Click box that keeps working on the same slide

Report · Apr 29, 2016

How can a clickable area be created that continues to do the same thing, regardless of how many times it is clicked?

The application is a schematic on which the learner is supposed to click the correct components. When they click anywhere other than a correct component (the clickable areas cover all of the schematic other than the correct components) an error message should pop up.

This works fine when the first click triggers an error, but subsequent clicks in the "wrong" areas of the slide do nothing. How can this be set up so that the error message pops up every time the clickable area is clicked?

Report · Apr 29, 2016

Do you have Attempts set to Infinite?

Which version are you using? I'm asking about that because in versions before 9 a simple action would release the playhead. What are the Success actions: are those simple actions?

You see that we need more details.

Report · Apr 29, 2016

Thanks for the quick reply.

v 6.0.1.240

The action when clicking the clickable area over the "wrong" areas of the

slide is simple: Display the error message for two seconds.

Report · Apr 29, 2016

Do you have it set to infinite attempts? Is there no overlap between incorrect areas? Or even between correct and incorrect areas? Do you have stacking click boxes, I mean that they are in the same location?

Report · Apr 29, 2016

Thanks Lilybiri,

Yes, infinite attempts is selected.

RE: Stacking

I have tried it both ways:

Stacking--a transparent click box covers the entire slide, with the correct

clickable objects placed on top.

Non-stacked--each incorrect area has its own transparent click box, without

any overlap with the correct areas.

I prefer the non-stacked because it lets me pop up the error message in the

same general location as the incorrect click, and error messages can be

varied.

.

Report · Apr 29, 2016

Do all click boxes end at the same time? And be sure to use a standard action, not a simple action to prevent releasing the playhead.

Have a look at: Why choose Standard over Simple action? - Captivate blog

Report · Apr 29, 2016

Thanks Lilybiri,

All click boxes do end at the same time, and at least two pause the

playhead.

I have changed to a standard action in the advanced actions, and set it to

Continue, because there is nothing I want it to do other than show the

Success message. And I can't use it to show a text caption object, because

I want the object to disappear once it is read.

The success message (which states the user clicked in the wrong place)

continues to appear only the first time the click box is clicked.

Report · Apr 29, 2016

Oops! Did you read that article? If you use Continue you are releasing the play head, just like with a simple action. You have to show the feedback message, which is hidden before, an incorrect one for the incorrect hotspot-click boxes. Since you want them to appear multiple times, with each click. I suspect you do not understand how a click box works, default messages cannot be used for your use cases. Failure message only appears when you click outside of the click box, success when you click on it.

Try to explain me in detail (maybe with screenshots) what you want to achieve. Maybe this article, where I use shape buttons as hotspots, can clarify more what I mean.

Custom Hotspot questions in Captivate 8 - Captivate blog

Report · May 02, 2016

Thanks Lilybiri,

I appreciate your patience and persistence with this. Yes, I read the article, but evidently did not understand all of the intended message.

- Because the standard version of an action in an advanced action requires something to be done, what can be chosen other than Continue? Would a conditional, with the 1 = 1 trick, be a better choice?

- I understand that the action can be to show a caption (the intended error message), but that needs to fade away after two seconds, and my understanding of a caption is that it exists for a specified period of time, which would need to be set to length of the slide if it is to appear any time the box is clicked. How can I get the caption to display any time the click box is clicked, then disappear, but appear again if the box is clicked again?

- RE: Success vs. failure message – it IS the success message that should appear, because clicking this box means that the user has not clicked what they should. The slide is set up with several boxes the user should click (similar to the geography example). They all work. If the user clicks anywhere else we would like an error message to pop up, preferably near to where the incorrect click was made (the rationale behind using several click boxes distributed about the slide). If the success and failure messages are configured to display only once on a slide, regardless, I now understand that they will simply not work.

- RE: Geography Example – Very clever and could be a workaround for us, but prefer what would be more simple for the user: just the error caption on any click not made on a correct object. With the error message fading away after two seconds. No need to keep count of the wrong clicks, and would rather not have a caption associated with wrong clicks remain on screen.

Thanks again for all of your help with this,

Report · May 02, 2016

Back to the basics. Will try to explain Success/Failure messages first, because you cannot use them. Test this work flow:

Create one click box, set it to infinite attempts.
Edit the Failure and the Success message.
Set the Success action to No action.
Test the click box in Preview:
1. Click outside of the click box multiple times: each time you do that, the Failure message will appear,
2. Wait until the Failure message disappears (default 3sec)
3. Click again outside of the click box: Failure message will appear again, you can do this as many times as you want because of the Infinite attempts
4. Click on the click box: the Success message appears, wait until it disappears
5. Nothing happens when you click the box again, because that Success message will appear only ONCE.

Try now to transfer this to two click boxes: one covers up the whole slide, and the other smaller one is on top of it. You want to use the Success messages for both click boxes, but as I tried to explain, they will only appear ONCE! This means that:

the Success message for the big click box will only appear the first time you click outside of the 'correct' click box
this is not what you want, right?

That is the reason I told you need a custom caption to appear for that big click box. In CP6 it is not possible to have it disappear automatically, that is possible in CP9 by adding a Delay command. In CP9 this would be:

Show MessageError
Delay Next actions by 2 seconds
Hide MessageError

Conclusion: you will have to cope with the fact that the error message (for the background big click box) remains on the slide until the user clicks elsewhere, either again on that big click box, or on a correct click box. For the correct click boxes you will have to add the command to the standard action to hide the MessageError.

A more complicated workaround would be with micronavigation, it will be even more difficult to understand.

Report · May 02, 2016

Thanks Lilybiri,

Thank you again for your extended explanations.

The situation is now both a relief and a mystery, in that it has self-corrected when I published to HTML5. The published version works just as desired: Clicks anywhere other than the “correct” boxes display an error message appropriate to the area where the click was made. This happens with every click, as often as clicks are made. The error message (the success message for the click box) fades away after two seconds and additional clicks on the same box bring it up again.

Publishing evidently turned the click boxes into regular old HTML buttons that keep doing the same thing, over and again, every time they are clicked.

Can’t explain it, but relieved it works this way, and it does not diminish my appreciation for all of your effort shepherding me through this.