Display an image on button click?

[synapse7]

Hi,
I'm using Captivate 3 and trying to set up an image to be displayed in a certain position on the screen when a button is clicked. It would always be on the top layer to overlay anything else on the screen at the time. I need to do this for multiple slides so it would be way too confusing to try to use multiple slides to accomplish this.

I am thinking it might be javascript? (I don't know what the code would be though) But I realize it might just be another trick. I thought this would be a popular request but searching in the forums and Google hasn't yielded anything helpful yet.

Thanks!
-Dan

[Captiv8r]

Welcome to our community, Dan

One way to do this is to enable the Success Caption for the button. Then edit the caption. Basically you would remove any text associated with the caption and browse to the image you wish to see and choose it as the caption background.

Cheers... Rick

[kpallenh]

Hi Rick, brilliant idea! When I tried selecting the image using a 'custom' caption type, it continues to default away from it. Am I missing a step? thanks, Karen

Update: I found something about .fcr files and am Googling to find out how to make my own custom Captivate captions but am not finding just what is needed. Thoughts?

[Captiv8r]

Hi Dan

You are losing me when you say "it continues to default away from it". I'm not sure what you mean.

Perhaps take another stab at explaining what is happening? In case this is what you are seeing, it's been my experience that one has to resize the caption to fully see the image after you choose it. But based on what you wrote, I'm not certain that's happening here.

Cheers... Rick

[kpallenh]

Hi Rick,

Let me back up a step and explain the issue with my project. I'm creating an interactive software simulation using png images of the application pages and inserting click boxes and buttons to give the illusion the user is in a 'real' training environment. The application is a windows based one, with three types of navigation; tabs, icons and menus. Creating the tab navigation was pretty straightforward, I put an image of each tabbed page on its own captivate slide and included click boxes to link the proper tabs to the proper pages. Looks pretty good so far.

My challenge is with the menu options. I would like the user to be able to select a menu option, see the drop down image of the choices, click on the choice and go to the correct new page. The challenge is the layering and timing. The menu options are on the same pages as the tab page images, the timing is already tied into what needs to happen with the tab images. So I was hoping if I could find a way to put a hot spot over say, the File menu, have the menu options appear, and have the user click on an option to be taken to the new page. Using the timeline, I set the first menu option to pause at 1.5 seconds, then the new menu option image would appear after clicking, then a hot spot on the menu option image would take the user to the new correct page. Still with me ?

If I use the timing feature, and click on a menu for the drop down image to appear, then all the drop down images appear. That's why I think your idea of a success caption is potentially brilliant. I tried making a custom caption by selecting Success Caption>Custom and then selecting the image bmp that I saved in the Adobe Captions gallery. On previewing, the image is not in the success caption. So I looked further at the gallery and the images there have files with .FCM extensions. Looks to be some type of text file, not sure?

So... <whew> there's my dilemma. Bottom line I am looking for best practices to create a software simulation (without using motion recording because I also need to create these in large quantity with minor image changes... John Doe and Jane Doe and such) when the software has integrated tab, menu and icon navigation.

Your thoughts?

thanks
Karen (working with Dan )

[synapse7]

Hi Rick,

It appears like the application does not like my .bmp file. I can select other .bmps and it works fine - just when I select mine the caption window stays white and nothing shows up when I click ok. If I go back to that caption and browse, it doesn't show my caption as being selected.

I am going to try to resave that .bmp different ways to see if it likes it any better.

-Dan

[jbradley88]

Unfortunately, Captivate is unfailingly linear, so you're not going to get around the issue of only being able to show a single menu at a time.

If you're going to all the effort of doing custom timing and whatnot, why not just use separate slides to show each menu list? A clickbox over each menu on your main slide, that each point to a slide showing a fully-functional list for that menu.

This would allow you to provide the greatest possible fidelity for your simulation and still be able to manage the menus easily.

If you wanted to, you could even get really fancy and use custom image buttons to simulate the rollover highlights for each item in the menu.

Regards,
John

[kpallenh]

Hi John,

I think I have developed a work around. I did end up using extra slides. My initial hesitation was related to the 'real' application I am trying to simulate; since it has three types of navigation (tabs, icons and menus), the tricky part was that the user can select a menu or click an icon from any displayed tabbed page. In other words, the user can select File>Open while any tabbed page is displayed (the tabbed page will remain visible in the background).

I was concerned that, by either having the tabbed page disappear from the background or even have the 'wrong' tabbed page displayed, it would break the illusion of the simulation. To get around this, I created a generic tabbed page. It has the general look and feel of the basic tabbed background page but the text and content are edited out. So the user can see an outline exactly where they would expect the tabbed page to be but the contents of the page are fuzzed out with a subtle grey. Seems to work for now. Overall, it did create a need for more slides than I had anticipated in my storyboard but in the end I think it will work.

Thanks John, Rick and of course Dan!

Karen