Submit button on Drag and Drop unresponsive

[ruthg84]

Hi,

I was adjusting some things on a drag and drop slide (deleting the rollover and down states on the submit, undo, and reset buttons) and I found that afterwards, the submit button was no longer responsive, i.e. I could not click on it. The undo and reset buttons were still fine. I tried remaking the drag and drop interaction from scratch, and even copying and pasting everything to a new slide, but I still had the problem occurring when previewing.

Is there some kind of problem that can be created by deleting the rollover and down states? For all other buttons in my project it seems to have worked fine and not affected their inactivity.

I noticed in the properties panel for the submit button that 'allow mouse click' is greyed out. Is this something to do with the problem?

[Lilybiri]

Like for quiz slides, those buttons are sort of 'protected', and probably you have messed up something. Which style was used by the Submit button? Why delete the InBuilt states instead of making them identical to the Normal state? Did you edit the object style?

[ruthg84]

I've been having a lot of problem with inbuilt states (sometimes they change so that the rollover and down states become a different style- seems like a bug) which is why I am deleting them. The submit button was set to my primary button style, which is used for all primary buttons in my project. I didn't edit the object style on this slide no, it's just set to the primary button style. This is a slide in my template. Is it something to do with it being a template that is causing the problem?

Here are some screenshots of the properties panel for the submit button, in case you can see anything that is off:

[ruthg84]

And just to clarify with the problem with inbuilt states, here is a screenshot showing how the rollover and down states change to a different style. The style for the normal state is EXIT and it should also be the same for the rollover and down states. I first got this problem on interactive elements after applying a theme to a project (this is no longer referring to the template).

[ruthg84]

(I can fix it by going into state view and refreshing the rollover and down states. They then change back to the EXIT state.)

[Lilybiri]

Templates (cptl) files cause a lot of issues lately. Why do you need a template, is a theme not sufficient? I see that you don't use the default quiz button style for the Submit button, but a custom style. How was that style created? Is it created in the present version or upgraded? There were significant changes in styles between CP8 and CP9 with the InBuilt states. Since you also mention issues with those InBuilt states I suspect those are due to the ''template" or theme you are using. Why did you not post a screenshot of the state view panel?

[ruthg84]

I thought we needed a template as there are certain key slides that always need to be exactly the same design-wise so I made these in a template so that the other collaborators on the project can copy and paste them. Do you think it would be better to just use a normal Captivate project rather than a template?

The style for the submit button was created in Captivate 2017, which is what I am using now. Here is a screenshot of the state view panel:

[Lilybiri]

This is a common misunderstanding. For design in most instances you only need a custom Theme: theme colors palette, all object styles, master slides, recording defaults and skin are included in a theme.  It has a lot of advantages over cptl-files and copy/paste is never a good idea but very wide spread as work flow. I used templates quite a lot before version 6, but since that version almost never use a template because of problems and limitations (need for specific resolution being one of them). But any project for me will start with creating a custom theme.

Please do not take out the rollover and down states from any interactive object, you can give them exactly the same look as the Normal state. Be especially careful with 'embedded' objects, objects which have no individual timeline but appear when you choose a certain type of slide: D&D or question slide. Edit the 'default' style for that object, do not apply another custom style.

Maybe if you have time, some reading:

Challenges for Starters - Captivate blog

What's in a Theme - a Template? - Captivate blog

[ruthg84]

Thanks for this advice, it's really helpful.

A couple of questions:

1) Why is it a bad idea to delete inbuilt states? All other buttons with deleted states in the project seem to be working fine.

2) Why shouldn't you apply a custom style to embedded objects?

[ruthg84]

Also, we have worked out that the problem seems to be related to the fact that we had a popup appearing on failure via a shared action. When we set the failure event to 'continue' the submit button works fine again. Is there any reason why executing a shared action on failure would cause the submit button to stop working?

[Lilybiri]

That is New Info...Can you show a screenshot of that shared action? Since an advanced/shared action is pausing the timeline by default, did you add Continue (or another navigation command) as last command?

[ruthg84]

So, I think I have solved it. It seems to be that the interaction didn't work when the failure caption was not included. Even if the failure caption was dragged off the slide, it still stopped the submit button from working in failure mode (it still worked if you selected the right answer).

On the advanced/shared action front, no, I had not included continue as an action. And now trying it with continue added I see that it works (incidentally though it still won't function for our project to have a text box pop up on failure as it is set to infinite attempts and so the failure action is never triggered).

Thanks so much for your patience and help!

[Lilybiri]

That is weird, I never did see that unchecking the Failure message would disable the Last Attempt action (it is not really a Failure action, wrong word).

[ruthg84]

I don't think it was that unchecking the failure message disabled the last attempt action as such (this is disabled anyway since I have it set to infinite attempts). It was that unchecking the failure message meant that I couldn't click on submit until I had the correct answer assembled in the drag and drop.

[Lilybiri]

Totally confused now: with infinite attempts you only have a Success event which happens when the answer is correct.  You don't have a Failure event... something must be wrong either with my understanding or with the setup. Do you score this D&D,or is it considered to be a Knowledge Check slide? Maybe the approach taken is not correct?

[ruthg84]

It is a knowledge check slide. I would like there to be a last attempt action ideally (a popup would appear with feedback) but I can't figure out how to do this if the submit button is not working. There are infinite tries, yes. The idea is that the user can get it wrong but keep trying.

[Lilybiri]

You don't have a last attempt action with Infinite attempts. I know, the 'Failure' action is not dimmed, and should be dimmed, will log that bug another time (is there since a couple of versions). When the user clicks Submit you can only show the Failure caption, nothing else, but you unchecked the failure caption. You talk about a 'shared action', which I would like to see, but if you trigger it as Failure action it will never happen, as Success action it only happens when the answer is correct. Get back to the basics: what do you want to happen On Failure, what on Success? Do you want to give the user control with a Skip button?

[Lilybiri]

I am not a programmer, but based on experiences recommend not to tweak embedded objects too much. That was the reason for my advice. You even added to that conviction by telling that when you put the InBuilt states back, everything works OK.

A not embedded object, which has a separate timeline, can be controlled totally by the developer which is probably why you don't have the same issues with those objects when deleting InBuilt states (which I personally never would do, easier to make them identical to the normal state, if you later want to edit inbuilt states would save you lot of time) nor applying custom styles. Since I always use a custom theme, in order to make future changes by the client easier to apply, I will edit default styles when they are 'default' in reality,  instead of adding tons of custom styles. If you ever have to switch to another theme, default styles will be updated automatically, custom styles not. Same for colors, I always restrict to the Theme Colors palette, if I have to change a color, it is so easy.