Smart Objects as buttons are not working as expected. Weird.

Report · Sep 28, 2017

Hi,

CP 9.0.2.437.

I have a course with 4 smart shapes on every page used as buttons. Next, Back, Play/Pause and Open close TOC. It really total of 6 buttons, but the the two toggling buttons are placed on top of each other and using advanced actions they hide the undesired one for the obvious reason. The toggle buttons are placed on slide 2 and set to appear for the rest of the project "on top". The Next and Back buttons are placed on every slide individually due to some have pause buttons and others do not. Each button has 3 states - up, over and down.

The issue:

Each button does not react to a state change and is inactive for the top half of the button. Placing the mouse on the upper half does not display the hover state, and the button is not clickable. Only moving the mouse to the lower half works.

Any solutions or ideas?

Report · Sep 28, 2017

Publishing to HTML5? Never put two interactive objects on top of each other in that case. Why do you not use a custom state to show the toggling? Have a look at:

1 action = 5 Toggle Buttons - Captivate blog

Do you have shadows on those shape buttons?

Report · Sep 28, 2017

Yes, publishing to html5. This method has always worked for me. In fact it worked for me in this project until I updated the shape/button images. The next and back buttons are not "stacked" and have the same behavior as the play/pause and TOC buttons. So I'm confident the stacking of some buttons is not the cause. I looked at your blog and at this point I'm not sure my pea-sized brain can get into that so late in this project. My buttons work as expected only if I click on the lower half of the shape/image/buttons. They work as expected when previewed in captivate but once published to html5 I get this behavior.

Report · Sep 28, 2017

I know that stacking can cause problems.

What about my 'shadow' question?

Report · Sep 28, 2017

I understand - there is no shadowing or reflection set on the shapes. There is a border added to the shape. II'll try to keep messing with it.

In relation to your blog - how do you think I can apply it to my needs? I have no intention of showing the playback bar, and have no audio (I understand your ideas are conceptual to what I need). The next and back buttons only have an action to go to next or previous and have the three states I mentioned.

Report · Sep 28, 2017

Look at the Toggle CC button, or the Toggle TOC button: instead of a different button when the TOC is open, show a 4th state, which is a custom state that replaces the Normal state. Something similar can be done with Play/Pause buttons.

Report · Apr 02, 2018

Hi,

I am having this issue, again. Different course, different custom play bar. Nothing is stacked, as mentioned on a previous note. Nothing shadowed. Three buttons, each with a rollover state and down state. The problem is when published to html5/scorm, only the bottom right quarter of the button is not active to states and button action. I have attached a video of my experience. This does not happen when published to html5/non-scorm, or swf, or any preview mode. In the video, you will notice the state is active only in the right bottom corner. What you cannot see or hear is me clicking in the buttons outside of the right bottom corner. From the scorm package, this happens in an LMS and also when the package is unzipped and viewed locally.

Report · Apr 03, 2018

I am losing confidence in Captivate. I actually built svgs for these smart shapes, then found out svgs are not acceptable in buttons or smart shapes. So i reverted to pngs and put them in the smart shapes used as buttons and found out the entire button does not work as expected. So i then put them in your standard button and needed to resize. They looked terrible. I resized outside if captivate and made sure I did not touch the size in captivate standard button and they look the best they've looked. could probably look better. Yeah, I'm still Captivate 9. My employer doesn't see the benefit in upgrading to 2017. After trying vary hard to convince them, I'm starting to agree with them.

So the correct answer is, use a button but do not use captivate to resize it.

Report · Apr 03, 2018

A SVG cannot be used to fill a shape, nor being used as a shape (both feature requests). Your conclusion is not correct, I always use in any published HTML project shape buttons which work fine. I'm sorry that you have issues with them, but only if this happens for everyone the conclusion is correct.

All buttons in these movies are shape buttons.

Captivate's Timeline

SharedActions

Report · Apr 03, 2018

Yes, I found out the hard way that SVGs cannot be used.

This was the only correct answer that worked for me...... I'm not sure what more I could do to explain or prove this was happening to me, and ask for assistance. No one replied to my request recently when this happened again, so I needed to use brute force to find a solution - too much time was already committed to finding a way to make this work.

Report · Apr 03, 2018

There wer"e issues in first release of 9, but not in 9.0.2.437. There were proiblems with visibility of states on master slides. But I was unable to reproduce your problem (still have 9 and 2017), Apparently that is also the case for other users, since no one tried to help.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

I have this very same issue with a button that was made from a shape and placed on a quiz results slide. Only the bottom half of the button shows the hand curser and allows a click. I'm on mac in 118.1.185

Report · Jun 28, 2023

Please update your version, the most recent is 11.8.1.219. Let me know after updating if you still have the problem. I have to confess that I am not a Mac user, they are very rare in this forum.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

The updator is already saying I'm up to date. Must not have that version for mac as yet. But anyway my issue was the same. I even pasted the button onto another side to see. I mouse over the bottom part of the button and the hand cursor appears and I can click it, but if i mouse over the top 2/3 of the button then nothing happens, no hand cursor appears and the button is not clickable. I better try a different presentation in case there is corruption.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

this issue does not appear when i view the preview in browser. Only when i publish to the LMS.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

Just another question: quiz slides have a lot of reserved areas and custom objects are always lower level than the embedded objects on those slides. Are you sure that your button is not covered by such an area?

Since Preview HTML works fine, I wonder if there is perhaps an issue with the LMS. Did you try the output in SCORM Cloud to make sure that it is not the case?

Report · Jun 28, 2023

i thought that at first and i moved my button to all sorts of places, deleted the states with the mouseover in case they were obscuring it, then eventually copied it onto an ordinary slide where there was definitely nothing obscuring half the button.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

I wondered if it was something to do with the advanced action attached to that button so I changed the button to go next, but this did not resolve the problem either. The continue button which is part of the slide looks fine.

I checked in the master slide in case something there was obscuring half the button. the other thing that makes it impossible that obscuring is the problem is that if i move the button down it still has the lack of buttoness in the same spot in the button.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

When you launch the module from the LMS, are you launching it from within a frameset, or in a separate window? I generally find that launching SCORM content in a separate window tends to be more reliable, but you may need to enable popups in your browser to get the separate window to open.

Also, when you publish to SCORM, do you have Scalable HTML Content selected? If so, try NOT using this setting. I have sometimes found it affects the hit areas of buttons.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

To launch it from the LMS I just click on course object title and it the window that was there is gone and replaced by the new window with the course opened. I do actually have scalable HTML content selected, but weirdly the test course I made, where I copied the button over, works fine and that also has scalable HTML content - mind you the project height and width of my test project is a different size to the original. I just tried opening the module from the LMS and resizing the browser window to see if that would make a difference but it doesn't.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

only the very bottom edge of the button is active.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

Rod I first thought the issue was due to something hidden on the results slide that was partially covering my button, so I left a post about it on one of your videos about making a restart the course button. But now I know it was a worse problem, and probably due to the scalable option.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

I created a new blank course with the same dimensions. Then i copied all the slides (apart from the results slide that can't be copied) to the new course and pasted them there, then I copied the button from the old course to the new course. The button lost it's action but i reapplied it. then i uploaded the course to the LMS (with scalable still checked) and now everything is working normally in my new course.

Report · Jun 28, 2023

I just spotted one difference. My old course didn't have the allow review of the quiz checked. I've checked it now on my old course and dragged the button outside the preview window. Then I tried my old course again, and the problem still exists with the button. So now the two courses seem identical to me. In my new recreated course the button is fine but not in the old course. In the old course only the very bottom 1/4 of the retake course button is active.