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Text Entry Box Questions

New Here ,
Jan 30, 2019 Jan 30, 2019

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Hello,

Running into a couple questions/issues using the Text Entry Box feature in Captivate 2019 and was hoping for some assistance. 

1.) Is there anyway at all to format the text entry field beyond the font type and size?  Specifically looking for settings to center justify and/or adjust the padding.  As it is it seems to default to left justified in the center of box with 0 padding (text entry is right against the line of the box)

2.) after a bit of googling I was able to find the way to return the text entry variable in a subsequent text box ($$Text_Entry_Variable_Name$$) but am running into a problem with it adding a line break before the output. 

I have attached a few screenshots to try and clarify

This screenshot is showing the way i have the slide designed to output with the textbox showing the "YOUR ANSWER" heading and the text entry variable below

First, here is the way i have the text entry output set up on the slide:

Text Entry Screenshot 1.png

When I preview the project however, it seems to be adding a linebreak before the variable shown here:

Text Entry Screenshot 3.png

Regarding the issue with the formatting of the actual entry box itself, here is a screenshot showing the text entry left justified with no padding.  I would like to be able to, if not center this, at least increase the padding to the left

Text Entry Screenshot 2.png

Finally, while playing around trying to figure out the linebreak issue, I noticed it behaving slightly differently if I added a colon (:) after the "YOUR ANSWER" heading.  Here you can see the output actually added the linebreak between "YOUR ANSWER" and the colon...

Text Entry Screenshot 3.png

Would appreciate any assistance on this as I have spent the better part of the day googling it and must be using the wrong search terms because I cannot seem to come up with anything.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 30, 2019 Jan 30, 2019

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If this is a non-responsive project and you will publish to HTML, the only preview close to WYSIWYG is Preview HTML in Browser (F11). I see that you use Preview Project.

You cannot format the TEB object style very much. It is the reason I often use the Scrolling Text interaction if the TEB doesn't have to be scored.

Displaying a variables is explained in:

Discover/Use Captivate's System variables - Part 1 - Captivate blog

You could concatenate the text with a variable. I used it in a recent post as an answer on a totally different question. It is only on the eLearning portal at this moment:

Calculate Expiry Date (Expression, variables) - eLearning

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New Here ,
Jan 31, 2019 Jan 31, 2019

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Lilybiri, appreciate the quick reply.  a few follow up questions.

Regarding the Preview in HTML, using the HTML Tracker it shows several elements incompatible with this preview method.  in particular i have one slide that utilizes a number of rollovers and it seems to flag slides that have no transition (fade etc) configured.

In terms of the scrolling text interaction, I gave it a look and maybe I am missing something but it seems to have many of the same formatting limitations as the text entry box (forced left alignment, no padding adjustment, etc...)

finally, if i understand your suggestion on concatenating the text with a variable correctly, i would be creating an expression which is where variable A = literal (the "YOUR ANSWER" text) + Variable B (the TEB variable) and then on the actual slide display Variable A instead of Variable B.  If this is the case, my follow up would be seeing if you could include a line break in the literal portion? 

Example:

Variable_Response = YOUR ANSWER \n [literal] + [operator] TEB_Variable [variable]

thanks again

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Community Expert ,
Jan 31, 2019 Jan 31, 2019

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Rollovers are officially not supported for HTML output, but they will be visible in desktop/laptop browsers.

Slide transitions however are Flash-based, leave them out. If necessary you can use transitions on objects.

Less limited than TEB:

Scrolling.png

I think you'll need JS to insert a line break.

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New Here ,
Jan 31, 2019 Jan 31, 2019

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so it actually seems the slides that don't have a transition are the ones flagging in the HTML tracker.  i went through and specified some slides to fade in at the slide level while others have no slide level transition and then have individual elements fade in/out depending on the situation.  it seems like it's the slides i removed the slide level fade transition from that it has an issue with.

for the text entry interaction, I do see in your screenshot the center justified button which i must have missed.  would still prefer to have a left justified with customizable padding option available but i will look further into this.

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 06, 2019 Aug 06, 2019

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Hi

I am running into the same problem with the text entry box - lack of padding - in a responsive breakline project.  As a work around I am looking at framing them with an empty shape underneath, and hiding borders.  Not ideal when the scrollbar option is enabled as this abuts the text on one side but better than nothing.

Enabling the scrollbar seems to get over the problem of the ugly default central vertical alignment - I can't see another way to do this.  It also seems to get rid of the hideous X control that otherwise appears to allow learners to clear content.

If I was able to use fluid boxes for my project, it looks from the Adobe helppage like you may have more control over padding/  alignment of the object through the fluid box settings.  Unfortunately we didn't use that option for our (rather text-heavy) project because the default overflow arrangements for fluid boxes aren't acceptable for our learners and we got stumped when trying to come up with a workaround for that.

Did you find a work around for this in the end?  It seems such a very basic and fundamental need in any elearning project.

I am still getting to grips with Captivate and coming up against so many of these problems with very fundamental things (eg achieving normal flow in a responsive breakpoint project).  We seem to end up building the majority of the course in dreamweaver to import into external web objects which rather defeats the point of a rapid development tool.  I keep telling myself this is a skills/ learning gap and that the product will prove more functional when I understand it better - be good to know how you are getting on and whether these kinds of issues did prove to be learning curve ones or more substantial problems.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 06, 2019 Aug 06, 2019

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Original question in this thread was for a non-responsive project.

You are talking about a Breakpoint Views project.

'Very fundamental' may mean something different for every user. I don't see how a text-heavy project could be consumed in a comfortable way on a small browser screen of a mobile phone.

Why do you need a text entry box, can you explain? It is meant to take input text from the learner.

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 06, 2019 Aug 06, 2019

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Hi Lilybiri,

Thanks for getting in touch.

The text entry box is there for the learner to input an answer.  We have different kinds of questions but often it's just a prompt for the learner to reflect a bit.

Appreciate different users will have completely different needs and these kinds of things won't appear in everyone's courses.

Agree it's a challenge to make a text-heaving course work on a small screen but we like to do the best we can for a range of users. And we do have users on a range of larger screens too.  

Sorry if my frustration was showing in my original post - I know new software can always be a bit of a challenge to get to grips with and it's easy to blame the tool when you don't know what you are doing; and easy to jump to tried and tested ways of working when it takes a while to work out how to do what you want.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 06, 2019 Aug 06, 2019

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Do you need to score the TEB? If not, I will repeat my proposal to replace it by the Scrolling Text interaction.

Scrolling Text Interaction to replace Text Entry Box - Captivate blog

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 06, 2019 Aug 06, 2019

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Hi Lilybiri,

The scrolling text does look a bit better than the TEB and you are right it may be a better choice for this - thank you.

Can you set padding there - I can't find an option for that?  I've given one a strong colour background below for contrast in the image below to show how it comes up for me.

I think the scrolling text interaction is based on a textarea and so perhaps there's a way to do it with custom css?

Incidentally is it OK also to ask here about how best to use the scrolling text control itself - we tried it early on where we had longer content but found we struggled with formatting eg with having individual words in bold as the formatting options there were seemed global.  Is there a way around that?

[[On our wish list was an interaction like this that effectively just let you insert a div with content we could connect to a style sheet.  We thought it would have helped us hugely with the project we are just finishing.     If you could insert library objects/ pictures etc into that, so much the better.  Does anyone else out there think that kind of thing would be useful?   

I thought it might also help with the difficulties I was having interacting with the main captivate course from the iframe web object -  though these may just be due to blundering about as I haven't had time yet really to sit down and see what is going on when that doesn't work- I was getting the impression that perhaps there were iframe security barriers getting in the way - perhaps that's the subject for another post when I have had a chance to play about with it further. ?  ]]

Thanks again for your help.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 06, 2019 Aug 06, 2019

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Cannot help you. Interactions are sort of widgets, and you don't have the source code.

For padding I would go with fluid boxes...

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 06, 2019 Aug 06, 2019

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Thanks.

Good to know:

1. In Captivate, you can't have a text entry box with padding in a responsive breakpoint project.

2. There is no way of styling the content of a scrolling text interaction beyond the limited options on the interaction controls.

Will share the upshot with our team here.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 07, 2019 Aug 07, 2019

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First statement is not fully correct, because that is the case for all types of projects, not only for breakpoint views.

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 12, 2019 Aug 12, 2019

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Thanks again.

My colleague is going ahead with the shape positioned under a standard textbox to mimic padding.  He thinks it gets a better look.

You have saved us time trying to find ways to make this work better.

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