Timing Buttons Active and Inactive Display

[dguiett]

I’ve designed a slide with multiple shapes configured as buttons. Each button has a different term on it, and each button’s Action is "On Success Change State of" a multi-state shape named text_placeholder_shape.  As the user clicks each button, a different state displays the definition of each button’s term in text_placeholder_shape. The actions are set for Infinite attempts. When I preview the slide, I am able to click on four slides and then the slide advances to the next slide. I am including screen shots to show what I am doing.

I have been reading about the active and inactive display, but have not been able to determine how long the button should be active. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

Your question is not clear to me, I have viewed all your screenshots.

You have a shape which is pausing the slide at bit more than 2secs, but have no idea what its functionality is. Later you have a bunch of interactive objects pausing much later, bit before 6secs. That slide is very long, have no idea why. Since the death of SWF output buttons remain always active, even in the so-called inactive part of the slide.

Do you want the slide to remain paused while the learner clicks one of those similar buttons with names Video...? If yes, delete the command 'Continue' from the advanced action. Playhead will remain at the pausing point of near 5secs, at least if it has not remained paused by the first smartshape. There is no reason to make the slide longer than the normal 3secs since you don't have slide audio. Audio triggered by the Play Audio command will not be affected by the pausing point.

However there is something very worrying: you use the SAME name for the button as for the Advanced action. Do never do that. It may be sufficient to change one lowercase to an uppercase character. 

Maybe you could learn something from this blog post (now already over 70K views):

https://blog.lilybiri.com/pausing-captivates-timeline

And about affecting audio types:

Pausing Timeline and Audio clips - eLearning (adobe.com)

[dguiett]

When I added these to the slide the length was predetermined, and I was not sure to change it. There is a 9 second audio file that will start when the slide starts. Do I need to make sure that the length is at least that length? I have been learning much from your blog posts. Thanks.

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

I didn't see slide audio because that would have appeared as a wave timeline under the slide timeline. If you trigger that audio also with a Play Audio command, you don't need to extend the slide duration. You have enough pausing points which keep the slide paused.

[dguiett]

It works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You have no idea how much frustration you have relieved me from.