Captivate 2017/10 Rollover Area limitations on one slide?

[ssto3664-pi76kT]

Hi,

I am running into strange behavior with CP 2017 that I do not have in CP 9.

I have a 'complex' project with 19 slides, each slide has links to other slides or content in the published folder. Here I am mainly talking about buttons and hyperlinks.

My problem starts with one slide that I link to that has a lot of items on the timeline , 20 Click Boxes beneath 20 Rollover Captions, and another 42 hyperlinks on text and a couple of buttons. All in all the scene has the timeline has 47 items on it:

When I publish the project and click on one of the links that lead me to this 'complex' slide there is no response - The slide does not open.

With CP 9 this was not an issue.

I started to troubleshoot this behavior and found that if I reduce the number of items

1) delete the all Click Boxes, publish and click on the link to this 'complex' slide - The slide does not open

2) delete the all Rollover Areas, publish and click on the link to this 'complex' slide - The slide opens

3) delete Rollover areas one by one, to then publish for each time and test the link to the 'complex' slide - when there were 8 Rollover Areas left over the slide opens

I now conclude that there is a limitation in the number of Rollover Areas on one slide since Captivate 2017.

Is this correct? and if so Why?

Is there any way that I can proceed with my 20 Rollover Areas on one slide that I link to?

I really appreciate your input.

Looking forward to your ideas and help.

Thanks

Stephanie

[Lilybiri]

Rollover area is sort of a hybrid item. Do you mean that you have an interactive object (click box) AND a rollover area in exactly the same location? That is looking for trouble, even for SWF output. Are you still publishing to SWF, although the end of the Flash Player is announced? Rollovers are not supported for HTML5 output, hence my suspicion that you want SWF output.

Sorry, since I do avoid rollovers since a couple of years, I have no idea if there is a limit. I just am aware of possible troubles when having several interactive objects in the same location.

[ssto3664-pi76kT]

Hi Lilybiri,

Thanks for coming back to me so fast.

Yes,

1) In this case (for the last time) I will need to update this project with swf publishing.

2) I have Rollover Captions over Click box interactions at the same location.

To explain what I do since at least CP4 and it has always worked fine in the same manor including CP 9 but not anymore with CP 2017/10:

I am linking from one scene to another. On the 'another' scene I have 'Interactions' 'Click Boxes' under the according 'Object' 'Rollover Caption' both on the same location over the according text 'Name of another course' that can be opened through the Click Box after having read about the Course content and objectives in the Rollover Caption.

I have taken this Captivate project along for years and had no issues until now with CP 2017. I find this rather strange.I also have another scene in the same project that I likt o from other scenes and with the same approach as explained above, with 9 Rollover Captions over the according Click Boxes, and the link to that scene works fine.

Actually earlier today I also managed to get up to 12 Rollover Captions on this 'trouble scene' without trouble to open the scene from another scene, but then that broke when adding further Click Boxes and Rollover Captions...

So there are a lot of inconsistencies that I do not understand where they come from and how to work around them.

Maybe this triggers something and you have another idea.

I hope so and Thanks.

Stephanie

[Lilybiri]

My suspicion is that the Adobe engineers do not focus on SWF output anymor.,That may be the reason of the issues you do experience at this moment. I also see different inconsistencies between SWF and HTML5 output for other aspects like effects.

You know also that reversing the stacking order of the click box and the rollover area will cause the rollover to stop working even in SWF. For HTML5 output your setup would not work at all. I understand you have been doing this in the same way since over 8 years, but the tool landscape has changed a lot since that looooooooong time.

I cannot offer you a solution if it is indeed due to a change in the setup that doesn't allow so many combinations of click box-rollover area. Personally I would switch to a different approach, some ideas:

• Using D&D slide, where dragging an object to one target would popup the explanation of that item, and insert a hyperlink in that explanation to jump to the other slide
• Creating a dashboard, where a click on an item shows the explanation in a shape, turn that shape into a button which can be clicked to navigate to the proper slide.
• Using multistate objects for the explanations, and a shared action to show the explanation and after a delay jumps to a slide.

With those approaches you'll not have to worry about later HTML5 output. 2019 with end of Flash Player is not that far away.

[ssto3664-pi76kT]

Thanks Lilybiri,

I will for now opt for your second suggestion. I just have to tell our customer something nice around this new approach 😉

And as it sometimes is ( I thought you may come up with this kind of suggestion even though it is Weekend and Saturday morning for you) I already started with a new approach to work around the issue - info buttons and get rid of click boxes to focus on hyperlinks to bring me forward to the next project and info button to show content info .

Thanks again for the effort in answering my question and especially for your three suggestions that I will take along with me to make it even better with HTML 5

THANKS and have a great weekend!!!

Stephanie

[Lilybiri]

Just FYI, it is 4pm in Belgium.

Success!

[ssto3664-pi76kT]

Hi Lilybiri, from the Netherlands to Belgium,

Now that I changed everything to remove the Rollover Captions sitting over Click Boxes to:

• Hyperliked text - pointing to another e-learning module to be opened; and  
• Smart Shapes as Buttons along side, opening a group of Text Captions that gives info to the module and a Click Box to close the information Group.

I again encounter that I cannot navigate to this scene 

There must be a kind of limitation to the number of items on a scene (that shall be opened from another scene), either

- on the timeline, in my case 20 groups including 3 items each (2 Text Captions, 1 Click Box); and

- 5 Text Captions with text with hyperlinks, all together 62, opening files with an Advanced Action each; and

- 2 buttons, navigation to other scenes.

I am so frustrated because this now took quite some time with a lot of hope.

Can you please find out if this is something I always have to count on in CP 2017, as I already mentioned this (original scenario) did not happen with CP 9.

Maybe you have another idea to solve my issue, as I would like to avoid to create 20 separate scenes and jump back and forth in the project to realize the same. 

Thanks once more for your input.

Stephanie

PS. Have a great 3rd Advent Sunday

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

Het spijt me heel erg!

I don't know about limitations but I avoid having such complicated nested setup. My first approach would be to make this much less crowded. Why do you need two captions and a click box in those groups? Why not have one text container, a shape that you turn into a button that can be clicked instead of that click box to hide the text container. I often use a big X as hyperlink for closing such a container (More is in a...hyperlink - Close button - Captivate blog ). One object instead of 3. The term for 'scenes' in Captivate is slide. Scene is a StoryLine term. There may be more ways to simplify the set up. I don't know what the 'advanced actions' actually do, but cannot they be replaced by shared actions? I learned that this can make everything run much more smoothly than a ton of duplicate advanced actions.

[ssto3664-pi76kT]

Thanks Lilybiri,

I will proceed and split it down to not have to crowded 'slides'.

"Why do you need two captions and a click box in those groups? Why not have one text container, a shape that you turn into a button that can be clicked instead of that click box to hide the text container." - I do have the second TC as a 'X' with a CB on-top to close the TC, the next step to simplification is to make this 'X' a smart shape and button.

I will also look into shared actions, but currently I am using advanced actions to open other e-learning modules that then open in a new tab/window. These AA are then reused on different scenes to do the same.

Have a great start to the week.

[Lilybiri]

You can put that big X in the same text container and turn it into a hyperlink to close that same container. That is the work flow I demonstrated in the post for which I sent you a link.

As for Shared actions, I published several posts about them. I do plan more to publish, maybe a workbook, when I find some time. They cannot be used in all cicumstances, but have helped me to make projects work that had too many advanced actions/vriables and were choking because of that. Debugging that type of projects for clients, is my favourite hobby.