Tips for 'Fluid' Quiz Slides

Intro

When publishing my first reflections on Fluid Boxes work flow versus Breakpoint View work flow I didn't mention my expectations for a smoother creation of Quiz slides using FB's. In my experience with responsive projects in previous versions, the most frustrating part were those (damned?) quiz slides. You are probably aware of the very strict rules to honor for quiz slides: need to be careful with 'embedded' objects which include functionality that can be broken. Styling quiz/score slides is tough even in normal (blank) projects and turns into a nightmare when having to do it for up to 5 breakpoint views. Every post I published about quizzes gets a lot of visitors. Many questions about quizzes are posted on the forums as well. This explains why I listed Quizzes as second most important stumbling block for Captivate users in this article.

The present post is not (yet) the promised upgraded version of the most popular article I ever wrote about questions, only a summary of tips I discovered while exploring the Fluid Boxes work flow for quiz slides (score slide will be subject of a later post). If you are new to Fluid Boxes, please take some time to read the articles posted by Zeeshan. Up till now, he published 3 but promised more on their way:

Using Fluid Boxes - Knowledge Facts 3

Quizzing Master Slides -Setup Fluid Boxes

All quiz slides, and the score slide, are based on a dedicated Master slide. Master slides have embedded objects (no individual timeline): Title, Question, Answer Area with Answers, buttons, feedback messages, progress indicator to mention some. The functionality of the quiz is embedded in those master slides (two-step Submit process, updating quizzing system variables, tracking attempts on question/quiz level, review and retake on score slide, etc). 

if you choose the Fluid Box work flow for a responsive project in Captivate 2017, the included themes will also have Fluid boxes on the quizzing master slides. There is one exception: the Likert master slide has no Fluid Boxes because Likert questions are not supported for responsive projects. Each theme needs to have at least a main master slide and 6 daughter master slides. Besides the Blank master slide which is essential for Software simulations and PPT-import, the other 5 daughter master slides are all about quizzes: MCQ,T/F,FIB,Sequence; Matching; Hotspot; (Likert = not supported in responsive); Result. 

The Setup for the quizzing master slides is common for all included Themes. I will explain extensively the most used master slide (MCQ, T/F...) and summarize only the differences for the other quizzing master slides. The score slide, which causes a lot of issues at this moment, will be explained in a future blog post, hoping that some of the problems will already have dissipated by a patch?

Setup Fluid Boxes in MCQ,T/F,FIB,Sequence Master slide

This is the most used master slide for sure. You have the Root fluid box (ID/ FB_8) containing 6 child Fluid Boxes. The ID's I mention for the Fluid boxes are from the master slides. Apparently the ID has to be unique as usual. When a quiz slide is created based on a master slide the ID will change: 3 characters will be inserted, referencing to the slide number. Example: FB_MS5_10 is the fluid box for a question based on the MCQ master slide, originally on slide 5. Beware: that ID will not change when you reorder the slides, which can make it quite confusing if you are used to reorder a lot. The Root fluid box (ID/ FB_8) is set up this way.

  • Flow: Vertical (has 6 child fluid boxes)
  • Wrap: Squeeze in a column , which means the child fluid boxes will never be rearranged. the 80% has no consequences, because stretch to fit is activated.
  • Horizontal Alignment: Center with Stretch to fit activated
  • Vertical Alignment: Space around
  • Padding: none, which means the space around has no effect on the child fluid boxes

The 6 child fluid boxes, from top to bottom,have this content and setup:

Title Fluid Box (ID: FB_9)

  • Flow: Horizontal - has mostly only one item, the title shape or caption
  • Wrap: Wrap to Next Row
  • Horizontal Alignment: Space around with 'Stretch to fit' activated
  • Vertical Alignment: Middle Align with 'Stretch to fit' activated
  • Padding: none, which means theoretically the title could touch the left and right side of the fluid box/slide. Personally I avoid that by adding a small horizontal padding (5-10px).

Tip: in theme 'Clear' the title overlaps with a design element. You can change the Vertical alignment to Bottom, and eventually increase the height of this first child fluid box to fix that. Another solution is to turn off that design element by unchecking the option 'Show Main Master Slide Objects.

Later on you'll see that the Advanced answers feedback messages will cover up this FB. Be careful when resizing and moving those messages. You could mess up the arrangement of this Title fluid box. Best way is to unlink those messages from the FB before touching them.

Question Fluid Box (ID: FB_10)

  • Flow: Horizontal (but has mostly only one item, the question shape or caption); text in that container is vertically aligned to top, to allow wrapping of longer text questins
  • Wrap: Wrap to Next Row
  • Horizontal Alignment: Space around with 'Stretch to fit' activated
  • Vertical Alignment: Middle Align with 'Stretch to fit' activated; for the inserted text placeholder text is aligned at the top; you could eventually change that to middle as well if you don't have long questions.
  • Padding:  50px horizontal (text placeholder is indented from left and right side of the slide/fluid box). If the focus is on smartphones, this padding could be too big (lot of smartphones have only a width of 320px).

Answers Fluid Box (ID: FB11)

  • Flow: Horizontal 
  • Wrap: Wrap to Next Row
  • Horizontal Alignment: Space around with 'Stretch to fit' activated
  • Vertical Alignment: Middle Align with 'Stretch to fit' activated; 
  • Padding:  50px horizontal (placeholder is indented from left and right side of the slide/fluid box); 20px vertical, the inserted answer area doesn't touch the top and bottom of the Fluid box. Comment about this being maybe too much for small screens is valid here as well.

Tips: the individual answer placeholders cannot be resized in the master slide (as is the case since CP6). They are designed to have only one line (contrary to the question placeholder which has space for multiple lines). If you have answers that are pretty long, font size will be decreased to squeeze the answer in the available space. If answers have different lengths, this could result in  different font size for the answers which is certainly not wanted (see image below). Here are two workarounds:

  1. If you don't mind the font size to be decrease but want the same font size for all the answers on a slide, check the option 'Enable Uniform Text Scaling' in the Properties panel for the slide. Eventually you can decrease the mininum font size which is set pretty high in 2017 (14p, minimum was 10p in previous versions).

  2. If you don't want to have the font decreased, but prefer text wrapping, you have to resize the individual answer containers on the side (not possible on the master slide). Start by increasing the container height for the longest answer, use the Align menu ro resize all to the same height, move them as far away from each other and Distribute vertically. Eventually you can decrease the vertical padding to have more space, and/or make this Fluid Box higher, which will decrease the height of the other boxes. This work flow is certainly necessary if you allow shuffling of the answers. Whenever the answer cannot fit in the container anymore the usual icon 'read more' will appear. 

In this image you'll see the result: Default setup on top, in the middle the result when 'Enable Uniform Text Scaling' is activated and at the bottom the same answers after manually resizing, moving and distributing vertically.

If your goal is a good experience on smartphones, I would recommend to reduce the padding in this Fluid box: 2x50px horizontally is a lot if the browser has only 320px in the width. 

Messages (ID: FB_15)

Since the Feedback messages are all in the same location, this had to be a Fluid Box of the Static type to allow overlapping objects. 

Issues: The usual problem for editing those messages remains: to edit a message you have to get all other messages out of the way, since they are embedded (they don't have a separate timeline). which means you cannot hide them on the stage  If the messages are the same on all quiz slides, you can edit them - before inserting quiz slides - in Preferences, Quiz, Default Labels (same for the button labels).
However if you want individual messages on the quiz slides themselves, I used to move each message to be able to edit the one below. Problem is that they will be moved over another Fluid box, and that means you cannot select them anymore.  I thought to use the Arrange menu but.... it is not available on quiz slides, only on the quizzing master slides! Not available in the right-click menu, dimmed in the Align toolbar. I tried to move the message in the scratch area (horizontally) for editing, but with the focus loss when zooming in, this is a real pain. Best way I detected (time consuming) is:

  • Edit the top most message in place (mostly Correct); since most of the messages are in a (semi) transparent shape/caption, increase the Alpha to cover up the other messages for editing.
  • Move the top message out of the way (I use shortcut keys like Shift-Up)
  • Edit the next message (same for Alpha as for the first one)
  • Move it also out of the way
  • Do not forget the Retry message if you have multiple attempts
  • When finished, use 'Reset Master Slide' to move all the messages back in their Fluid Box (FB_12). Since the object styles will be reset as well, the Alpha of the shapes/captions will be reset to the initial value. Beware: be careful not to override object styles in this case (indicated by + sign next to style name).

Here is some good news: if you choose multiple Failure messages (up to 3 still) because you have multiple attempts, those extra Failure messages (#2 and #3) will appear over the Answer FB. Contrary to messages moved over that box, these can be selected and edited easily. When previewing/publishing the slides all Failure messages will appear in the same location although being in different locations on the stage.

When using Advanced Answer options for MCQ, one correct answer, to show feedback messages for each answer, another problem appears.The text captions for the feedback are very small, and in the top right corner (over the Title Fluid Box), slightly off stage. Depending on the number of answers, some will appear lower, over the Answer Fluid Box.

Buttons Fluid Box (ID: FB_16)

  • Flow: Horizontal 
  • Wrap: Symmetrical, which is almost the same as One Row. Only when the number of buttons is even, will you have a rearrangement in two rows.
  • Horizontal Alignment: Space around with "Stretch to fit" not activated
  • Vertical Alignment: Middle Align with Stretch to fit not activated
  • Padding: 0px horizontal and 2px vertical

The maximum amount of buttons is 6: two Review navigation buttons, Clear, Back, Skip and Submit. If you are used never to insert Back and Skip buttons (which is my normal setup) you can better increase the font size (now 20px) to 28px or even 30px. If the option 'Enable Uniform Text Scaling' enabled, the label will rescale nicely and especially the small symbols << and << on the Review navigation buttons will be readable even on small screens. The buttons don't have the option 'Maintain aspect ratio' enabled, which means that the width only will be resized.

Progress indicator Fluid Box (ID: FB_17)

  • Flow: Horizontal 
  • Wrap: Wrap to next row.
  • Horizontal Alignment: Center Align "Stretch to fit" not activated
  • Vertical Alignment: Middle Align with Stretch to fit not activated
  • Padding: none

This fluid box has only one text caption with the progress indicator, in font size 12p which is smaller than the minimum font size. The text will never rescale even if 'Enable Uniform Text Scaling' is activated.

Setup Fluid Boxes in Matching Master slide

This master slide has one extra child Fluid box for the Column Titles. The Answer Fluid box is bit different. The ID's of the fluid boxes on this master slides are:

Root Fluid Box FB_18

Title Fluid Box FB_19

Question Fluid Box FB_20

Column Title Fluid Box FB_21

  • Flow: Horizontal, has two text placeholders for the column titles
  • Wrap: Squeeze in a row.
  • Horizontal Alignment: Center Align "Stretch to fit" not activated
  • Vertical Alignment: Middle Align with "Stretch to fit" not activated
  • Padding: none
  • Answer Fluid Box FB_22: this Fluid box has now two answer areas, linked by the line indicators
    Messages Fluid Box FB_23
    Button Fluid Box FB_24
    Progress Indicator Fluid Box FB_25

    Setup Fluid Boxes in Hotspot Master slide

    This master slide has only 5 child Fluid boxes, because Question and Answer are now in one box. Moreover it is a Static box, which means overlapping objects are possible. These are the ID's of the boxes:

    Root Fluid Box FB_26

    Title Fluid Box FB_27

    Question Fluid Box FB_28: static fluid box, will contain the image with the hotspots

    Messages Fluid Box FB_29
    Button Fluid Box FB_30
    Progress Indicator Fluid Box FB_31

    General tips

    I would recommend to activate the option 'Enable Uniform Text Scaling' for question slides in most circumstances. Since this option is at slide level, it will be valid for all Fluid boxes on the slide. 

    Avoid to override object styles, that is a general rule but even more necessary for quiz slides. It will happen that you want to reset the Master slide and in that case all styles will be reset to the Default style. If you want to change a style, do not hesitate to save the edits to those default styles. 

    Preview is never WYSIWYG certainly not when you are using the slider during preview to see the changes for other screen resolutions. Example: it often happens during Preview that the text in long answers (even when manually resized and redistributed) seem to be cut off for small screens; when published all looks mostly a lot better.