Advanced Actions: TOC and Next/Back

Report · Mar 20, 2017

Complicated issue. I do have the most up to date Captivate version 9.0.2.437.

First, I have custom Next and Back buttons. They are incorporated as Image buttons.

Then I have 2 Smart Shapes inserted a "Use as Buttons" and filled with an image for "Table of Contents >>>" (TOC_Open) and "<<<Table of Contents" (TOC_Close). The "<<<Table of Contents" (TOC_Close) is set to "Not visible in output".

All four objects have Advanced Actions set.

The hide TOC object is using the following advanced action:

IF ( cpCmndTOCVisible ==1)

Hide TOC

Hide TOC_Close

Show TOC_Open

"Table of Contents >>>" (TOC_Open) uses:

IF ( cpCmndTOCVisible ==0)

Show TOC

Show TOC_Close

Hide TOC_Open

The above worked fine until I realized the next and back buttons needed some advanced actions. If next or back were used while the TOC was opened, it was not working as expected. So, I added some conditional advanced actions.

The Back button is using the following cond adv action:

IF ( cpCmndTOCVisible ==1)

Go to Previous Slide

Hide TOC

Hide TOC_Close

Show TOC_Open

Else

Go to Previous Slide

Show TOC_Open

And the Next button is using something similar:

IF ( cpCmndTOCVisible ==1)

Go to Next Slide

Hide TOC

Hide TOC_Close

Show TOC_Open

Else

Go to Previous Slide

Show TOC_Open

THE PROBLEM:

The buttons for "Table of Contents >>>" (TOC_Open) and "<<<Table of Contents" (TOC_Close) only work as expected on the first slide. After the first slide, the toc will open as expected with no TOC_Close button to appear. The Next and Previous buttons always work as expected. If the TOC is opened when next or back is selected, the TOC closes and the appropriate slide appears. This behavior started when I added adv cond. actions to next and previous.

Any help?

Report · Mar 20, 2017

The cpCmndTOCVisible system variable is actually a little unusual in that it's a COMMAND variable. That's what the Cmd in its name refers to.

This means that assigning it to a value will DO something. In the case of cpCmndTOCVisible, the default value is 0. With that value the TOC will be closed. If you assign the variable to 1, the TOC will open.

You've overcomplicated your Advanced Actions. All you really needed to do was assign the cpCmndTOCVisible variable with 0 to close the TOC or 1 to open it. You didn't actually need to add all the other actions.

I would also suggest that you NOT use the image buttons but use Shape Buttons instead for them. Then you can just put all of these navigation buttons either on the first slide and set them to show for Rest of Project, or else add them to the Master Slides for your main content slides. (You can't do either of those things with Image Buttons.) That will save you replicating objects on each slide.

Better still would be to just use the default Captivate playbar instead. But that's your call.