Publishing a Captivate project

So far, you have been working with .cptx files, which is the default native file type of Captivate. The .cptx file format is great for creating and designing projects, but it has two major disadvantages:

• It can become very large. Consequently, it is difficult for you to upload the file to a website and for the student to download and view it.
• Opening a .cptx file requires that Captivate is installed on the computer system.

Publishing a Captivate movie is converting (the proper word is compiling) the .cptx file into a format that can be easily deployed on a web server (or on a LMS), downloaded and viewed by the students.

The primary format used to publish your projects is the .swf format. SWF (pronounced swiff) stands for Shockwave Flash. It is the file format used by the free Adobe Flash player plugin installed on more than 98 percent of computers connected to the Internet. It has two advantages over the .cptx file:

• A .swf file is usually much lighter than its...