Adobe Captivate for Mac Preview

So I had the pleasure of getting a sneak peak at Adobe Captivate for the Mac at the Adobe Learning Summit today.  Currently, Adobe Captivate is only available on the PC, whereas all of my fun visual programs reside on my nice shiny Mac.  Here are my first impressions.  The first demo showed how Captivate is moving away from diving into menu after menu.  For those of you who use Captivate on a regular basis, you know that often times you have to dig three menus down to get to that pesky mouse setting you would like to change.  Adobe showed that they are moving away from this model to more timely information showing up in toolbars on the main screen much like Flash.  Second thing that popped of the page for me was the ability to have more than one Captivate project open at a time.  Currently, to grab slides from two interactions, you have to open one project, highlight the appropriate slides, copy them, close that project and reopen the other.  No thanks… Although I am not always able to re-use screens, it’s definitely nice to be able to quickly jump back and forth between projects for consistencies sake.

Also reviewed in the presentation was the ability to add multiple questions at one time.  So for example, instead of adding a single question slide at a time, you can now identify how many of each question type you would like to add and Captivate will automatically generate all of the slides you need in one go.

All in all, my first impression is a good one.  However,  I did pose the following question to the Adobe folks at the session and that is, “Will there be more integration and less menu selection when dealing with mouse alignment and properties in the Mac version or within Captivate 5?”   For me, these particular functions seem to be key factors in my ongoing quest to develop carpal tunnel.  The response was vague, so it sounds like I’ll be banging these menus to pieces for a while yet.

I was signed up for the beta program today, so a more detailed hands on review is forthcoming.