Faced with the challenge of Captivate Classic’s limited and visually unappealing caption styling options, I pioneered a dynamic solution to modernize the presentation of Captivate’s text boxes. Eschewing pixelated bitmap graphics, I developed a system where unstyled, transparent text boxes with specific naming conventions (e.g., ‘bp-‘ for Best Practices) were styled at runtime using a central JavaScript file. This file injected custom CSS classes to render sleek drop shadow boxes, control color palettes, and incorporate relevant icons, resulting in a professional and visually consistent appearance across all lessons. We were forced to abandon the prototype due to higher priority projects, but it’s an interesting approach that might be useful later.
