Show/hide via AA only works once?

[carlosspicyweinr]

Hopefully someone has some insight into this problem I'm having in Cp9. Trying to have lightboxes on some of my slides to bring up an illustration (object group) when the learner hits a click box on the slide. The AA I wrote to do this works great the first time, shows the group, plays its little audio bit, then closes the group and resumes the slide audio when the learner clicks the X button. On repeat attempts to open the same lightbox, it won't re-show the objects but it does again pause the slide audio and play the lightbox's audio bit. Tried subbing in a smart shape button to see if it behaved differently than a click box, but same behavior. Screenshots below, thanks in advance!

-C

[Lilybiri]

Why using a conditional action without a condition? Always wonder...

You only show a small part of the timeline, is it possible to see the whole timeline?

[carlosspicyweinr]

Thanks for the quick response!

In this case I may or may not need to add a condition based on the current mute setting since the audio is optional for the learner, so I tend to leave everything conditional in case I discover later that I need it to be. 

If it helps, the groups in question do start off invisible since they're only meant to be shown if the learner hits the click box for them; and there are 0.5 secs deadspace x2 bookending the slide audio. Everything on the slide appears at 0 and is shown for rest of slide, and there are no pauses built into anything.  The slidelet at the top also starts off invisible and is meant to show/hide along with the Figure1 group (purpose is just to enlarge the image of Fig1 if needed). I've included the AAs for that one too, though it's behaving the same way as the one above. Let me know if any other info will be helpful, thanks again!

[Lilybiri]

I don't have all the details to try to double-check, but here are some suggestions:

• Move the command 'Pause' till the end of the action. SInce you are pausing before the objects are shown, and before the effect has been applied, this could be a cause of your problems. All effects need a duration, but you are pausing immediately.
• I think you made it too complicated, would have attached the audio to one of the objects in the group, and inserted 1 second of dirty silence in the audio clip, instead of using a Delay command (it can screw up things, you have to be very cautious).
• You use two buttons: one to show and one to hide; sometimes hidden buttons have to be shown and enabled (depends on output, HTML is more sensitieve). Are you sure the button is still active the second time?

[carlosspicyweinr]

Thanks so much for the suggestions; here's what I found:

• Attached audio clip to image itself with a leading dirty silence, shed the "delay action" and "play audio" items of the "show" AA, and shed the "stop triggered audio" action of the "hide" AA. Group shows and plays its audio as expected on 1st hit of the click box; hides/stops audio bit/resumes slide audio as expected on 1st hit of the "exit" shape button.  Subsequent hits on the click box still do not show the group or image but, very strangely, do pause the slide audio and play the audio bit attached to the image. Weird.
• Moving the "pause" to occur after the "show" didn't allow the newly attached object audio to play, so had to move it back up the order.
• Through cutting the frills out of the AAs and adding things back in one at a time, it seems that the FadedZoomOut, as well as any other Exit effect, applied to the group within the hide AA is somehow the offender. When I delete just that line from the hide AA, it does allow re-showing of the group/audio ad infinitum. It's just not as polished looking without the Exit effect.

**WORKAROUND: Adding a Basic effect seems not to burn up the object like an Exit effect does. I added an AlphaFromTo effect to the hide AA (100% to 0% over 0.5 sec) and that does pretty nicely simulate an exiting fade out effect. Though I did have to add a delay before the "hide" corresponding to the effect duration to get it to look right. Screenshot below.

Thanks again for the advice, Lilybiri. Your Captivate blogs and teachings have been so invaluable since I started doing this stuff last year, so it's really great to finally "meet" you!

-C

[Lilybiri]

Yes, expected the timing of the effects to be the culprit. I mostly avoid applying effects by Advanced actions for that reason, especially when the effect can be triggered multiple times. I replace it by micronavigation with a time-based effect. BIt more cumbersome but better to be trusted.

Thanks for your kind words about my blog. You'll find me daily around on these forums as well.

[michelewrites]

This is very similar to the problem I'm having. See this post: Apply effect as advanced action - interfering with functionality

I tried your workaround. When I use a basic animation, the advanced action works multiple times, as intended. But I can't find a good replicate of flying out to the left under Basic animations. And if I try to use a motion path, it also doesn't work. I also tried creating a motion path effect, saving it out and bringing it back in as a custom effect and using that in the advanced action. Still no luck.

[carlosspicyweinr]

Agreed, it's far from perfect but I was just happy to get some semblance of a finished appearance into the project. Unfortunately I haven't spent any time working with custom effects or motion paths yet, so I can't offer any insight on that front. I've been wondering to myself what purpose there could be for an Exit effect to preclude re-showing an object within the same slide and I can't come up with any practical benefit to that behavior, but that's a question probably best answered by one of the devs anyway. I first ran into this in a recent project when attaching stretch/collapse effects to a volume widget toggled by a rest-of-project shape button which, as we now know, didn't allow more than 1 cycle of the button, but then did work for another cycle after moving to another slide. This prompted me to try a micronav approach on that one by logging the current slide and frame in 2 user variables when collapsing the widget, re-directing it back to the current slide and then immediately up to resuming at the frame saved in the variables. The action itself worked as I'd hoped, but it didn't reset whatever the exit effect had done to the object, so still only good for 1 cycle per slide. After that wasted afternoon I just wrote it off as having something to do with it being a widget and tried to forget about it. Probably worth submitting as an issue.

[Lilybiri]

That was my recommendation (in the other thread): replace the AA aproach for effects that take time, especially motion effets, by a micro-navigation approach. I always use custom effects, the problem remains the same as for other motion effects.