Captivate blog

Intro

If you have been visiting this blog already, you are aware that I'm writing a lot about (advanced) actions because they allow to push Captivate to another level, to create more engaging eLearning assets. 

In previous posts I offered:

• list with System variables essential in a lot of (advanced) actions
• list with Statements, the commands you can use in an advanced action, and comparing them with the commands you find in the simple Actions accordion

When helping users who start with creating actions, I often see that novices in this domain are not always aware of the process needed to trigger an advanced action: each action, whether a simple or an advanced one has to be connected to an 'Event', and that is the subject of this article. At the end you'll find a link to a list, describing all the possible events, use cases and tips.

Events - out of the box

Most events that can trigger an action are linked with interactivity, something the user has to do. This is the case for Success/Failure events for (Shape) Buttons, Click Boxes, Text Entry boxes, interactive Widgets but also for Question slides. 

Less known are the actions that can be triggered when a Quiz is completed (Success/Failure).

Also even less known is that a Rollover slidelet has even two events: on Rollover, and on Click. For the events available out of the box with Captivate this is the only rollover available to trigger an action. The backdraw is that you rarely can use both events, because when you use the On Click event you necessarily have to do the rollover as well.

Events that are not linked with interactivity are the slide events: when entering or when exiting a slide, you can have an advanced action to be executed. But not all commands (statements) can be done by such an action (see list).

Often I get the question if an action can be triggered by time or by a frame, but that is not possible for the moment with Captivate. One example: the timer widget will show a popup when time is elapsed, but you cannot execute an action immediately at that point. I have been explaining this in an old article: Timer widget.

Widgets to extend events

Jim Leichliter, aka Captivatepro/CaptivateDev has a free widget for Time Based Actions.   It can be used in some cases, but not as easily as for an 'On Frame' event that is available in Flash for programmers.

InfoSemantics developed a widget that is one of my favourites: the Eventhandler Widget. It is not free but if you are plunging really into advanced actions, please try it out because it can add as many events as you want to any object.

Both widgets are not yet supported for HTML5 output.

List

You can download the list from this link. I created this table, along with other lists, to use them for the workshop Advanced Actions that I coached at DevLearn 2012. Really hope to be able to do more workshops of that kind, interaction with learners is something I really miss when blogging.

First column (Event) identifies the event, second column (Assign action) shows in which Properties panel (PI) you can indicate the action to be triggered, third column is A Description. When necessary you'll find some comment/use cases in the last column, which also mentions the possible limitations for the event. 

You'll find first a table with events that can trigger only one advanced action, and next a smaller table with those events that can trigger one out of two possible (advanced) actions based on a condition: validated TEB, question slides and Quiz.

I would appreciate if you left some comment in case you find this list useful. Combine it with the lists I mentioned at the beginning: system variables, and statements/commands.