Skip to main content
A
Anonymous
February 22, 2011
Question

Controlling (rewinding) SWF animation in slidelet

  • February 22, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 557 views

Hi,

A colleague asked me whether it was possible to rewind an SWF animation that plays in a rollover slidelet.  I had thought that it was possible to have it autorewind using system variables once the animation had finished playing, so that the user could rollover it and view it again.

After spending some time playing around with it, I'm beginning to think it can't be done.  I've tried using advanced actions on a click box to achieve the same affect but that isn't working either.

Does anyone know how I can get this to work?  Ideally what we want is for the user to rollover/click a box, and then have a caption appear with an option to start the animation.  At the moment we can do that but the animation continues if the user leaves the rollover and is still playing if they come back to it.

I hope that makes sense.

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 22, 2011

If you trigger an animation to play, something has to also trigger it to stop playing.  It sounds like you've triggered the start of play but not provided any way for it to stop on another mouse event, e.g. roll out.

Captivate doesn't really offer much except for click events with it's current set of interactive objects (click boxes and buttons).  If you want to add other mouse events such as roll over, roll out, mouse down, mouse up to the arsenal, then you need to get the Event Handler widget from here: http://www.infosemantics.com.au/catalog/widgets/interactive/wdgt_event_handler_01

My personal recommendation regarding these animations is that I wouldn't put them in a slidelet, since this makes it difficult to control when they stop, as you have found.  If you put them on a separate slide altogether, and simply jump to and from that slide, then you'll find the animations will be terminated automatically when you leave the slide and reinitialised when you go back there.

I see this kind of problem all the time with Captivate projects. People try to do too much on a single slide. Try to design your interactions so that there is more separation between elements and you'll have more control.  If you use the same slide backgrounds and no slide transitions, most of the time the user will be blissfully unaware that they jumped to a different slide.

A
Anonymous
March 9, 2011

Thanks Rod, I had a feeling that it couldn't be done.. Good (although a little disappointing) to get that confirmation.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices