Animations_please Help!!

I would recommend looking at SwishMax which is a great Flash alternative. We use it to create all of our swf content which plays perfectly in the Flash Player. Cheaper and easier to use and does about 90% of what Flash can do. Also, it's pretty similar to Flash, so it's a great way to introduce yourself to timelines and stages without dealing with the steep learning curve that Flash has. We still use the Flash Encoder to create FLVs though.I don't think of Captivate as an animation tool. It's really a software simulation tool.