Transitions and Effects on Changing State of Multistate Objects

Report · Jul 23, 2016

Working in Captivate 9.0.1.320, (Wasn't that a TV show about 90's High School kids in LA? ) I have a Multistate Object in my Captivate project, and I would like to apply an effect to it so that on Change State of my Multistate Object, I could see a nice visual effect on the page. I'm getting this to work one way, but not the way I expect.

Here's How I am Getting This to Work

I create an advanced action with two actions in it:

Change State of > My Shape > State #2
Apply Effect > to My Shape > AlphaFromTo > Effect Start: 0 sec; Effect Duration 0.5 sec; Initial Alpha 0%; Final Alpha 100

I have a button that runs that action, and it works nicely. It applies a nice, easy-on-the-eyes fade in/out effect for the shape. This looks so much better than the sudden shock of a Show/Hide that basically slams the object to its new state in a blink. That may be appropriate sometimes, but not for what I'm doing now.

Here's my Issue

Why do I have to create an advanced action for this? Why do I have to program two lines to get this to happen? Shouldn't this be available from the Effects panel?

Here's What I'd Prefer to Do

What I'd rather do is select the object, and either:

Just set its transition to a half-second fade in/out (preferred), ~ or ~
Apply Effect > To My Shape > AlphaFromTo > Effect Start: 0 sec; Effect Duration: 2 sec; Initial Alpha: 0%; Final Alpha: 100% - I could do this either for the shape, on the Effects Panel, or Enter the State View, and do it on the Effects Panel while in State View. In fact, I have done so, tried it both ways. And while I really only want a half-second transition, I put a 2 second effect on it so that I could be really, visually certain to see it (if it works).

But it doesn't work. If I use the button to Change State of the shape, configured as described, then I don't see the transition when I publish and view the course in the browser from localhost. What gives?

The Help Page for this, under Effects behavior when objects have multiple states says "When an effect is added to an object, the effect is applicable for all the states of an object." That doesn't tell me much, but I took it to mean "If you apply an effect then you'll see it play whenever you change the state of the object," which is what I want, but not what I get.

Here's my Question

Am I doing it wrong, misreading that, or do I have an errant expectation for this?

There's no rush on this. Because I'm a dedicated designer, I'm going to write the Advanced Actions, as mentioned above, for the 120 different objects on this page that I want to transition (three states each, that's....yeeesh! 360 different states!). But I would really rather just set the transition or effect and have it work onI guess I'd better quit typing this and get back to work.

So if anyone knows what's up with this, or an easier way of doing it, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Report · Jul 24, 2016

I cannot help you really, Advanced actions and Alpha effects have never been a 'happy mariiage', and although effects have been refurbished - improved in many ways - in Captivate 9, this is still a pain.

The Help statement means that the Effect is just applied to the object, not repeated with every state. Moreover if you apply an effect to one state while in state view, that effect will be applied to the object, not to the state. Help could be certainly much clearer, will not start about that (again).

Transition is really a old legacy effect, dated from before the Effects panel appeared in Captivate. Transition behaves same way, but cannot even be applied by an advanced action.

360 advanced actions on one slide: please don't do that, Captivate will choke. Even with shared actions, although they seem to bloat a file less than advanced actions I have some more ideas for feature requests concerning states, but that is off topic (being able to use a variable as state name, because contrary to most naming in Captivate you can use the same state name for different objects). That could spare some time, but still...

Maybe the JS specialist has a better idea, if this can be done with a JS function? If I had more time, I would also check the CpExtra widget to see if the offered enhancements both for states and for addressing targets could help.