Presentation ignores Advanced Actions and continue to play slide

[theamandachick]

I've read through so many discussions about the slide advancement, and I've tried nearly every solution I could find to no avail. So I'm hoping someone can help me understand what I'm doing wrong.

I condensed my deck to just two slides to show what I've done without including any extraneous information.

Note: I'm using image buttons instead of SmartShape buttons because I need for this to be viewable in Firefox.

I created a slide with several image buttons (eventually to link out to other slides in the deck) and additional image buttons to the left of those button (info bubbles) that should open a lightbox on screen to give background information on what each of the options is.

Each lightbox is set up as a group with the appropriate naming convention.

I set every element in all three groups to be Not Visible in Output and hid them from the stage view for ease of use.

 

In Actions, I used Execute Advanced Action for the info bubble to run a script to show the associated hidden group.

 

I then created another script to hide the group when the user selects the X image button.

Rinse and repeat for the first three info bubbles. I only did it for the first three to test the functionality. This is where I discovered that any time I click the X image button to close the lightbox, the slide automatically advances to the next slide.

So I started trying out different things:

Set the advanced action to Go back to this slide.

Changed the pause buttons timings.

Added a Visible clickbox that paused the project until user clicks.

Added pauses in the Advanced Action.

Nothing I do seems to prevent the project from advancing. I'm losing my mind!!!

[Lilybiri]

This looks like being much too complicated. Some questions: which version do you use? You mention FF, so I suspect it is 8?

What is the reason for the pausing points to be different for all those interactive objects?

Why do you add Pause to an advanced action? An advanced action never releases the playhead, Pause is useless command to add.

In this article, you'll see an example of lightboxes:

Playing with Captivate 9 - Captivate blog

If you are indeed on CP8, have a look at this Youtube video: Simple versus Standard Advanced Action in Adobe Captivate - YouTube

[theamandachick]

Yes, I AM using 8. Unfortunately, my company will not upgrade me to 9, so I'm stuck with this version (for a while, at least).

As I said in the original post, I started troubleshooting after it initially started advancing to the next slide by changing the pause locations, then adding pauses to the advanced actions. I found very, very little documentation about what each of the advanced actions does in Adobe's Captivate 8 user guide, so this was me trying to experiment to see if I can stop the slide from advancing.

I watched the video and read the page you referenced, but it didn't seem to provide any solution to my current problem. I happy in that you did teach me a lesson that the Advanced Action never releases the playhead. But unfortunately, I'm still confused as to why the project still advances.

[RodWard]

Clicking the buttons means that the playhead ends up on the inactive side of the Pause points.

One way to solve this is to make sure all the pause points on the timeline are lined up vertically and then change your advanced actions to rewind the timeline slightly (e.g. 25 or 30 frames) so that the playhead is positioned again in front of these pause points.

You can use the Expression action together with the cpCmndGotoFrame command variable and cpInfoCurrentFrame System Variable to jump back 30frames or about 1 second from the frame where the button is clicked.  As shown below, you need to add the Continue action as well so that the timeline advances again to the pause point. 

[theamandachick]

Ok, so I did what you recommended, but it's still advancing the project. To clarify, did you think I should add that script to my existing script to show the hidden elements? Or did you think I should include it with the script to hide the recently opened group? Honestly I tried it both ways, and it still advanced the project to the next slide. [sigh]

[theamandachick]

[Lilybiri]

Adding Continue means that you release the playhead. If you want that you should use cpCmndGotoFrameAndResume in the Expression instead of the present variable. I never rewind 30 frames (which is 1 sec), but not sure you need to do this here.

Could you try to explain, in normal sentences, what you want to do exactly? On the slide screenshot I see 8 image buttons, but in the Timeline there are a lot more interactive objects, what is their use? For each button, that jumps to another slide, you also have an Information button to show a lightbox. The lightbox is a group, including one Close button. I see a dropdown interaction in the lightbox? What happens with the selection in that dropdown interaction? There is a semi-transparent cover, do you use another cover for each group?

Title mentions 'Advanced actions', but are you sure that none of those interactive objects is triggering a simple action? Because that would mean releasing the playhead (reason why I pointed to the YouTube tutorial). The action to display a lightbox, and close a lightbox is a standard action but what about the actions triggered by the other buttons? BTW I would certainly have used shared actions.

Maybe post a screenshot of the Advanced Interaction panel (F9), showing only the button interactions?

[theamandachick]

Lilybiri​

The larger buttons with the text will use simple actions to take the user to a different slide in the project. The info bubble buttons (adjacent to every text button), will open a lightbox so that the user can understand what each of those question types means. There is an info bubble for each of the eight buttons, and that's so the user can figure out exactly which button before proceeding down that pathway (each text button will take a user down the pathway to show him/her how to include that specific type of question). I haven't built that functionality into it yet because I'm still trying to get the lightboxes explaining the different types of questions into this particular slide. So basically, the text-looking buttons (which are actually image buttons that I created in Illustrator) take the user to a different point in the entire project, and the i buttons open up the associated lightbox for each info button. Again, I didn't finish creating the different lightboxes for the different text buttons because I wanted to test this out with only the first three (rightly so, since they don't see to work correctly).

The button within the group is the close "X" button (see the 2nd screenshot in my original posting) that closes the lightbox and returns to the normal view (see the very first image). It's when I click this button that the project advances to the next slide in the project, even though that Advanced Interaction does not ever say to advance to the next slide. I want the action here to hide the group again (where when clicking the i button opens the lightbox view).

I don't know what you mean by "use another cover". The action for those elements I haven't assigned appropriately yet are in fact going to the next slide because I haven't programmed those yet. Even though those buttons are not visible (because they reside in a lower layer in the timeline, underneath the lighbox) could those buttons be causing the advancement to the next slide?

[Lilybiri]

What I mean by 'cover' is the partially transparent shape covering up the background to make the lightbox standing out. I suspect it is one of the shapes in each group (the one ending with 'dim...'?) but I would have used one cover for all groups. Same with Close button. For several reasons (time saving, file size) I try to limit duplicate instances everywhere.

What are the actions for those other buttons at this moment? Did you set them to 'No Action'?

Do you have Infinite Attempts for all buttons?

Can you insert the system variable cpInfoCurrentFrame in a text container on the slide, to watch when the playhead is released? Hiding a group normally should never release the playhead if it is a standard advanced action.