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keith888
Known Participant
April 22, 2010
Question

Captivate widgets

  • April 22, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 1202 views

Hi all,

Just a question about Captivate widgets...

We all know there are widgets out there that can help us simulate a WINDOWS system, for example
there is one that I found online that enables you to do a right click with your mouse on a clickable area etc.

I just wondered if anyone out there knew of a widget that can help you simulate the scenario whereby you
click on the top item in a list, hold the SHIFT key and then select the last item at the bottom, thereby
selecting all of the items in the list. A typical example of this is when you are in Outlook and you are deleting
a number of emails by selecting the one at the top of the list, then holding the SHIFT key and selecting another
one further down by clicking on it.

I am doing an e-learning simulation of Microsoft Outlook that's why I am enquiring about this.

I thought an obvious solution would be to create a flash movie that has a screenshot image of the inbox in Outlook
in the background and you would click on the first email which would have an invisible button in flash and then you
would go to the next frame in the flash movie where there would be a bit of code that detects if you are holding the SHIFT

key whilst clicking another invisible button that is positioned above the last email etc (obviously one for a FLASH GURU).

Obviously someone can create this in flash and publish it as an SWF (the normal format for widgets that are imported
into captivate) but in order for this to work with Captivate, for example when all the "emails" are selected in this flash movie,

ideally I would like it to go to the next screen in the captivate movie where it would play as normal etc.

Is there some code that I can insert into the flash movie that can communicate with the captivate movie that it is being imported into?

At the moment I am using Captivate 3 so is this only possible in Captivate 4 where you do select File > New > Widget in Flash.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best regards

Keith

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
April 22, 2010

Hello,

Widgets were a new feature in CP4, that answers one of your questions.

About your other question for the simulation, it is not used as an assessment, right? Just try to see it from the viewpoint of the user. I did realize this a lot of times using the following scenario:

1. user has to click on the first item, so provide a click box

2. instruct the user to hold SHIFT (CP will not react to it, will not evaluate, but the user doesn't know that) and click on the last item to be selected

3. when capturing be sure that you have a slide where the right selection is shown

4. then instruct to delete

You do know that the SHIFT has really no meaning, but that is because you know CP, your users are not in the same situation.

For me this is another usecase as with the right mouse click (which is BTW present in CP4 out of the box) actions. There you cannot cheat on your users, but in this case you can.

What do you think?

Lilybiri

K
keith888Author
Known Participant
April 22, 2010

Hi,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Just want to be clear...

Lets imagine you are doing a simulation of Microsoft Outlook in captivate and you want to make it so that
when it is published the user goes through the whole process of deleting a bunch of emails. So, therefore
he/she clicks on the top one and then he holds down the SHIFT key and then clicks on the last email.

At this point the user is taken to the next screen where all the emails have been selected and there is a
right-hand mouse click widget on the screen so that when the user does this a menu pops up (ie he goes
to the next screen where this appears) and he clicks on the delete option which at this point is just another
transparent button.

No, this is not an assessment, just a simulation created when the captivate is used to record a screen with all
the mouse movements and clicks.

At the moment I have actually done this, put in transparent buttons and text boxes with on-screen instructions
so that the user uses the simulation just like the real Outlook system. It is purely for instructional purposes to teach
people how to use Outlook. For example in one scenario, the user is told to click on the inBox icon on the left hand
side of the screen to open all his emails etc.

The only sticking point is the point where you delete your emails as I described above using the shift key and mouse
to select a whole bunch of them before deleting. I suppose I could have this bit as a movie part where you see the
mouse move on its own and selecting these emails before deleting etc etc. BUT I want to do it where the user
interacts with the system.

Hence my previous post on this forum.

Br

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
April 22, 2010

Hello,

Apparently I did not explain well. The only problem with my scenario is that you'll have to know in advance which is the first email to be selected and which is the last one. Perhaps that is not the case? I do not really see something moving when doing this in Outlook: select first mail, hold SHIFT and select last mail to be deleted. Just afterwards selected mails are highlighted all at once, which can be done by showing the next slide. Or do I misunderstand and can the user add one mail at once, or does he have to scroll? If he has to scroll you'll need indeed a FMR for that part, but if all is visible?

Lilybiri

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