Purpose

So what's the big idea? What does a project running CpMate look like?

CpMate's development was inspired by what the developers consider Captivate's 'Golden Era'. This was back in the Flash SWF days where you could build rich animations inside of Adobe Flash and then easily import them into Captivate. This symbiotic relationship between Captivate and Flash allowed eLearning developers to build a rich variety in courses. If you couldn't build it in Captiate, no problem! Build it in Flash and import it. Process maps and other complex concepts could be explained with simple animations. Customer and staff communications could be illustrated with character animations. The brave even built interactive learning games.

And then Steve Jobs released the iPad and the whole industry took one giant leap backwards. (To all the Flash Player haters reading this now, I'd like to redirect you here) Yes, with no support for Flash Player on Apple's latest 'IT' thing, Adobe Flash was so ashamed it moved overseas and changed its name to Adobe Animate and took up a quiet life of exporting image sequences and beekeeping.

But times are different now! Yes, it took a good decade, but Adobe Animate's HTML5 export is quite reliable and look! Over the horizon comes CpMate! Riding a stallion and donning a wide-brimmed acubra hat. Huzzah! The sheriff is back in town.

Here's how it works

Once CpExtra and CpMate are installed and configured (see the following pages for how to do that) you will...

1. Use Adobe Animate to build animations.
2. Export a OAM file from Adobe Animate.
3. Include the OAM file in Captivate as a Web Object.

Just like that you can now include Animations built in Adobe Animate inside Captivate.

Now you might be thinking: "I can do that now. Why do I need CpMate?"

Because CpMate allows you to do the following:

• Sync your animations to the Captivate timeline.
• Package multiple animations in a single Animate OAM.
• Manage loading the Animate OAM.
• Change Captivate Variables from within Adobe Animate.
• Change animations based on Captivate Variable values (Useful for localization or customizing content by job role)
• And much, much more.

Yes, CpMate makes working the Adobe Animate OAMs a smooth process for yourself and the learner.

What can be built with this?

While we expect the majority of people to use CpMate to build animations which sync to the course's voice-over, it is also possible to build learning interactions which influence Captivate Variables. See this page to learn how to change Captivate Variables from Animate.

Those familiar with Infosemantics's Slider Component widget will be happy to know that CpMate includes support for sliders.

What's next?

Next we need to discuss the required software you'll need to make CpMate work for you, as well as how to configure Adobe Animate and Adobe Captivate to work smoothly with CpMate.