Some Questions on Advanced Actions window

HI
I have a couple of questions on Advanced Actions (using the CP7 trail version)
1. What's the function of the "Continue" action? Exit's the advanced action and advances the Playhead?
2. What does this comment mean "Nested calls of advanced action is a nice enhancement."? Is the decision tabs at the top of an advanced action page?
3. What's the function of the "custom" option in the IF statement - "preform action if - custom", it doesn't seem to do anything for me?
4. Where can i get information about timeline / playhead interaction with advanced actions i.e. where the playhead goes to the start of the slide again. e.g. custom question slide - displaying button, checking answers, feedback - when all/most objects are at the start of the timeline. I'm looking more for playhead functionality infromation rather than how to set up this type of question.
Thanks
Donal.

Hi Lilybiri,
Thanks for your reply and the link to your blog.
Continue: Can you just explain yor statement "Continue can also be a choice in a conditional action, when one of the branching commands has nothing to do special but to advance.". When you say "branching command" i'm assuming you mean "IF ELSE statements" and "to advance" is that to the next decision if there is one? and if you didn't include "Continue" would it still advance?
Custom: I see what you mean the first is an AND statement and the rest are OR statements.
Nested advanced actions: I picked the term up from the Adobe web site comment by "Hari" on Shared Actions, who i took to be an Adobe person. Maybe i didn't understand the context.
http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2013/07/shared-actions.html
On Demand: Is there an up to date link. I found this one but the latest recordings are May (advanced action - part 8), and there isn't much training after May so it may be while before your Shared Actions are uploaded.
http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/etrainings-adobe-captivate-adobe-elearning-suite-and-adob e-presenter
Donal

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Hi Eric,
Thanks, understand now what happened and this is indeed an issue.
I'm always trying to respect one of my beloved rules for names "KISS" (Keep it small and simple). So I will immediately trim the 'Duplicate_' that is added for every 'clone' (do like your word) and make the name different from the original in another way. That will be the reason why I never bumped into your problem. You have to know that I did live once in a DOS-world where every name could only have max. 8 characters and probably I'm still stuck with some reflexes from that past.
Have a nice weekend,
Lilybiri

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I have the following slides in my project:
content slide 1
content slide 2
question slide 1
question slide 2
Question slide 1 is a question about content slide 1. Question slide 2 is a question about content slide 2. I would like to restrict the total number of attempts to two for each question. If question 1 is answered incorrectly on the first attempt, the learner would be returned to content slide 1 for review. Clicking the next button will take the learner back to the missed quiz question and allow them a second attempt to answer it correctly. If they answer it incorrectly again, it is scored as incorrect and the learner is taken to question slide 2.
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Hello,
About your point 1: do not even know what you are pointing at, never keep track of that kind of numbers (not an accountant) because I feel them being unimportant. I'm happy if I can help some users out with issues and do learn a lot myself by trying to solve problems.
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Switching between scripts in Advanced actions very slow on Mac OS X

Hi,
I've been experiencing a problem with Captivate taking an inordinate amount of time (approx 30-40 seconds) to switch between scripts in the Advanced Actions window. This happens incrementally as create/duplicate scripts and switch from one to the other. After switching about 4 to 5 times, the wait extends to 30-40 seconds. The rest of Captivate is unaffected, i.e. no delay issues when adding statements to a script, or working with other features in Captivate. I called Adobe Support but they said it is the first time they heard about this issue, although they seemed to suggest that Captivate is "slower" on the Mac. For comparison's sake, and to check if there was anything wrong with the project file itself, I tried using a trial version on a PC running Windows XP (using the same project file) and I experienced no issues, and switching between scripts remained constantly quick even after several hours working on a project.
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Thanks!

Hi,
I've been experiencing a problem with Captivate taking an inordinate amount of time (approx 30-40 seconds) to switch between scripts in the Advanced Actions window. This happens incrementally as create/duplicate scripts and switch from one to the other. After switching about 4 to 5 times, the wait extends to 30-40 seconds. The rest of Captivate is unaffected, i.e. no delay issues when adding statements to a script, or working with other features in Captivate. I called Adobe Support but they said it is the first time they heard about this issue, although they seemed to suggest that Captivate is "slower" on the Mac. For comparison's sake, and to check if there was anything wrong with the project file itself, I tried using a trial version on a PC running Windows XP (using the same project file) and I experienced no issues, and switching between scripts remained constantly quick even after several hours working on a project.
This particular project requires a lot of scripting and this issue has ground my productivity down to a halt having to wait 30-40seconds just to switch between scripts. Adobe suggesting "removing programs" from the Mac to speed up affairs, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the machine as it runs other Adobe software, like InDesign, Photoshop and Acrobat without any issues. In addition, while the switching is being processed, OS X doesn't hang. I am perfectly able to switch to other applications, or load new ones, which indicates that Captivate is not hogging all the resources.
I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue before, and if so if a solution/workaround has been identified?
Thanks!

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I have an unrelated question:
In Advanced Actions using Conditional actions, when I compare the text in a TEB to a string, sometimes Captivate puts the string in "quotes" and sometimes it doesn't. Do you know why and does this have any impact on the comparison?
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One of my most urgents feature requests, but not yet there. I suspect it it mostly due to the fact that each object in CP needs its own unique ID, and that makes transferring advanced actions that do often reference objects pretty complicated. Nevertheless expect, hope that it will be possible in a future release.
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In each of my quiz slides, I have set the On Success action to Execute an Advanced Action. In the Advanced Action, I have two lines. The first line is to run audio that says something like "That's Correct - great work - click any key to continue" and the next action line is a jump to slide. Only the jump to action works. The audio doesn't run. Thoughts anyone?

Sorry, seem to repeat what I already told you about messing up Quiz slides. This problem is also due to that.
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Question Question Slides in Captivate - Captivate blog
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hi
i glad that i found this forum, i have the mini HP laptop 110 and i have some question
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1. if i'll instal the windows 7 pro - is my performance will be smaller ?
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3. what is the most light browser that recommended for this mini laptop ?
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Can an advanced action open an image in a seperate window?

I am wondering if this is possible.
I am using an advanced action to Show/Hide an image. I would like the image to open in its own window so the user can move it to compare the pop-up image with the other image and instructions on my slide. (I have a TOC so I have limited space on the slide.) I think the advanced action might be Execute JavaScript because that choice gives me the option to open in new window. I am not savvy with writing JavaScript so any help would be great.
Thanks
Jeff

Hi Jeff,
Welcome to Adobe Forums.
In order to open an image in its own window you can go to Properties > Action > On Success > Open URL or File, in the URL box type the name of the image and from the drop down select New.
After publishing the project, copy and paste the image in the output folder and then you can view the output, this will open the image on a new window.
I hope it helps.
Thanks
Vikas

Question regarding use of advanced actions in drag&drop interactions

I have trouble figuring out sth in Captivate.
I am creating an exercise where the user has to drag specific waste items into the correct waste bins. What I want to do is to show the Next button after the user has completed the task.
There are 6 waste bins, 5 bins have two correct drag sources, 1 bin has 4 correct drag sources.
I have created 6 variables, one for each of the 6 waste categories, and given them all the initial value of 0.
If the user puts the correct waste item into a waste bin I have stated in the "action" under "Accept" for the drop target that the variable for this bin should be incremented by 1.
Further, I have created an advanced action that states that if var_waste_bin_a = 2, then the Next btn should be shown.
I had thought that each time a waste item is accepted into waste bin a, the variable should be incremented by 1 - thus making the Next btn visible when the two correct drag sources are in place?
Can anyone help me out on this? Would be much appreciated...
Kind rgds
Casper

Hi!
Thx a bunch for your answers, truly appreciated! Based on your tips I figured it out.
The problem with my advanced action was that it caontained the Expression var_paper = 1+1 ( I had thought that this would assign the value with 1 the first time the action was run, and then increment by 1 for each further time)
I changed the Expression to var_paper=var_paper+1 and for some reason this worked just as I had planned.
Not sure if I totally understood the logic, but it works just as wanted now
Thx again!

Edit Actions and Advanced Actions in some kind of text editor

Is there any way to edit Actions and Advanced Actions in some kind of text editor?
The built-in GUI is fine for little tweaks, but trying to use it for anything real is a almost impossible.
Can Creative Suite open a Captivate project and give access to the Actionscript in the project?
Is there a text file someplace that can be extracted, editted, and put back in?

Hello,
has the feature to edit Actions and Advanced Actions using a text editor been implemented into the new Captivate 7?
I'm facing the problem that I have very extensive Advanced Actions in Captivate in which I want to change a variable x into a variable y. Doing it manually would take about a day or so.
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Regards

Text Entry Box--Advanced Actions--Conditional Statement--Double quotes in literal input value

Hello forums,
I'm new to the forums (and Captivate in general), but I'm having a real problem carrying out a tutorial design and I think you may be my only hope. Let me explain what I want to do and the difficulty that I'm having:
I'm an instruction librarian at a university, and I'm designing an interactive tutorial for English 100 students to complete in order to become familiar with how to search the library catalog. What I've done is taken a screenshot of the catalog search page, made it the background of a slide in Captivate (vers. 6), and placed a text entry box over the search bar in the screenshot. The idea is for the students to conduct a simulated search by choosing one of three suggested search string formulations, and depending on the search string they enter, the tutorial will jump to a slide featuring a screenshot of what the actual search results would look like. The idea is to emphasize the use of keywords over full-sentence phrases, and the use of double quotation marks to enclose multi-word search terms.
So I've set the action for the TEB to "Execute Advanced Actions" and then created some IF/THEN statements in the "Advanced Actions" pop-up window (with action type set to 'conditional'). The script is such that if the student enters the first search option (how does sleep affect college students) in the TEB, the tutorial jumps to 1 slide, if they enter the second option (college students AND sleep), featuring a Boolean operator (AND), the tutorial jumps to a 2nd slide, and if they enter the third option ("college students" AND sleep) with the double quotes around "college students" and the Boolean operator, the tutorial should jump to a 3rd slide. This action script works fine for the first two input options, but I can't make it work for the third search option.
I think that it has something to do with the fact that the third input option features double quote marks, and this seems to throw off the script (I tried a quote-less input value for the third IF/THEN just to make sure that it would work jumping to the 3rd slide and it did), and I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can get around this issue. Again, I need it to work so that if the student enters "college students" AND sleep, with the quote marks and the Boolean operator, the tutorial will jump to a slide showing the search results if those search terms were used in a real search of the catalog.
I'd be extremely grateful for any help that anyone here can give me, we've been trying to make our online tutorials more engaging and interactive (and therefore more interesting), and I think this would be a great way to teach students about using quotes in their catalog searches.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Andrew Wilk
College Library
UW-Madison

The tutorial is for a "how to use catalog searching" instruction in an undergraduate library session. We use boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to combine search terms, ex. to search for books about the sleeping habits of college students, I would enter "college students AND sleep." Because "college students" is a multi-word phrase to describe one concept, I need to put quotation marks around the phrase to prevent the catalog from searching for the individual words separately, so the most correct search becomes ["college students" AND sleep] with quotation marks around only "college students," a user-typed "AND," and the word "sleep" (no q-marks).
A colleague of mine worked out a pretty cool (if complicated) solution that I'll share if anyone is interested. Since the q-marks where the problem, we've set it up so that the TEB validates the response for the search string with q-marks around "college students." If they enter it correctly, the tutorial jumps to the corresponding slide. The attempt # is set to 1, and if the user fails to enter the validated phrase (they misspell or use one of the other response options) then the TEB is set to run an Advanced Actions Script in which the other two options are scripted in IF/THEN statements that cause, when the term is entered correctly, the tutorial to jump to their corresponding slides. We've created another tab of IF/THEN statements that say that if the response is NOT equal to one of these response options, then the slide restarts (technically the slide "jumps" back to itself and starts over) and the user gets another chance to start the cycle over again.
I know this is confusing (I had a really hard time explaining it in words), so if anyone is interested I could make a Jing video when I have some time.
Thank you for all your suggestions

How can you trigger more than 1 advanced action?

I wonder if someone can answer a very quick question for me that I'm struggling with at the moment
I have 6 stacks of 16 images. I have the user select the name of the image they want to show in each stack, and then I have an advanced action that runs to show only the image they have selected. Currently I have 6 actions, one for each stack of images.
What I need to do is to run all 6 advanced actions as the user enters a page so they only see the 6 images they have selected on the previous slide. My problem is that I can only seem to run one advanced action upon slide entry (or from a button or anything else). Is there a way to combine advanced actions, or to run more than one action from a single command? Or does this require a different approach?
Thanks in advance for your help.
James

Thanks Lilybiri and RonWard,
I guess I could have been clearer in my question.
I'm using Cp5 and to give you an idea of what I'm doing I've pasted an image of the slide I'm playing with below.
Each image you see here is actually a stack of 16 images that are hidden on slide enter. There is a combo box under each stack that allows the user to choose the name of the image they want to use, and the button triggers an advanced action that shows the image that has been selected.
Ultimately what I intend to do is to move the combo boxes to the previous slide, and on slide enter only the 6 six selected images will be shown. I'm then going to use a drag and drop widget to create a question about of all of this. The teacher will select which 6 images are relevant to their students, enter some information (definitions, quotes etc) that are related to each image, and the students will have to drag them to the correct image / icon.
So... I've created 6 advanced actions, one for each stack of images. (I suspect that was my mistake).
I've attached an image of the action. For each Action there are 16 parts to it. One for each image. You can see here that the action is fairly simple. It just checks the variable that comes form the combo box, and if it has been selected, then it shows the appropriate image. If not it just moves onto the next part of the action which checks for the next image being selected.
There is one action for each stack of images - so 6 actions. If there was a way to combine them it would be very helpful - but I'm suspecting that's not possible. Alternatively if there was a way to trigger all of them together that would work - but again I don't think that's possible. So what are my options.
Finally, and here's the biggy that I don't think can be done. As I eluded to above. The idea here is that a teacher will set this up and a student will then complete the activity. Is there anyway for the teacher, without Captivate, to select these images and enter some other variables, and have that information propagated across a network so many students can use the project with the variables the teacher enters just once?
Thanks heaps for your help. This forum is great. I'll spend some time reading the blogs mentioned also. I'm so thrilled that Captivate is finally letting me do some of the elearning things I've wanted to do for years. I'm a teacher by training and now consulting and building resources for schools.
Thanks again
James

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