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LagilCC
Known Participant
February 9, 2021
Answered

Hiding text shown on click after being visible for a few second

  • February 9, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 891 views

I'm working on converting some Captivate courses I inherited, so that they'll play in HTML5. The original creator used tons of rollovers, which I'm busy replacing with click boxes. One way they used rollovers was to optionally show definitions for words that were in orange text in a block of other text, if the user needed to be reminded of the definition of that word.

I have no problem replacing the rollover with a definition text box and a click box that shows that text box. However, I'd like the definition text box to disappear a few seconds after it shows, rather than persist on the page. How do I do that? I tried setting a 3-second duration on text box, but that made no difference. (Reading the manual and Googling this question has not yielded an answer for me.)

 

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Note: I'm using Captivate 9, because that's the only version my company will allow me to use right now, so please don't chastise me for not using a newer version! Also, please don't chastise me for not having converted these to HTML5 sooner....the Adobe Connect server showed these courses on the Content page with a "Yes" in the "HTML Compatible?" column, so I thought they would be good to go, the same way the Adobe Presenter courses with a "Yes" in the "HTML Compatible?" column were. 

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Lilybiri

    There have been a lot of improvements for HTML output with versions 10, 11 and 11.5.  But that is not helping you of course. HTML output is available in your version, but apparently the output has been still SWF. Indeed, some objects are not supported for HTML output. However, if your learners do NOT use mobile devices, but only desktop/laptop, Rollovers will continue to work, with the exception of Rollover Slidelets. Just FYI.

    Do you have multistate objects? Here is a very simple workflow using a multistate object, but I fear that you still don't have the command 'Delay Next actions by..... ' in your version to be used in shared/advanced actions? It would be ideal to extend this workflow:

    http://blog.lilybiri.com/click-slash-reveal-interactions-back-to-basics

     The action would have to be:

        Go to Next state  ...object

        Delay Next actions by X secs

        Go to Next state ... object

     

    Supposing you don't have that command, why not use the Success feedback message of the Click box? That may seem crazy but is probably the simplest way:

    • Add the Success message to the Click box
    • Edit that Success message with the text you want to appear
    • Keep the message selected and open Timing Properties
    • You'll see that the message is timed for 3 seconds, but you can edit that duration.

     

    Beware: click boxes are not allowed in a fluid boxes responsive project. But there I am sure: they don't exist in our version.

    If each text is in a shape, you could convert the shape to a button instead of using a click box over the text.  That will not work of course if you need click reveal for multiple words in the same shape.

     

     

    2 replies

    L
    LagilCCAuthor
    Known Participant
    February 9, 2021

    The sucess box did exactly what I wanted....thanks again!!!

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    February 9, 2021

    Sorry, our mails were posted at the same. Thanks for marking the correct answer. You remembered me that I need to post more about the conversion swf to html because more and more questions appear now that Flash player is really dead.

    Lilybiri
    LilybiriCorrect answer
    Legend
    February 9, 2021

    There have been a lot of improvements for HTML output with versions 10, 11 and 11.5.  But that is not helping you of course. HTML output is available in your version, but apparently the output has been still SWF. Indeed, some objects are not supported for HTML output. However, if your learners do NOT use mobile devices, but only desktop/laptop, Rollovers will continue to work, with the exception of Rollover Slidelets. Just FYI.

    Do you have multistate objects? Here is a very simple workflow using a multistate object, but I fear that you still don't have the command 'Delay Next actions by..... ' in your version to be used in shared/advanced actions? It would be ideal to extend this workflow:

    http://blog.lilybiri.com/click-slash-reveal-interactions-back-to-basics

     The action would have to be:

        Go to Next state  ...object

        Delay Next actions by X secs

        Go to Next state ... object

     

    Supposing you don't have that command, why not use the Success feedback message of the Click box? That may seem crazy but is probably the simplest way:

    • Add the Success message to the Click box
    • Edit that Success message with the text you want to appear
    • Keep the message selected and open Timing Properties
    • You'll see that the message is timed for 3 seconds, but you can edit that duration.

     

    Beware: click boxes are not allowed in a fluid boxes responsive project. But there I am sure: they don't exist in our version.

    If each text is in a shape, you could convert the shape to a button instead of using a click box over the text.  That will not work of course if you need click reveal for multiple words in the same shape.

     

     

    L
    LagilCCAuthor
    Known Participant
    February 9, 2021

    Thank you for your response! The Success feedback seems like an interesting workaround....I'll have to check that out!

     

    These courses were last published to both SWF and HTML (which is, I think, why the Contents page indicated that they were HTML compatible), but they didn't launch.....all that showed was a blank screen and a separate tab showing all of the non-HTML5-compliant features, including rollovers. (We didn't publish these to be used on mobile devices...the rollovers are not working in the latest version of Chrome on my Windows 10 machine.) Oh, and the click boxes are just sitting on top of text boxes....not "in" anything, and the text is not in a shape.

     

    I've had no problem converting the rollovers to click boxes (other than time and aggravation -- I'll have a total of 130 of these to do across six different courses) and, the two courses I already completed the conversion work for play fine with those replacement click boxes. The only reason I'm even wanting to have the definition disappear is that there are other click-to-see-text elements on this page and space is limited. For those two other elements, which work based on clicking a click box that sits over a text box that looks like a button and shows detailed info about the label on that faux "button," I figured out how to create advanced actions that would hide the other faux button's corresponding detailed info before showing the most recently clicked-on faux button's detailed info, so that the detailed info text boxes for both faux buttons could use the same space on the slide. But I wanted to treat the definition text box differently, hence my original question! 

     

    At any rate, thank you VERY much, again, for your suggested workaround to deal with my issue! 🙂 

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    February 9, 2021

    The dual publishing did lead to always showing SWF output on laptop/desktop and HTML output on mobile devices. Now that Flash player is dead, you have issues with watching the desktopt/laptop version. But you seem to work on courses with very outdated workflows. Sorry, maybe I will get cursed again.

    Text captions is such an old workflow, you can see in Preferences that all feedback message are by default Shapes, not text captions anymore. My proposed workflow, using the Success message, is also possible for Rollover Images, since you can fill a shape with an image. Just FYI. 

    Having a click box over an image or text (what you call faux button) is MO ridiculous, since you can do this with a shape, either filled with text or image, used as button. Shapes appeared with Captivate 6 and my practical mind cannot understand why people still use workflows from Captivate 4 or older.

    Please, to close the thread, you need to mark the most relevant answer to your question as being correct. That can help other users looking at this thread.

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