Captivate 8 Smart Shapes as Buttons to show on all slides

I am having to create custom navigation for my Captivate. I know I can either put them on my Master Slide and select the option "Show Master Slide Objects on Top", or I can put the on the first slide and have them show until the end of the project. I think putting the navigation on the first slide and showing until end of project is going to work out best for me, but I have a few questions...
Will the elements chosen to "show for rest of project" be on top of all the other screen elements on subsequent slides or below them?
Will having elements from slide 1 to be "on top" of the elements of a different slide have any effect on rollover states? I know I ran into this issue with master slide objects being on top.
Will I be able to show and hide the items from slide 1 that are set to show for rest of the project? For instance, if I do not want the learner to be able to go to the next slide until they have finished the interaction on the current slide?
How will items showing for rest of slide work with drag and drop interactions?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Kelly

Some answers. When you time an object for the rest of the project, it has the option to have it always on top in the Timing panel.
What do you mean by 'rollover state'? If a shape button with rollover state is covered by another object, the rollover state will not be visible. If that covering object is non-interactive, the shape button will still have its interactivity to be used. Never have two interactive objects in the same location at the same time.
Showing/hiding is easy with an object timed for the rest of the project. BUT you cannot time it differently for slides, it will always have the same timing as on the slide where it is really sitting (first one), same for pausing.
Shape buttons cannot be used in a drag&drop interaction. Could you explain that last question?

Similar Messages

Adobe Captivate Help | Smart shapes

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/using/smart-shapes.html

The Fit to Stage is not functional in any version of Captivate 6, as described in the Texture Fill, when choosing an image with the Browser icon. When the image is bigger than the shape, the Edit Image dialog box doesn't even appear in 6.1.319.

Where is the button that shows me all my post?

Where is the button that show me all my post in this forum?
I do not understand why other than to make finding things that much more convoluted and difficult for the people that have actual problems;
and safer for the idiots that spout crap out on the forums?
Really how can a forum run by a company as large as adobe be so useless?
I have posted many question starting back 3 years ago; none which have an answer yet why?
I just do not understand?
Is there anyone with a clue in this forum?

Hello engine_man_2t,
if you are seriously interested to solve some of your problems, so you should have a look at this thread Re: What happened to my DW Forum acct? with the hint in consecutive number 3. >>> "The forum administrators read http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments".
Hans-Günter

Grouped smart shapes as button

I am trying to use 2 smart shapes as a button. I select the grouped smart shapes and if I select use as button, the actions sections show up and I can choose my action. However, once I am finished Captivate automatically deselectsuse as button. In other words, whenever I select those two grouped smart shapes, they are no longer in use as button mode. Any suggestions?

I wonder if I misunderstand the question? Of course a group, even if it is a group of shapes, can never be set to act as a button. Some properties can be set for a group, but not the change from a non-interactive shape to a shape button. And if Rod's answer is to the point, what was the reason for the grouping of two shape buttons?
But I wonder if the OP was not talking of wanting to have an 'image' constructed by two smart shapes to be turned into a button, that is why he tried to do it by grouping, which would be a normal intuitive action in a lot of other software applications. Please, if that is the case, could you explain better?
For those who are indeed in the situation I describe: lot of users do not know that you can 'fill' a shape with an image, or that you can turn each shape into a freeform shape and by manipulation of the vertexes (points) change its form. This is (trying to be diplomatic) not very well documented in the Help.

Smart shapes, groups, buttons

To try out these new features, I set up a simple slide. The slide contains two groups, each group containing 3 smart shape objects. I wanted to make one group into a button that would show the second group. However, it looks like only a single smart shape can become a button, not a group of shapes. Is that the case?

No Jay, a group cannot be an interactive object. In Advanced actions you can hide/show a group, which is a huge timesaver
Lilybiri

Is there a way to create a text field that shows on all slides?

I'm trying to create a "Revised On" date field that can be shown on every slide. Or, do I just have to copy and paste on all slides?
Thanks in advance.
- Michael

use the master slides
view > show master slides
click on the master slide that has a tick mark
add a text box to master slide and any other objects that you want on every slide; enter text, then position, size and set colour
click on the normal slide and add other content that is to be seen on that slide only
adding new slides will use the background design

Theme not showing on all slides

I created a new theme, but when I applied the theme (File>Choose Theme) it only shows it on one of the slides. Anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.

Themes are applied on a slide-by-slide basis, not globally. If you want to set the theme on ALL slides in a presentation, select one slide in the sidebar, hit cmd-a to select all of them, and THEN select your theme.
Message was edited by: SarahMicheleF

Making a Smart Shape a button will not pause slide

Hi.
I am not sure what I am doing wrong but when I use a smartshape as a button (I am selecting the Use as Button checkbox), the slide will not pause like it does when I insert a button. Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong?
Thanks,
Jeff

Hello Jeff,
Maybe this post will provide you with more details, will explain shortly: http://blog.lilybiri.com/why-i-like-shape-buttons-captivate-6
Normal buttons pause by default at 1.5secs, and you can uncheck the pause, change the timing in the Properties panel, Timing accordion.
Shape buttons do not pause by default. You have to check the Pause in the Timing accordion:
But they have a lot more advantages, as you can see in this screenshot, they can be shown for the rest of the project, which is impossible with any other interactive object.

Captivate 7 Smart Shapes not displaying according to timeline duration

If a put per say an arrow set for 2 seconds, the arrow will display throughout the slide and not disappear after 2 seconds. I really need to resolve this issue asap. I have the same issue in V6 and V7.
Thanks for your help.

Hi mary_td,
HTML5 output will work for PPTX files with High Fidelity checked in PowerPoint Import dialog while importing on Windows.
It will not work for PPT file as mentioned in your post. You can save your PPT as PPTX if that is the case.
If you still see the issue. Please mail me the pptx file.
My Email ID: [email protected]
Regards,
Nitin Kumar
Adobe Captivate Engineering Team

How do I keep the buttons from showing up all the time?

I made several little shapes in Photoshop and imported them, then made buttons out of them. But when I simulate the menu, the buttons are always on top of the motion menu, how do I get the buttons to not show until the entire motion menu has played?

The loop point is indeed set to 10 seconds in. But as the motion menu starts playing and the words are flying onto the screen, the button (custom key shape) is already on the screen. Is there not some kind of opacity setting where I can make the button invisible until all the words have loaded onscreen?
And I tried some of Apple's buttons, they do the same thing. The little bracket " >" is sitting there on screen while the words "Play" and "Scene Select" are flying in from off screen. Once it reaches 10 seconds, then the " > " highlights to yellow on "Play". But I do not want that little bracket to show onscreen until the word "Play" is even there yet!

Captivate 7 - Shrinking Smart Shape Buttons

Adobe Community,
Currently we are starting to creating training modules in Captivate 7, we use a "wrapper" for the output which simply means this. The wrapper is simply designed to listen for specific Adobe standard 'actions' or 'calls', which I'm told is derived from the Adobe Connect compiler library. The Adobe actions/calls have changed since Captivate 6/7 but the Adobe Connect library binaries were not and this has caused a disconnect with the new Captivate actions.
Our chief problem that has arisen because of this are Smart Shape buttons, we are excited to use them for training modules but once clicked they continue to shrink the button until the user is unable to see them and in large modules the next button disappears before they are completed.
My questions are this:
What causes the buttons to shrink in CP7? I see other people referencing this issue but not alot of information outside of "this is a problem in Captivate 7" but no attempt at a solution.
Has anyone come up with a solution to this? Can it be addressed/repaired in the Captivate output possibly in the javascript?
I can provide screenshots of how this is happening on both the Master Slides and Normal Slides with Smart Shape Buttons if need be.
Thanks in advance!
-Stephen

Hi Stephen,
I don't think there is any simple solution to this and the problem needs to be addressed by Adobe. The solution that I've applied (In CP8) seems to be working for when users accidentally click the edge of a smart shape button. What happens at this point is the button shrinks and the user's cursor is no longer under the active area of the smart shape and the action attached to the smart shape does not fire. In some situations I have noticed that the smart shape button has continued to shrink with each click that does not fire the action.
I have found that this issue is partly resolved in CP8 with the introduction of different button states. If I use smart shapes as buttons in CP8 I make sure that I apply Rollover and Down states for my buttons. Where possible provide a slightly larger stroke width to the down state which increases the size of the button so that when the default shrinkage happens on the down state the additional stroke width compensates for this. This appears to have solved the problem for me with the actions not firing and to some degree the shrinkage issue. If you are still on CP7 then I sorry this does not provide you any real help but I hope that it gives you some other ideas to work on.
AndyK

Captivate 7 - Shrinking Smart Shape Buttons II

Since my last question was a little difficult and no one seemed to be able to help I'm hoping to receive a better response on this one as it is most definitely a little easier to explain and I think will be simpler to troubleshoot.
I was able to create a .swf with smartshape buttons that keep all the smart shape buttons at their needed size but once I load them into our LMS/Flex Wrapper the buttons contine to shrink per click (I think this is because Adobe Flash Player doesnt know what to do with it).
My solution is I'm trying to find a way to either do one of the following two things (reload or "refresh" the button in advanced actions after a click so that it will always have the first click sizing) or ...
The second is a little more involved as I found that the sizing happens on the 'down' action of the button and not the 'click'. This means that if I could remove the 'down' graphic functionality from my smart shape buttons and keep the up and click actions in theory the button might work and not cause the image shrinking...
Thoughts....
Anyone....
Thanks,
Stephen

Hi Stephen,
I don't think there is any simple solution to this and the problem needs to be addressed by Adobe. The solution that I've applied (In CP8) seems to be working for when users accidentally click the edge of a smart shape button. What happens at this point is the button shrinks and the user's cursor is no longer under the active area of the smart shape and the action attached to the smart shape does not fire. In some situations I have noticed that the smart shape button has continued to shrink with each click that does not fire the action.
I have found that this issue is partly resolved in CP8 with the introduction of different button states. If I use smart shapes as buttons in CP8 I make sure that I apply Rollover and Down states for my buttons. Where possible provide a slightly larger stroke width to the down state which increases the size of the button so that when the default shrinkage happens on the down state the additional stroke width compensates for this. This appears to have solved the problem for me with the actions not firing and to some degree the shrinkage issue. If you are still on CP7 then I sorry this does not provide you any real help but I hope that it gives you some other ideas to work on.
AndyK

Toggle button (play/pause) problem when using smart shape

Hi,
I am utilizing smart shape as button. I have one play button, and pause button, on top of each other. When "play" is clicked then I display "pause" button, and hide "play" button. Vice versa for pause button. And, I set the buttons to be displayed in the rest of the project. The problem is that buttons are working so irregularly. In some slides they may stop toggling, and when I do go back to previous or next slides, they may start working again, but they may mul-function in other slides then.
Did anybody run into this problem? How can I solve it?
P.S. I cannot user widgets, because of incompatibility with html5.

Thanks for sharing your blog. I actually did whatever you explained in your blog. I created advance actions. I labeled the buttons, btn_Play, btn_Pause, respectively. And, in "Play" advance action, I added the following command "Show -> btn_Pause", "Hide -> btn_Play", and vice versa for "Pause" advance action. It is working, but irregularly.
As the example in your blog, If I test it in the single slide, it is working great. However, if I do consequetive transitions to other slides fastly, it sometimes stops working (for example, when I click "Play" button, the "play" button does not disappear, and "pause" button does not show up). I know this sounds so weird!
Also, another point is that I did not use master slide, I just put them in the first slide, and set them visible for the rest of the project. I see that you did not recommend this practice.

CP6 - too many smart shapes / levels on one page?

Hi all,
While creating a new project in Captivate 6, I used smart shapes as buttons with advanced interactions to show and hide product features. These product features in itself can have subsets of information that I want to show when the user asks for them.
So on the second level, I again used smart shapes for that information (e.g. a list of three). I grouped them to avoid too lengthy an advanced interaction. Upon publication, however, and rather peculiarly, the first smart shape in the list did not work. I checked and rechecked (and then checked again ) all interactions and they were correct. Moreover, when I switched the first and second item in the list (i.e. physically moved them on the page), the problem did not move along: it remained with the (now new) first item in the list. Which means that it is not a mistake in the advanced interactions.
I have tried to find a solution for this, but eventually had to revert to using separate slides for the separate features and then the smart shapes worked fine (without changing the logic behind them).
Has anyone else encountered this, or am I doing so onviously something wrong that I've failed to notice? It looks like Captivate stumbles on the number of levels on one slide?
Thanks.
Jan.
PS: I'm new to this forum, so if this question has been asked (and answered) before, I apologise. I couldn't find it.

Hi,
thanks for the treply. Unfortunately (and carelessly) I chucked the .cptx that didn't work and stuck with the workaround. So I can't remember exactly how many levels (guessing three levels of smart shapes on top of each other.
Elsewhere on this forum, we found that if two buttons are on top of each other (invisible or not) could interfere with each other. My guess is the same happened with the first smart shape in ly list, that it got interfered with by an invisible button.
In the end, the customer found the non-linear navigation too complicated so we had to go for a linear slide per slide approach anyway.
Jan.

Need forward button to only appear after slide is viewed

For Education purposes I dont want my students to be able to forward through the course without viewing all of the information. So I remove the forward button on the skin editor. This creates a problem if the student clicks return on accident or only wants to hear the beginning of the previous slide. They now have to watch the entire course or page again. i have tried to create an Advanced action on enter to show a hidden button if the slide was last viewed or else hide but this does not work bc if they go back multiple slides the button only shows on the slide they go back to.
I can achive this by creating a variable and advanced action per slide but this will require me to make one variable and action for each page.
So what I need is one button (goes to next slide when clicked) that is on every page (entire program) but only shows if the user goes back to that page (its been previouly viewed). There has to be a one button one action to achive this.... But its beyond me... is it beyond you too????

Hello and welcome to the forum,
Which version of Captivate do you use?
Lilybiri

Captivate 8 Smart Shapes as Buttons to show on all slides

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for