Product Reviews

Macromedia is best known for web design tools such as Flash and Dreamweaver, but it also has a lucrative sideline in computer-assisted training (CAT). However, its Authorware program is a very high-end tool for developing sophisticated multimedia training applications and it costs more than £2,000. Many business users want to produce simpler training tools, such as product demos or tutorials, and Authorware would be overkill for this sort of work. Fortunately Macromedia has released a cheaper alternative called Captivate.

This program was originally developed by training specialists eHelp and was called RoboDemo. However, Macromedia bought eHelp and has upgraded and redesigned the program so it looks and feels more like the rest of the Macromedia range.

Captivate is designed to record any activity that occurs on your computer screen. It allows you to save this recording as a series of slides, referred to as a movie, that can be played back rather like a conventional business presentation. The program also allows you to annotate these slides in many different ways so you can explain the activity that is taking place in each slide. This means that

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you can create movie projects that then act as online tutorials or demonstrations.

It's ideal for creating tutorials and help files for software. You could, for instance, create a tutorial that introduces new users to a program such as Adobe Photoshop. Simply select the Record New Movie option from the Captivate start screen. You can tell Captivate to record all screen activity or just the activity that relates to a particular application or window. Captivate will record all actions, such as mouse clicks or opening menu items or dialog boxes, that you perform while you are using Photoshop.

Each action creates a new slide that can be edited within Captivate. You can add audio clips to a slide, or record your own narration to explain the tasks you are performing. There are also standard presentation tools that enable you to create animated text or add simple transitions between slides.

You're not just limited to creating software tutorials, though. Captivate allows you to import graphics, PowerPoint slides and Flash animations into its own slides. So you could just as easily import a series of images that demonstrate the features of a new washing machine. Another useful feature is the ability to create question slides, so you can ask questions, create quizzes or multiple-choice tests to see if people have understood your tutorials.

Once you've created your movie, you can export it as a self-contained program, or as a Flash file that you can put on a website or CD-ROM. You can even turn it into a Word document to print as a classroom handout. Captivate isn't that cheap, however, costing nearly £300. Still, business users who regularly need to create training material or tutorials will find that it earns its keep quickly.