simple advanced action will not work

[Guest]

Hi

I have a very simple advanced action. It does 2 things.

1. Assigns a variable.

2. shows a "next" button

On success of clicking a button nothing at all happens on one slide.

The other 5 slides with similar AA's work perfectly.

1. I have deleted the variable and advanced action and rewrote them.

2. i have completely rebuilt the slide from scratch and nothing works.

the timeline looks like this. And the on enter for slide is set to no action

I am running out of options.

[Stagprime]

Hmmm... does seem odd.

Hard to tell for sure without being able to look at a few other things.

Here are a couple areas I would start to look.

I would verify spellings and I wonder if my other variable assignments have dual double quotes like the ""Baked Potato"".

Also - did you remember to create the starchchoice variable under Project >> Variables... ? Double check spelling there too.

Looking at timeline - what is the user clicking on to make the next_starch_button appear?

I see veggy_button_8 is named as a button but it does not appear to be one. It looks like it is meant to display your variable.

When you preview the project - does that appear blank (variable recognized) or does it actually read $$starchchoice$$ - that would indicate a typo.

Image_49 and Image_50 - are they being used as a buttons? They have a pause on them. Did we get the right one and properly assign the Potato_chosen action to it?

Just some places to look - hopefully one of them takes care of it.

As a side note.

Piece of advice from me - take it as you would - I never use symbols in my naming conventions.

No spaces, no dashes, no underscores. I see them as issues waiting to happen.

[Guest]

thank you i like your advice on naming conventions.Think i will go with it.

here is a wider snapshot for more context. The 2 buttons, potato & french fries are now labeled. The text caption is the variable on the slide.the user is to click either the potato or fries and then the name will be assigned to that variable then the next button should appear. The other slides are for ordering main course, drinks and salads. each have 2-3 choices and they all work properly.

It's a head scratcher!

[Guest]

additionally when i click the potato or fries nothing happens

[Lilybiri]

Perso-nal tip for labeling, because besides a few exceptions, each label needs to be unique. You cannot use same name for an action and a variable, an object and a variable etc...

If you look at all my tutorials in blog, you'll see that I use to start each name with one or two characters indicating the nature of the item:

• v_    starts a variable name
• I_ starts an image name, but if you use that (bitmap) as a button I usee
• I_Bt to start the name

Is the variable not filled when you click the image used as button? I see that you inserted it on the slide. In that case I suspect you have a double usage of a name.

How did you hide the Next button? I suspect the three pausing points are at the same time, but you can easily move it for the Next button to about 2 secs.

[Guest]

Lily,

the next button is hidden on enter. I am reasonably sure that $$starchchoice$$ is unique but i will alter that element and see how that works. thanks

[Stagprime]

Yeah - I am thinking along the same lines of there being some sort of naming conflict.

A duplicate could be another reason for that.

I know you said you remade stuff already but at a certain point - I might replicate just this slide in a new project just for troubleshooting sake to rule out something more global. It would either go away or help truly isolate the problem to this slide.

[Guest]

good idea. i renamed that variable to $$carbchoice$$ and rebuilt the AA and still nothing.

[Lilybiri]

You have to check all names, not just the variable name.

[Guest]

Ok. so to step back from this unsolvable issue a bit.i have created 90% of this project in about 2 hrs and spent 2 days trying to complete the remaining 10%. I have done everything possible including rebuilding the slide from scratch with brand new media objects. no matter what approach i take it eventually ceases to function or not work properly.

At this point i have one remaining hope...could this be a cache issue? Is the project file holding on to prior labeling, names, objects?

Can i safely clear that cache and if so how can i do it without deleting my project(as some have had this happen on the forum).

I am starting to question Captivate's performance on a Mac. I know we are a minority so it's easy for Adobe to skimp a bit.

Any ideas on the cache idea please let me know. thanks

[Lilybiri]

Youhave searched only on that slide, but a duplicate name can be used anywhere in the project. That is the reason I always insiste on a good labeling system with all my trainees. Either you keep to the generic names, which are all unique, but not very useful when you need to identify them, or you set up a system for naming which will avoid duplicate names. Capital and low case can make the difference between two names, names are case sesnsitive.

[Stagprime]

I had suggested recreating this slide all by itself in a different project. Have you tried that yet?

If we isolate this slide and it works - we can be pretty confident that the issue is due to a conflict with another part of your project and you must expand your search to find and remove it.

If we isolate the slide and it still does not work - we can be pretty confident that it is a problem with the make up of the slide itself and you can find your problem within that project. Solve it and you can implement the fix to the main project.

[Lilybiri]

Cache if too big could cause issues, but not prevent an advanced action. It is a very simple action.

[shreya · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I can see 2 quotes around Baked Potato. So while assigning the variable do not use any double quotes. Captivate will automatically generate the quotes if you have space Eg: Baked Potato.

Please try this out.

Hope this helps.

Otherwise you can share a sample slide where you are seeing the issue.

Regards

Shreya Gupta

Adobe Captivate Engineering.

[Lilybiri]

Thanks Shreya, I missed this on the tiny screenshot and am glad you posted your answer.  In the future will always ask to see the Preview of the action, at least that is better readable. You have probably very young eyes....

[Lilybiri]

@kurtfar I sincerely apologize, but I had not detected the multitude of quotes in the AA screenshot, my eyes are pretty bad. Next time will ask for Preview screenshot (as I mostly do).

You have to know that Captivate inserts automatically double quotes surrounding a string when you have a space in the string. You added extra double quotes to the string, and Captivate is choking on that. I am not even able to do so, Captivate generates an error or crashes when I do sot. But I am on a Win system, not Mac.

What I mean by Preview action and why it is better not only because font is bigger: it give you a clear view of complete advanced action, with the translated JS equivalent of the point and click advanced actions. Easier to detect bugs.

[Stagprime]

I actually suggested looking at that in my first response to the thread.

[Lilybiri]

My apologies to you as well, didn't understand what you wrote properly: double quotes are normal for a string with a space included. But I didn't see the double quotes inside of the double quotes, which are the culprit. As i mentioned: I cannot even do it without getting an error on my system. If these were simple quotes, it could be functional. Terminology: do you call these double double quotes? I am not a native English speaker..

[Stagprime]

If there is a special name for them - I don’t know what it is. I referred to them as dual double quotes in my post but perhaps it would be better to just say two sets of double quotes. Whatever describes it best, I suppose.

Any symbol out of place in JavaScript will break it. Super easy to do when typing it out. I was not sure how Captivate would treat that via advanced action GUI like just displaying the extra set but I was immediately suspicious of it which is why I offered that as an item to look at.

Original post stated there were other similar actions that worked fine so the idea was to compare the one that didn’t work with the ones that did. A difference should have been detected.