Playbar and Slide View Count

[fpjones3]

I have only recently started with Captivate and have been experimenting. I need advice on this scenario please:

Playbar is disabled until user views all elements/contents of a certain slide. The user can go back to that slide and the playbar will still be available. Playbar is disabled on a subsequent slide with the same condition.

Here is what I did:

• Created a variable for slides that had the condition (and hiding the playbar)
• Assigned an AA on entry

So far it works. But I am wondering if there is a faster way to do the same on a larger project. It will be messy having to create and assign 100 variables.

Thanks!

[RodWard · Accepted solution]

If you want THIS much control over the navigation, it sounds very much to me like you probably should NOT be using a playbar at all and just add your own BACK and NEXT navigation buttons to the slides.  These NEXT buttons would have Visible in Output set to OFF initially and then would be set to ON when the learner had performed all required actions on that slide. (Or they can just be timed to appear at a given point on the slide timeline.)

If you DO insist on using a playbar, one thing that might simplify things when you get to the quiz slides is to set the option in the Skin Editor to Hide Playbar in Quiz.  You really want the learner to click the Submit button on those slides anyway because navigating via any other method might result in quiz questions getting marked as not answered (depending on settings).

[Lilybiri]

I have published some information about such a 'Forced View', and presented that use case at DC last Wednesday as well. Have a look at:

Force First View

As Rod explains, I am not using the playbar at all, but custom navigation buttons. Showing/Hiding playbar is possible but since the real estate needed for that playbar is filled with a border color when the playbar is hidden, it doesn't look very professional design.

Maybe I'll write out the workflow with the shared action SkipFrames in the future. Long time ago I had written this article:

Force first view - Captivate 8 - Captivate blog

It may seem easier, but you need two Next buttons in that case.

Both work flows use a user variable to track the visits, as you already detected yourself.

[fpjones3]

Thank you both.