Adobe Captivate 2017 Publish Breaks When Disabling Playback Control (HTML5)

[jaredv7421409]

Hello everyone!

So I'm trying to make a small course as a part of a project for one of my classes, and I'm trying to have my navigation exist as onscreen buttons. I find that after unchecking "Show Playback Control" in the Skin Editor, my published version of the course completely breaks. So far I've worked around it by placing the playback controls on the top of the screen, disabling all buttons, and making the background the same color as the course. I don't want to have to use this workaround all the time though if there is a real fix to my problem.

This is what I see when I publish without playback controls:

And this is what it looks like when I preview from within Captivate:

Does anyone know if there is a fix for this? I'm using Adobe Captivate 2017 10.0.0.192 and I've checked for updates from the help menu but it looks like I'm using the most up to date version.

Thanks in advance!

[Lilybiri]

I am really stumped because I never use a playbar, but always create custom buttons. That is why i doubt the problem is due to taking out the playbar. How do you preview? Is this a non-responsive project? In that case the only Preview method that will create a temporary HTML output, not a SWF output, is Preview HTML in Browser (F11). I see that you use Preview Project. Can you check with F11 and the playbar unchecked if you have the same issue?

[jaredv7421409]

Hi Lilybiri, thanks for the quick response! Yeah I'm not sure what the actual root cause could be. I use Captivate at work and we generally don't use playbars but it seems to work fine (though I think we're using Captivate 9 at work, I got a free copy of Captivate 2017 from my school and I use it for my school projects). Yes, my project is non-responsive, I started from a blank project. And using F11 seemed to work with the playbar disabled:

[Lilybiri]

OK, so the project is OK. It is publishing that causes problems. Do you run Captivate as Administrator? Are the paths in Preferences for Publish at and Cache pointing to folders on your system?

[jaredv7421409]

I just tried running it as an Administrator and I checked all the paths. They all point to folders that do exist on my system but publishing still results in the same thing. If it makes any difference, when I publish to swf, the swf file seems to work fine.

[Lilybiri]

Can you publish to HTML but published file is not playing locally? I thought you couldn't publish. HTML output in many situations only works correctly when you upload to a webserver, which has to support JSON.

[jaredv7421409]

Yes I can publish to HTML, sorry I realize I worded things incorrectly. After publishing with the playback controls disabled, I go to the published folder and double click on index.html and then my course is broken and looks like the first image I posted like this:

And when I enable playback control, then publish and then click on index.html my course looks correct like this:

[Lilybiri]

Very strange, never did see someone mentioning such an issue, I always upload to my domain. Do you not have access to a weserver?

[jaredv7421409]

Unfortunately I don't when we finish up our projects in my class we've just been zipping up the published folders and sending them to the professors.

[Lilybiri]

OMG, those professors don't know Captivate maybe? HTML output is never meant to be viewed locally, that was possible for SWF output. Only one out of 4 projects I create will play locally. You can try to switch to another browser, i you are lucky you'll find one that will play the project. But you'll have to instruct the professor to use the same browser in that case.

[jaredv7421409]

Oh wow I didn't know that! I don't think the professors actually gave us any instruction on how specifically to send the files, I'm just used to publishing HMTL5 files for work and they'll upload those to a client's LMS. I've seen some people send in their projects as executable files and the professors didn't say anything about that, so I can probably get away with publishing as an executable for the sake of this project and in the meantime I'll see if I can get my work to let me use a test web server to test out my project that way.  Thanks for all of your help with this!

[Lilybiri]

Executable output is Flash-based....same as interactive pdf, also Flash-based.

[moyco]

I never use Flash...it's dying and none too soon, cannot be made accessible, and won't play on iOS systems. I usually test my html output locally on a browser and usually don't have a problem with any of my content. But I also test on a server. I have found the best way to ensure everything works correctly without needed an LMS is to test directly on the SCORM cloud...and it's free! https://scorm.com/scorm-solved/scorm-cloud-features/content-just-works/testing-content-with-scorm-cl...

I don't have any suggestions about your button issue, unfortunately. It does seem as though somehow you are tapping into the playbar controls, which is why they won't show when you disable the playbar. You might want to look into custom navigation buttons as Lilybiri says, or if you customize the playbar you have to make sure to add the assets in the published output afterwards and then make sure you link to the stylesheet in your index_SCORM.html file (that's what I do). Good luck!

[Lilybiri]

Just a slight correction: Flash Player is dying, not the Flash developing application which is labeled now Animate CC. Slight but important difference.

[moyco]

You are correct; Flash player or any output with the .swf extension.  I use other scripting languages to animate and program so I tend to forget that Animate was built on the flash developing app.

[Lilybiri]

Not only built on it, still most games are created as Flash games.... 

[moyco]

Depends on the industry you are in. Not in my shop And...we'll leave it at that.