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perthbalky
Participating Frequently
August 24, 2012
Question

Simulating a screen brightness control

  • August 24, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 1376 views

I am trying to simulate a screen brightness control on a training tool for locomotive driver console. This console has 8 function buttons, which are used to navigate to various screens depending on the scrren currently displayed. There is another button that is used to control the brightness of the display and I want to simulate this by pressing the button and displaying a semi transparent rectangle over the screen. I can do it for a single screen using the advanced actions but I don't know how to have this work on all screens without repeating the process for every slide. I tried to put this feature in the Master sldie but with no joy

I have an image of the device front panel on a Master slide and I am have created moveable buttons on each subsequent slide to navigate to the relevant images I am navigating through.

If anyone has any helpful hints on how to achieve this I would appreciate it.

Cheers

Greg

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    1 reply

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    August 24, 2012

    Hi Greg,

    Interesting question. Will try to find a solution with advanced actions, but could you first tell me which version you are using? It would be easy with CP6 but I imagine it could be worked out with previous as well.

    I suppose you want this to be able to achieve on each slide. How many levels of brightness?

    Lilybiri

    P
    perthbalkyAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    August 24, 2012

    Thanks for the prompt response.

    I am using Captivate 5

    I was going to keep it simple and just have normal brightness and one level below that, with an overlaid grey box with the alpha dropped down to 60%

    It would be fantastic if you could find a solution.

    Cheers

    Greg

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    August 24, 2012

    Hi Greg,

    I felt sad when you mentioned the version 5, had hoped you were at least at 5.5. My idea was to create the 'dimming' rectangle on the first slide

    and time it for the rest of the project. The option 'always on top' should be checked. In 5.5 and 6 it is possible to show/hide that rectangle on all the slides, but in 5.0 you can only hide the rectangle on other slides than the first where it really is. This was a less known improvement on 5.5 due to my begging to the engineers. That way you could create one advanced action to be attached to all the buttons, without any editing because the rectangle always had the same ID.

    In CP6 it would be even easier: a shape button has all the functionalities of a normal button but can be also be timed for the rest of the project: only one shape button with one advanced action would have been needed. Have a look at this blog post: http://lilybiri.posterous.com/why-i-like-shape-buttons-captivate-6

    The idea was to make that rectangle initially invisible, and show it when the button to dim was pressed with an (advanced) action. Now I can only offer some tips to make the cumbersome process of editing shorter, you'll need a rectangle on each slide, and will have to edit the advanced action for each button to point to the correct rectangle:

    • create rectangle and button, with its advanced action for the first slide (and test it) before copying both at once to all the other slides
    • label first the button and have the number of the slide in the label (like Bt_x where x=slide number)
    • it is possible then to use the same name for the advanced action to be triggered by the button
    • before copying: if those rectangles are the only ones, you can keep the default names for them
    • the copied buttons will get their proper ID, I would relabel them on the slide, go then to the advanced action, duplicate and edit it

    So sorry,

    Lilybiri

    PS: I'm not paid by Adobe, not trying to push you to upgrade

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