Captivate 2 - tabs and rollovers

[gdaminato]

I'm using a rollover caption in Captivate 2 as a 'help' button - I display steps of a procedure when the learner mouses over the rollover area. There are other hot areas, buttons, or text entry areas on the same screen.

I've discovered that the rollover caption is triggered by tabs. One one screen with a text entry area, the rollover caption appears when the learner presses tab after entering text. If the typed text is incorrect, the rollover caption disappears again quickly so you don't notice it. When the typed text is correct, the rollover caption appears and a yellow highlight appears around the rollover area.

Is there anything I can do to make prevent the rollover from being triggered by tabs?

Grace D

[Erik Lord]

Hi Grace!

I'd assume the the tabbing is related to accessibility features, so perhaps turning off accessibility would do the trick?

Edit > Preferences > Project > Publish settings > Enable Accessibility (uncheck it)

Cheers!
Erik

[Captiv8r]

Hi all

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with Erik here. I'd be surprised to hear that Accessibility is affecting things one way or another. Maybe it will, certainly won't hurt to try it.

My gut feeling on this is that what you are seeing is that the Rollover area of the Rollover Caption is part of the invisible tab order. Unfortunately we have little (if any) control over that order. Perhaps it can be influenced by removing the Rollover Caption, inserting another object then re-inserting the Rollover Caption?

Note that I'm not claiming this will fix anything, just suggesting it as something you may wish to try.

While it won't help you at the moment, it will be overall helpful if you (and many many others) complete the Adobe Wish Form to ask for a way to define our own tabbing order. If we had this capability, we could more easily influence the behavior of our projects.

Cheers... Rick

[Captiv8r]

Hi again

Okay, the question of the Tab order had me wondering, so I performed a small test to see if I could suss out how it works.

While I'm not going to claim it's conclusive, here's what I'm seeing thus far.

The tab order seems to be Left to Right and Top to Bottom.

I created four buttons that were stacked vertically. During playback, I tabbed from top to bottom. To check if it was related to the Timeline Stacking Order, I left the stacking order alone and rearranged the order by shifting the button locations on the slide. Again, Top to Bottom. Hmmmm

So I tested a bit further by arranging two columns. Tab took me from upper left to upper right, then moved to second row. First the left and then the right.

Strange, huh?

So if your issue is related to the Tab order as I suspected earlier, you may need to re-think the placement of the objects.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcerStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[Erik Lord]

Did you try turning off the Accessibility option to see if that prevented the tab-order from working at all?

I wouldn't be surprised if it did not, but since the ability to use Tab as a method of navigation is a requirement per 508 specs (as I understand it), it would seem logical that it could be affected by the Accessibility setting.

On the other hand, web browsers support tab-order/navigation whether you like it or not....

But 'twas a thought. If changing the order of the buttons is a possible solution, great!

(I've no hang-ups about being disagreed with 😉

Erik

[gdaminato]

Hmmm...thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure, yet, whether I can use it to help solve my problem. The issue, to me, is that the rollover hotspot activates whenever I press a tab...why does it do that? Why should a tab activate the rollover? I thought the whole purpose of a rollover is to show something, e.g. text, when the mouse moves over the hot area. That's what I want to happen BUT the caption appears when I press tab.

I'm considering a few things I can do change my strategy to avoid the problem.

However, I'm still left with transparent buttons, used as hotspots, that highlight in yellow when I activate them with tab. Is there any way to turn off the highlight feature?

Could all this be happening because I'm using Vista? Maybe this is an OS issue>

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Grace

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

I'm not sure if it will work for Captivate 2, but fellow Adobe Community Expert Paul Dewhurst offers a gizmo that does that. He has it listed among his Captivate 3 list, but it may work for 2 as well.

Click here to view Paul's stuff

As for the hotspot activating when the rollover area gains focus and highlights, well, that seems to be a standard behavior. I just tested in my fully patched Captivate 4 and that's the behavior.

If you can share your project where I can see it first hand, perhaps I can recommend a workaround.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcerStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[gdaminato]

Hi Captiv8r:

Could you clarify what you mean by:

"As for the hotspot activating when the rollover area gains focus and highlights, well, that seems to be a standard behavior. I just tested in my fully patched Captivate 4 and that's the behavior."

Do you mean that pressing tab gives the rollover area focus? I really don't understand why that would be the case.

I've created a minimal file that exhibits the unwanted behaviour I've described. You can see it here:

http://www.interaxys.com/test/t_rollover/Create_Reminda_Memo_Try_Me.htm

There is minimal instruction and direction because simulation allows learners to practice on their own a process they've learned in another simulation. Move your mouse over the icon in the lower left to see what you need to do. This is the rollover I'm so unhappy about. I want the caption to appear ONLY when the learner needs it - not when they press tab. The problem happens on the second screen when you press tab after typing in the claim number.

Grace

[Captiv8r]

Cool beans! I'll check it out.

Wow, it's been a while since I've seen a good old "green screen" mainframe app!

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcerStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[Captiv8r]

Well carp

Upon first reading that I was thinking you were making a .CP file available. That's what I hoped to see.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcerStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[gdaminato]

Captiv8r wrote:

Well carp

Upon first reading that I was thinking you were making a .CP file available. That's what I hoped to see.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcerStone Blog Captivate eBooks

Sorry to have disappointed you. I thought you might be able to deduce how things were set up by the behavior.

I appreciate your help.

[gdaminato]

Hi Erik:

Thank you for the suggestion. I thought it might have something to do with accessibility too. The directions you gave don't seem to work for Captivate 2. All I see is a checkbox for 508 compliancy in Publish Preferences (opens with File>Publish>Preferences). Unfortunately, unchecking the option didn't change the behaviour.

I've noticed that all my transparent buttons that are activated by Tab highlight when they're activated. I didn't notice it before because they were full screen areas. Now that I've made them smaller I notice the highlights.

Grace

[Erik Lord]

Ooops, sorry, missed you were using CP2.

Yeap, what you've found for accessibility/508 is all I see in CP2 as well.

It could be a Windows/Vista thing...but I think it's a Flash thing. I thought Accessibility had to be enabled/setup in Flash for Tab Order to be invoked, so I'm kinda surprised that it seems to be default behavior in a published Captivate SWF. However, quickly chatting with a Flash Pro, it seems tab order is on by default. Any 'clickable object' added to a Flash scene is automatically added to its tab order...so it seems to be default SWF behavior.

SO barring any insights from Rick, I don't think you'll be able to turn it off in CP2. Maybe with CP4 as you could possibly invoke an AS call to turn it off...OR maybe you could create a Flash SWF with the script to turn off Tab Order and insert that SWF into the CP2 project...

Hopefully Rick has a better solution 😉

Good luck!
Erik

[gdaminato]

Erik Lord wrote:

It could be a Windows/Vista thing...but I think it's a Flash thing. I thought Accessibility had to be enabled/setup in Flash for Tab Order to be invoked, so I'm kinda surprised that it seems to be default behavior in a published Captivate SWF. However, quickly chatting with a Flash Pro, it seems tab order is on by default. Any 'clickable object' added to a Flash scene is automatically added to its tab order...so it seems to be default SWF behavior.

SO barring any insights from Rick, I don't think you'll be able to turn it off in CP2. Maybe with CP4 as you could possibly invoke an AS call to turn it off...OR maybe you could create a Flash SWF with the script to turn off Tab Order and insert that SWF into the CP2 project...

Thanks Erik. After considering how the actual system works and your answer here I decided to abandon using text entry fields. I'm using transparent buttons instead and specifying a keyboard short cut for each. Basically, if the learner enters the first letter or number in a text field, the whole field fills in.

Of course, you and I both know that a better solution WAS possible up to the middle of 2007. It's too bad so few people actually appreciated it.

Grace D

[Guest]

I had this same problem. The workaround I came up with is to create another rollover with a clear rollover caption box.

For the rollover area I made it as small as possible 1 x 1 pixels and positioned it to be above and to the left of the second rollover area that triggers the caption that I want them to see when they do the intended rollover.

When they click tab after the text entry there is a very small area of 1 x 1 pixel that turns yellow but they go to the next slide after that so it is so quick that I don't think it will be noticeable.

This is manageable for a screen with only one text entry since they go on to the next slide - it might not be so simple if you have several text entries on the same screen.