Captivate 8 - First Adventures

Review? Not really...

Lot of well-known Captivate users have already blogged about the new features in version 8 of Captivate, released this week:  Michael Lund and Jim Leichliter are not the only friends who published their review. If you are a regular visitor of this blog, you'll know that I don't want to talk about features before having been able to explore the final release and that I'm used to offer an article with at least one example movie to demo what I try to explain. Some will be disappointed that the included movies are not responsive projects, but a good old SWF's (sorry Mac-users). You'll see some of the less-talked about new enhancements in Captivate 8. 

Focus on?

Watch this first movie. Focus in this project was on:

  • new possibility to customize theme colors: I edited one of the new themes, based on a Kuler palette (imported in the Swatches) panel; for this palette I used the colorful new box-shot  of Captivate 7 as resource

  • the ability to save and reuse custom shapes: for the shape buttons I used a custom shapes that are now available to me in the shape library

  • creating Normal, Rollover and Down states for Shape buttons and save those states in one Shape button object style: all buttons in the movie are shape buttons with 3 states; I used two shape button object styles

  • shared actions: being able to define variables and literals as parameters

  • shared actions: dragging them from the Library onto slides or interactive objects to open immediately the Parameters dialog

  • shared actions: being able to exclude variables, literals as parameters; discovered some nifty tricks!  Maybe I'll offer them in the future

  • new character sets
The project is showing a typical dashboard, that allows branching to different parts of the movie. For the sake of simplicity each part is only one slide in this case. The number of visits to each part is visible when returning to the dashboard. I hope you'll also discover the total number of visits to all parts in that dashboard (red number). When all parts have been visited, something happens on the dashboard. If you want to play again, you'll be able to reset at the end. There is no playbar, no TOC.

Movie

Actions & Variables

Five user variables were created:

  • v_counter: tracks the total number of views of chapters
  • v_ch1: tracks the number of views of the first chapter
  • v_ch2, v_ch3 and v_ch4: similar for the three other chapters
Tip: To keep it simple I limited to four chapters. If you want to store the shared actions in a Library to be used in future projects, it is better to have the maximum number of chapters you'll ever use.

As you can see in the Library, I created/used three shared actions. Only the Reset functionality uses an advanced action (not described in this article).


1. FirstViewBt

This action is triggered by the four shape buttons that appear the first time on the dashboard slide. It is a standard action, that will replace the button itself by a second version, navigates to the first slide of the chapter to be visited, increments both the general v_counter and the specific v_chx variables. The advanced action (before saving as shared action) is visible in this screenshot:

When saving this action as a shared action, the dialog box looks different from Captivate 7:

Watch the icons in the first column (fuchsia colored rectangle): before entering the description, this column will have the Warning icon for the items that are automatically defined as parameters: objects/groups. In this example 3 objects had that status: the buttons (BullletRight_1 and Sec_1), the first slide of the chapter. However now you'll also see variables and literals as possible candidates for parameters! They are normally indicated by a check mark (green) in the first column. In this example: v_counter, '1'(literal used in Increment statements) and v_ch1. To turn such a candidate in a parameter, you have to check it in the third column (blue rectangle). In this case I choose to make turn the chapter specific variable v_ch1 into a parameter. The warning icon appeared, and will disappear when I confirm the entered description. Both v_counter and the literal '1' are no parameters, since they will not have to be changed when using the shared action for a different button.


2. NextViewBt

This action is triggered by the four shape buttons that replace the first view buttons (by previous described action). It is a simple version of FirstViewBt with only three statements:
  • increment v_counter
  • increment specific chapter user variable
  • jump to first slide of that chapter
Only two parameters in this case: the specific chapter user var (v_chx which was a candidate) and the first slide of the chapter (compulsary parameter). As for FirstViewBt, neither v_counter nor the literal '1' were promoted to parameter.

3. EnterDash

This action is triggered when entering the Dashboard slide. It is a conditional action with two decisions. In these screenshots you see the Advanced action from which I started. First decision 'None' will make the slide ready for a first view, second decision 'AllDone' will make the Next button (navigates to last slide) visible and do some more bonus tricks.

I'm smiling at this moment, because I 'hear' a lot of questions: 
  1. Why did I convert this into a shared action?
  2. What are the parameters for this shared action?
  3. Can the user vars be parameters, they are used more than once?
  4. Same question perhaps for the literal '0' that is used 8 times?
  5. ....yours ?
Or is it crystal clear? Let me know. One tip: I used the shared actions for this movie:

Movie2: reused shared actions


Dare to Share - part 3

A while ago I published two posts as an introduction to shared actions in Captivate 7. At that moment I promised a third part about reusing shared actions in other projects. But since I was aware of the imminent release of CP8, and as a professional procrastinator, I postponed this part. I will explain how I reused the shared actions described in this article for the second movie. Watch out next week.


Conclusion

For those who expected a complete review or Captivate 8, sorry!  These are not the only CP8 features that I like. Honestly there are also changes that I don't like. Maybe I will post more about both when I feel capable to judge better. 'Hurry slowly' as a great friend tells me all the time. The enhancements I started to discuss today, I have been exploring already (also during prerelease) more in depth. In Dutch there is a proverb, freely translated like 'Each bird sings his own song, depending on his beak'.  I need more time for my songs.

Upvote Upvoted 3
5 responses
Thank you, Normal, Rollover and Down states for Shape buttons and save those states in one Shape button - worth the upgrade just for this.
— Joanne
Not really the work flow, it is a bit more complicated. You can save a style for a shape button, and that style can have the three states, you can also set the font and color for the text. But the form of the button itself is not saved with the style. For some of the shape buttons in the first movie I created a freeform shape (bullet), that can now be saved. Then I applied the saved object style to the shape, and set it to be used as button.
— ir. Lieve Weymeis
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