Replacement for Rollover when converting to HTML5?

[Mgrant04]

I've used rollover slidelets, rollover captions, and rollover image objects in many of my elearning projects which were always output to SWF/HTM. All of our projects were for use on desktop systems, not on devices like the iPad or iPhone.

Now that Adobe is killing Flash, I'm faced with converting the projects to HTML5, where the rollover functions won't work. We're still planning on delivering only for desktop systems.

Does anyone have any suggestions for ideas to replacement the rollover functions that we've been using?

FYI - we're still using Captivate 6 and unlikely to upgrade to a more current version.

[RodWard]

Use Click actions instead of rollover.  One click/tap event to make something appear, and another one to make it disappear again.  Create toggle actions if necessary.

[Erik Lord]

Yeah, substitute clicks instead and, where needed, tell the user, "you don't need to click in the actual application, just roll-over, but here click to help reinforce the process"

Perhaps a larger concern, CAN you output to HTML5 with CP6? HTML output was pretty 'beta' at that time, wasn't it?

If your company/boss/client requires you to publish to HTML instead of SWF in order to move with the times, you REALLY need to upgrade your version of Captivate.

If you do get CP6 to publish acceptable/workable HTML content - great!

(and just side-note, Adobe isn't really 'killing Flash'. Lots of other software - i.e. browsers - are dropping support for SWF, so Adobe is altering it's Flash *tool* to output to HTML *also*...but it'll still output to SWF... That aside, it's definitely wise to move to HTML output ASAP)

[RodWard]

Eric,

I think the situation with Flash and SWF is actually a little more dire than that. 

Adobe made two announcements last week that show they are backing right away from Flash. Although, as you correctly point out, Adobe's main Flash application will still be able to output to SWF (for the time being at least), the name is being changed from Adobe Flash to Adobe Animate.  Due to all the negative press being generated at the moment about security risks with Flash content, I think Adobe is doing the wise thing here. It's a sensible marketing decision.

As a result of those two announcements, I've just written a blog post to help Adobe Captivate developers understand what these developments will mean for their future e-learning content.

What the 'Death of Flash' Means for E-learning Developers | Infosemantics Pty Ltd‌

Everyone on this forum knows that I have long been a champion of Flash and SWF and I have always supported Adobe's right to make their own business decisions, regardless of whether or not I happened to agree with them.  Despite the fact that I personally believe SWF is probably a far more efficient format for delivery of multimedia e-learning, I now find myself forced to agree that it's finally time to commit to HTML5 for any future development projects.

[neatsweller]

I also have this problem with rollovers. And the answer is not as simple as saying click here, but in the real software, you can just rollover. For example. in the software we are simulating, you click a start point, move your mouse, then click an end point. While moving your mouse, the distance from the start point is displayed, which we can simulate using rollovers (it's not as smooth as in the actual software but it does the job). Our software does not run on anything other than a PC, so we have no need for elearning on ipads or other devices.

I can't think of how to do this in HTML5 or see the advantage of moving all of my elearning to a different format, but I understand Rod's concerns about flash support in browsers is valid. Just not sure how to move forward.

[RodWard]

If you are never going to be delivering your e-learning from a touch screen, only mouse-driven desktops, that's one problem solved.

But Captivate basically thinks rollover objects are not supported for HTML5 output.  And it tells you so when you try to test the content in Edge Inspect as HTML5.

However, when you actually publish and play this content in an HTML5 browser on a desktop with mouse, the rollovers DO work.

So maybe you don't need to worry.