Intro

Recently I published a blog about what seems to be 'hot' topic: how to replay a slide, how to reset a slide. That blog didn't include an example file.

When coaching a training I often use Captivate tutorials, more than videos. This particular topic needs such an interactive approach, to allow to experiment, to get a 'feeling' of the difference between Replay and Reset (with or without an On Enter action). For learners I provide the cptx-file. Here I will only share the HTML5 published output. 

You will see that I borrowed design elements from the Quick Start Project 'Safety'. The interactions were created from scratch.

Content and Tools

After a short rehearsal of terminology and the step-by-step workflows you'll be able to see 4 different examples:

• Slide 5  which is only based on the Timeline: staggered objects and effects. 
  The info button will show you the Timeline and a relevant part of the Advanced Interaction panel
  This slide is followed by a T/F quiz slide to check your observations.
• Slide 7: click/reveal slide, using multistate objects. The info button shows you the same information as for slide 5
  This slide is followed by a MCQ slide with multiple correct answers, to check what you learned.
  Both quiz slides are Knowledge Check slides. If you want to cheat you can go back to the previous slide. Navigation by TOC is also possible. The TOC is in overlay mode.
• Slide 9 : flipcard slide (with thanks to the QSP Alliance). Rather simple but worth seeing the difference between Replay and Reset.
• Slide 10: Drag&Drop slide set up as Knowledge Check slide.

You may detect several techniques like Forced view, which need using some user variables. Quiz slides do not use the default two-step Submit process, but show a Continue button when the Submit button has been clicked. 

Tutorial

You can watch the embedded version, or use this link to play a scalable version. I recommend to use the link. The embedded version seems to have long loading times. 

Animations?

You may have missed animations in the tutorial. There is a reason. While it used to be possible to Reset an animation, that feature is broken in the version 11.5.1. At least for the animated GIF which I created. I have already been searching since a couple of weeks for a workaround without success. I will create an OAM as well, to check if has the same issues. Too bad, it was a fun animation:

Intro

There are many ways to create a Click/Reveal interaction. Some are very old (with jump to slide), others are pretty old (show/hide) and lot depends on the exact situation. It is possible that I will make a complete analysis, although  I don’t think this will appeal to many users.

However my sense of justice is too keen, and I cannot  leave this type of comment (newbie)  without reacting:

“This is basic stuff right! Why is it so complicated?  “

If you want to know more, explore the discussion link.

I created a quick example of the most basic workflow which can be used. Will explain step-by-step.

Example

A two-slide project. The Click/Reveal interaction is on the second slide. You see three characters, which act as toggle buttons. When you click a character, a speech bubble will show up, when you click the character again, the speech bubble will disappear.

There is a Back button top left (but you can also use the Back button on the playbar which I have left in this project). You'll see that when revisiting the slide, the original situation is reset: no speech bubbles. Even if you leave the slide with one or more speech bubbles opened.

Step-by-step

Step 1 Characters to button

Download the Characters and insert them on the slide.  Check the option ‘Use as button’ in the Properties panel (red outline in screenshot below). Leave the option ‘Retain state on slide revisit’ unchecked (green outline)
TIP: you don’t have to do this three times. Select the three inserted Characters (using CTRL button to add to the selection, or by creating a selection rectangle which cuts the three characters. Check the option in the Properties and it will be done for all the Characters.

Step 2: Custom state

Select one of the Characters. Click the State view button in the Properties.  Look at the screenshot above, where you see the button with a Blue outline. The  Object state panel will appear, which will have 3 states because you have a ‘button’: Normal, Rollover and Down. I deleted the last two ‘InBuilt’ states. They were identical to the normal state. You can do that with the right-click menu as shown in this screenshot. The Down state was already deleted, here the Rollover state will be deleted. 

Now add a Custom State using the New State button. Make sure to choose Custom under the first dropdown list (click the triangle button). You can edit the default name (NewState1). You have seen in the previous screenshot that I labeled it ‘Answer’.

That state will be selected, and you can add the speech bubble (eventually even with audio attached to it) and or any other object you want. Use the stage, where all will be dimmed in the background except your new custom state:

Close the Object State panel using the Exit State button at the end of the top Big Button Bar:

Step 3: Actions

Select the Actions tab in the Properties panel for the selected Character button. For the On Success event  set up this action:

You may see how easy it is to detect the multistate object to choose from the second dropdown list, since its name appears at the top of the Properties panel.

IMPORTANT! You have to uncheck the option ‘Continue playing the Project’ (red outline). That will prevent the playhead to be released. Will not expand in this article on pausing the timeline.

Your toggle button (character) is ready.  Start testing using F11, Preview HTML in Browser.

Comparison with Show/Hide

What are the advantages of the described workflow over the older Hide/show workflow which was chosen by the user:

• Show/Hide will need a lot more objects on the slide. In the multistate workflow the character is the only object: it is used as button, and the bubble (eventually the audio and/or other objects) is in a state of the character.
• Since using 'Go to Next State' will loop between the Normal and the Custom state, there is no need for a close button. If you want to achieve the same with Show/Hide you can also create such a toggle button, but that means a tracking variable and a conditional advanced or shared action. If you don't want a toggle button, you need to add a close button to the group to be shown.
• One of the biggest advantages is the automatic reset when revisiting the slide. Because the option 'Retain state when revisiting the slide' is unchecked, revisiting the slide will result in having the Normal state for each of the Character buttons. If you use a Show/Hide workflow, you have to use the On Enter event of the slide to reset everything, which means another advanced or shared action.

Hope you understand why I labeled this post as being a 'super easy' workflow. Multistate objects are available since version 9, there is no reason why you want a more complicated workflow in the 3/4 last versions.

To be honest, there is one disadvantage: you cannot apply an effect to the Speech bubble when appearing.

Why?

Recently a Captivate posted a question in the Adobe forums.: ‘How to create a lightbox within a state of an object‘. She was upgrading an older project, where the developer used a slide for each lightbox, by using multistate objects to replace the multiple slides.  After having asked for some extra information, it turned out to be more complicated than just the creation of lightboxes.  It was about a two-step process for extra information:

1. Clicking a ‘question button’ would show the answer to the question as a popup (Click-Reveal workflow). That popup didn’t really need a way to close it, but clicking another question button should replace the content by new content. OP was correct that using a multistate object was the perfect workflow for this first step, with a Normal state which was invisible by setting Alpha (for the Fill) and Stroke both to 0. I have demonstrated this use multiple times in blogs.
   
   
2. The content needed to have a way to open a ‘lightbox’ (in the traditional sense explained before) with more information related to the question/answer already shown. 

Problem

Such an interactive object can be a button, a click box or… a hyperlink. Quite a while ago I wrote a couple of articles to demonstrate the power of hyperlinks which is ignored by many. However, for HTML5 output in the recent version (11.5.1) its use to run advance actions seems not always to be functtional, needs lot of testing. Originally when creating the sample output, I planned to use hyperlinks in most cases, but had to give up for the reason just explained. BTW all actions triggered by hyperlinks worked perfectly for SWF output. So I had to revert to buttons in most cases. I will explain the complete setup in a blog.

Example project

• Clicking a question button will show a popup which should contain the answer, and there is a (image used as) button to open the lightbox. The question buttons shows a ‘Current state’ when clicked.
  
  
• Clicking the button opens a lightbox: cover, shape with content, and a hyperlink used to close the lightbox. When the lightbox is closed, the question button will revert to a ‘Done state’. It is not a Visited state, but a custom state.

You can watch the project below (fixed resolution) or using this link (rescalable output)

Setup

Objects – timeline

See the setup, using this screenshot of the timeline panel:

From bottom to top:

• Five question buttons, which are shape buttons labeled SB_Quest1….SB_Quest5. They have a pausing point at the default 1.5secs. For those buttons I deleted the InBuilt Rollover and Down states, but added two custom states: ‘Current’ and ‘Done’. 
  

  
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• A group of shapes used as text container for the answers SS_Answer1…. SS_Answer5. I could have used a multistate object as well. I started using individual texts because I hoped to use a hyperlink for the lightbox switch.
  
  
• A shape used as Cover. Its position in the stack order is important: it needs to be above the answer and question objects, but under the multistate object SS_ExtraInfo. That cover is a shape, filled with dark gray, partially transparent. Beware: it is also used as text container: look for the text ‘Close Lightbox‘ which has been converted to a hyperlink triggering an advanced action.
  
  
• Multistate object SS_ExtraInfo which has a state to appear in the lightbox for each of the answers. The Normal state is empty (Alpha and Stroke shape = 0).
  

  
• Button Bt_Info (used a button from thitOt not necessary to be on top of the stack, Its position in the stack order is not important, because will be hidden when the lightbox appears.

Variable

Events and Actions

On Enter slide event: "EnterAct"

This simple non-conditional action is meant to set the slide to its original situation:

If I had used a multistate object for the Answer popups, with a Normal state that was invisible (like for the SS_ExtraInfo), I would not have needed the second command (Hide Gr_Answer). By hiding the Cover, I also hide the hyperlink since it is a text in the cover. No need to hide SS_ExtraInfo since the Normal state is invisible. Why didn’t I use a hyperlink instead of the button Bt_Info? Because the advanced action was not triggered as it does when using SWF output. Too bad.

Question buttons:  Shared Action "QuestAct"

Another non-conditional action, based on this Advanced action:

I converted it to a Shared action, with these 6 parameters:

Button Bt-Info: Advanced action "ShowLightBox"

This is an action with 6 decisions. The first decision is non-conditional, the five remaining decisions are conditional because a different state has to be shown based on the question number in the variable v_quest.  Those decisions have only one command and can easily be created with the duplicate decision button.

Hyperlink: Advanced action "CloseAct"

The hyperlink in the Cover shape triggers a 6 decision action very similar to the previous one:

More…

You can extend the described workflow to more than 5 questions. The shared action can be used, and you may have to add decisions to the two longer advanced actions.

I didn’t provide a close button on the answer popups, for learners who don’t want to see the lightbox, for whom the answer popup is sufficient. It could be done with a hyperlink or an extra button.

It would be possible to have something happen when all question buttons have been clicked, but that will require the creation of one extra variable for each button, a Boolean to be toggled from 0 to 1 if a button has been clicked.  The check for the extra happening has to be added to the CloseAct.

§Intro

In previous posts I have talked about the advantages and disadvantages of the 6 button types, and how you can edit the colors of SVG’s, even in states and when they are used as buttons. SVG’s, being vector images are excellent for use in projects to be viewed on multiple devices, whether it is a scalable non-responsive or a responsive project (fluid boxes or breakpoint views).

Unique about SVG’s used as buttons, is the fact that you have control over the clickable area, which is not the case for other  button types. In the example below you’ll see buttons which would have been impossible to realize with any other button type.

Example file

Watch this two-slide project. The Title slide is taken from the QSP ‘Legacy’ (non-responsive), but I have changed fonts (not fan of Arial). The second slide uses an edited master slide from that same QSP. Click the buttons in circular image in any sequence, and you can also reset the slide (used the Scenario 2 technique described in Replay Slide)

Setup Clickable Area

Six Buttons

The 6 buttons in the circular arrangement have overlapping bounding boxes. Have a look at this screenshot:

By unchecking the option ‘Enable Click in Bounding Box’ the clickable area will be limited to the space within the colored shapes, and those do not overlap. 

I kept only the Normal and Visited InBuilt states of the buttons . In the Visited state I added an icon (also SVG) from the Assets panel,  colored in the same color of the button (which was dimmed). That icon also covered up the number, which was part of the button SVG. Here is the Object state panel for button 6:

Reset Button

For this button I used an icon from the Assets panel. and added a text caption close to this button. The bounding box of the SVG is encreased so that the Reset text looks to be inside of the box. In this case The default option under the Style tab ‘Enable Click in Bounding Box’ remained checked. It now looks as if the learner can click both text and icon. I didn't use the padding option, which would make the icon smaller inside the bounding box.

Other Items

The information is stored in a multistate shape, where the Normal state is invisible (Alpha and Stroke set to 0). A two state shape is used for the final image, which is in a custom state of a circular shape. That circular shape also has an invisible Normal state. 

For the multistate objects the option ‘Retain State on Slide Revisit’ remains unchecked. Since the Reset button is re-entering the slide, all multistate objects will automatically revert to their Normal states.

Actions and variables were custom made, I didn’t use any of the click-reveal interactions from the QSP’s. Sorry about that, but I’m so used to create that type of interactivity that it comes almost naturally. One tracking variable for each buttons was needed to have the final image appear after all buttons have been clicked. 

Intro

A week ago I published a first showcase, explaining how to replicate the hotspot workflow for VR projects on a 2D image. This second article about using hotspots for a 2D image is not duplicating as closely that same feature: instead of showing the popups for a duration defined by the developer, this workflow will offer a close button for the popups. The learner decides when to close a popup and proceed (eventually) to the next hotspot. I also used a technique, often labeled as 'lightbox': to have the popup stand out of the rest of the content, it will have a semi-transparent cover in the background dimming the rest of the slide.

Example movie

I used the same image (welcome screen) and content for the popups as i the first workflow. Only  some small color changes and changes in the location have been applied . Watch this 3-slide movie: after the title slide (doubles as poster image) you can test the new hotspot slide, and the last slide gives a short Step-by-step list if you want to use this slide in your project. 

Try it out: quick workflow

You can download the project file from this link

If you do not need to have more than 6 hotspots, and you are happy with the resolution of the project (1024x627) and its Theme (Pink Icing), you can quickly use the hotspot slide using these steps:

1. Create a blank project, with that resolution and theme. Create your title slide, and eventually a poster image as explained in his older article
2. Copy the hotspot slide from the sample project and paste it into your project. The object names will get an extra number, but you don't have to bother about that. The advanced and shared action is automatically adapting to the new names.
3. Select the Image..  'WelcomeScreen.png' and replace it by your image (Properties panel).
4. Move eventually the hotspots to the right location. If you need less than 6 hotspots you can hide some of them in output. Deleting is also possible. Start by hiding or deleting the last hotspot(s). The sequence of the hotspots is starting with HS_Responsive (first in first row), going to the right and then to the second row. Last hotspot is for the PPT.
5. Open the multistate object SS_Info.. which is just on top of the 'Cover' (needs to be there). Click the State view button in the Properties panel to open the Object State panel.
6. Leave the Normal state alone. Replace the content in the other states by your content (follow the sequence described under 4.)  You don't need to rename the states, nor to delete the last unused ones (just leave them as they are).
7. Start testing with 'Preview HTML in Browser' (F11).