Launch Pad for Adobe Captivate

We're excited to announce the release our latest product, the Launch Pad for Adobe Captivate!

Product Released!
Our latest product - the Launch Pad for Adobe Captivate is now available.

06/23/2009: Version 1.03 released with compatibility for Internet Explorer 8.

The Launch Pad for Adobe Captivate is a framework to deploy multiple Adobe Captivate movies within one web page.

Have you ever published a series of Adobe Captivate movies but then had to come up with some method to display them to your end-users in an effective manner?

The Launch Pad dynamically loads your published Captivate movies into a designated content area. You simply publish your movies to a designated folder and then edit the menu links.

Overview

The Launch Pad was specifically designed for integrate with published Capitvate movies as easily as possible.

LAUNCH PAD HIGHLIGHTS

Use one web page to deploy multiple Captivate movies.
Cross-browser, minimally styled CSS layouts.
4 designs: menu left, menu right, menu top 1 level, menu top multiple levels.
Welcome (home) screen can be fully customized with your text, images, Flash movies to provide an introduction, instructions, or any other custom content.
Detailed Instruction Guide.
All designs include Header and Footer rows (logo, copyright).
CSS includes fix to 100% div column height (using faux column technique).
Content column expands to full width of browser window, giving maximum space to display Captivate movies.
Captivate movies can be different sizes (width, height). The size of each movie is specified in the menu item hyperlink.
The active menu item is automatically highlighted, and stays highlighted even when the Captivate movie has focus!
Organized menu items into sub-sections with topic headers.
Menu has a “Home” link that returns user to a homepage (with introduction, instructions, etc.).
When edited in Adobe Dreamweaver Design view, the CSS renders the without distortion (overlap, cropping) for full WYSIWYG editing!
Advanced custom editing of HTML and CSS for those with technical knowledge.

Compatibility

Requirements

Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate 4
Adobe Captivate 3
Adobe Captivate 2
Macromedia Captivate 1
Robodemo (1.x - 5.x)

Web Browsers

Page degrades gracefully in older browsers with all content accessible.

Windows browsers

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.x
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.x
Firefox 1.x and up
Mozilla 1.x and up
Opera

Macintosh browsers

Safari
MSIE 5
Firefox
Opera

The Launch Pad consists of the following elements:

One XHTML 1.0 Transitional (doctype) web page
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS 2.0)
JavaScript files
Most designs use pure CSS for the menu items.
The Top Menu Multiple Level layout uses Adobe Dreamweaver CS4's Spry Menu Bar system.

In order to deploy the Launch Pad with your content, minimal HTML editing is required.

Dreamweaver MX or higher is recommended for for CSS support.

No JavaScript editing is required!

Options

We've designed the Launch Pad to allow developers with technically savvy in HTML and CSS to customize the design and funcationality of the system.

You can overhaul the page design, colors used for the menu items - up. over, and active states, CSS, fonts, etc. The Instruction Guide provides documentation on editing most elements of the page.

Tours of the Launch Pad

Here's some Captivate movies that provide walk-throughs of the Launch Pad:

Basic Workflow

	Create a folder for your project ( typically \My Documents\My Adobe Captivate Projects\MyProject ) and copy the Launch Pad files into it.
	Publish your Captivate movies as Flash (.swf) files into the \flash folder.
	Edit the menu items in the index.html file to link to your .swf files.
	Replace the logo graphic and edit the <title> tag. Optionally, edit the CSS file to match your specific color scheme requirements.
	Test the Launch Pad on your local PC in your browser. Stage the files to production (copy files to web server).

Screen Shots

Home Screen	Movie Loaded	Editing in Dreamweaver

Questions?

Why don't you provide a fully operational demo of the Launch Pad?
We've stuggled with this question. However, we decided not to post an online example because all of the source files and custom code is exposed. Alternatively, we are developing demo movies of the Launch Pad in Captivate to show you the behind-the-scenes functionality.

We've published many answers to questions in our

Purchase - $29.95

To order the Launch Pad or any of our other products, use our

Lifetime License

All of our products now include a free lifetime license. You purchase the product once, and you're entitled to free upgrades to each version we release.

Version History

Version	Date	Release Notes
1.00	02/24/2009	First 10 copies distributed for free.
1.01	02/24/2009	Fixed column width variance between FireFox and IE in Menu Left and Menu Right layouts.
1.02	02/25/2009	Added "alternate content" DIV to be displayed if end-user does not have required version of Flash Player.
1.03	06/23/2009	Added compatibility for Internet Explorer 8 web browser.