Trigger event only if text box has text entered

[chavab1]

I have a text box on a slide that I want to make sure students fill out before they are allowed to continue with the rest of the course. The text is not to be graded, I just want to make sure they enter something first. I've tried several different things but I can't get it to work correctly.

First off, I created a variable for the text box. Then I created an advanced action with an 'If' statement to check for a value before 'Continuing'. This works in doing the validation. However, there's a small problem. If at first try I hit enter with an empty text box it doesn't 'Continue', which is what I want. But then it seems like no more attempts are being allowed because no matter what I enter in the text box it still doesn't 'Continue'. If at first try I enter something in the text box then it does 'Continue'. It seems like it just letting me make one attempt even though I have the 'Infinite Attemps' checkbox selected.

I also tried doing it with plain Javascript. I created an advanced action that triggers a script. Inside the script I check the value of the text box variable to make sure it's not empty. But then my problem is how do I programmatically trigger the slide's continue event. I tried creating a continue button and hiding it until the text box has been filled. But again, I don't know how to programmatically show it. I looked at the CSS and I can display it but the click event doesn't work.

I'm new to Captivate so it might be something simple that I'm missing.

Thanx

[Lilybiri]

Did you read this blog post:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/where-is-null-in-cp2017

About Text Entry Boxes, this is a recent post:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/text-entry-boxes-back-to-basics

[chavab1]

Thanx for your quick reply and for the information.

I read the blog post you sent and I want to make sure I understood it correctly. So basically the only way to do it is for me to have the student re-enter the slide after the TEB has been submitted without any entry? Because it looks like one solution has a 'Retry' button appearing if no text was entered. When the button is pressed it just basically resets the slide to the entry point. In the second solution, it is using micronavigation to again return the student to the entry point.

I want to make sure I'm understanding that this is the only way to do it.

One aside, how do you view the 'Preview Action' menu that is shown in the screenshots?

Once again, thank you very much!!

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

You got it right, both solutions work.

For the Preview Action, have a look at another blog post where I explain all functionality of the Advanced Actions dialog box:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/advanced-actions-dialog-box-in-captivate-2017