Rollover slidelets and getting the "main" slide to persist

[joebor1776]

Hi,

I have a slide with a graphic of a user interface with several rollover slidelets on various UI elements. I have it set up that when the user clicks on an item, it jumps to another slide with some audio narration that explains the item, and displays some different video. How do I make that first slide (or any slide, actually) persist and just display indefinitely, without moving to the next slide?  I can work around this by making all the slides have a really long display time, but there has to be a better way to do it.

Thanks!

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Not sure to understand well, and please tell which version of Captivate you are using?

I suppose you atached the action 'Jump to' as click action to the slidelets?  When the user clicks it will release the playhead that continues. To prevent this you'll have to create an advanced action that rewinds the playhead together with the jump. But since I do not know which version you are using, it is difficult to show you that action (different in CP4 and CP5+5.5).

Lilybiri

[joebor1776]

Hi,

Thanks. I'm using Captivate 5.0. Yes, I have the "click" action set to jump to, and I have an individual slide for each rollover item.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

OK, just tried this out, and learned that indeed, with 2 or more slidelets when returning to the main slide the playhead just continues. I tried to find a solution and this seems to work but do not ask me to explain exactly why. Create a very simple advanced action, that you attach On Enter for the main slide. It has only one statement, but you cannot just choose it in the Properties Inspector, that is why you need this advanced action:

Just hoping it works for you as well, crossing my fingers,

Lilybiri

[joebor1776]

Thanks so much--I tried it but it still advanced to the next slide. Do I add that action only to the first slide?

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Perhaps I did not understand everything correctly. I created a small project with:

1. Main slide, to which I attached the described advanced actions; this slide had 2 rollover slidelets
2. As action for click on each slidelet I jumped to another slide, slide 2 for the first rollover slidelet, slide 3 for the second rollover slidelet
3. On slides 2 and 3 I put a button to go back to the first, main slide
4. And I was able to use the click actions on the rollover slidelets again, the advanced action was executed again on entering that first slide

Perhaps I would better have asked what you want really to achieve? Are you showing something in the slidelet? Post a screenshot could help eventually too.

Lilybiri

[joebor1776]

That sounds like what I'm doing, but I don't have buttons to go back to the first slide. I just have the same rollover spots on every

slide, so the part of the screen that has the rollover spots really looks the same on every slide and has the same ability to jump to any other slide. Right now I'm using a workaround of just having every slide display for 60 seconds to avoid the progression to the next slide. I guess that will work OK if I can't get the advanced action thing to work. Thanks so much for trying to help me, I really appreciate it!

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Wouldn't it be possible to use the same main slide for everything - the filesize would be a lot smaller, and it seems logical? If you do not want a button to return to the main slide, that means that it is not paused to allow each user the time he thinks necessary? And that is why you need to extend the slide duration to a 'crazy' amount. Captivate is all about pausing whenever necessary, is there a specific reason why you do not want the user to use a button to proceed?

As I asked last time, if I knew more in detail what you want to achieve, could give you perhaps another proposal, because your present work flow seems really complicated and very heavy on filesize. Hope you do not mind, if you do, please ignore this question.

Lilybiri

[joebor1776]

Hi,

I can't use a single slide because each slide does show some slightly different information (the UI that I'm showing has a navigation pane that is always the same--that's where the rollover hotspots are, and a graphics pane that shows slightly different information depending on what the user clicks on in the navigation pane). Also, I have TTS narration on each slide--I have to be able to export the XML for the audio, for localization, so I have to use slide notes for the audio.

But, yes, that's what I would love to be able to do--pause the progression of slides until the user clicks something. That works great with click boxes--I use those for software simulations. But that functionality doesn't seem to be available for these rollover slidelets, unless I'm just missing it.

Thanks again!

Joel

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Sorry,but I give up, because I really do not understand several things (have been asking about them). Why do you use rollover slidelets in the first place? If you do not know which rollover slidelet will be chosen, the main slide should always be the same IMO, but now you say it is not? Perhaps it is due to English not being my native language but I really am still in the dark about too many things. Hope for you someone else will pop in.

Lilybiri

[RodWard]

I have to agree with Lilybiri.  I would not be using rollover slidelets to do what you want.

If all you need to do is show information in text or graphic form when a user rolls over some portion of the left navigation area, then a rollover caption or rollover image object is more appropriate.  Since none of these rollover objects (including rollover slidelets) have pausing, you need to pause the slide using a clickbox or button until ready to move on.

If you want the user to click someplace in the left side navigation and display different content on the slide, then I'd probably use clickboxes to jump the user to seamlessly to different slides that looked to have the same navigation but had different content elsewhere.  The user will be none the wiser about which slide they are on.  All they will know is that when they click something, the view changes.

[joebor1776]

Thanks to you both. So, I started thinking about this some more, and tried your suggestion of using rollover captions and clickboxes. I had two problems--first, the clickboxes did not pause the slide progression, even though I had their properties set to do that. Second, after I finished adding all of my rollover captions and clickboxes, mysteriously they all stopped working completely. I can delete all of them from a slide and recreate one, and it works, so I'm wondering if I ran up against some upper limit or if maybe my project file has become corrupt.

Anyway, here's some more information about what I'm trying to do. In the pic below, number 1 indicates one of the items I'm adding a rollover caption and clickbox to. All of the items like this that appear in the left side are going to have clickboxes and rollover captions. When the user clicks one of these, the clickbox jumps to a different slide, which will show a different image in the right side, as well as a slightly different list of options in the left side (in some cases). Each slide has audio narration as well. All of this must be easily reproduceable in local language versions of this interface as well, for translation purposes, so I can't get too fancy in Captivate.

So what I've done is create all my rollover captions and clickboxes on the first slide, and then copy and paste them to each of the other slides (moving them as necessary on some slides when the sequence of the options changes). This way the user can always click or mouseover another hotspot from any slide and doesn't have to click a Return button. This seemed like it would work, but now none of the rollover captions or clickboxes are working.

[joebor1776]

Well, I figured out my problem, it was just my stupidity :-). I set all the clickboxes and rollover captions to not be Visible, thinking the Visible checkbox only affected visibility on the page (I didn't want to have the boxes appear), but it seems to actually turn off the functionality as well. Once I set them all to Visible again, it works, and I'll control actual visibility with the Fill & Stroke settings.

[RodWard]

Just a word of advice.  You may find that if you have the rollover area and the clickbox occupying exactly the same space then you need to have the clickbox on the layer underneath the rollover object, otherwise the rollover won't work.  With the clickbox underneath you can get them both to work.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

A Click box is by definition invisible to the user, it has normally no stroke and no fill, so I'm a bit puzzled.

About Visibility: you have the possibility to hide an object on the timeline, which is only for editing reasons: if you have a lot of objects on the stage, it can be difficult to select objects that are below other objects in the stacking order. By turning the objects on top to invisible this makes editing easier, but has no influence whatever when publishing the movie: objects will be visible.

If you turn of visibility in the Properties panel, they will be invisible also after publishing. But you can show them by actions during the movie. If you turn off the visibility of interactive objects you also lose their functionality, it is as if they are not there at all. This is also the case for slides that you hide. Same: if you show them by an action, not only will they be visible (Buttons, TEB's) but you get their functionality as well.

Sorry, but I'm a teacher

Lilybiri

[joebor1776]

Thanks!