Intro

In my first blog post  and video about the recently released Captivate 6 I mentioned that my favourite feature is not Themes (certainly not :-)), nor HD Video, nor HTML5 publishing, nor Quiz enhancements, nor Actors/interactions but the new Shapes! Beware: I do not love them because of the design of the default shapes (why not enable adding custom shapes, or inserting SVG-images), not because of the editing possibilities (too limited, lacking tools for editing Bezier curves like pen),  little bit because they are vector-based, but really because they double both as Text containers and as BUTTONS! 

Today I want to show you why Shape buttons are for me the feature that will save me a lot of time.

Difference between buttons and Shape buttons

Both regular buttons and Shape buttons have the same list of possible actions (on Success/After Last attempt), including the possibility to execute an Advanced action or Javascript. 

Creating a custom shape button is easier than creating a normal button: you can use one of the default shapes, convert it to a freeform shape and edit to your wish. You can fill it not only with a solid color, but also with gradients, with textures or with an image. 

The real value of a Shape button over another button (or click box) is:

1. You can use a shape button on a Master slide, even on the Main master slide, which is not possible for any other interactive object, not even for the Rollover slidelet (kind of hybrid between non-interactive and interactive). This is a timesaver, because it allows to put custom buttons that have to appear on all slides on the main master slide, or if you want different sets of buttons, put them on normal master slides.
   Drawback: the shape button on the master slides will not have an ID (label), so it cannot be addressed by an (advanced) action. I logged a feature request to have this ability in future versions. Another drawback is that for buttons on the Main Master slide, you do not have an option 'Master slide objects on top', so you have to be careful that the button is not covered up in the normal slides.
2. You can put it on the first slide of a project and set its Timing for the rest of the project. That is an alternative for buttons that you want to see on all slides. Moreover the shape button will have an ID in this case, which means that it can be addressed by an (advanced) action, like being hidden on certain slides.
   Drawback: an issue that I already discussed in this article 'Stack order and Master slides' is that the button will normally be at the bottom of the stack on slides where it is not really present (from the second slide on in this case). It will be even under the master slide objects, and unchecking 'Master slide objects on top' doesn't help. It is possible however to check the option 'Place object on top' when timing for the rest of the project.

Here are some negative points:

A normal button has three states: Up, Over and Down to show user's activity, the Shape buttons are more limited: when pressed the image will shrink a little bit. For small shapes this is not that visible. 

Contrary to normal buttons, a shape button cannot have a score attached to it, nor report to a LMS. They will show up in the Advanced Interaction view (F9). 

Shape Buttons on Master slide - setup

After checking the option 'Use as button' in the properties panel, you can choose to have a Hint caption (no Success/Failure captions possible), to show the hand cursor, have a double click and opt for a click sound. All those are to be found in the Options accordion. 

Do not look for a Timing accordion, there is none because the Master slides have no fixed duration, they'll adapt to the slides that do use the master slide. And objects on the master slides will always be shown for the duration of the slide. But you have the possibility to have a pause for the shape button, also to be found in the Options accordion. Timing of that pause will always be at the end of the slide (like for click boxes).

As I mentioned before no label cannot be attributed to smart shapes on a master slide. They all show up the same way on the Timeline panel as you can see in the screenshot.

Use Cases

Shape buttons on Master slides are great if you want to have them on all slides (Main Master slides) or on a lot of slides (normal master slides) and you do not need the ability to change them on individual slides. Some examples:

• A Next/Back button as you did see an example in previous screenshot. For this Next button I used the simple action 'Go to Next Slide'. The shape is a rectangle, filled with an imported image.
• Toggle buttons to show/hide Playbar or Closed Captions. I use a standard advanced action, not a simple action so that the play head is not released (see recent video about simple vs standard action)

Shape Buttons Timed for rest of Project - setup

Such a shape button, on a normal slide, can be labeled as you can see in the screenshot below.

Check the same option 'Use as button', and in the Options panel you'll find besides the Hint, now also Success/Failure captions. You'll miss the Pause option here, because it has been transferred to the Timing accordion that is now available, just like for normal buttons.  You can time the pause, but be careful: this setting will apply to every slide, and is not dependent on the slide duration, so do not pause too early. You can delay the timeline for the button, which is not possible for shape buttons on a master slide. In the screenshot the shape button, timed for the rest of the project, will show on each slide after 1 second and pause after 2 seconds. 

I checked the option Place Object on top, to avoid that the shape button could be covered by another object on the slide or on a master slide. This is not always necessary, but you have to be aware of the shape button being at the bottom of the stack if you do not check this option.

Use Cases

Shape buttons timed for rest of project allow you to time the pausing point or the duration of its timeline on each slide but they are really better suited than shape buttons on master slides if you want to hide/show them on some slides without having to create another master slide. And they are also great if you want to simulate a changing button to indicate the state when toggling. Here are a couple of examples:

• Next button has no sense on the last slide; with a timed for rest of project button this is easily solved by hiding the shape button on entering that last slide
• Audio toggle or Play/Pause button, showing the state: this will be the subject of my next video... will keep you informed

Buttons Category

In the Smart shape flyout panel you'll see a category 'Buttons'. Have a look at them, most have a simple action attached to them (Go to Last Visited slide, Open URL/File), but some trigger an Advanced action. And personally I hope that we soon will be able not only to create and save custom shapes in that panel, but also to edit/create the advanced actions attached to them.

Some examples of (advanced) actions for the buttons category:

1. Mute: is a simple action triggered by the audio button 'Assign cpCmndMute with 1'. Be careful, since it is a simple action, clicking on the button will release the playhead. You can convert it to a toggle by replacing the current action by 'Assign cpCmndMute with 1-cpCmndMute' but the issue with releasing the playhead will remain, and the button will not reflect the state (muted or not). I will explain in a video how to create a real toggle button for audio with changing states.
2. startSlide: triggered by both the Start and Home button is an advanced action:
   

   
   The first statement navigates to the first slide. Wondering about the strange expression? It is linked with the fact that slide numbers start with 0, so to navigate to slide 1 in the filmstrip you need number 0. The second statement releases the play head, will try to explain in a future blog post the changes to the advanced actions for pausing/releasing.
3. lastSlide: similar to the startSlide action:

Conclusion

I hope you understand why I like the shape buttons that much. And I will try to post more about them: tips to change the advanced actions, how to create changing states for toggle buttons etc. Let me know if you have other suggestions, please, post in a comment.

Intro

Another user asked for a solution to this problem, quoting:

" I'm creating a test where the students grade themselves between 1 and 5 on what they think their ability is for each category.. eg Public Speaking (1,2,3,4 or 5)

There is ten categories. But for each category, the answer they give needs to be multiplied by a certain number, which correlates to the importance of that skill in negotiating. eg

Public Speaking is important = ( number * 5 )

Maintaining Control Over Body Language is LESS important = ( number * 3 )

Questioning is the LEAST important = ( number * 1)

Initially she tried using the Likert question, but it has never a score. So I worked out another scenario

Example

Take the test: one subject only 'Will I be a good teacher'? The percentage at the end should reflect the grade of ability based on your estimations. 

My scenario

I used Multiple Choice Questions as Survey questions. And for once I appreciated the fact that Captivate makes no difference between text and numbers. This was a pleasant and useful discovery: if you use numbers instead of characters for the answers, the value of the system variable cpQuizInfoLastAnswerChoice will be an number and... you can use this number in calculations using advanced actions.This made the solution easy, was glad that my Captivate intuition was correct. I tried to make the solution as simple as possible, because the user was kind of a newbie to advanced actions. Each category will be one Multiple choice question, with the choice of numbers for the Numbering option. All questions have the same possibile answers corresponding with the five grades of ability: 

1. Very Poor,
2. Poor
3. Good
4. Normal
5. Excellent

When the user clicks the Submit button, the chosen answer number will be stored in the sysem variable cpQuizInfoAnswerChoice. This value changes after each answer and will be used to calculate the score for the subject.

Variables

I created some user variables:

• v_subject: will store the subject for this list of questions, will be populated in the title slide for the subject; I inserted a text caption on the MCQ master slide  above the Progress indicator to show the subject on each question slide. This variable will get its value by a simple action (Assign) On Enter of the Title slide.
• v_teacher: stores the cumulated score based on the estimated ability grades and the weight factor (depending on importance) for each category; this value will be calculated by an advanced action triggered by the Submit button. If there is no reason to keep this absolute score, the variable could be reused for another subject, and perhaps then you could better label it v_score.
• v_maxTeach: will be used to store the maximum score that could be obtained if the maximum ability was indicated everywhere. Of course it could be replaced by a literal value, and in the example this was 100. But I thought it would be more versatile to calculate this maximum score, to avoid dreaded maths...and the calculations are done in the same advanced action triggered by the Submit button.
• v_percTeach: will store the percentage for this subject, calculated from the variables v_teacher and v_maxTeach by an advanced action triggered on entering the 'score' slide.
• v_multi: the weight factor for a category, will be populated by a simple action on entering each question (category) slide.
• v_dummy: a variable necessary to compensate for the limited mathematical functionalities in Captivate, used only for calculations

Events - actions

On Enter Title slide: Simple action Assign v_subject with XXXX    (name of the subject)

On Enter Question slide (for each): Simple action Assign v_multi with .... (weight factor, number)

On Enter Score slide: Advanced action TeachCalcEnd

For each Submit button same Advanced action TeacherCalc

Advanced Actions

TeacherCalc: 

This action is triggered by Submit buttons

The variable v_dummy is first used to store the weight of the grade by multiplying v_multi with the chosen answer number (1-5); then the total score v_teacher is incremented with the result.

The same variable is used a second time to calculate the maximum possible score for this category by multiplying v_multi with 5 (maximum ability); and this is used to increment the maximum total score v_maxTeach.

I added the statement 'Go to Next Slide' so that the user doesn't have to wait for the playhead to reach the end of the question slide.

TeachCalcEnd:

Action, triggered on entering the last slide, which shows the percentage.

Rather simple maths to calculate the percentage from v_teacher and v_maxTeach and store it in the variable v_percTeach.

Some Timesaving tips

Start by creating the user variables, and then add the Text Caption with v_subject to the MCQ Master slide.

Create the title slide, with its On Enter action (assigning a value to v_subject), and duplicate it then for the other subjects. That way you have only to change the value With for the On Enter action and edit the text captions.

Insert only one MCQ slide after the title slide. Edit its text captions, add the simple action On Enter, create the advanced action TeacherCalc to be triggered by the submit button. I unchecked also dragged the Next button under the Clear button but since there is no Review, it could also have been unchecked.

Now duplicate the MCQ-slide 9 times: this will avoid to re-edit the answers, to relocate the buttons, to re-assign the simple action On Enter and the advanced action for the Submit button. Do not forget to edit the With field for the Simple action On Enter that will populate v_multi.

For the question slides in the other objects, you will have to duplicate the advanced actions if you use new variables to store the score (v_teacher), maximum score (v_maxTeach) and percentage (v_percTeach). The variables v_subject, v_dummy are reusable.

Intro

Users of Captivate 9 or later! 

You no longer need to use the work flow in this blog post, because this version 9 provides a new check box for Simple actions: if you uncheck 'Continue Playing the Project' the playhead will not be released.

Several times I answered the question: why should I create a standard advanced action to do something that is also possible with a simple action? This is one of the questions I treated in my first webinar (10th of May 2012) about Advanced actions: difference between simple, standard and conditional advanced actions. You can watch the recorded webinar On Demand using the link in the article:

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2012/04/training-power-of-advanced-actions-in-adobe-captivate-tips-and-tricks.html

For the demonstrations in that webinar I used Captivate 5.5. Meanwhile I offered another webinar about conditional actions (5th of July) but I think the recording is not yet available. That one was using Captivate 6. However what I explain in this article is valid for versions 5, 5.5 and 6.0.

Difference Simple/Standard

What do I mean by a 'simple' action, because that is not an official term in Captivate? It is an action defined in the Actions accordion of the Properties panel, either for a slide or for an interactive object, the place where you find the possible events (On Enter/Exit for slides, Success/Failure for objects). Such an action is limited to one statement.

A Standard advanced action can be triggered by the same events but will be defined in the Advanced Actions Dialog box. And you can create such an action with only one statement, seems strange because it takes more time,... but there is a very good reason!

This is not a public secret, but a lot of users are not aware of the fact that even if you have exactly the same statement in both, the behavior is different! In the example of the screenshots both actions are triggered by a button (On Success):

• When clicking a button that triggers a simple action, not only will the statement be executed but the playhead will be released. This means that it will continue and if you have nothing else to stop the playhead on the slide, it will advance at the end of the slide to the next slide.
• When clicking  a button that triggers an advanced standard action, only the statement will be done but the playhead is NOT released!

Video

I uploaded a video about this difference to my YouTube channel. It is not possible (too big) to embed the video here, this is only the poster. The link to the video is:

Simple versus Standard Advanced Action in Adobe Captivate

Intro

Favourites

Shape buttons

Object Grouping

Video

Intro

Example

Slides - events - objects

Variables

Intro

Example

Audio Object

Work flows to control Audio Objects

Play only first time

Stop audio when other audio starts

Other tweaks

Update

New version of this workflow, with example output to HTML5 and using new features can be found in this post:

Sequence Check slides (updated)

Intro

Example

Slides, objects, labels and events

Slide First: 

Slide Second

Variables/logic

Update: 

Intro

Example

Variables

Slides, events and actions

More possibilities

Intro

Example

1. to enter 2 answers at once (use CTRL to select the second item) - I provided partial scoring, 5points for each correct answer
2. to enter 1 answer, score 5 points
3. same widget is used for 2 choices and multiple answers possible - only correct/incorrect possible with a score of 15points

Listbox widget - functionalities

• Similar to other widgets, you have to create those user variables separately (see Using Captivate Widgets - some tips)
• The variables will store the chosen answer in the sequence they are chosen; you only need variables for the possible correct answers; in the example two answers were correct, so I defined two variables; the first answer chosen by the user will be stored in v_one, the second in v_two.
• Contrary to other widgets, you can have spaces after the commas for the field with items, the space will be considered however as a first character; for the variables avoid those spaces
• To make the font bigger, increase the size of the widget. It is a bit of trial and error to find a font that corresponds with other text. Do not worry about keeping the width/height ratio, the font will always keep a correct aspect. The widget bounding box is a lot bigger than the dropdown list itself, as you can see on this screenshot. Once I figured out the proper size, I used the size mentioned in the Transform accordion to change all the widgets to the same size.

• v_one, v_two, v_three to be (re-)used as associated variables in the Listbox Widgets on the question slides (used 2 on first questin, 1 on the second and 3 on the last)
• v_correct1, v_correct2, v_correct3 which will get the correct values on entering question slides 1/2 or based on choice for question slide 3; those are reused variables as well
• v_q1, v_q2, v_q3 are not reused, but will get the string 'Correct', 'Partially correct' or 'Wrong' for the question slides depending on the user's answer
• v_region is used on the third question slide, to store the choice for 'Flanders' (value = 1) or 'Wallonia' (value = 2)
• v_score, v_percent will store the score and percentage to be showed on the score slide.

Advanced actions

First Question Slide:

1. Failure: is a mimicked standard action, will always be true but overridden for partial or correct answers by the subsequent decisions (see screenshot in Gallery); it will show the Next button (initially invisible), Failure1 Text Caption and puts 'Wrong' in the user variable v_q1;
2. Partial: checks if at least one answer is correct, with an OR combination (see screenshot); it shows Next button, Partial Text Caption, hides the Failure1 caption, adds 5 points to the score and puts 'Partially correct' in the user variable v_q1. If the answer is totally correct, this condition is also true and statements will be executed, but part of them will be overridden by one of the Success decisions. The Next button that was made visible by the Failure statements, will remain visible.
3. Success1: because the correct answers have no imposed sequence, we need two success decisions (second has v_one and v_two interchanged). This action (see screenshot) checks if both answers are correct, shows the Correct Text Caption, hides the Partial Text Caption, adds another 5points to the score (combined with the previous 5 = 10 points), and puts 'Correct' in the user variable v_q1.
4. Success2: similar to previous, just switch v_one and v_two in the condition.

Second Question Slide:

Third Question Slide:

1. Failure: is a mimicked standard action, totally similar to the one in btSubmit3; it will be overridden by one of the subsequent decisions if the answer is totally correct
2. till 7. Success1..... Success6: for the same reason I needed to have 2 Success decisions for BtSubmit1, since now 3 items are correct there are 1x2x3 = 6 possible combinations, hence 6 decisions. One of them, Success4 has a screenshot in the Gallery. It is similar to the Success decisions for the first question slide.

Score slide

Conclusion

Intro

"I have developed an MCQ captivate project that presents the emergency nurse with randomised scenarios of patients that they have to assign the correct level of urgency.  The levels of urgency are 1 through to 5, were 1 is the most urgent and 5 the least.  Captivate produces an accuracy %, but I would also like the percentage of over or under assignment of urgency category."

The user provided me with a small example with 3 MCQ slides and allowed me to publish this file here ... on the condition that I offered a solution of course.

Example SWF

Play this SWF to see the result. On the score slide the number of incorrect answers that were too high or too low. It is not a percentage - for 3 slides it is a bit ridiculous - but calculating the percentage as well is possible of course.

Variables - actions & triggers

No one will doubt that at least one counter is needed, which will be incremented with each incorrect answer. Although I could achieve it with one counter, found it easier to create two:

• v_low  will store the number of incorrect answers that were under assignment of urgency category
• v_high  will store the number of incorrect answers that were under assignment of urgency category

1. one that will be executed after a correct answer; in this case this can be left at Continue or eventually Go to Next Slide
2. one that will be done after last attempt (on question level) for a wrong answer, which we will have to turn into an advanced conditional action

• either the answer was too high, then the v_high counter has to be incremented, will be the THEN part
• or it was too low and the v_low counter increments, the ELSE part

IF cpQuizInfoAnswerChoice is greater than B       (B is the correct answer)

THEN   Expression  v_high = v_high + 1

ELSE    Expression v_low = v_low + 1

IF cpQuizInfoAnswerChoice is greater than v_correct

THEN   Expression  v_high = v_high + 1

ELSE    Expression v_low = v_low + 1