Clickbox shortcut key not working...

Report · Oct 10, 2012

Hello all!

I am having a problem with my clickbox shortcut key not working in a simple two slide file. I'm using Captivate 5.5 to publish .SWF files. When the user advances to this page within the LCMS my company uses, he or she should be able to simply press "enter" on the keyboard to go to the next slide. My preview and the published .SWF file work perfectly. Once I upload the .SWF to the LCMS, you have to click somewhere on the slide first before you can press "enter". I need to make it where user can just press "enter" on the keyboard without clicking anywhere else first. I have attached an image of my properties for the clickbox below. Any help is appreciated!

Report · Oct 10, 2012

Hi there

Your situation perfectly illustrates why in all my Captivate classes I advise it's a good idea to have a Button object on the first slide. The purpose is twofold.

1. It pauses the slide until the user is ready to proceed.

2. By forcing them to click the button, focus is unknowingly shifted to the Flash Object on the page. And as you have seen, once focus is there, the Flash object is "listening" for the shortcut keys.

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Oct 10, 2012

The most likely reason for this is that your LCMS is using a player that means the content is sitting inside a frameset window. So it does not initially have focus. Clicking on the slide gives it the focus.

The easiest way to resolve this might be just to have a button on a slide somewhere BEFORE the one where you need the keystroke to work. Getting the user to click this button will mean they set focus for you.

Report · Oct 10, 2012

Good points gentlemen, however, we have several other courses in our LCMS developed with Captivate 4.0 that mimic this situation. When the user advances to a page, they do not have to click anywhere and can just press "enter" to advance to the next slide within the .SWF file. Could there be any differences between v4.0 and v5.5 that change how shortcut keys are implemented?

The course I am working on now will be our first course deployed with v5.5.

Report · Oct 10, 2012

Interesting. I remember having this same problem with Captivate 4.

Anyway, Captivate 5x WAS re-engineered from the ground up, so certainly some things have changed.

But your issue with shortcut keys could also be due to the way your current version browsers are handling this, not just Captivate.

Report · Oct 10, 2012

Hello again

It has NOTHING to do with how the shortcut keys might be implemented and EVERYTHING to do with the browser and the Adobe Flash player.

Are you possibly using a different browser than you were before? I know that Firefox and IE behave differently when it comes to this aspect. I use Firefox and most of the classrooms I use are equipped with IE, so it makes for a nice contrast to illustrate my point.

I do suppose another possibility would be in the JavaScript coding used between Captivate versions. I know there are a lot of tricks and hacks that can be implemented in JavaScript that controls the Browser. So I would say it's also entirely possible that something changed in the scripting between versions that might account for it.