Adobe unveils eLearning Suite 2, Captivate 5

BANGALORE, INDIA: Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe eLearning Suite 2, a significant upgrade to its tightly integrated, end-to-end solution for easily creating, reviewing and maintaining eLearning content.

The suite, now natively compatible with Mac OS in addition to Windows, enables eLearning professionals, educators and trainers to turn creative ideas into dynamic eLearning materials that engage learners with multimedia and interactivity, said a press release.

eLearning Suite 2, anchored by the new Adobe Captivate 5, includes Adobe Flash Professional CS5, Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, Adobe Presenter 7 and Adobe Soundbooth CS5.

“Today’s educational and professional learning departments are under enormous pressure to deliver impactful content quickly and efficiently,” said Naresh Gupta, senior vice president, Print and Publishing at Adobe.

He further said that eLearning Suite 2 is a major leap forward in eLearning content creation. It addresses the challenge with its tightly integrated toolset that allows content creators to develop powerful media-rich eLearning experiences without the time and expense of programming.

Adobe eLearning Suite 2 enhances productivity with smarter aggregation capabilities included in Adobe Captivate 5, eLearning extensions for Dreamweaver and Flash, and new application round tripping workflows between authoring and asset creation tools.

For example, a course designer can now insert Adobe Photoshop CS5 (PSD) files as smart objects into an Adobe Captivate project and update the images with one click should the original files change without having to resave and reinsert images. Similar workflows exist between the other eLearning Suite components including Adobe Captivate, Soundbooth and Flash.

The Adobe Captivate 5, which introduces the software to Mac OS, offers new features that allow users to do more complex tasks faster such as enhanced importing and round tripping for Microsoft PowerPoint, said the release.

The new user interface, similar to the Dreamweaver CS5, Flash CS5 and Photoshop CS5 interfaces supports multiple document editing and personalized workspaces. The Properties Inspector tool enables time-savings, as course authors can edit object properties in fewer steps. Additionally, eLearning professionals can leverage an expanded asset library and use customizable widgets to quickly create tables and design graphical buttons. Other major enhancements include support for rich animation effects, the ability to import videos in popular formats (AVI, MOV, FLV, MPEG) and synchronize video across multiple slides.

Adobe eLearning Suite 2 and Adobe Captivate 5 are expected to be available via Adobe Authorized Resellers and the Adobe Store in June.