Is There a Limit to the Number of Advanced Actions on a Slide?

Question

Hi All,

I have gotten wolf-howling-at-the-moon crazy with a Captivate Classic (11.5.5.553) project that has a lot of text and audio being toggled via Advanced Actions. I am trying to initially HIDE a Continue button and then have this appear if certain criteria are met.

The way the Continue button is set to initially hide is to have the slide Advanced Action set to HIDE this button based on an IF criterion. I am actually using this slide AA, that is needed for navigation later, to serve a dual purpose.

Issue I have is when I have this HIDE button action set, along with several other HIDES, the slide breaks and automatically goes to the next slide when the Continue button is clicked, in violation of AA rules set for that button.

If I take this HIDE Button away from the slide AA, then the slide behaves as expected, but it appears on screen at an undesired time.

Have I maxed out the system?

Thank you for any thoughts.

RodWard · Accepted Answer

I find the best way to debug complex interactions like this where you have multiple variables that affect multiple conditional decision blocks is to make the current values of all variables visible to you (the developer) at runtime.

You just need to find a spare spot on the problem slide to insert a text caption or smart shape in which you display the custom user variables that are influencing the Conditional Advanced Actions.

If the interaction is not working as expected, it will either be due to a flaw in your logic. And the usual reason for that is that one of the variables you assume will have a certain value does not actually have that value. So, by making the variable values visible at runtime you can have better visibility of what is happening "under the hood".

I would reiterate my earlier instruction that you do not always need to make every decision block have a condition at the top. If certain objects will always need to be hidden on enter to that slide, just use the first decision block in the Advanced Action to hide them all. Then if some are going to be unhidden later based on variable values, do that via conditions in the subsequent decision blocks.

Lilybiri is correct that Shared Actions can be very useful. But I would not suggest trying to convert this interaction to Shared Actions until you have debugged the current way it is working.

Don Wallbaum · Answer

Thank you Rod and Lilybiri!

I do have the On Enter Execute Advanced Actions to control the slide opening. But a conditional statement is needed to control a navigation control later.

And to compound things.....part of the desired operation of this slide is:
Click 4 buttons to view content.

If each of the 4 topics buttons are not clicked, and the Continue button is visable,display message.

If each of 4 topics are clicked, go to next slide.

I have this constructed with four variables, one for each topic, and that variable is incremented by 1 upon click.

By way of test, if I click on one topic 2 or 3 times, then click a second topic, I get the warning message. This is as expected.

If I click the rest of the topics I still get the warning when the Continue button is clicked and the slide will not advance.

That is illustrated in the "Continue.png" screenshot, and ignore the blue rectangle. I have played with using a mask to hide the Continue button until needed, but that isn't working either. There is something amiss with the way the Continue button is evaluating. I suspect it is the PAUSE in the ELSE but Continue sends the project to the next slide, so I am out of ideas for this. See the AA for THIS in the "Continue-AA.png".

Youall are wonderful, thank you again for the time and expertise you are sharing. Over the years, I would have been lost without this resource.

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