Question about Captivate output vs Storyline output
Feb 22, 2017
I know this is the Articulate forum, but I also know that several of you are well-versed in both Articulate and Captivate, so I hope someone here can help me.
I have been using Storyline for years, and have only used Captivate once or twice. I know that when I publish a Storyline course, I get a folder with assets including the story.html file, but that I need to go back to the "course.story" file if I want to make edits to the course.
Does it work the same way in Captivate? A new client gave me a zipped folder that contained files for a course created in Captivate (no idea what version). It appears to be similar to the package that is created when I publish in Articulate. Within the zipped folder are subfolders of course assets, plus several files that end with .xml and .xsd, plus a file called "index.html." I can play the course using the index.html file. I told the client I would need them to send me the Captivate (.cptx) file. They reached out to their previous vendor, who responded by saying that the .html file can be edited with any text editor and was all that was needed.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I still need the Captivate file to edit the course, correct?
4 Replies
Yeah - Both may be right. For sure if you need to extensively edit the output files, the sources files, Captivate source files would be needed. And it's possible the for some parts, you can edit the HTML output of the course.
Conclusion; well - get the supplier to give you the source files.
What could you edit via the HTML output?
As Jonathan said, to make any meaningful changes to the functionality of a CP course you do need the source file. By editing the html code, you may be able to do cosmetic tweaks, like how the content scales or change the background color but that's it.
You may be able to make minor text changes in the project.txt file, which should be in the same file as index.html. The project.txt file should also tell you which version of Captivate they used (look for "generatorVersion"). The index.html file is mostly for loading the rest of the content, which is contained in the other subfolders and files. There's not much to actually edit there other than things like background color, as Michael said.
If you're doing more than a bit of minor text tweaking (fixing typos, replacing a few words, editing a slide title), you'll want the original .cpt or .cptx file.
If the vendor no longer has the source file (which I'm guessing they don't), then you may have to talk to your client about rebuilding the course from scratch. I'm sure that's not what they want to hear, but that's the reality if they need major rewrites or functional changes.
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