Maximizing the Captivate window automatically

We found that some of our users did not know how to maximize windows (or even that it was possible!), and so never saw the navigation bar and buttons on the bottom of a Captivate-based course they had to take.

The customer who designed the course asked that we add instructions on maximizing the window, but I thought that it would make more sense just to make the window maximize itself.

It’s been a while since I used window sizing functions, so I went hunting for a script that works across all browsers.

After trying several, I found that some “auto-maximize window” scripts don’t even work every time on ANY browser. The one that worked best on every browser I tested it on is available free from Dynamic Drive, here.

How it works:

First it moves the window to the top left, then if the browser is IE, it uses the “resizeTo()” function to resize the screen.

If the browser is Netscape, Mozilla, Safari, or any other, it checks if the window width or height is less than the screen maximum width or height, and sets those values to the screen maximum

To make the Captivate course maximize itself automatically when it launches, I simply added the Dynamic Drive script to the head area of the HTML wrapper’s source. It appears to work perfectly in IE 6 & 7, Firefox for both Mac and Windows and Safari for Mac.