Pressing Tab key activates player controls

[crg381]

I'm simulating an application that requires the use of the Tab key. Within Captivate the Tab key is a shortcut for a click box that simply advances to the next slide. During playback when the Tab key is pressed, in addition to advancing to the next slide, a player control button is enabled as indicated by it being highlighted. In the simulation the user may be required to press the Tab key a specific number of times, which in turn advances to the next slide and highlights the next player control button. Once the user has pressed Tab the required number of times, any one of the player controls will be highlighted. In the simulation, users are usually required to press Enter after a sequence of Tabs, which in addition to executing the desired simulation action, also executes the currently highlighted player control button. This could be anything from Rewind to Exit and everything in between. That's the problem in a large nutshell.

I've tried the "tab_no_yellow.swf" and "tab_no_yellow_global.swf" wizards to no avail. The result of using these files has been varied. They include no change at all, no action at all, and the user has to press Tab twice for every single press in the real application.

I've tried disabling the player controls altogether which resulted in completely bizarre Tab key behavior. In this configuration, pressing the Tab key appears to go through a list of 'hidden' player controls before executing the programmed click box action. It's pretty consistent ... it takes six Tabs to execute "goto next slide" the first time and five Tabs thereafter. If Enter is pressed before it gets through all the hidden player controls, it executes whatever player control it happens to be on.

Here's the environment this is happening in:
Captivate 3
Skin: BMP Playbars
Playbar: Captivate
Show borders: disabled
Publishing: SWF only - no html - Flash Player 7 (also tried 8 & 9)

The resulting SWF file is played as an animation on a Lectora (Trivantis) generated html page in a fixed IE 6 browser window - no toolbars, no address bar, no scrollbars, etc.

Any help to resolve this dilemma is greatly appreciated.

[Kathrynxyzzy]

If you have never used Flash before there are any number of things that may be wrong that you wouldn't know to look for. The only thing I see that I would have you double check right off is #8:

8. I then moved the file to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 5\en_US\Gallery\Playbars\AS3

"the file"

Make sure that the file is the published Steel_custom.swf file and not Steel_custom.fla file.

That would be the most obvious reason it wouldn't display in the Captivate selections that I can think of without a closer look at your work.

[techy_kate]

Oh thanks! That was exactly it. I had moved the .fla file instead (and felt dumb because all of the other files were .swf, so I should have known... )

So far, it seems to be helping.

[JP Cornelissen]

The latest version of Adobe Captivate (6.1.0.319) still has the same problem. I think these are really basic problems and kind of bad they don't fix this. Anyway...

1. Internet Explorer address bar stealing focus after a tab in a text box:
   I could fix this by adding the so.addParam("SeamlessTabbing", "false"); into the generated .htm file. It's silly if you have to do this each time after publishing and is easy to forget.
   My question is now if there is a setting in Captivate, or maybe a template where this file is generated from? Just so it will pick up the setting or changed template automatically?
   
   
2. Playbar getting focus.
   In post 4 Kathrynxyzzy says

   Open the AS3 flash version of the playerbar that you are using and add the following line of code to the Actions layer on the main timeline:

   this.tabChildren=false;

   This shuts off tabing on the playerbar without affecting it on the rest of the captivate project.

   
   Do I need Adobe Flash Professional CS6 to do this? I don't have it, is there another way to fix this?

Thank you

JP

[RodWard]

You can add code to the HTM templates that Captivate uses for publishing.  So if you wanted to make seamless tabbing the default behaviour, you could add it to the relevant HTM file here:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 6\Templates\Publish\

Making changes to the FLA file used to create a playbar SWF would require Flash Pro, yes.

[Kathrynxyzzy]

Yes. With each new version we add “so.addParam("SeamlessTabbing", "false");” to the SWFObject in "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 6 x64\Templates\Publish\standard.htm"

[JP Cornelissen]

Thank you RodWard and Kathrynxyzzy, did change that template file and it worked perfectly.

Too bad for the playbar buttons, I don't have lash Pro

[JP Cornelissen]

Good news: in Captivate 7 the so.addParam("SeamlessTabbing", "false"); is added to the default publishing file

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 7 x64\Templates\Publish\standard.htm

and it is set with a parameter in the publish dialog (keep it disabled!).