Dynamic Buttons

Guidance

If you’re planning on attending the Adobe Learning Summit, DevLearn, or both this fall, read on….   (If you can’t make it this year, there’s a consolation! Skip to the bottom of this post to get a tip about dynamic buttons.)

Most of you know that I frequently blog and post about Adobe Captivate. Well, Adobe has given me the wonderful opportunity to offer free in person peer-to-peer Captivate project help at the MGM Grand Las Vegas on September 29th and 30th. Since I’m flying from my home in Belgium to present at the Adobe Learning Summit, this is a great chance to meet and help you face to face, not virtually.

My friend and fellow Captivate user, Alice Acker, will host this event. To see as many Captivate users as possible, we’ve limited each appointment to a maximum of 30 minutes.  If you are part of a project team, we can accommodate your team at the appointment. These times are designed to limit disruption of your Adobe Learning Summit or DevLearn schedule. We’re co-located with the conferences at the MGM Grand, so there is no need to Uber or bike to us. We’ve made this super convenient for you.

Please bring me your most headache-inducing project, and I’ll do my best to solve your quandaries.  Since these spots are limited, make sure to sign up now with your top 3 appointment choices. The slots will be filled on a first come, first served basis. We’ll do our best to schedule you for one of them. If you just want to drop in to say hi, I’d love to see you. But, please make sure that you register so we get an idea of how many Captivate users to expect.

Once you’re successfully registered, you’ll get an email confirmation of your appointment, directions to the session, and a link to upload the project. It will really help if I can review it before the session. All information will be kept confidential. What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.

Looking forward to meeting you. Tot weldra in Vegas!

Lieve a.k.a. Lilybiri

This is the link to the registration form Form to complete


Dynamic buttons

In the archive you'll find several articles about shape buttons, which appeared with version 6. I used to call them 'chameleon', because they can be useful as shapes (images), text containers, buttons, and recently also for the automatic feedback text appearing on question slides and with interactive objects. Maybe you are not yet aware of this aspect of shape button? You can insert a variable as a label on the button. On runtime the value of the variable will appear. That value can be changed by actions, and the label will change in that case, hence my title 'Dynamic'. Some ideas to use this feature?

  • Localisation: if you use custom shape buttons on master slides (or timed for the rest of the project) to replace the play bar, you can change the label on those buttons based on the language choice. If the language is chosen from a dropdown list (learning interaction) or with radio buttons (learning interaction), insert the variable associated with that interaction. Combine this with the work flow explained in Branch Aware Quiz

  • Custom Question Slide: if you want to allow a limited number of attempts, you can add the attempt number on the Submit button, or you can change the label to 'Continue' after the last attempt. Of course you'll need a companion conditional action to change the functionality of the button as well.

  • Navigation: if you use shape buttons on the master slide, they cannot be hidden/shown. But you can change the value of the variable that acts as label on each slide. Using a Back/Next button, put a null value to the label on the first slide for the Back button, and change the Next button to an Exit or Return button on the last slide (you'll need to create a conditional action in that case as well).


Windows 10

Just a short warning: do not hurry with upgrading to Win10.  Be patient, Captivate 8 is not guaranteed to be fully functional in this new OS. Personally I will wait to see eventual issues on forums and in groups.