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I was a long time Captivate user and made a lot of money producing projects with it for a long time. I was, and remain, even though I don't ever use it anymore, an expert on both it as well as Rise and Storyline. Up until about 5 years ago, Captivate was better than Storyline simply due to the ability to build responsive projects but also because it was very stable and everything built worked as intended once deployed. It took quite some time but, once Storyline gained feature parity with Captivate, SL was and remains the overall better tool for most things. To be clear - both tools can pretty much do the same things. It used to be that you couldn't do some things in SL that you could in Cp, particularly interactions requiring more scripting (aka "Advanced Actions") etc. but that's no longer the case and hasn't been for years now. But the biggest differentiators still remain: doing anything in Cp is clunky and just about everything in its default state is flat out ugly. Add a button and it looks like shit without custom styling. The widgets are clunky and still atrocious. I contend that the reason Storyline became so popular is not because it worked better (as I said, for a long time it certainly did not) but because they focused on support and enablement via community (first Kuhlman's blog, now elearning heroes...), by abstracting the "development"/technical stuff from users initially, and most importantly the default styles and widgets looked good out of the box. I haven't looked at Captivate in a couple of years now but based on what I see here the default themes, widgets, characters, etc. still look like hot garbage. It always amazed me that Adobe, the leader for decades now in design tools, couldn't simply hire a professional graphic designer to style the widgets, color palettes, etc. that Captivate comes with. And don't discount the Articulate community vs the Captivate one. The Captivate forum was for a long time dominated by power users (one in particular) who positioned themselves as experts and knew the tool functionality inside and out. But if you ever look at the actual content they produce and share it always looks *terrible*. Embarassingly bad. Their real-world production skills leave a lot to be desired. Articulate's community, and Tim is a shining example of this, is full of e-learning examples that look great and are impactful in a positive way. Now compare that to those dominating the Captivate forum...
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! I particularly agree with you on the lack of visual design quality on Captivate’s stuff. Even with the marketing on the latest version, they are showing horribly designed slides. I don’t understand the disconnect with how they developed this new version, along with how they marketed it. From my perspective, they should have grated early access to a small group of highly talented developers and designer to create some amazing sample projects to showcase what’s possible. What they’ve put out thus far just looks rushed and poorly thought out.
Nice and thorough review Tim - it was fun to watch you going through it after just a little exposure. I loved that you had mastered so many elements right away. Though I should add a few thoughts. You added a slide video - which is meant to auto-play and has no play bar. The other video object let's you add event videos - those start in a paused state and include control bars. I totally agree re the animations - they shouldn't start until their position is reached on a scroll page. I like your ideas about insertion animations and markers too. A note about the limitations of template designs - you'll no doubt be excited to learn that you can actually create your own design options - and those will allow you to change the contents / arrangements and layout of the items for any given layout slide - so things like moving a button around etc. are all within reach. I agree with you, it is so much easier to use than previous versions. Send me a note if you like and I'll make sure that you get an invitation to our upcoming roadmap webinars. On that note, we are basically working toward complete feature parity with Adobe Captivate Classic - in the All-New Adobe Captivate. So the comparison should probably be - what does it look like when we combine the features of desktop authoring tools like Captivate and Storyline with the ease and convenience / web mobility and responsive nature of tools like Rise and Elucidate? (Toss in some AI and other advancements and I think you get a strong sense of where we are headed.)
@@AdobeELearning Allen - please share this (and more details) in the Adobe Captivate community! Everyone is eager to see this roadmap you speak of so we can get a sense of what is coming next and how that will work. I am loving everything you are saying for direction, but everyone is confused and I agree with Tim, that calling it Captivate and then giving us a version that has so many less features is what is holding up a lot of people. I'll still be using both for a while, but please let us know what and when to expect it to perform like what we already have.
Captivate user here....I think this is Adobe's Rise version, which we haven't had, and I think over the next bit of time, they will add in the features from Captivate 2019. In 2019, you can select a standard project or a responsive project. I think Captivate will end up like that again....and this new version will be the "responsive" version and there will be an updated full version. For now, I'll be using both versions for my work. But, I agree....I'd like to see a roadmap of releases and what they'll entail. And for us Mac users at companies that don't allow Parallels/Windows setups, you can add more points to Adobe for native Mac support! And more points to them for the pricing model...that pricing includes both 2019 and this new version, so technically, Captivate users get Storyline and Rise comparable capability with this update for $35 a month.
Thanks for sharing, Lisa! I totally agree with you on points for price point and having a native Mac version! I still wonder if they should have made this Rise-like version it's own standalone tool, similar to how Rise and Storyline are separate tools. But, as you mention, as they add additional features, it'll be interesting to see what you can create with it.
@@elearningacdmy I am wondering if that first screen will end up offering the various options like Captivate 2019...allowing you to choose responsive, simulation, PPT, fully editable responsive, or fully editable non-responsive. That would be my vote vs. separating them into various programs.
As a very busy corporate ID, Rise is my “go-to” for fast and responsive course development. The lack of video controls makes this version of Captivate makes it a hard NO. That’s a dealbreaker for me. BUT, now Articulate knows Adobe is seeking to develop a competitive product to Rise. Maybe we’ll get some new features in Rise? Hope so!
Thank you, Tim, for your in-depth review and overview of the new Captivate. I watched a video that went over the new Captivate and the infinite scroll feature and all I could think of was, “How does this work for the end user when you add the scrolling to a ‘slide’?” Thank you for clarifying that it doesn’t actually work that well, at least it probably doesn’t without many advanced triggers and variables to time everything. It can already be tricky enough to time everything going horizontally with the timeline of the slide. When you add timing it vertically on top of that, it’s hard to wrap your head around. Like another comment mentioned, it would be impossible to gauge how long it would take for every learner to scroll down. I can’t think how it would be done except to restrict scrolling down until there is some interaction, like when the user clicks a continue button or a video finishes playing… I think I’m good with Storyline, lol. While the price point is appealing, I think the overall frustration over the lack of customization negates that point for me.
Thank you so much for sharing! I just played around a bit with the video options and one thing is really funny: when you add a slide video there were no video navigations and it auto plays (like you mentioned), but when you add "Video" the navigations are in the video and you need to start it manually. (at least for the vimeo one I tested).
Thanks for sharing. That is interesting, and I suspects that’s because it’s an embedded video, which provides the hosting platform’s video controls. It should provide a consistent experience with any type of video added. It just seems like they really haven’t thought through the various use cases.
@@elearningacdmy I agree. It is also a bit throwing that in both cases you just give the URL, not an embed code. So you do the same thing, but get a different result.
Thank you for this great overview. I am in the second of the three groups you discussed: a Rise user. As a university professor, I've been using Rise to build my course syllabi and some quick "website lessons" that are primarily for information delivery. I've had great student feedback, and the number of questions that could be answered with "It's in the syllabus" has plummeted. I was hoping Captivate would be a great replacement. I would rather pay $34 for one month to get my semester's materials ready than pay for a year of Articulate (even at my educator's discount). Unfortunately, my early playing with it has me doubtful that it is a good Rise replacement. Articulate, please please please come up with monthly plan.
Thank you Tim. You're always on top of things. The All New Cptivate for me is quite impressive. I'm also a long time user of Articulate but the All New Captivate provides me the opportunity to become a designer again. It allows for greater flexibility.
Tim,hi! I'm so glad I found your video. You should have more views, and I'll do my part in advertising this. First of, I absolutely love your personality and the way you articulatel such a natural flow! Secondly, you educated about the tool so well. I'm glad you did a comparison wherever necessary. This gave me an idea of what the tools offer and which I would like working with. I agree with you. I'm glad that Adobe Captivate is available on Mac, and I also find it clunky (btw, I'm going to be using clunky a lot, thanks to you).
Great review. Agree. We converted over to Articulate about a year ago (I had used it at a prior job) and we only have a few Captivate licenses to be able to convert older assets into Storyline (yes, a laborious and annoying time suck). I was struck at how inaccessible color-wise thee standard you profiled was - such as the dark green correct-answer banner with a dark gray or black font superimposed. Yeah, I get that we can edit all that, but the template default should not have anything non-accessible. After seeing this, I can't see any reason why I want or need to learn this yet-another tool that clearly needs a lot of tweaking, at this time. TY for saving my future time, as well!
A thought about the slide and timing of events such as the animation of characters and video playing: It probably has to be timed the same way that the scale-ins for each of the 3 circular images were (meet the team). A great point you made, is that it is, as you say, totally confusing because even if you did adjust the timing of the video playing, in the time-line feature, for that video to begin after the other animations above it took place, the timing can never be set correctly unless there were triggers that could activate the timing process as the user scrolls. We cannot know the pace of each individual scroller so how could we insure that the video would play when the user is viewing it.
Yes…it feels like two conflicting experiences they want you to create: timed animations, similar to what you can do in Storyline (or the old version of Captivate), while also allowing for infinite scroll. For example, what would happen if you had multiple videos on on slide? If the user can’t control them independently, then it’s going to be a usability nightmare. And maybe you can customize this with a bunch of actions/triggers…but it doesn’t and shouldn’t be that complicated. It ultimately goes back to the #1 thing people criticized the old version of Captivate for: it’s just clunky.
Great review! I totally agree with every single point. Iam also a storyline nerd and was curious if the new captivae could be a nice addition or even a replacement. But no, it is not. What I do hope is that the guys at Articulate take a closer look at the new Captivate as well and give us some more flexibility within Rise.
Yes, agreed. I’d like to see more interactivity and design options with Rise (along with more themes…where the heck are all of those that they announced a while back?!). Beyond that, I’d like to see a native version of Storyline for the Mac.
@@elearningacdmy yeah, mor themes would be great. I don't understand what takes them so long. My dream would be to have various options to adjust the look and behaviour of Rise, or even better the possibility to add custom CSS. Just like the Wordpress theme editor.
I am a die-hard Adobe Captivate user, and you are right, I have lost my creative edge with this new Captivate. I can't add a box or text box.... let alone place it anywhere on the slide. Adobe needs to make some definite changes with this program. I am just glad that Classic Captivate is usable until 2027, give them time to make it a bit more user friendly, and give us a little bit of creativity. Thanks for providing a different view.
I've worked a lot with Storyline and Captivate (Rise has never appealed to me as it's a bit light). I like both. I think the only reason I'm fond of Captivate is because I've landed a lot of projects and contracts with it over the years. Everything about it is backward, but once you get used to the quirks, you can build out good work. I'm favourable to the all-new Adobe Captivate. It's still quite undercooked, but it had such a low bar to clear given how badly Adobe dropped the ball with its release. Adobe has given Articulate such a good run and an opportunity to consolidate the market. If Adobe has an ace up its sleeve, it's the innovation that's happening in its other apps, such as generative AI. I think if they can leverage and integrate this innovation into Captivate, they might be able to pull out a winning hand over Articulate. Either way, I'm sure that in five years, we'll look back at both tools and marvel at how lame they are.
Thanks for sharing! I think that's a very reasonable take! Like you, I wish Adobe was a bit more aggressive in their attempt to improve Captivate. As you said, it kinda feels half-baked for sure!
Why does Storyline still not have a Mac version, there still doesn't appear to be a clear answer for this after many years of requests. I doubt it's a cost issue considering the tools widespread usage.
I've heard many rumors as to why they won't support Mac. No matter the reason, I find it pretty egregious in 2023. I'd gladly pay double the price if I could simply have a native Mac version of Storyline.
@@elearningacdmy it is pretty obvious to me - Storyline is developed using library/API of PowerPoint (the Windows version). The slide-based UI, drawing tools, etc. etc. are all native PPT functionality. Majority percent of Storyline functionality is just native PPT wrapped in a shell UI (Storyline). It would require a complete rewrite from scratch to produce a native macOS version and that's never going to happen because PowerPoint on the mac is very different from the Windows version. They'd be maintaining two completely separate codebases.
This answers a lot when it comes to several features that users have been requesting for 8+ years (according to the posts on Articulate’s support site), such as separating the replay button from the seek bar, for example. Their response is always to put in a feature request but when you see people have been doing that for 8 years or more, it kind of lessens their credibility as a company that listens to user feedback and then applies that feedback. That being said, I still prefer Storyline to Captivate, but I think Articulate should seriously consider redesigning and rebuilding from scratch if it’s going to provide the functionality that its users have been asking for, such as a native Mac capability. We certainly pay enough money to afford them that opportunity to rebuild.
@@LearnAtMyExpense ah this does make sense, as I think that it is still a 32-application, it will most likely require a complete rewrite at some stage.
A long-time certified Adobe Captivate user here. The new Captivate is a lot like Articulate Rise for me. I have a lot more power in Adobe Captivate 2019 (now updated to "Classic") to customize. I'm hopeful that Classic will evolve with advantages of this "Rise" program. So, I'll use both Classic and the new Captivate as this evolution occurs. I can use Rise on my Mac, but it would be very nice if Articulate made a MacOS-native version.
It's Adobe's version of Adapt/Rise - and it's never going to replace what is now called 'classic Captivate' They wanted to combine Captivate's power with full responsiveness - but the long development time and this disappointing result makes me suspect that they got nowhere so went for the Adapt/Rise solution. Still a work in progress - after 4 years?
I'm learning the "All-New Adobe Captivate" (v. 12.3) and find it very limiting and frustrating. I'm used to being able to design screens the way I want them but with everything being so templatized it seems I can't move or layer assets as I would like.
I am both Storyline and Rise user, maybe Rise a little bit more. I agree that Captivate still remains confusing to say the least. But also, I see some very good things that Articulate could use to make their products sooo much user friendlier. E.g. the block reordering (drag-and-drop) and resizing in Rise or the Mac compatibility of Storyline (although not applicable to me).
Nice introduction; About the video, you have to add a VIDEO, no SLIDE VIDEO. also, you can duplicate the VIDEO media block and change to 1 video in the options, Great Content!!
The most recent Adobe Captivate versions had fluid boxes, which really helped in creating responsive projects without the need to adjust device breakpoints, but I feel they really dropped the ball there, because there was some quirky issues, especially when including an odd number of shapes in a fluid box or the text sizing especially in buttons or shapes and that annoying text expand icon that kept showing up. A few times, I had to go back to breakpoints for more control. Plus, you couldn't move fluid boxes up and down the hierarchy shown on the right to change where boxes would be located, if that makes sense. I'm not familiar at all about Storyline or Rise. Is Rise responsive and Storyline is not?
Thanks for sharing your experience! Rise is fully responsive and, like the new version of Captivate, it handles it all for you. As for Storyline, the way the handle responsiveness is okay, but I wouldn't call it fully responsive. Essentially the player is responsive, but not the slide content.
Hey, this question relates to how the video is edited together. Great content by the way. Are you manually editing video feed and screenshare into a template you made to showcase your screenshare like this? With your webcam video to the side and the screen in is own frame? Or is it a prebuilt tool like Loom? Its love to use this method for my own content. If your happy to cast light onto it.❤
Thanks for the kind words about the video! I record my video and screen simultaneously using Camtasia...and then I edit it together like this in Camtasia as well. It's not a specific template or anything like that...just some fancy work with cropping the video, using basic animations for the transitions, and then adding in the other graphical elements. I hope that helps!
@@elearningacdmy it helps a lot thank you. I'll have an experiment. I do a lot of screen recording and this format is very engaging. Very much appreciate the advice you've shared here. I see you can do masking and layering with OBS also. I'm thinking branded background, web cam feed masked, and screen masked and layered on top. However I could tell with your cut aways you had likely recorded both separately (giving that option) it was either that or something like a switch control / Mac feature I just wouldn't have seen. ♥️
HI Tim! I love your video and review! Thanks so much for sharing and releasing the notification. I am a Captivate person. (LOL) I have the 2019 version still on my desktop that I purchased as a grad student. Your mentions for Captivate users are absolutely correct. I truly love Adobe Captivate 2019's creative freedom and ability to run on Macs and Windows. My tool preference is the opposite of yours regarding personal favorites. Adobe Captivate allows more freedom of creation and artistic expression in design that I can never hope to achieve using Articulate. To me, Articulate Storyline and Rise are both dry, stale, and rigid regarding artistic stylistic expression. This may be due to the unique and personal preferences resulting from the neurodiversity of individual users. I highly value and regard Articulate Storyline as a fantastic and efficient tool for developing interactive e-learning experiences. An analogy is my preference for front-end development & coding over the simplicity of using website builders. Website builders allow for rapid design (via template-based) of websites that are effective, appealing, inclusive, and accessible. On the other hand, the front-end development & coding allows for the most expressive, creative, innovative, and unique sites that more directly and adequately appeal to and meet specific clients' needs and preferences. I enjoy Storyline and Rise (as well as this new Adobe version of Captivate), a more generic tool that well-meets the needs of most clients. The artistic side of me wants that artistic and expressional freedom for intricacies yielded via Adobe, yet the business and production side (rapid development) part of me sticks to the reliable and professional abilities of Articulate's Storyline and Rise. I realize there's a time and purpose for each tool, and I know that Adobe 2019 is also a sort of template version software to replace coding and front-development process, but its stage/slides allowed for more creative and eclectic design input. I am grateful for your captivating review of these tools and will not rush to purchase this newest Adobe Captivate tool. I expect Adobe rightfully will claim an increasingly sizable niche of the e-learning development world, especially thanks to its new locked-in responsiveness feature and overall platform compatibility - still lacking with Articulate products. I love them both, but given my choice, I especially love the allowance for artistic expression and freedom on either platform (IOS or Windows).
Thanks for sharing! While I can for sure see the vision for where Adobe is trying to take Captivate, I think they are doing it at the sacrifice of their existing users, who are use to having way more creative freedom with the design of their slides. I don't see Storyline folks jumping ship to start using Captivate...and I think Rise users will find it clunky. Ultimately, I think Adobe will mostly end up with those who don't want to pay / can't afford Articulate's $1,400 price point...and I just with they would have competed a bit more on usability and feature reliability...which is the thing most people complain about with Captivate. Of course, I realize this is a new tool, but in the 40 minutes I spent recording my overview, I ran into several snafus that just didn't make sense...and I don't understand how the folks at Adobe didn't catch them during testing.
From a diehard captivate developer perspective, this new version of captivate will cause many developers like myself to start considering Articulate 360. Also, it is sad to see Adobe lose its dominant position in the digital space one product after the next.
Thanks for sharing! It was certainly a risky move by the folks at Adobe...and while I've been told they have an extensive roadmap for Captivate, I think they could have done better to prepare their core users for this shift.
Thanks for really giving us a good look! I haven't looked into it yet, but I am wondering if it has to be downloaded like Storyline or if you can just use it online like Rise? I feel like that would be a key element as to whether I would try it or recommend it. If I could pay for it monthly and not download software? I would definitely have a use case for it.
The strength of Captivate has always been software simulations. I’m very concerned that this product will reduce the ability to create custom software sims.
Thanks for watching and commenting. I’m curious…it’s been years since I’ve used Captivates software simulation features…so, what exactly is/was Captivate able to do differently or better than Storyline in terms of software sims? My understand has always been that those features are nearly identical between the two softwares. But maybe I’m wrong on that?
@@elearningacdmy It does nothing different the Storyline as far as software simulations and they both are extremely bad at doing software simulations. To get a good software simulation you have to recreate it manually in the software for both Storyline and Captivate. So, not change there except now it appears you can't do that in Captivate. I know why I ditched Captivate almost a decade ago and it hasn't got any better. They will just play cheap knockoff copycat until the end of time.
@@NickLeffler Thanks for sharing! I’ve never been a big fan of Storyline’s screen recording and simulation features…I’d much rather create/watch a well-produced video from Camtasia.
@@TimSladeeLearning I also think videos for learning are pretty poor also unless it's a very basic and short process. Simulations are more powerful at helping people learn, practice, and be able to perform with the aid of, well, job aids if necessary. So, software simulations are still so much more powerful than video but the built-in tools are bad at doing it realistically.
Hi Tim, I see you're using a Mac to run Captivate. Have you had any issues running it on Mac? Every time I try to open the software, it just errors out with 'unexpected error' and crashes 😢
Great overview Tim! Don't see myself jumping back to Captivate any time soon (converted my team in the early 201x era). I get the allure of trying to simplify things for users, but this seems to have gone too far to a point of restriction to make it attractive to me (YMMV).
Yes, it appears that option is not currently available in the new version of Captivate...however, I've been told they are working to incorporate these features in the future.
Hey Tim, great video on Captivate! I really appreciate the walkthrough and insights you shared. By the way, I'm currently in the market for a new computer for our eLearning projects, and I'm torn between getting a Mac or a gaming PC. Since you use Parallels on your M1 Pro Mac, I was wondering if you could share your experience with using Storyline on it. Do you recommend it? I personally prefer Macs because of their video editing capacity, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks in advance! #ComputerDilemma
Thanks for watching! I'm a Mac person all the way. While I wish Articulate would make a Mac version of Storyline, overall, Windows runs better on my Mac vs. a normal PC. I say go big or go home. You won't regret a Mac. It'll last you so much longer.
That is effectively what they have done as they are continuing to give you 'Classic' Captivate 2019 as part of the subscription until the new version properly 'feature matches'.
That is effectively what they have done as they are continuing to give you 'Classic' Captivate 2019 as part of the subscription until the new version properly 'feature matches'.
I've had new Captivate forced on me and I have to say, it's beyond frustrating. It's truly remarkable that Abode has released this product considering how poor the documentation is, and how poor the overall product is.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s clear they decided to take a big risk (which is generally a good thing); however, I feel like it was half-baked.
I don't disagree. There's a lot that Articulate can do to improve Storyline. However, I still expected more from Adobe for a tool that they've been working to re-build from the ground-up for the past several years.
Captivate Classic looks like something you would have first seen using a dial up modem. While some of the elements in Storyline look dated (characters) , others have a much greater variety and you can find some pretty fresh assets. New Captivate’s assets are pretty limited
*sigh while I don't disagree with that statement and that the Rise concept works for end users. I personally don't like Rise, the limitations in terms of look and field. That being said, the new Captivate looks even worse.
The 'Responsive Learning' features simply create 'Restrictive Design'. I'm a Captivate user (not by choice) and I find the new tool is simply unuseable. Adding screen shots into slides/screens are unreadable, and there is no way to properly change the image size to accommodate these screenshots. Hopefully Adobe's iterative updates will address some of this, but I'm NOT impressed. I miss my days working with Articulate/ Rise.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Shawn! Personally, I've never been a big fan of Captivate...but even if I were, I'd be seriously disappointed in the steps backwards they've taken with this update. It truly feels like they should have built it as a totally separate tool. Again, it would be as if Articulate tried to make Storyline and Rise the same tool...it just wouldn't work.
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I was a long time Captivate user and made a lot of money producing projects with it for a long time. I was, and remain, even though I don't ever use it anymore, an expert on both it as well as Rise and Storyline. Up until about 5 years ago, Captivate was better than Storyline simply due to the ability to build responsive projects but also because it was very stable and everything built worked as intended once deployed. It took quite some time but, once Storyline gained feature parity with Captivate, SL was and remains the overall better tool for most things. To be clear - both tools can pretty much do the same things. It used to be that you couldn't do some things in SL that you could in Cp, particularly interactions requiring more scripting (aka "Advanced Actions") etc. but that's no longer the case and hasn't been for years now. But the biggest differentiators still remain: doing anything in Cp is clunky and just about everything in its default state is flat out ugly. Add a button and it looks like shit without custom styling. The widgets are clunky and still atrocious. I contend that the reason Storyline became so popular is not because it worked better (as I said, for a long time it certainly did not) but because they focused on support and enablement via community (first Kuhlman's blog, now elearning heroes...), by abstracting the "development"/technical stuff from users initially, and most importantly the default styles and widgets looked good out of the box. I haven't looked at Captivate in a couple of years now but based on what I see here the default themes, widgets, characters, etc. still look like hot garbage. It always amazed me that Adobe, the leader for decades now in design tools, couldn't simply hire a professional graphic designer to style the widgets, color palettes, etc. that Captivate comes with. And don't discount the Articulate community vs the Captivate one. The Captivate forum was for a long time dominated by power users (one in particular) who positioned themselves as experts and knew the tool functionality inside and out. But if you ever look at the actual content they produce and share it always looks *terrible*. Embarassingly bad. Their real-world production skills leave a lot to be desired. Articulate's community, and Tim is a shining example of this, is full of e-learning examples that look great and are impactful in a positive way. Now compare that to those dominating the Captivate forum...
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! I particularly agree with you on the lack of visual design quality on Captivate’s stuff. Even with the marketing on the latest version, they are showing horribly designed slides. I don’t understand the disconnect with how they developed this new version, along with how they marketed it. From my perspective, they should have grated early access to a small group of highly talented developers and designer to create some amazing sample projects to showcase what’s possible. What they’ve put out thus far just looks rushed and poorly thought out.
Nice and thorough review Tim - it was fun to watch you going through it after just a little exposure. I loved that you had mastered so many elements right away. Though I should add a few thoughts. You added a slide video - which is meant to auto-play and has no play bar. The other video object let's you add event videos - those start in a paused state and include control bars. I totally agree re the animations - they shouldn't start until their position is reached on a scroll page. I like your ideas about insertion animations and markers too. A note about the limitations of template designs - you'll no doubt be excited to learn that you can actually create your own design options - and those will allow you to change the contents / arrangements and layout of the items for any given layout slide - so things like moving a button around etc. are all within reach. I agree with you, it is so much easier to use than previous versions. Send me a note if you like and I'll make sure that you get an invitation to our upcoming roadmap webinars. On that note, we are basically working toward complete feature parity with Adobe Captivate Classic - in the All-New Adobe Captivate. So the comparison should probably be - what does it look like when we combine the features of desktop authoring tools like Captivate and Storyline with the ease and convenience / web mobility and responsive nature of tools like Rise and Elucidate? (Toss in some AI and other advancements and I think you get a strong sense of where we are headed.)
Sorry - i realized that it logged me as the generic - Adobe Elearning. This is Allen Partridge. ;)
@@AdobeELearning Allen - please share this (and more details) in the Adobe Captivate community! Everyone is eager to see this roadmap you speak of so we can get a sense of what is coming next and how that will work. I am loving everything you are saying for direction, but everyone is confused and I agree with Tim, that calling it Captivate and then giving us a version that has so many less features is what is holding up a lot of people.
I'll still be using both for a while, but please let us know what and when to expect it to perform like what we already have.
Thanks for sharing, Allen! I know folks will appreciate the transparency! Thanks for taking the time to watch and thoughtfully comment!
Hello, we want captivate to return back on adobe cloud, please.
Captivate user here....I think this is Adobe's Rise version, which we haven't had, and I think over the next bit of time, they will add in the features from Captivate 2019. In 2019, you can select a standard project or a responsive project. I think Captivate will end up like that again....and this new version will be the "responsive" version and there will be an updated full version. For now, I'll be using both versions for my work. But, I agree....I'd like to see a roadmap of releases and what they'll entail.
And for us Mac users at companies that don't allow Parallels/Windows setups, you can add more points to Adobe for native Mac support! And more points to them for the pricing model...that pricing includes both 2019 and this new version, so technically, Captivate users get Storyline and Rise comparable capability with this update for $35 a month.
Thanks for sharing, Lisa! I totally agree with you on points for price point and having a native Mac version! I still wonder if they should have made this Rise-like version it's own standalone tool, similar to how Rise and Storyline are separate tools. But, as you mention, as they add additional features, it'll be interesting to see what you can create with it.
That price point is very doable for more folks than Articulate's price.
@@elearningacdmy I am wondering if that first screen will end up offering the various options like Captivate 2019...allowing you to choose responsive, simulation, PPT, fully editable responsive, or fully editable non-responsive. That would be my vote vs. separating them into various programs.
As a very busy corporate ID, Rise is my “go-to” for fast and responsive course development. The lack of video controls makes this version of Captivate makes it a hard NO. That’s a dealbreaker for me. BUT, now Articulate knows Adobe is seeking to develop a competitive product to Rise. Maybe we’ll get some new features in Rise? Hope so!
I'm with you! Competition is a good thing! Thanks again for watching and commenting!
Thank you, Tim, for your in-depth review and overview of the new Captivate. I watched a video that went over the new Captivate and the infinite scroll feature and all I could think of was, “How does this work for the end user when you add the scrolling to a ‘slide’?” Thank you for clarifying that it doesn’t actually work that well, at least it probably doesn’t without many advanced triggers and variables to time everything. It can already be tricky enough to time everything going horizontally with the timeline of the slide. When you add timing it vertically on top of that, it’s hard to wrap your head around. Like another comment mentioned, it would be impossible to gauge how long it would take for every learner to scroll down. I can’t think how it would be done except to restrict scrolling down until there is some interaction, like when the user clicks a continue button or a video finishes playing…
I think I’m good with Storyline, lol. While the price point is appealing, I think the overall frustration over the lack of customization negates that point for me.
Thanks for watching and commenting, Laura. I can’t help but think that the new Captivate is trying to be too many different things all at once.
Thanks!
Wow! Thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing!
I just played around a bit with the video options and one thing is really funny: when you add a slide video there were no video navigations and it auto plays (like you mentioned), but when you add "Video" the navigations are in the video and you need to start it manually. (at least for the vimeo one I tested).
Thanks for sharing. That is interesting, and I suspects that’s because it’s an embedded video, which provides the hosting platform’s video controls. It should provide a consistent experience with any type of video added. It just seems like they really haven’t thought through the various use cases.
@@elearningacdmy I agree. It is also a bit throwing that in both cases you just give the URL, not an embed code. So you do the same thing, but get a different result.
Oh…hey, Noemi! I didn’t even realize it was you at first. For some reason it didn’t show your name. I hope you’re doing well!!!!
@@elearningacdmy Yes, hi it´s me :)
Thank you for this great overview. I am in the second of the three groups you discussed: a Rise user. As a university professor, I've been using Rise to build my course syllabi and some quick "website lessons" that are primarily for information delivery. I've had great student feedback, and the number of questions that could be answered with "It's in the syllabus" has plummeted. I was hoping Captivate would be a great replacement. I would rather pay $34 for one month to get my semester's materials ready than pay for a year of Articulate (even at my educator's discount). Unfortunately, my early playing with it has me doubtful that it is a good Rise replacement. Articulate, please please please come up with monthly plan.
Thanks for sharing! I think a lot of other Rise users will share similar feelings. Thanks again for watching and commenting!
Thank you Tim. You're always on top of things. The All New Cptivate for me is quite impressive. I'm also a long time user of Articulate but the All New Captivate provides me the opportunity to become a designer again. It allows for greater flexibility.
Tim,hi! I'm so glad I found your video. You should have more views, and I'll do my part in advertising this. First of, I absolutely love your personality and the way you articulatel such a natural flow! Secondly, you educated about the tool so well. I'm glad you did a comparison wherever necessary. This gave me an idea of what the tools offer and which I would like working with.
I agree with you. I'm glad that Adobe Captivate is available on Mac, and I also find it clunky (btw, I'm going to be using clunky a lot, thanks to you).
Thanks! I appreciate it!
Great review. Agree. We converted over to Articulate about a year ago (I had used it at a prior job) and we only have a few Captivate licenses to be able to convert older assets into Storyline (yes, a laborious and annoying time suck). I was struck at how inaccessible color-wise thee standard you profiled was - such as the dark green correct-answer banner with a dark gray or black font superimposed. Yeah, I get that we can edit all that, but the template default should not have anything non-accessible. After seeing this, I can't see any reason why I want or need to learn this yet-another tool that clearly needs a lot of tweaking, at this time. TY for saving my future time, as well!
Yes. Overall, I felt that many of the templates left a lot to be desired from a look and feel (and accessibility) standpoint.
A thought about the slide and timing of events such as the animation of characters and video playing: It probably has to be timed the same way that the scale-ins for each of the 3 circular images were (meet the team). A great point you made, is that it is, as you say, totally confusing because even if you did adjust the timing of the video playing, in the time-line feature, for that video to begin after the other animations above it took place, the timing can never be set correctly unless there were triggers that could activate the timing process as the user scrolls. We cannot know the pace of each individual scroller so how could we insure that the video would play when the user is viewing it.
Yes…it feels like two conflicting experiences they want you to create: timed animations, similar to what you can do in Storyline (or the old version of Captivate), while also allowing for infinite scroll. For example, what would happen if you had multiple videos on on slide? If the user can’t control them independently, then it’s going to be a usability nightmare.
And maybe you can customize this with a bunch of actions/triggers…but it doesn’t and shouldn’t be that complicated. It ultimately goes back to the #1 thing people criticized the old version of Captivate for: it’s just clunky.
Great review! I totally agree with every single point. Iam also a storyline nerd and was curious if the new captivae could be a nice addition or even a replacement. But no, it is not.
What I do hope is that the guys at Articulate take a closer look at the new Captivate as well and give us some more flexibility within Rise.
Yes, agreed. I’d like to see more interactivity and design options with Rise (along with more themes…where the heck are all of those that they announced a while back?!). Beyond that, I’d like to see a native version of Storyline for the Mac.
@@elearningacdmy yeah, mor themes would be great. I don't understand what takes them so long. My dream would be to have various options to adjust the look and behaviour of Rise, or even better the possibility to add custom CSS. Just like the Wordpress theme editor.
I am a die-hard Adobe Captivate user, and you are right, I have lost my creative edge with this new Captivate. I can't add a box or text box.... let alone place it anywhere on the slide. Adobe needs to make some definite changes with this program. I am just glad that Classic Captivate is usable until 2027, give them time to make it a bit more user friendly, and give us a little bit of creativity. Thanks for providing a different view.
Thanks for watching and sharing...especially given your experience as a die-hard Captivate user!
I've worked a lot with Storyline and Captivate (Rise has never appealed to me as it's a bit light). I like both. I think the only reason I'm fond of Captivate is because I've landed a lot of projects and contracts with it over the years. Everything about it is backward, but once you get used to the quirks, you can build out good work. I'm favourable to the all-new Adobe Captivate. It's still quite undercooked, but it had such a low bar to clear given how badly Adobe dropped the ball with its release. Adobe has given Articulate such a good run and an opportunity to consolidate the market. If Adobe has an ace up its sleeve, it's the innovation that's happening in its other apps, such as generative AI. I think if they can leverage and integrate this innovation into Captivate, they might be able to pull out a winning hand over Articulate. Either way, I'm sure that in five years, we'll look back at both tools and marvel at how lame they are.
Thanks for sharing! I think that's a very reasonable take! Like you, I wish Adobe was a bit more aggressive in their attempt to improve Captivate. As you said, it kinda feels half-baked for sure!
Great video Tim. I was about to test this out but you've done that for me! Thanks.
Thanks, Stephanie! As I’m sure you can tell, I wasn’t horribly impressed. 😂
Why does Storyline still not have a Mac version, there still doesn't appear to be a clear answer for this after many years of requests. I doubt it's a cost issue considering the tools widespread usage.
I've heard many rumors as to why they won't support Mac. No matter the reason, I find it pretty egregious in 2023. I'd gladly pay double the price if I could simply have a native Mac version of Storyline.
@@elearningacdmy it is pretty obvious to me - Storyline is developed using library/API of PowerPoint (the Windows version). The slide-based UI, drawing tools, etc. etc. are all native PPT functionality. Majority percent of Storyline functionality is just native PPT wrapped in a shell UI (Storyline). It would require a complete rewrite from scratch to produce a native macOS version and that's never going to happen because PowerPoint on the mac is very different from the Windows version. They'd be maintaining two completely separate codebases.
This answers a lot when it comes to several features that users have been requesting for 8+ years (according to the posts on Articulate’s support site), such as separating the replay button from the seek bar, for example. Their response is always to put in a feature request but when you see people have been doing that for 8 years or more, it kind of lessens their credibility as a company that listens to user feedback and then applies that feedback. That being said, I still prefer Storyline to Captivate, but I think Articulate should seriously consider redesigning and rebuilding from scratch if it’s going to provide the functionality that its users have been asking for, such as a native Mac capability. We certainly pay enough money to afford them that opportunity to rebuild.
@@LearnAtMyExpense ah this does make sense, as I think that it is still a 32-application, it will most likely require a complete rewrite at some stage.
A long-time certified Adobe Captivate user here. The new Captivate is a lot like Articulate Rise for me. I have a lot more power in Adobe Captivate 2019 (now updated to "Classic") to customize. I'm hopeful that Classic will evolve with advantages of this "Rise" program. So, I'll use both Classic and the new Captivate as this evolution occurs. I can use Rise on my Mac, but it would be very nice if Articulate made a MacOS-native version.
Thanks for sharing!
It's Adobe's version of Adapt/Rise - and it's never going to replace what is now called 'classic Captivate'
They wanted to combine Captivate's power with full responsiveness - but the long development time and this disappointing result makes me suspect that they got nowhere so went for the Adapt/Rise solution.
Still a work in progress - after 4 years?
Thanks for sharing!
I'm learning the "All-New Adobe Captivate" (v. 12.3) and find it very limiting and frustrating. I'm used to being able to design screens the way I want them but with everything being so templatized it seems I can't move or layer assets as I would like.
I am both Storyline and Rise user, maybe Rise a little bit more. I agree that Captivate still remains confusing to say the least. But also, I see some very good things that Articulate could use to make their products sooo much user friendlier. E.g. the block reordering (drag-and-drop) and resizing in Rise or the Mac compatibility of Storyline (although not applicable to me).
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for giving this informative walk through😊
Glad it was helpful!
Nice introduction; About the video, you have to add a VIDEO, no SLIDE VIDEO. also, you can duplicate the VIDEO media block and change to 1 video in the options, Great Content!!
Omg the intro already has me cracking up😂😂😂
Ha! I’m glad you liked it…I think it sums it up pretty well.
The most recent Adobe Captivate versions had fluid boxes, which really helped in creating responsive projects without the need to adjust device breakpoints, but I feel they really dropped the ball there, because there was some quirky issues, especially when including an odd number of shapes in a fluid box or the text sizing especially in buttons or shapes and that annoying text expand icon that kept showing up. A few times, I had to go back to breakpoints for more control. Plus, you couldn't move fluid boxes up and down the hierarchy shown on the right to change where boxes would be located, if that makes sense.
I'm not familiar at all about Storyline or Rise. Is Rise responsive and Storyline is not?
Thanks for sharing your experience! Rise is fully responsive and, like the new version of Captivate, it handles it all for you. As for Storyline, the way the handle responsiveness is okay, but I wouldn't call it fully responsive. Essentially the player is responsive, but not the slide content.
Has it been rectified / updated since? Or do you still feel the same way Tim?
I think there needs to be an advanced action set on the video. That would stop it from playing when you enter the slide.
Thanks for sharing. I suspected as much…however, I don’t think it should be that complicated to create someone that effective from a UI/UX standpoint.
I think you said Adobe Rise instead of Articulate Rise @ 17:50 🤭! But yes, your video is super useful! Thanks!
Hi Tim!
I was wondering if you might be able to share which video editing software you use - Premiere Pro, Camtasia, Final Cut, etc.
Sure! I do everything in Camtasia. I hope that helps!
Very much, thank you!
Wow thanks! Finally I know the tools works for MacOS without instaling virtual windows machine as articulate does
Hey, this question relates to how the video is edited together. Great content by the way.
Are you manually editing video feed and screenshare into a template you made to showcase your screenshare like this?
With your webcam video to the side and the screen in is own frame? Or is it a prebuilt tool like Loom?
Its love to use this method for my own content. If your happy to cast light onto it.❤
Thanks for the kind words about the video! I record my video and screen simultaneously using Camtasia...and then I edit it together like this in Camtasia as well. It's not a specific template or anything like that...just some fancy work with cropping the video, using basic animations for the transitions, and then adding in the other graphical elements. I hope that helps!
@@elearningacdmy it helps a lot thank you. I'll have an experiment. I do a lot of screen recording and this format is very engaging. Very much appreciate the advice you've shared here. I see you can do masking and layering with OBS also.
I'm thinking branded background, web cam feed masked, and screen masked and layered on top. However I could tell with your cut aways you had likely recorded both separately (giving that option) it was either that or something like a switch control / Mac feature I just wouldn't have seen.
♥️
I wonder if you have to put the different videos on different actual slides, not on the same page as the loading part at the top?
HI Tim! I love your video and review! Thanks so much for sharing and releasing the notification. I am a Captivate person. (LOL) I have the 2019 version still on my desktop that I purchased as a grad student. Your mentions for Captivate users are absolutely correct. I truly love Adobe Captivate 2019's creative freedom and ability to run on Macs and Windows. My tool preference is the opposite of yours regarding personal favorites. Adobe Captivate allows more freedom of creation and artistic expression in design that I can never hope to achieve using Articulate. To me, Articulate Storyline and Rise are both dry, stale, and rigid regarding artistic stylistic expression. This may be due to the unique and personal preferences resulting from the neurodiversity of individual users. I highly value and regard Articulate Storyline as a fantastic and efficient tool for developing interactive e-learning experiences. An analogy is my preference for front-end development & coding over the simplicity of using website builders. Website builders allow for rapid design (via template-based) of websites that are effective, appealing, inclusive, and accessible. On the other hand, the front-end development & coding allows for the most expressive, creative, innovative, and unique sites that more directly and adequately appeal to and meet specific clients' needs and preferences. I enjoy Storyline and Rise (as well as this new Adobe version of Captivate), a more generic tool that well-meets the needs of most clients. The artistic side of me wants that artistic and expressional freedom for intricacies yielded via Adobe, yet the business and production side (rapid development) part of me sticks to the reliable and professional abilities of Articulate's Storyline and Rise. I realize there's a time and purpose for each tool, and I know that Adobe 2019 is also a sort of template version software to replace coding and front-development process, but its stage/slides allowed for more creative and eclectic design input. I am grateful for your captivating review of these tools and will not rush to purchase this newest Adobe Captivate tool. I expect Adobe rightfully will claim an increasingly sizable niche of the e-learning development world, especially thanks to its new locked-in responsiveness feature and overall platform compatibility - still lacking with Articulate products. I love them both, but given my choice, I especially love the allowance for artistic expression and freedom on either platform (IOS or Windows).
Thanks for sharing! While I can for sure see the vision for where Adobe is trying to take Captivate, I think they are doing it at the sacrifice of their existing users, who are use to having way more creative freedom with the design of their slides. I don't see Storyline folks jumping ship to start using Captivate...and I think Rise users will find it clunky. Ultimately, I think Adobe will mostly end up with those who don't want to pay / can't afford Articulate's $1,400 price point...and I just with they would have competed a bit more on usability and feature reliability...which is the thing most people complain about with Captivate. Of course, I realize this is a new tool, but in the 40 minutes I spent recording my overview, I ran into several snafus that just didn't make sense...and I don't understand how the folks at Adobe didn't catch them during testing.
From a diehard captivate developer perspective, this new version of captivate will cause many developers like myself to start considering Articulate 360. Also, it is sad to see Adobe lose its dominant position in the digital space one product after the next.
Thanks for sharing! It was certainly a risky move by the folks at Adobe...and while I've been told they have an extensive roadmap for Captivate, I think they could have done better to prepare their core users for this shift.
Thanks for really giving us a good look! I haven't looked into it yet, but I am wondering if it has to be downloaded like Storyline or if you can just use it online like Rise? I feel like that would be a key element as to whether I would try it or recommend it. If I could pay for it monthly and not download software? I would definitely have a use case for it.
Thanks for watching and commenting! As for Captivate, unlike Rise, it's still a desktop program.
@@elearningacdmy Bummer! Feel like that is also another missed opportunity!
Thanks for this great review Tim. I'm not sure that the updates are worth the trade-off from the simplicity of Rise, or flexibility of Storyline.
Thanks for watching and commenting…I totally agree with you!
What's the difference between this and Canva? Especially for the price?
The strength of Captivate has always been software simulations. I’m very concerned that this product will reduce the ability to create custom software sims.
Thanks for watching and commenting. I’m curious…it’s been years since I’ve used Captivates software simulation features…so, what exactly is/was Captivate able to do differently or better than Storyline in terms of software sims? My understand has always been that those features are nearly identical between the two softwares. But maybe I’m wrong on that?
@@elearningacdmy It does nothing different the Storyline as far as software simulations and they both are extremely bad at doing software simulations. To get a good software simulation you have to recreate it manually in the software for both Storyline and Captivate. So, not change there except now it appears you can't do that in Captivate. I know why I ditched Captivate almost a decade ago and it hasn't got any better. They will just play cheap knockoff copycat until the end of time.
@@NickLeffler Thanks for sharing! I’ve never been a big fan of Storyline’s screen recording and simulation features…I’d much rather create/watch a well-produced video from Camtasia.
@@TimSladeeLearning I also think videos for learning are pretty poor also unless it's a very basic and short process. Simulations are more powerful at helping people learn, practice, and be able to perform with the aid of, well, job aids if necessary. So, software simulations are still so much more powerful than video but the built-in tools are bad at doing it realistically.
@@NickLeffler I use Captivate 2019 for software simulations all the time. It does it really well.
Hi Tim, I see you're using a Mac to run Captivate. Have you had any issues running it on Mac? Every time I try to open the software, it just errors out with 'unexpected error' and crashes 😢
I had the same exact issue...I had to update to MacOS Ventura in order for it to work.
Great overview Tim! Don't see myself jumping back to Captivate any time soon (converted my team in the early 201x era). I get the allure of trying to simplify things for users, but this seems to have gone too far to a point of restriction to make it attractive to me (YMMV).
Thanks for watching and commenting. I agree with everything you said here.
I’d been hoping I could input a 360 image into the new Captivate but I don’t think it’s possible anymore. It’s interesting
Yes, it appears that option is not currently available in the new version of Captivate...however, I've been told they are working to incorporate these features in the future.
Hey Tim, great video on Captivate! I really appreciate the walkthrough and insights you shared. By the way, I'm currently in the market for a new computer for our eLearning projects, and I'm torn between getting a Mac or a gaming PC. Since you use Parallels on your M1 Pro Mac, I was wondering if you could share your experience with using Storyline on it. Do you recommend it? I personally prefer Macs because of their video editing capacity, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks in advance! #ComputerDilemma
Thanks for watching! I'm a Mac person all the way. While I wish Articulate would make a Mac version of Storyline, overall, Windows runs better on my Mac vs. a normal PC. I say go big or go home. You won't regret a Mac. It'll last you so much longer.
Storyline crashes and is so expensive. I’m excited to have another option.
Thanks for sharing!
OMG what were they thinking? They should have just sold this as a companion product to Captivate like Articulate does with Rise!
Yes, that's my conclusion as well!
That is effectively what they have done as they are continuing to give you 'Classic' Captivate 2019 as part of the subscription until the new version properly 'feature matches'.
That is effectively what they have done as they are continuing to give you 'Classic' Captivate 2019 as part of the subscription until the new version properly 'feature matches'.
Love the Mac/Parallels callout 🤣
It's funny cuz it's true. It's 2023 and we need a native version of Storyline on a Mac.
I've had new Captivate forced on me and I have to say, it's beyond frustrating. It's truly remarkable that Abode has released this product considering how poor the documentation is, and how poor the overall product is.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s clear they decided to take a big risk (which is generally a good thing); however, I feel like it was half-baked.
Storyline has an outdated look and feel too.
I don't disagree. There's a lot that Articulate can do to improve Storyline. However, I still expected more from Adobe for a tool that they've been working to re-build from the ground-up for the past several years.
Captivate Classic looks like something you would have first seen using a dial up modem.
While some of the elements in Storyline look dated (characters) , others have a much greater variety and you can find some pretty fresh assets.
New Captivate’s assets are pretty limited
I was referring to the software interface.@@rsauchuck
*sigh while I don't disagree with that statement and that the Rise concept works for end users. I personally don't like Rise, the limitations in terms of look and field. That being said, the new Captivate looks even worse.
The 'Responsive Learning' features simply create 'Restrictive Design'. I'm a Captivate user (not by choice) and I find the new tool is simply unuseable. Adding screen shots into slides/screens are unreadable, and there is no way to properly change the image size to accommodate these screenshots.
Hopefully Adobe's iterative updates will address some of this, but I'm NOT impressed. I miss my days working with Articulate/ Rise.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Shawn! Personally, I've never been a big fan of Captivate...but even if I were, I'd be seriously disappointed in the steps backwards they've taken with this update. It truly feels like they should have built it as a totally separate tool. Again, it would be as if Articulate tried to make Storyline and Rise the same tool...it just wouldn't work.
Ugh. Hate it. Sorry Adobe - fail.
Very expensive software I will lear captivate