Continue playing project when ">>" TOC-close button in clicked?

[ryan schar]

I have a button that shows the TOC when clicked (simple action) and "continue playing project" is not clicked.

This works as planned. The project is paused and the user has time to look at the TOC without the project runing in the background.

The problem is when the user clicked the Captivate ">>" to close the TOC, the project does not continue playing.  It is possible to get the project to continue to play when hitting the ">>" button?

Thanks for any help!

[RodWard]

If you want that to happen then you would be better off using a Conditional Advanced Action instead of the simple action you are currently using.  With a Conditional Action you have more control and the action that closes the TOC can also have an added action to Continue play.

[ryan schar]

Thanks for the response.  I cannot attach an advanced action (or simple action for that matter) to the Captviate ">>" button, can I?  I would need to create a TOC close button.  Is that correct?

[Lilybiri]

Ryan, wouldn't it be a better experience to have one toggle button to open and close the TOC? You don't have control over those tiny default buttons but with a toggle button, using states, checking the system variable cpCmndTOCVisible with a condition and three commands: Open/Close TOC, change state of the button, Pause or Continue. It will be a variation on the shared action I described in this article:

1 action = 5 Toggle Buttons - Captivate blog

[ryan schar]

Yea, that would be nice, but we were given a Captivate Master from the customer.  They already have this "TOC" button on the slide that is hooked up to a simple "open TOC" action and "continue playing project" is not clicked.  Now we are realizing this pauses the timeline and it never starts again on close.   

[Lilybiri]

Is it not possible to talk with the customer, and propose to use that button as a toggle button? Of course, since states are not possible on master slides since a couple of years and that button has no ID, you will not be able to change the 'look' of that button. I have an old workaround, maybe too cumbersome, by placing a diagonal line object on the first slide, that will appear when the TOC is open, over the TOC button.

There could perhaps be a way by JS to control the actions of the default TOC buttons, but since the customer already preferred a custom button, maybe he'll accept your proposiition?

[RodWard]

I would be replacing the default >> and << images that appear beside the TOC with transparent GIFs so that the user does not see those images and therefore doesn't know there is anything to click.  Having them visible is really part of the issue here.

Force the user just to use your TOC button to do anything related to opening or closing the TOC.  Then you have the option to use a more sophisticated Conditional Action that gives you complete control.

[ryan schar]

Their Captivate master wasn't really thought through and it's too late to change it because they have already made a number of modules with it.

To open the TOC, they use a button with a simple action bound to it, show TOC, and "continue playing project" is not checked.  The TOC then covers this button when it is open so ">>" needs to be used to close it.  Like I said, not very well thought through. : ) But it has been working fine for them.

I think if I can somehow replicate the behavior of the "<<" button, and bind this behavior to our TOC button, I would be fine.  It seems the the "<<" button not only shows the TOC but allows the project to keep playing without explicitily calling the Captivate "continue" function.  On the other hand, our button with the simple action "Show TOC" with either "pause" the project if you do not click "continue playing" or "continue" the project after opening the TOC; which will take the user to the next slide if he is already at the end of it.  What I need is my TOC button to show the TOC, but not pause it in the first place.  

Is there a way to do this?

Thanks for reading if you made it all the way to this point : )

[Lilybiri]

As I already mentioned, there is no way to hack in the behavior of those InBuilt buttons. The 'open' button ">>" is not pausing the slide, and that is what your client wanted. Same for the 'close button' "<<", since the slide is not paused, there is no need to have a Continue command. Both behaviors can only be launched with a custom (toggle) TOC button.

[ryan schar]

I don't want to hack the ">>" buttons.  I just wanted to replicate their behavior.

I think you mentioned this already, but I figured out how to do it.  Rather than binding our button with the Show TOC simple action, I buried it in an advanced action.  So now an advanced action with just "Show TOC" is triggered.  This replicates the behavior of the "<<" button.

[Lilybiri]

If you could hack that button you wouldn't need a custom button.

Advanced action is exactly the same as simple action with Continue Project unchecked. That is not solving the unpausing when they click the close button "<<".

[ryan schar]

A simple action "show TOC" without contiue project clicked will pause the project.  If you put "show TOC" in an advanced action, the project will not pause.

[Lilybiri]

Ryan, please, double-check because that is not true. An advanced action  NEVER releases the playhead. It was the only way before CP9 to have a project paused while executing an action. It couldn't be doen with a simple action, because the option 'Continue Playing the Project' was not yet available. I have been teaching this many times beofre Captivate 9. Have a look at this well-visited blog post:

Why choose Standard over Simple action? - Captivate blog