Intro
If you have read my first
blog about this major update, you will know that the extended functionality of SVG’s for use as buttons is one of my favorites. I didn' t mention that you get some editing features within Captivate. Thisat means that you don’t have to do a roundtripping with Illustrator (or use another vector editing application) if you just want to change some colors. This post is meant for those who are rather new to vector images, and the way paths are used. Next post will be about roundtripping with Illustrator for more complicated editing.
You may also ignore that the new Assets Panel (wait for an in-depth exploration in the near future) includes a set of ‘icons’ which are SVG’s. The hotspots used in 360 slides are SVG's as well, the editing functionality was added to make customizing their colors possible. All SVG’s in your project end up in a dedicated folder of the project Library.
Remember: SVG used as button is only possible for HTML5 output, not for SWF output
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Example slide
The example uses only included assets from the Assets panel, to be found in the Audio and Icons part. All icons have edited colors (not meant as a design example) to illustrate the workflow I will explain in this post (and later on in an interactive video). The biggest SVG in the center of the slide is configured as a button. You can click it as many times as you want, you’ll be able to listen to some of the audio assets. There is no poster image in this example, just the default Play button.
Step-by-step ‘Edit colors’
I will explain this for the Normal state of the big SVG which you clicked in the example slide.
1. Insert SVG and resize
As I explained in the intro, this SVG is one of the Icons in the new Assets panel. Insert it from that panel (name ‘Cover’). You can resize either by using the Options tab of the Properties panel for the SVG, or by dragging a corner with the mouse while keepoing SHIFT pressed to preserve the width-height Ratio. Since this is a vector image, you’ll see that it remains crisp even when enlarged considerably. The original icon uses a uniform dark grey. I check the option to use it as a button, and uncheck the option to make the whole bounding box clickable (Enable Click in Bounding box). You can see that the bounding box extends above the image. There is an option to ‘Fit to Bounding box’ but it would have distorted the SVG.
Step 2: Edit mode
To enter edit mode for the SVG double click the SVG. You find the tooltip when hovering over the Fill in the Properties panel. Do not use the button ‘Edit SVG’, which would let you choose an editing application on your system, nor the option Edit with Illustrator.
Step 3: Select a ‘path’
A vector image is composed mostly from several paths, which can have a width (may be variable) and/or a Fill. The image I used as example has 3 paths, all closed and with a fill. You select a path by clicking it. Selected path will have a blue surrounding line as you can see in this screenshot:
Step 4: change color
Click the Fill icon in the Properties panel to open the Color dialog box. For this simple demo slide I used the color wheel to select a color. In a normal project I would have used the Theme Colors palette of course. Click OK to confirm the color change. Repeat that workflow to the remaining shapes.
SVG button states
When you convert a SVG to a button, the InBuilt states Rollover and Down are added automatically. You can use the edit workflow described above for each of those states. I added also the Visited state (with a speech bubble) and the custom state ‘Done’ which appears after you have listened to the 5 available audio clips. Here is the Object state panel of the big SVG button:
The Visited state is selected in this screenshot. Look at the Properties panel: you see that the opacity is reduced to 50%. This always applies to the full SVG, but in this case only to this state of course. You see a user variable inserted in the added speech bubble. That bubble has no reduced opacity, it is not part of the original SVG but an added shape£.
More?
Main topic is finished, you may stop reading if you want. But for the curious fans, the audio clips are attached to a state in a second multistate object, which is a shape to which I added an icon in the Normal state (no audio) and an audio clip with its name to the other states.
The Advanced action triggered by the big SVG buttone:
No need to trigger the Visited state, it appears automatically after the first click on the SVG button.
