Captivate Timelines: color coding and shortcut keys

Intro

This last article about the Timeline is sort of a bonus for those who want to know 'everything' about the timeline panel. The color codes can be a quick visual help to recognize object timelines, and I personally use the shortcut keys quite a lot to avoid the many mouse movements to the different tabs in the Properties panel. 

If you have problems with the used terminology, maybe you missed some information from this articles, already published:

Captivate's Timelines demystified - Intro

Video Timeline demystified (cpvc)

Captivate's Timelines cptx-project

Pausing Captivate's Timeline (cptx)


Color coding

The color coding is the same for master slide timelines and slide timelines.  The hexadecimal code is just an indication because a lot of the timelines have a gradient fill..

  • Audio timeline: dark grey (about #4E5156)
  • (Master) slide timeline: beige (about #DBD7CE)
  • Placeholder objects: orange (about #DCC399) with some exceptions (Content/Rollover Caption/Rollover Image)
    • Content Placeholder: light blue (about #AFD7FF)
    • Placeholders for Rollover Caption/Image: green (about #BFDD8B)
  • Static objects: light blue (about #BEE8FB). Static objects are Text Captions, Text Animations, Shapes (not used as button), Highlight Boxes, Web objects, SVG's, Images, Videos, Animations, Characters, HTML animation. There are some exceptions
    • Rollover Caption/Image have the green color like for the placeholder (about #BFDD8B)
    • Rollover Slidelet is sort of a hybrid, between static and interactive: is also green (about #BFDD8B)
    • Zoom object: also green (about #BFDD8B)
    • Static widget/interaction: also green (about #BFDD8B)
  • Mouse object: beige like the slide timeline (about #DBD7CE)
  • Interactive objects: green (about #BFDD8B). Those include the buttons, click boxes, Text Entry Boxes, Shapes used as buttons, Learning interactions (static and interactive)
  • Effect timelines: light red (#FBDAE1), turning to darker saturated red (#F584A7) when selected

  • A selected timeline, with the exception of the slide audio  at the bottom, and effect timelines will always be blue (about #99BCBF)

Shortcut keys

I love shortcut keys, once published my favorites for moving/resizing objects (which are still functional). The timeline panel has also several shortcut keys, which can save time because you don't have to switch to the Properties panel all the time. Some of the shortcut keys also work for Effect timelines, but not all.
 

Zooming : Zooming in/out has to be done with the slider at the bottom of the Timeline panel. No shortcut keys are available.  

Spacebar or F3: alternative shortcuts for the play button on the timeline panel or the option Play Slide (confusingly stored under the big button Preview). This method (no Preview) can be used for editing timing, for synchronizing. Use this 'Play slide' (or scrub) to position the Playhead, and you can then easily synchronize start times of objects with this Playhead position. Inserting an object when the playhead is at a certain frame will result in having the object timeline starting with that frame.

HOME/END: moves the playhead to the start/end of the slide timeline

CTRL-E: to extend the duration of a selected object till the end of the slide.
This shortcut key is not valid for individual Effect timelines

CTRL-L: to move the start of an object timeline to the Playhead position, a great way to have multiple objects appearing on the same moment  (still waiting for CTRL-R to align end of timeline with playhead)
This shortcut key is not valid for individual Effect timelines but they'll move automatically with the object timeline   

CTRL-P: to move the start of an audio timeline to the Playhead position

LEFT/RIGHT arrow: moves start of an object timeline 0,1sec in the indicated direction. Applied effect timelines move with the object timeline. Shortcut keys also work for audio timelines
This shortcut key is valid for individual Effect timelines, after selecting they can be moved independently from the object timeline

CTRL-LEFT/CTRL-RIGHT arrow: moves start of an object timeline 1sec in the indicated direction (also audio timelines), applied effect timelines will move along.
This shortcut key is valid for individual Effect timelines, after selecting they can be moved independently from the object timeline

SHIFT-LEFT/SHIFT-RIGHT arrow: decrements/increments duration of slide timeline or object timeline with 0,1sec. Applied effect timelines will not be changed. This means that an effect timeline could end up being outside of the object timeline; in that case the effects will play but not with the intended duration or start.
This shortcut key is valid for individual Effect timelines, after selecting you can increase/decrease the duration of the effect timeline independently from the object timeline

SHIFT-CTRL-LEFT/SHIFT-CTRL-RIGHT: decrements/increments duration of slide timeline or object timeline with 1sec; same behavior for the effect timelines as described above.
This shortcut key is valid for individual Effect timelines, after selecting you can increase/decrease the duration of the effect timeline independently from the object timeline

Conclusion

This was the last article in the (long?) sequence about Captivate's Timelines.

I learned from the contacts with Captivate users, as forum moderator, trainer and consultant, that the Timeline is the most important stumbling block for starting Captivate users. For that reason I spent quite a lot of hours trying to assemble this 'soap' about it. Based about that same experience, and the statistics of my blog posts, I see two other similar issues causing problems to Captivate newbies. In the next article I will try to elaborate on those 'big' 3 and offer links to tutorials/articles that explain them in depth.  

Warning: be Careful not to Assign same Shortcut Key to Multiple Objects on a Slide

Normally the action linked to a button or a click box is activated by clicking on them. However it is possible to add a shortcut key as an alternative method of activation or even to replace the click entirely by a shortcut key. You should be careful: it is not possible to have different active objects (like buttons, click boxes) on one slide to have the same shortcut key, not even when they are visible at different moments in the timeline. If you assign the same shortcut key, only one object will react to it: the object that is the lowest on the timeline (= the first created object if you did not change the order). Flash-adepts will use the words Z-order or stacking order.

 
To illustrate this I realized a small SWF with Captivate. It has two introduction slides. On the second introduction slide I used the Interactive label Widget, created by Yves Riel (@Whyves_  on Twitter - http://blog.flash-factor.com). Slides 3-6 seem identical, they have four interactive objects, two buttons (that show a hidden Text Caption) and two click boxes over a drawing shape that jump to a following slide (YellowSlide/BlueSlide). The only difference between the four slides is the stacking order: on each slide another interactive object will have the 'priority place' in the timeline. The shortcut assigned to the objects is the Enter-key and it is not an alternative, it is the only way to activate the button or click box. Try it out, use Enter on pages 3-6 and you will see that on each slide only one object can be activated. You will be able to see an image of the Timeline corresponding with each slide to check the stacking order. Timeline is in a rollover image, that you can open when rolling over the information caption.