Hi guys! Really liking Captivate 5.5, especially the way random question slides can lift questions out of a question pool...very elegant!
Sadly though, I've come up against a bit of a wall. In my project, I want to have 3 separate quizzes that all use the same question pool; a 10, 30 and 50 question-long quiz. Each one needs to have its own results page.
It's easy enough to see what I mean by looking at the screenshot below:
The idea was to have about 105 slides in total, with slides 10 - 20 being the 10 quiz slide, 21 - 51 being the 30 question quiz and 52 - 102 being the 50 question quiz.
There are three invisible buttons placed over those 10, 30, 50 text boxes. In the picture, the '10 question' button would jump to slide 10, the '30 question' button would jump to slide 21, and the '50 question' button would jump to slide 52, jumping the user to the start of their designated tests.
Though I can create the 10 random question "block" easy enough, when it comes to adding the 30 question "block" it just adds the new random questions to the existing random questions. I want three separate quizzes, each with their own results screens please. 
(I don't want to daisy-chain to external projects, because the results of each test need to be used within the homepage.)
It just adds them on to the existing block!! Argh!!
Little bit ticked off with Adobe...the reason their products are so incredible is because they put no constraints on the user, and you can use their tools to create things even the developers never dreamed of. Like in Photoshop for example, I bet when the dropshadow fx was created, the developers never realised that it would be used to give a metallic 'stamped' look to text by turning it to white and applying it just inside the text.
Captivate, though amazing most of the time, has a nasty habit of stomping on my toes. You can't set grade boundaries and have quizzes give out grades A+ to F- for example. You can only have 'pass' and 'fail', thus making it rather pointless for use in schools, contrary to how the program is advertised. Another example would be when I wanted to create a replay button. I thought that a button that jumped to the slide it was on would be a simple, no-BS replay button, but for some reason you can't make a button jump to its current slide. I downloaded a widget that worked in the end, but I wish Adobe would get off my back and let me do what I want!
Anyway, if you could help me out here it would be grand 
9
Replies
seagulldesigner wrote:
Another example would be when I wanted to create a replay button. I thought that a button that jumped to the slide it was on would be a simple, no-BS replay button, but for some reason you can't make a button jump to its current slide. I downloaded a widget that worked in the end, but I wish Adobe would get off my back and let me do what I want!
Anyway, if you could help me out here it would be grand
As a side note, although it looks like you fixed it, you can do a replay button with some black magic trickery, aka variables and advanced actions.
Lilybiri has a pretty good blog entry on how to make it work: http://lilybiri.posterous.com/micro-navigation-in-adobe-captivate
But yeah, it would be nice if one of the 'on success' actions was simply "replay current slide." Sounds like a good feature request.
Captivate actually needs loads of work!
You can't make text buttons transition in for example...a work around would is to make the button invisible and put it over some text that has a transition applied, but it's getting ridiculous...my project looks pretty slick on the surface, but underneath it's held together with workarounds and bits of string 
It doesn't help that Adobe may whip the carpet out from under our feet at any moment and discontinue Captivate as they did with Flash Catalyst -__-
seagulldesigner wrote:
Captivate actually needs loads of work!
You can't make text buttons transition in for example...a work around would is to make the button invisible and put it over some text that has a transition applied, but it's getting ridiculous...my project looks pretty slick on the surface, but underneath it's held together with workarounds and bits of string
It doesn't help that Adobe may whip the carpet out from under our feet at any moment and discontinue Captivate as they did with Flash Catalyst -__-
Perhaps.. I think back to using Photoshop 6 compared to CS5 (v12) and I'm amazed at the features implemented that have smoothed my workflow. Content aware fill? Spot healing? Quick select? Refine edge? I used to spend hours precisely creating masks or fixing images with the clone tool. Now I draw a box, click CA fill and spend 2 minutes touching up the edges, maybe. Believe me I understand your frustrations, I have some of my own. On the other side of the coin I'm learning Lectora and something simple I can do in Captivate can't be done in Lectora. Absolutely can't.
As for end of life... that can happen to any software. Unfortunate, but it's part of the game I suppose. Where my wife works one of their vendors sunsetted the accounting software they used. Talk about havok.
If Instructional Design was easy, everyone would want to do it 
seagulldesigner wrote:
Though I can create the 10 random question "block" easy enough, when it comes to adding the 30 question "block" it just adds the new random questions to the existing random questions. I want three separate quizzes, each with their own results screens please.
While Lilybiri and RodWard explained the 'one quiz' limitation, you are not limited to the random questions.
Not sure if I'm understanding your question there but you can create more than one pool of question slides then link each random question slide to a separate pool.
So you'd have a pool for the 10 question quiz, another pool for the 30 questions, another pool for the 50 questions. (Quiz > Question Pool Manager > (click the + to add another pool). You can then create or drag/drop question slides into the pool using the question pool panel.
On each random question slide you can either specify which pool they'll use when you insert them (Insert > Quextion Slide > Random Question > Linked Question Pool) or In the Quiz Properties Panel for each slide you can select them after being added.
On the last question slide for each 'quiz' you'd have the on success/last attempt action jump over the other quiz slides to some kind of score slide. Systematically determining if they pass/fail is a little tricky I suppose, as Rod mentioned above.
AdChoices
