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Brettisme
Participant
April 24, 2018
Question

Fluid Box Properties (Border and Size)

  • April 24, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 958 views

Captivate 2017 10.0.0.192

Is there a way to add borders to fluid boxes?

If no, is there a workaround to this (image fill with borders)?

Is there a way to specify the horizontal or vertical size of a fluid box (depending on the orientation of the box)?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
April 24, 2018

Just FYI, yesterday a patch was released, the present version is 10.0.1.285. Use Help, Updates.

You can fill a fluid box with the same possibilities as for a shape, but a border is not included.

Solution: fill the Fluid box with a shape with a border. Turn off 'Mainiain Aspect Ratio, turn on Stretch vertically and horizontally. Since a normal fluid box doesn't support stacked objects, this means that you can only use the states of the shape and its Fill possibilitles to add other items to the same fluid box, they'll have to be IN the shape.

Not sure what you mean by the last question? Due to the fluiditiy the boxes cannot really be sized. The amount allowed to a box horizontally or vertcially can be done easily when using Guides. Look at my blog post:

Guides and Fluid Boxes: Best Buddies! - Captivate blog

B
BrettismeAuthor
Participant
April 24, 2018

First question:

Say I want to have a fluid box (fb)with a border, and the fb is meant to be a placeholder for a software screen shot capture.

I don't think that I can populate the fb with both with a shape, and also with an image (on top of each other where the shape is the background border and the image fills that border in the foreground).

I can add a shape with a border stroke and make the capture and image fill, but I cannot add an image to the shape fill unless I am in the master slide.

In normal mode (not master slide view) I can add a capture as the background of the fb that has the master shape border.

This seem like the most simplistic functionality; wanting the ability to have consistent fluid box borders in a slide where that fb would also have an (master) image placeholder.

Last question:

Say I am creating master slides in a theme (in the "Desktop" preview) and want the bottom-most fb on several slides to be the same (starting point) size as a placeholder for say a logo.

Maybe it's me, but if I want this fluid box to be 35 pixels high (no matter how many fbs are above it), the Guides do not make this easy. The guides do not tell the user the size of the fb when adjusting it. I understand this because a guide actually adjusts two fbs (the one above and below the guide). This is not a good design for adjusting the size of an fb imo. I haven't tried zooming in to make it easier.

In my opinion, users should be able to set the size of an fb using the properties for that fb, or have a guide for each fb where the size of that fb is displayed as the guide is moved (the adjoining fb would resize appropriately, but would not be displayed).

As designed, the guides make a user guess the size of the fb until she gets it right. To me, that's "messed up" (lazy programming that is not user-friendly). So far, I am not impressed with the Captivate functionality when compared with that of FrameMaker or Illustrator (it doesn't seem like the same company created Captivate).

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
April 24, 2018

Hmm, do you understand how Fluid Boxes work? You give control to Captivate over the layout in all screens. You cannot define what will show up in Desktop view etc. If you want that amount of control you need to use the other workflow for responsive projects, which is with Breakpoint Views. I tried to explain the difference in this blog post:

Fluid Boxes Or Breakpoint Views? - Captivate blog static

Honestly, I don't think you can do what you want exclusively with Fluid Boxes workflow.

You can add stacked objects in a ​static​ fluid box.

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