# About the work environment

Captivate is designed so you can create a movie easily. Following is an overview of the Captivate work environment.

Note: You can also customize the way in which you work in Captivate.

### Views

Captivate has two main views: Storyboard view and Edit view (with the Filmstrip).

- Storyboard: This view appears when you open a movie from the Start Page. The movie opens with small images representing the slides that constitute the movie. Storyboard view provides an easy way to see all of the slides within a movie at a glance. It also enables you to see the flow of the movie. You can change the properties of multiple slides at the same time: to select multiple slides, hold down the Shift or Control key while clicking on slides; to select all slides, press Control+A.

- Edit: This view appears when you double-click on a slide in Storyboard view. After recording a Captivate movie, you will probably spend most of your time in Edit view, because this is the view in which you add movie objects (such as captions, images, click boxes, and audio). Using this view, you can make many changes to a slide, such as altering the mouse movement and changing the mouse pointer. Finally, Edit view contains the optional Filmstrip. The Filmstrip lets you see all of the slides in a movie, even while editing an individual slide in Edit view. For more information, see Using the Filmstrip. (Example)

### Timeline

The Timeline is a visual representation of all objects on slides. The Timeline provides an easy way to view, at a high level, all objects on a slide and their relationship to each other. With the Timeline, you can organize objects and precisely control the timing of objects. For example, on a slide that contains a caption, an image, and a highlight box, you can display the caption, then the image four seconds later, and then the highlight box two seconds after that. The Timeline also shows any audio associated with the slide or with objects on the slide, letting you easily coordinate the timing of audio with objects.

### Toolbars and menus

#### In both views, the program contains menus and toolbars at the top of the program window. Context (right-click) menus are also available throughout the program.

- Menu bar: Click a menu at the top of the program window (for example, File, Insert, or Options) to see the related menu commands.

- Context menus: Place the mouse pointer in the pane in which you want to work. Press the right mouse button, and select command from the menu.

- Toolbars: Click an icon on any of the program toolbars as a shortcut to dialog boxes and actions. All of the toolbar options (for example, showing/hiding toolbars, toolbar location, and so on) for a given view are located in the View menu.

Tip: For maximum editing space, open a movie and click F11 to display Captivate in full-screen edit mode.