Intro

Several users have asked me already for tips about localisation in the new version of Captivate - momentarily version 12.3.0.12. There is still a way to export texts (now called captions) to a Word document, similar to the old workflow. However I wanted to limit my endeavor for an in-depth exploring to Quizzes. The main reason is that I expected a bunch of issues, which can be solved with improvements in future releases. I have indeed logged already several bug reports and feature requests based on this exploration.

In this first part I will show you an example of a Captivate project where the quiz is presented in 2 languages, to see how this can be managed in the new Captivate. I used the CSV import feature which is new in this most recent release, and had to abandon the third language (French) for reasons linked with problems due to languages with more characters than English, and maybe also with the use of a non-US keyboard. 

Example project

Try out this project, using this link. Please be patient, because output from this version is much slower to render than in all previous versions.

Used workflows

I will explain in-depth the workflows I used for this rather simple quiz: it hasn't multiple attempts on quiz nor question level. It is not possible to Retake nor Review the quiz. I left the default Results slde visible, although it is not relevant. Reasons for this simplification is the lack of the feature Branch aware which I hope will become included soon in a future release. Branch aware would make the quizzing system variables dynamic. That means the variables are adapted to the behavior of the learner, so that only the (quiz) slides visible are taken into account to create the values to be transmitted to a LMS. More info in this post on the eLearning community:

What is Branch Aware? - eLearning (adobe.com)

You can support the request to re-add this feature by voting on:
Please include quizzes that – Adobe Captivate Feedback Page (uservoice.com)

That feature is also important in projects where you want to give the opportunity to skip some parts based on a pretest or knowledge of exisiting skills for some learners.

1. Preferences

Before adding any quiz slide, start with the translation of the labels under Preferences, Quizzing, Default Labels.Changes to the Preferences will not affect existing quiz slides! In this project I started with the default labels in English, to insert the quiz slides in that language. After this first set, I translated the labels to Dutch and inserted the Dutch quiz slides. In this screenshot you see that I didn't translate all the labels, only those I would need:

In a previous version I would probably translate everything, because it was possible to export those Preferences and import them in a new project, which needed to be in Dutch without any impact on the Theme (styling) of that project. This is not yet possible in the new version of Captivate - saddening. It means that you will need to repeat this workflow in a new project from scratch, or use a model project which will have already a theme. Please support this feature request:

Export/Import Preferences – Adobe Captivate Feedback Page (uservoice.com)

More issues

• In all previous versions the Quiz Preferences included also the possibility to edit the Quiz Result messages in Settings. That has been moved to the Interaction button of the Results slide, as well as the former Pass/Fail settings. In a later example where I will show a fully translated version in one language I will include a table with all workflows needed for a full translation. The Review messages however are included in Quiz Preferences, General. 
  
  
• Some button translations do not appear. That is the case for the Back button, which is necessary for the Submit All but in this version also during Review. Buttons on the results slide always need to be translated manually, but for the Review status this is cumbersome. The 'Next' button in Review is not available in Default labels. That problem was inexistent in previous versions because the Review buttons were 'international', didn't need a translation.
  Translation Back/Next in Preferences – Adobe Captivate Feedback Page (uservoice.com)
  
  
• Label for "Partial correct" message (MCQ with multiple correct answers) is not available for translations, but it is even non-existent in the multistate object with all feedback messages. There are more problems with MCQMA but that is off topic.
  Partial correct caption – Adobe Captivate Feedback Page (uservoice.com)
  

2. CSV import

Question and answers both in English and Dutch were imported using the new CSV feature in Captivate 12.3. I used the provided template in Excel and added different types of questions. CSV doesn't allow to have partial scores, which is possible when using GIFT import in previous versions. Here is a partial screenshot of the translated CSV to Dutch:

I have indicated the cells in the Option1 column which caused problems.

Issues

1. You cannot translate 'True'/'False'. I did it in the example screenshot above, but when importing the CSV the default 'TRUE/FALSE' remained and you need to translate them manually. In the screenshot I highlighted them with a blue box.
    I logged a bug report:
   TRUE/FALSE translation in CSV not imported – Adobe Captivate Feedback Page (uservoice.com)
   
   
2. The second bug is more worrying. Look at the sentence highlighted by a red box. It has a word 'creëren'. The second "ê" has a sign on top of it which will not import in Captivate. It is a character which needs two keys on my keyboard to create it. Several characters in Dutch are in that situation, and more in other languages like Spanish, German and French. It may be the reason why the French translation of the CSV file was not imported at all.  
   When importing the Dutch version, it worked but the sequence 'eë' was replaced by a Chinese character. When trying to edit the word manually in the question slide, I discovered that it is impossible to type the character 'ë', it is always replaced by a simple 'e'. This version of Captivate doesn't allow to use any character created by a sequence of two keystrokes; Problem is not limited to quiz slides, it is the case for all text containers in a block or in a slide template. To be complete: I am using the English version of Captivate (there is no Dutch version) and was not able to check this situation in the Spanish, French or German version. For me it is a big problem! Characters like 'à', 'è', 'ç' which are available on my keyboard with one key press are not a problem.
   Combination characters in CSV replaced by Chinese characters – Adobe Captivate Feedback Page (uservoice.com)
   

3. Translation on slides

I was dearly missing the quizzing master slides which were available in the Themes in previous versions. 

• Results slide: you can have only one results slide in a project. In the example project I kept the English version and will show the workflow in part 2 for a full translation of a quiz when only one language is used.
• True/False question: you need to translate the answers on each of the slides of this type.
• Matching question: the 'Select an option' needs to be translated as many times as it appears. Contrary to changing style of the radiobuttons or check boxes which need to be done only on one item, for this 'Select an option' you need to repeat the translation.
  
• Progress indicator: is not correct for the Dutch questions. You cannot restart that indicator for the second sequence of questions. In previous versions it was easy to remediate this by replacing the default indicator by a custom indicator and using the On Enter action of the question slides. I couldn't find a workaround: the On Enter event has been taken out, and it is not that easy to get a custom indicator somewhere neither.
• No On Enter event:  makes it also impossible to calculate partial totals which could be used here or in other situations. Personally I think it is important to get the On Enter event back, especially when the Question pools will be back. Please vote for this request/
  Quiz Slide Enter trigger: restore please! – Adobe Captivate Feedback Page (uservoice.com)
  

Custom slides

To restore some of the functionality I added several custom slides, which are using multistate objects to show the necessary text in the wanted language. The chosen language is stored in a variable and conditional interactions take care of setting the correct state. The two last slides use also bookmarks and animations.

Intro

Multiple users asked me how to get rid of the default Success/Failure messages on quiz slides in the New Captivate version. Especially now that it is possible to have the correct answers hidden during Review, I understand this question. Depending on the situation, you do not always want an immediate feedback after each question.

The two-step Submit process which I have described multiple times on my blog remains the same as in previous versions:

1. Learner clicks the Submit button, a Success/Last Attempt message appears. That message warns to click the slide or press Y to continue
2. Learner presses Y or clicks the slide and the pause is released, the specified actions on Success, Last attempt will be done.

That situation is for a question slide with one attempt. If there are multiple attempts in case of Failure a Retry message will appear.

All messages in the new version are now in one multistate object. It replaces the individual messages which were in a static fluid box in the previous versions for a responsive project. 

It is impossible to delete that multistate object, there is no option to get rid of all the messages like was possible in previous versions by the setup in this screenshot:

Consequence of such an edit was that the first step of the Submit process automatically was deleted: no pausing after Submit, no need for the warning for the second step. I didn't succeed to achieve this in the New version, which means that you need to warn the learner to click another time. I have tried many workflows without success: changing the label of the Submit button to 'Continue' is only one of my failed attempts. 

Example output

It is a short quiz with 5 questions. I added an audio clip to the first quiz slide to warn about the extra click. All questions have only one attempt, and there is also one attempt on Quiz level. Review (without seeing correct answers) is possible from the Score slide. I did hide the review messages on that slide as well and added an extra slide (with exit button) after it. Like in previous versions it is still a recommendation not to have the score slide as last slide. You can watch the example below (fixed resolution) or the responsive version by clicking this link. Know that the loading time can be long for this version.

Workflow 1 - all quiz slides

This workflow can be used if you do not want any Success/Failure message. In that case it is important to change the settings before inserting the question slides! It cannot be applied to existing question slides.

Step 1: Default labels

• Open Quiz Preferences, from the Preferences (Edit menu for Windows, Captivate menu for Mac).
• Go to Default labels
• Delete the text for the labels you want to hide. In this example I deleted the Success and Last Attempt message:
  

  

Step 2: System colors

You are aware of the fact that this version has no longer object styles. Each of the states in the multistate object with the feedback messages has a solid color at 100% Alpha in the default Themes. Color management has not improved, it is guessing which colors have been used. For the Success message it is the Success System color, and for the Failure message it is the Error System color. I didn't spend (waste) time trying to find by trial and error where those colors were used in other situations, but changed the Alpha for those colors to 0% which makes them transparent.

Result of those two steps: you'll not see a Success or a Last Attempt message, but still have to click the slide to proceed. If you have multiple attempts on quiz level, the Retry message will still appear because you didn't edit that message nor the fill of the box. Same for the message when learner clicks the Submit button without choosing an answer.

Workflow 2 - individual quiz slides

This workflow can be used when you don't want to hide the feedback messages for all question slides, or when you want to hide them on existing  slides.

Step 1: Text color

You cannot delete the text in a state, only edit it to create a custom feedback. You can however change the color of the text. So I changed that color to the background color of the question slide. This screenshot is taken on the Score slide, for the state 'Success' of the Review message. You need to do this for all states with messages you want to hide.

Step 2: Fill colors

This is similar to step 2 in the first workflow. For the states to hide set the Alpha of the Fill color to 0%. In the screenshot of Step 1 of this workflow, you see that this has already been done for the Success state of that area. In the last screenshot of Workflow 1 you have seen where you find the Alpha setting in the Color management dialog box.

Help?

I would be very happy if another expert could find a way to:

• Style the Back/Next Review buttons the same way as all the other quiz buttons. I really miss the object styles. You cannot use Copy/Paste Appearance on buttons of the quiz/score slide. You cannot apply a new style to all the other objects with same type/style as in previous versions.
• Avoid the second step of the Submit Process.µ
• Avoid the weird state change of the images on the T//F questions. I know that you cannot disable the Hover state really, but I changed that state to look exactly like the Normal state. Nevertheless that original Hover state appears after submitting the answer.
• Getting rid of the dimming or text and state change during Review. Light grey on white background is not very comfortable for people with weak eyes.

Intro

That blog is still fully valid for the most recent versions. This one offers some additional tips which still seem to be unknown to many. I deducted this from my daily visits to the Adobe forum and the eLearning community. Often you see these recommendations, to solve a possible corruption:

• Clear the cache, but be careful because the cache of a recent project can be used as backup
• Clean the Preferences

I will not repeat how to do both – you’ll find that easily –  but want to offer some less-known tips. Even though some of those tips are over a decade old (will refer to the original authors).

Cache

Clearing the complete Cache is easy: use the button ‘Clear cache’ in Preferences, General settings. But:

• If you do this from the Welcome screen, all cache folders will be deleted.
• If you do it when one or more projects are opened, the cache folders of the opened projects will not be deleted.

That could be a way to preserve those caches for eventual backups.

However it is less known that the team provided an AIR application (in 2010) to delete selectively cache folders, based on the name of the projects (instead of the cryptic generic names used in the cache folder). The blog announcing this app is still available, the app is labeled ‘dCache‘ and can still be downloaded:

New utility for deleting Adobe Captivate project cache folders – eLearning

Yesterday a user asked if it would still be functional after the demise of Flash Player. This is due to a common confusion between the authoring tool Flash Builder (now renamed to Animate) and the Flash player needed to play SWF output. AIR application can be built with Animate and do not need the Flash Player. I double-checked it with version 11.5, all works as expected. Look at its UI.

The cache folders of all the projects since previous clearing are shown. The one which is dimmed (blue rectangle) means that it is open in Captivate. I have checked two caches (red rectangle) which I can now clear using the Clear button. It is very simple, but avoids having to search for the folder linked with a project.

Preferences

To clean the Preferences you need admin rights for Captivate. You find two clean options under the ‘utils’ subfolder in Captivate’s installation folder. Run the file appropriate for your OS.

Doing that you are deleting a folder in your profile.  I am on Windows and that folder is under AppDataLocalAdobe and it is named ‘Captivate 11.5’ (for the most recent release). When deleting that folder (can also be done manually) Captivate needs to be closed. A fresh copy of the folder will be restored when you restart Captivate. Do not import the previous Preferences, because they may have been corrupted, reason why you cleaned them.

Problem with deleting that folder is that you lose some customization, because they are stored in that folder. Have a look at the structure of the folder ‘Captivate 11.5’ in my profile:

I have marked the most important subfolders with customized items:

• objects: will store saved custom shapes
• PhotoshopTextEffects:  custom Text Effects
• Themes: I never use a custom theme in this folder, but maybe you did.
• Workspace: custom workspaces if you are working in the Expert UI. The default UI is the Newbie UI (has big buttons for Library and Properties next to the Assets button).

If you want to keep some custom items, make a backup before cleaning the Preferences. You can move the backup back to the subfolders (in AppData) after cleaning. Personally I always keep the workspaces stored somewhere if I need to reset them because Preferences needed cleaning. It saves time. I always store the custom Themes with the projects, not in the subfolder of the Preferences.

What cannot be restored is the choice for the Expert UI. You will have to repeat that workflow, by activating the option ‘Enable custom workspaces….’ under Preferences, General Settings.