How do I prevent transparent button label alignment changes in rollover and down states?

[Eilmer]

In Captivate 9, I use transparent buttons quite a bit. (I'm currently using Captivate version 9.0.2.437.) I want the button label text to remain centered in all states. In many instances, however, the label text alignment in the rollover and down states shifts to the right or left. (See State View image below.)

How do I keep this from happening? I know I can change the alignment by going into State View, resetting the rollover state, changing the font and font size back to what it was, and then repeating for the down state, but that's very time-consuming when I have a lot of these buttons, and shouldn't be necessary.

This looks like a bug to me. I can copy a button that has no alignment issues and paste it in another slide, and the pasted button now has alignment issues.

How can I create a transparent button, or copy and paste one, and have the text alignment of all three states remain centered?

-Stuart

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

Never use copy/paste for mutlistate objects, that so common work flow has cause already multiple problems.

The way to define  button styles has changed between CP9 and previous versions since 9 introduced the multistate objects. Is this a button that has been upgraded from a previous version? If yes, please create its object style in the present version. Also check the exact version number, should be 9.0.2.437.

[Eilmer]

Thanks for the reply. To answer your question, this is a button created in my current version, which is 9.0.2.437.

Is this alignment issue a bug that you know of?

I'll proceed by creating the button from scratch each time, rather than by copying and pasting, and I'll see how that works.

-Stuart

[Lilybiri]

Create an object style, or edit the existing default style for transparent buttons. That can be done in different ways: either in the OSM or by styling one transparent button and saving its style as default style for transparent buttons.:

I used the same version, never had the issue you describe (just double-checked). That is why I suspect this is a leftover of an older version. Did you have a previous version installed before 9.0.2.437, did you follow the release notes when installing versions, patch?

[Eilmer]

The project I'm working on was originally built in an earlier Captivate version. That's probably where the problem is coming from, even though I'm now deleting the old transparent buttons and creating new ones. I did have a previous Captivate version installed on this computer. I assume I followed release notes when I installed newer versions and any patches, but I can't remember.

Thanks for the tip on creating/editing object styles! That will be a big help.

[Lilybiri]

That was the suspicion already in my first answer: upgrade issue.

Understanding how themes are created, is one of the 3 essential skills for any CP-developer. Object styles are only one component of a theme. Look at:

Challenges for Starters - Captivate blog

[Eilmer]

The blog link will be helpful too. Thanks!

[Eilmer]

I discovered another thing that contributed to the alignment issue. I'm passing it along in case it's useful to you.

I found that if I used State View to center the text on the button in all three states, the alignment would stay that way if I copied and pasted the button. However, if I used the Align Center feature to center the button on a text caption, that un-centered the button text in the RollOver and Down button states.

This should not happen. Aligning a button with another object should not affect the alignment of button text. I sent this to Adobe as a bug fix, and I no longer use the Align Center feature in this situation.

[TinkerTrainer]

You might want to create a new topic for this issue, Eilmer.  Many users will skip over an answered question without reading it.

[Eilmer]

Good suggestion. Thanks!