📖 Glossary

Every Captivate and e-learning term used in this course, in plain language — one or two sentences each, alphabetized, and badged where a term belongs to a specific version or carries a cost. Keep this open in a tab while you work.

📚 How to Use This Glossary

Definitions here are deliberately short and beginner-friendly — enough to unblock you, not to replace a lesson. When a term is tied to a particular product or to money, you'll see a badge:

All-New — belongs to the modern, responsive all-new Adobe Captivate.
Classic — a feature that (today) lives in Captivate Classic.
Trial / Paid — needs an active trial or subscription.
Add-on / Metered — billed separately or consumed by usage.
Win + Mac — runs natively on both platforms.

Adobe keeps moving features between the two tools, so treat the version badges as "true at time of writing" and check the current release. For anything cost-related we point you to adobe.com/products/captivate rather than quoting numbers that go stale.

In This Lesson

A

Adobe Captivate (all-new) All-New Trial / Paid: The modern version of Captivate: you build responsive courses out of component blocks on slides, and it saves .cpt files. This course's main path.
Advanced action Classic: A saved sequence of actions in Captivate Classic that runs on an event (like a button click) — the building block for custom logic and branching. See also conditional action.
AICC: An older e-learning standard for how a course talks to a Learning Management System. Still supported but largely superseded by SCORM and xAPI.
Alt text: A short written description of an image or component that screen readers announce to learners who can't see it. A core accessibility practice.
Asset All-New: Ready-made content — images, icons, characters, interactions, backgrounds — you can drop into a project from Captivate's Assets panel to build faster and look polished.
Assessment / Test mode: The scored software-simulation mode: the learner performs the task unaided and their performance is graded. One of the three modes (View / Try / Test) generated from a single recording.

B

Block: Another word for a component in the all-new Captivate. See Component / Block.
Breakpoint: A screen-size threshold (for example, phone vs tablet vs desktop) at which a course's layout is allowed to change. Lets you tune how content reflows across devices.

C

Captivate Classic Classic Win + Mac: The older, slide-and-timeline version of Captivate with deep power features (fluid boxes, variables, advanced actions, VR/360). It saves .cptx files. Included in the same subscription as the all-new tool.
Character All-New: An illustrated or photographic person you add to a course to make it feel more human and relatable. Comes from the Assets panel; use consistently for best effect.
Click box Classic: An invisible clickable region in Captivate Classic that waits for the learner to click the right spot — commonly used in software simulations.
Closed captions: On-screen text of spoken audio or video, which learners can turn on. Essential for accessibility and for anyone learning without sound.
cmi5: A modern profile of xAPI that defines how courses launch from and report to an LMS — think of it as xAPI with clearer rules for LMS use.
Component / Block All-New: The basic building unit of a slide in the all-new Captivate — a piece of text, an image, a button, a shape, an interaction, and so on. Components stack and reflow to make a course responsive.
Conditional action Classic: An IF/THEN rule in Captivate Classic — "if the score is at least the pass mark, show the certificate; otherwise, show a retry message." The engine behind branching and personalization.
.cpt All-New: The project file format saved by the all-new Adobe Captivate.
.cptx Classic: The project file format saved by Captivate Classic. Inheriting a .cptx is a common reason to open Classic.

D

Demonstration / View mode: The "watch" software-simulation mode: the learner sees the software being operated, guided by highlights and captions. One of the three simulation modes (View / Try / Test).

F

Fluid box Classic: Captivate Classic's responsive container: objects snap into fluid boxes and rearrange to fit different screen sizes. Classic's more manual answer to the all-new tool's automatic responsiveness.
Focus / Tab order: The sequence in which interactive elements receive keyboard focus as a learner presses Tab. A logical order is a key part of making a course usable without a mouse.
Full-motion recording: A screen recording captured as continuous video (rather than as discrete steps), used for actions like dragging or animation that step-by-step capture can't represent well.

G

Generative-AI credits Add-on / Metered: Usage-based allowance consumed by Captivate's generative-AI features. Because plans and limits change, check adobe.com/products/captivate rather than any quoted number.

H

Hotspot: A clickable region layered over an image, video, or 360° scene. Used for click-to-reveal interactions, hotspot quiz questions, and navigation in VR projects.
HTML5 output: The web-friendly format Captivate publishes to, so a course plays in a modern browser on any device. The foundation under both plain web hosting and LMS packages.

I

Instructional design: The craft of planning learning so it actually teaches — analyzing the audience, writing objectives, structuring content, and aligning assessment. Good design beats fancy features every time.
Interaction: Anything a learner does that the course responds to — clicking a button to reveal content, answering a question, dragging an item. Interactivity is what separates a course from a slideshow.
Interactive video All-New: Video with bookmarks, overlays, and questions layered on its timeline, so learners do more than passively watch. A modern Captivate strength.

K

Knowledge check: A low-stakes, usually unscored question used to help learning along the way, as opposed to a scored quiz that measures it. Great for keeping learners engaged.

L

Learning objective: A specific, measurable statement of what a learner will be able to do after a lesson — "the learner will be able to reset a password in three steps." Objectives drive both content and assessment.
LMS (Learning Management System): The platform where learners take courses and where completion and scores are recorded — for example Moodle, Canvas, or a corporate system. You publish a Captivate course to an LMS via SCORM or xAPI.

P

Playhead Classic: The vertical marker on the Captivate Classic timeline that shows the current moment in a slide as it plays. Drag it to scrub through timing.
Publish: The step that turns your editable project into a finished output learners can take — HTML5 for the web, or a SCORM/xAPI package for an LMS.

Q

Question pool / bank: A collection of questions from which the course draws a random subset for each learner. Makes assessments fairer and harder to cheat. Deep, random pools are a long-standing Classic strength.
Question slide: A slide that holds an assessment item — multiple choice, true/false, matching, and so on — with its answer options, scoring, and feedback.
Quick-start project / Template All-New: A pre-designed, professional-looking starter project you customize instead of building from a blank slide. A fast way to get a polished result.

R

Responsive design All-New: Building one course that automatically adapts to phone, tablet, and desktop. The all-new Captivate is responsive by default; Classic does it more manually with fluid boxes.
Results slide: The end-of-quiz slide that shows a learner's score and pass/fail status, and reports that result to the LMS.

S

SCORM (1.2 / 2004): The most common standard for packaging a course so an LMS can launch it and record completion and scores. 1.2 is simpler and widely supported; 2004 adds finer sequencing and status.
Scoring: How points, pass marks, attempts, and partial credit are assigned to assessment questions, producing the result reported to an LMS.
Screen recording: Capturing what happens on your screen — clicks, typing, movement — as the raw material for a software simulation. Captivate's signature workflow.
Section 508: A U.S. law requiring electronic content from (or for) the federal government to be accessible to people with disabilities. In practice it points at the WCAG guidelines.
Slide: A single screen or step of a course. In the all-new tool a slide is built from components; in Classic it holds objects arranged on a timeline.
Slide master: A reusable layout template that defines the look of slides based on it, so a change to the master updates every slide at once. Keeps a course consistent.
Software simulation: An interactive recreation of using an app, built from a screen recording, that lets learners watch, try, or be tested on a task safely. Captivate's standout capability.
State: An alternate look or behavior of a component for a situation — Normal, Hover, Visited, Selected, Disabled. States make buttons and interactions feel alive without code.
Storyboard: A slide-by-slide plan of a course made before building — on-screen text, visuals, narration, interactions, and which objective each part assesses. Your blueprint.

T

Text-entry box: A field where a learner types a response — a password, a command, an answer — commonly used in software simulations and fill-in-the-blank questions.
Theme All-New: A coordinated set of colors, fonts, and component styles applied across a course for a consistent, on-brand look. Switching themes restyles everything at once.
Timeline Classic: Captivate Classic's track-based control over when objects appear and disappear on a slide, much like a video editor. The all-new tool's component model doesn't rely on it.
Training / Try mode: The "do it yourself" software-simulation mode: the learner performs the task with hints and prompts if they get stuck. Learning by doing, with a safety net.

V

Variable Classic: A named container that stores a value — a learner's name, a score, a choice — so the course can remember and react to it. System variables come built in; you create user variables. (The all-new tool is gaining logic features, so check your version.)
VR / 360 project Classic: An immersive project built from 360° images or video with hotspots and guided or exploratory navigation. A Captivate Classic capability today.

W

WCAG: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — the international standard for making digital content usable by people with disabilities, organized around content that is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
Widget / Interactive component All-New: A ready-made interactive element you drop into a slide — an accordion, tabs, a click-and-reveal, a drag-and-drop — that adds rich interactivity without building it from scratch.

X

xAPI (Tin Can): A flexible modern standard for tracking learning experiences — including things that happen outside a traditional LMS — by recording statements in a Learning Record Store. The successor generation to SCORM.