Button vs. Click Boxes / Prevent Slide from Greying Out

Question

1. When is it more appropriate to use a click box vs. a
button (or vice-versa)?

2. Why do buttons have an "inactive" area after the active
area? What if I want my button to display for the first five
seconds, and then become active - what is the best way to
accomplish this?

3. On slide 1, I have a "NEXT" graphic covered by a click
box. I want the movie to pause until the user clicks on the click
box. In web page preview, slide 1 pauses but becomes greyed-out
after the slide reaches the end of the timeline. How can I prevent
it from greying out?

Thanks in advance!

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Thank you for the detailed explanations Rick. It makes sense now...

Your response made me think of something else which solved my "fading out" problem. What was happening is that the Slide > Transition properties for Slide 1 were set to "No Transition", but Slide 2 was set to "Fade Between" - so even though the slide was pausing, the timeline continued and the slide faded....

I had the same scenario on another Captivate movie I created - so I now know how to fix it there too!

Thanks Rick...you get a gold star today!

Captiv8r · Answer

Hi Flygirl555

IMHO, buttons and click boxes are essentially the same thing. Both are designed to carry out a defined action when clicked upon by the user. Personally, here is where I "draw the lines of distinction as to when to use one over the other".

If my goal is to simply pause the movie until the user clicks and I want a definite indication this is happening, I'll use a simple text button containing the verbiage "Click here when ready to proceed..." or something like that. But if my movie has areas where the user should click (as in a screen capture of a dialog with an "OK" button) I need a click box, because it will be invisible and make the static image of a button "clickable".

Sorry, but I'm at a loss as to explain why buttons and click boxes appear differently on the Timeline, with respect to the "Active | Inactive" segments. I'm just making an assumption here, but I suspect this may be used in a case where you don't really want the button to disappear and just have the slide continue playing to another segment. In this case, after clicking, the button is still visible but won't do anything if the user clicks.

To make your button visible, but not active for the first five seconds, consider inserting an image of the button in a disabled state. Then at the five second point, insert the live button. The end result should be that your user sees a button that appears to be disabled (and since it's just an image and doesn't have a click action assigned, it is truly disabled) then the button springs to life as that five second mark is reached.

To prevent the items from "greying out", time the click box so it pauses sooner. It's probably pausing the slide late enough that the fade out on objects has occurred.

Hopefully this helps... Rick :)

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