – Increases the value of a specified variable by a specified
amount.
Extends the Assign option by changing the value of a variable by a
specified amount when the viewers perform some task.

Decrement – Reduces the value of a specified variable by a specified
amount.
Extends the Assign option by changing the value of a variable by a
specified amount when the viewers perform some task.

Multiple actions – To make a viewer task perform multiple follow-on
actions in sequence, like running a movie and going to a particular
URL when it ends.
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To specify the action, click the ellipsis button at the right of the field
after you select the Multiple Actions option. The Set Multiple Actions
dialog box displays, shown below.
Select each desired action in the left list box and click the Add button
to add them to the right list box in the desired sequence. Then, click
on each action and use the field at the bottom of the dialog box, which
changes depending on the action, to set the action’s parameters

No action – To do nothing when the viewer exits the slide.
For whatever action you select, you can then specify its parameters.
The first nine plus No Action were available in different prior releases. The rest –
Execute Advanced Action through Multiple Actions – are new in version 4. The
old options are simple to understand and use but the new ones are more complex.

They have a programmatic aspect. Scripting is lightweight programming
but programming nonetheless.
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
They can be mixed. For example, you can use the Multiple Actions option
and set or change a variable’s value depending on what viewers do. This
can get messy.
While it’s fun to play with these options, consider whether there’s an easier way
to do whatever you’re trying to do with the advanced actions.
“Managing” the Branching Options
It can be hard to keep track of complex branching. Captivate has two features that
make that task easier – the Advanced Interaction report and Branching view.
Advanced Interaction Report
This feature generates a report listing interactivity features on each frame and the
settings for those features. Specifically, the report can list click boxes, text entry
boxes, buttons, questions, and hidden slides. (Hidden slides aren’t interactivity
features but they can be hard to track without the report.) For each interactivity
feature, the report lists the action to be taken on success or failure, the number of
attempts before failure, the points for success, and so on. You can also print the
report for use as a checklist.
To see the report, select Project > Advanced Interaction. Here’s an example:
Branching View
The Advanced Interaction report is useful, but doesn’t actually show branch paths
within a movie. For that, you want Branching view. For each frame, this view
shows the connections to the preceding and subsequent frame. For each branch
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point, it shows the different branches and the type of action for and target of the
branch.
To see this pane, select Branching View from the View dropdown in the upper
right corner of the Captivate screen. Here’s an example of a simple branching
project:
There’s one branch here, at frame 4, where viewers can either go to frame 5 or go
to frame 6 depending on a choice they make in frame 4. If they go to frame 5,
they then proceed to frame 6.
Here’s a more complex example:
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Here, the movie splits into three branches at frame 4, and splits into additional
branches elsewhere. You can look at this movie in detail in Captivate; it’s the
Soft Skills Sample project that’s in the Sample folder in Captivate 4.
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Hyper/Word Services Offers…
Training • Consulting • Development for




Flare • RoboHelp • RoboInfo
Mimic • Captivate
XML
Single sourcing • Structured authoring
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