Inspiring

Question

Hide all text captions through Advanced Actions

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
March 10, 2017
4 replies
1481 views

How can I do this? I have create a Toggle button (per Lily's blog) and this is working perfectly. I have over 100 captions across various slides. Hiding them one by one in the Advanced Actions window cant be the only way! And then to show them I have to create the 100+ actions again. Please tell me there is another way.

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nonen53461523Author

Inspiring

I have found a much easier/better solution to hiding a bunch of elements.

Using Javascript, I simply call the cp.hide() and cp.show() functions. No need to mess around with actions.

Joseph Ganci

Inspiring

Great! I'm happy you know JavaScript well enough to do this. I hadn't suggested JavaScript because the majority of Captivate users are not comfortable with it. I'm glad you do!

L

laurent_machado

Participating Frequently

Are the notes all in the same place all along the slides?

In this case is if the background allows it, you can put a cache on the 1st slide for the rest of the project, always on top, and simply hide or show this cache, with simply on action. It's a bit DIY but it works well.

Lilybiri

Legend

Laurent, good idea, but that means that the notes (or the cover) will take up real estate all the time. Only the OP can decide if that can be allowed. In most cases notes in a popup are meant to appear over the slide content. Another problem could exist if the background is not a solid color, which would make the 'cover' over the notes too visible.

L

laurent_machado

Participating Frequently

Effectively, this only works in this case, i use this method for custom subtitles.

Joseph Ganci

Inspiring

There are many ways to be much more efficient when starting from scratch by using shared actions, but considering your situation, why not have a toggle button on your master slide in which each time the learner clicks the button it toggles between showing all the notes and hiding all the notes? I just tried it and it's working perfectly for me. It's a quick and dirty method to be sure but it works. You only have to create one action, not 100.

I created two slides but it doesn't matter if I had 100. The advanced action I set up looks like this. text1_1 is on Slide 1 and text2_2 is on Slide 2. I could just add the notes captions from each slide to both lists and I'm done. As I said, quick and dirty, but it works.

2017-03-11 03_25_35-Advanced Actions

Lilybiri

Legend

Joe, did you test this out? So many objects always to show and to hide, will it not have impact on the speed of the course which is so big? You also will have to hide them On Enter for each slide, because it is possible that the user didn't close the notes.

Joseph Ganci

Inspiring

No, I didn't test it with 100 of them, so you may be right. However, I think we may be looking at this differently. Am I right that you're thinking that a learner may just want to see the notes on one slide and then when moving to another slide the notes should automatically close?

My thought is that the learner decides at any time whether notes should be on or off. If the button is on the master slide as part of a button panel, for instance, I would assume that turning the notes on on any slide means they want to see the notes on slides in general until they decide to turn off the notes. So, I wouldn't worry about putting it On Enter for each slide, just the one button to turn off or on all notes any time the learner chooses.

Lilybiri

Legend

Can you explain exactly what you want to do? I suspect you are talking about the toggle button described in this post:

1 action = 5 Toggle Buttons - Captivate blog

You can group captions, if they are on the same slide, and hide the group instead of hiding each caption separately.

Explain more in detail: why do you want to hide the text, why and when to show it?

nonen53461523Author

Inspiring

Yes that's the one.

The text Captions are helpful information for the user. however if they just want to view the slides without the notes bothering them - I have provided a toggle button to hide the notes.

I have 1 caption per slide. There are a total of 120 slides. I want to hide / show the captions based on the toggle button. So far it seems that I need to add a "Hide" action for each of my 120 captions and then add a "Show" action 120 times.

Is there faster way?

Lilybiri

Legend

Are those notes the same throughout the project or different on each slide?

You can time a shape button, and any static object (like a caption or a shape used as text container) for the rest of the project, always on top. That way you'll only need one advanced action to toggle them on/off.

You don't need a show and a hide action with that toggle action, all is done with the same action? You can also use a hyperlink to close the notes:

More is in a...hyperlink - Close button - Captivate blog

If the caption is different on each slide, another approach could be to use the same text container, but put a variable in it, and fill the variable with the text On Enter for each slide. That can be a shared action, would be much less work than having to create all those buttons. The same shape button, with attached action, and text container can be used timed for the rest of the project. The content of the text container will change with the On Enter action. I once suggested something similar:

"Beat the system" - save time creating Advanced Actions (Captivate) - Captivate blog

I showed this for question slides, using system variables in my last post:

Using Quizzing System Variables - Captivate blog

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