To all readers: best wishes for a healthy and enthralling 2020!

Have some fun with this small game, created from an Adobe Stock image, using Illustrator (for assets) and Captivate 11.5. Again SVGs are used extensively. You can play the embedded game (fixed resolution) but I recommend to play it from this link which is a rescalable version. It may be easier to find the differences, especially if you are using a big screen.

Lot of SVGs, some multistate objects, one shared action, two small advanced actions + two variables. If you follow me since a while you know that I had lot of fun with all my favourite Captivate tools.  I didn't use any Javascript directly (actions are converted to JS on runtime) but I’m sure this can be done with JS as well.

The usual white screen with grey arrow is replaced by a poster image. After the mysterious title slide game, game and end image are all on the second slide.

Setup

Objects and Timeline

SVGs reign as you can see in the screenshot of the Timeline panel of the game slide:

The stacking (z-order) of the objects is important. From bottom to top you see:

• Two instances of the same image (SV_Correct to the left and SV_NOK to the right.
• Two text containers which show the two titles (Tx_Correct and Tx_Difference).
• A click box CB_Wrong: it is important that this click box is below all other interactive objects, and that its pausing point is at the same time as the other ones (here 1.5secs).

• 
• A multistate object functioning as progress bar. The Normal state is invisible (Alpha set to 0), and you see all the states in this screenshot:
  
  

  
  Just a note: there are some display problems with SVGs in the present version, and that can make the previous screenshot bit confusing. Although the circles have the same size in all states, they seem to be smaller when more circles are present. Moreover something seems to be wrong with the C4 state: total width seems smaller than for the other states. Reason was that originally that state switched to 'Custom', instead of Original.
  In this case it is very important that the option 'Original' size is forced for each state.
  

  
• A shape 'Cover', which is rectangular filled with Solid dark gray, with Alpha = 70%.
• Final image 'SV_Eind' (sorry for the Dutch label). 

Variables 

Two user variables were created:

• v_counter: with a start value of 0, will be incremented when a correct hotspot has been clicked.
• v_hotspot: will be set to the number of hotspots minus 1; in this case it is set to 6 since there are 7 hotspots.
  

Advanced Actions

Two advanced actions are used:

EnterGame triggered by the On Enter event of the Game slide

WrongAct triggered by the Success event of the Click box CB_Wrong

Another rather simple standard action, to let some audio play and have effects with the cover:

Shared Action 'CorrectHotspot' triggered by the SVG buttons (Success event)

The most important script for this game. Several actions happen when a correct hotspot is clicked:

• An effect is applied to emphasize the clicked SVG, in this example I used a ScaleTo effect.
• Secondary an audio clip is played (sort of congratulation)
• The hotspot needs to be disabled, to avoid having it clicked multiple times.
• To track the number of discovered hotspots, the counter variable needs to be incremented.
• Progress has to change in the indicator (yellow circles multistate object)
• When all hotspots have been found, the final image has to appear (with an effect).

This is a Preview of a filled in action, where the 5 necessary parameters are marked in a color rectangle:

None of the candidate parameters need to be a parameter: the two variables (v_counter and v_hotspot) nor the literals. As I have emphasized many times, it can be tricky to define a literal as parameter. In this particular case it could have been possible to indicate the Delay time needed to listen to the audio clip being defined as parameter. That would be necessary if you want to use audio clips with very different lengths for the the individual hotspots. The parameters are visible in this screenshot:

Why shared action instead of duplicate advanced actions?

You can use exactly the same shared action if you have a different number of hotspots (differences). Just edit the action EnterGame to replace the value to be assigned to the variable v_hotspot. It is the reason I replaced the literal '6' by a variable v_hotspot. Several parameters are used multiple times in the shared action: the name of the progress bar, the hotspot, the audio clip. When using duplicate advanced actions you would have to edit quite a lot. 

One of the disadvantages is the fixed status of the applied Effects. If you want another effect, use the shared action as template for an advanced action, replace the effects and save it as a new Shared action. If you are new to shared actions: contrary to advanced actions it is perfectly possible to save a new action with the same name, provided the older one is no longer used.

Intro

Example

• Geo slide: alphabetically clicks on countries (used English names, not the original names of the coutnries)
• Keypad slide typing the pincode on a numeric keypad.

First and last slide are taken from the Quick Start Project 'Aspire'. The images used as button also are from the Assets panel.

You probably will have more ideas where this workflow can be used for Knowledge Check slides. There is a sequence type of quiz slide, you can test a sequence with Drag&Drop slides, but these alternatives are less limited in design. ould love to hear your proposals for sequence checks as well

Setup

Variables

• v_counter: will track the number of clicks on interactive objects. It starts with a default value of 0. It is reused on the second sequence slide, by resetting to the default value using the On Enter action of that slide.
• v_correct: will track the number of correct clicks, set up with default value of 0 and re-used in the same way as the previous variable.

Multistate Objects

The Normal state is empty (easy to reset, will automatically reset when returning to the slide if ‘Retain State’ is unchecked). The 6 following states correspond with the correct sequence, hence their labeling. The last state is the Wrong state. The sequence of states is important, because I will be using the ‘Go to Next State’ command in the actions.

SVGs

The group Gr_Wrong on the Keypad groups all button SVGS which are not used in the pincode. Those buttons are on top of the image, and can be hidden, since the remaining keypad image shows them as well but in a non-interactive version. For the Geo slide, the colored country  SVG buttons are also on top of a big SVG (Europe), but I don’t want the colored ones to disappear, for that reason the buttons will be disabled, not hidden (see advanced actions below).

Actions and events – Geo slide

Only the items marked by a red oval have to be switched for the actions SV2….SV5Act: the name of the SVG button in the first decision, and the literal (number) in the second decision. If the clicked country is not fitting in the correct sequence, the learner sees the Wrong state in the multistate shape and the Retry button will appear.

The last country SVG button (SV6) has a slightly different action, derived from the previous one.  Reason: the Next button has to appear if the sequence is correct. That extra command is highlighted by a blue rectangle.

The Next button has the default command ‘Go to Next Slide’ on its Success event.

The Retry button needs to  everything, as you can see in this screenshot. Action is triggered by the Success event:

Actions and events – Keypad slide

Some explanation may be needed for the Hide command which I highlighted. Since the required pincode (29791) needs the number ‘9’ twice (second and fourth position in the sequence) I have put two SVGs on top of each other: SVG_Two and SVG_Four. By default SVG_Two is visible, but SVG_Four  is hidden and becomes visible With the same action where SVG_Two is hidden. You cannot have two interactive objects on top of each other when both are active at the same location.

The Number buttons trigger an advanced action On Success.  It is similar to the one in the Geo slide, except for using Hiding instead of disabling. Example of the first number button (which is 2):

As explained above, for SVG_Second (number 9) is bit different

Similar to the Geo slide, the last correct button (number 1) will show the Next button if all was correct:

Any wrong number button will trigger this action using its Success event:

The new Retry button, labeled RetryBis is similar to the one on the Geo slide, triggers:

Remember that the SVG button Four  is in the same location as Two, because both have the number 9. That is why SVG_Four has to be hidden and SVG_Two shown.

Why no Shared Actions?

• The SVG button SV_1 – compulsory parameter in the first decision
• The literal ‘1’ in the condition of the second edition, not compulsory
• The multistate object Tx_Display, compulsory parameter in the second decision
• The state Wrong in the ELSE part of the second decision
• The button Bt_Next in the ELSE part of the second decision

Why is the literal a problem? Because it is also used in the Increment command. If you replace it by 2 for the second button, this will also be the case in the Increment command. I may have a workaround, but it is not always functional.

Second reason: with the workaround the parameters would increase to 6, which is my limit for a usable Shared action. Whereas using duplicate functionality for the advanced action is lot quicker, since only two items need to be edited.

This blog is already way too long. If you like to hear about my ‘thumb rules’ for choosing between duplicate advanced and shared actions, post a comment. Maybe I’ll dedicate another blog to it.

Why?

In Flanders there is a saying ‘Twee vliegen in één klap’ (killing two flies at once). Let me show a workaround for a Pretest (without the normal limitations) and update  that old post, taking advantage of improvements since …. version 6. Have to refurbish a lot of posts, which are still attracting visitors, with HTML5 output. Here is one of them.

Example file

Setup

I will explain the variables used in this example, and the actions/events in the rest below.

Variables

System variables

cpQuizInfoPointsscored: the points scored so far by the learner, is updated after the Submit button is clicked.

cpInfoLastVisitedSlide: is used to check if the learner gets to a slide from the previous slide or from another slide (because getting a passing score has become impossible.

User variables

v_PassPerc: required pass percentage for the Pretest. As explained for the previous variable, I preferred a specific variable instead of the system variable cpQuizInfoPassPercent. The value has to be filled in on definition, in this case it was set to 80  %.

v_PassScore: will be calculated from the two previous variables (is same in the example as cpQuizInfoPassPoints.

v_MaxUntil: will be calculated. What is the maximum score the learner would have gotten until the present question (all answers correct).

v_MaxRemain: will be calculated. What is the maximum score the learner can obtain with the remaining questions? Logically the sum of v_MaxUntil and v_MaxRemain should be equal to v_MaxPretest.

v_Possible: will be calculated, what is the maximum score which the learner can obtain if he/she gives a correct answer to all questions still to be answered.

Advanced Actions – Events

EnterFirst

The variable v_Passcore is calculated from two other variables having a default value. In this case v_MaxPretest was 40 points  (maximum score) and v_PassPerc = 80% required for passing the test. Result will be 32 points for v_Passscore.

The variable v_MaxUntil will get its first value, which is the score possible to obtain for this first quiz slide.

EnterPre

CheckPre

The trick used is to calculate v_Possible, which is the maximum score a learner can still get after the present question, supposing he/she will give a correct answer to all the remaining questions  (value of v_MaxRemain). Learner already obtained a score stored in cpQuizInfoPointsscored. This calculation happens in the first decision ‘Maths’.

The second decision is conditional, and will navigate the learner out of the Pretest (Jump to Score slide) if he will not be able to pass the test. If it is still possible to acquire the passing score, the test continues.

EnterScore

This is the most complicated action, because it has to take care of three situations.  Each situation results in a conditional decision:

1. If the learner has finished all questions (last visited slide was slide 8, which is the last question slide), but did fail, (comparing score with v_PassScore).  In that case the appropriate state of an multistate SVG and a multistate text container is shown.  The Next button appears as well.
   
   
2. If the learner has not finished all questions, (last visited slide was not slide 8) another state is made visible for both multistate objects, and the Next button appears.
   
   
3. If the learner has a passing score for the test, another state is shown and not the Next button, but the ‘ToTest’ button appears, which will navigate the learner to the results slide (from which a separate quiz file can be launched).

Conclusion

Of course the same approach can be used for a normal quiz. It can spare the learner a lot of frustrations if he started the quiz, without mastering the content, and quickly sees that the result will never be sufficient. That was the original reason for the first older post. 

It would be interesting to know if you ever use the default Pretest slides, because I really dislike the many limitations. All Pretest slides need to be at the start of the course and in sequence. All navigation will be disabled, on the playbar as well in the TOC, not only for the Pretest slides but also for content slides which is very annoying. What do you think?

Would it be possible to replace the Pretest slides by Knowledge Check slides? I suspect it would be possible, maybe stuff for another 'anti-frustration' post? The advantage would be that a final quiz will be easier to set up.

Intro

However yesterday a user asked another similar question on the forums. You can visit the thread here

The title doesn’t really reflect the full question, which was clarified later on. User wants to have survey slides, which each have two statements. The learner should rate each statement with a number between 0 and 10, and the sum of both ratings should always be 10. As usual I have a dislike for the word ‘force’ used in the title. The example you will be watching, is not forcing really. I considered three possible situations:

1. Two ratings have a sum of 10, rating is accepted immediately.
2. Sum of the two ratings is not equal to 10. In that case the second rating will be edited to achieve a sum of 10. Learner can accept this change or if he prefers:
3. Learner gets the opportunity to retry to set correct ratings.

Contrary to my old blog post, where I used a MCQ, for this solution used the Radiobuttons interaction. Likert question was not possible, since I needed a rating scale with 11 dvisions (0-10). Moreover Likert is not supported for responsive projects. Although the example is a non-responsive project, the described workflow would also be possible for responsive projects (some changes needed)..

Example File

Setup

Due to this specific setup, extending the survey to more than 3 survey slides is very easy.  Just duplicate a survey slide and edit the statements. Everything will work fine. I will explain the objects using the timeline, the user variables to be created and the advanced actions.

Timeline Survey slide

Have a look at the screenshot of the timeline of the FIRST survey slide:

• Two statements, labeled SS_XStatement, and SS_YStatement. I didn't create a dedicated master slide with two placeholders for these statements, but that would be possible. Labeling of those statements is not so important, because they are not used in any action.
  
  
• Two instances of the RadioButtons Learning Interaction, used as rating scales. Please don't be confused by their green colored timeline, because these interactions are not interactive, they are static. This is a design bug. The properties of one interaction can be seen in this screenshot:
  

  
  Important fields are marked in Red or Green. Beware: you have to create the variable - here ‘v_X‘ i- n the Variables dialog box.
  
  
• Question1: text above the statements with the warning about the sum (could also be a placeholder on the master slide)
  
  
• Submit button: needs to be a shape button, because it has to be timed for the rest of the project. Eventually you can use a SVG or bitmap image (from 11.5 on). Both can also be timed for the rest of the project.
  
  
• A group Gr_Feedback, including the Accept button, Retry button and the Message which appears when the sum of the rates is not equal to 10.  This group is also timed for the rest of the project, which means that both buttons need to be shape buttons, SVG or bitmap images.

Variables

• v_null: empty variable is used to clear the associated variables to the learning interactions. More details about its functionality in this blog
  
  
• v_start: will store the first frame of each survey slide. For the Retry action, the micro-navigation solution described in Replay Slide (scenario 2) is used, hence the necessity of the variable which can be empty as default value. This variable is reused on each survey slide.
  
  
• v_X: variable associated with the rating scale (interaction) of the first statement, default can be empty. This variable is reused on each survey slide. Default value can be empty.
  
  
• v_Y: variable associated with the rating scale (interaction) of the second statement, default can be empty. This variable is reused on each survey slide. Default value can remain empty.
  
  
• v_sum: will be calculated by adding v_Y to v_X. Default value can be empty.
  
  
• v_XScore: will be calculated after each survey slide, by adding the value of v_X. Default value can be empty.
  
  
• v_YScore: will be calculated after each survey slide, by adding the value of v_Y. Default value can be empty.
  
  

Actions/events

EnterAct

SubmitAct

This action is triggered by the Success event of the Submit button. Because that shape button is timed for the rest of the project, you need only one instance of this two-decision action:

The first decision ‘Always’ is not conditional, calculates the value of v_sum which is used in the condition of the following decision.

Second decision ‘Checkit’ verifies if the sum of the ratings is equal to 10. If that is the case, the ratings for X and Y score can be added to the totals, and navigation to the Next slide is done. If the sum is different from 10, the group (2 buttons + message) shows up. The value of v_Y is corrected (10 – v_Y) which will show immediately on the rating scale. The learner can accept this correction or opt for retaking (Retry) the rating.

AcceptAct

RetryAct

This action is triggered by the Success event of the Retry button. Because that shape button is timed for the rest of the project, you need only one instance of this action:

EnterResults

Conclusion

Hope you liked this solution? For a responsive project with fluid boxes, the workflow will be more cumbersome, not only because of the Fluid Boxes setup but also because:

• You cannot use grouping in fluid boxes.
• The possibility to have objects timed for the rest of the project is limited. It is possible if the slides are based on the same master slide, which could be the case for the survey slides.

Could I have used Shared actions? Of course,  I dragged the Replay action from my external library with Shared actions bit for your convenience converted it to an Advanced action. The other actions can be converted to shared actions as well. However withthe described setup, the advanced actions are used only once. If you have issues with the timing for the rest of the project in a Fluid Boxes project, I would certainly recommend to use shared actions because you’ll need an instance on each survey slide.

Intro

“I have groups of slides. Each group consists of a handful of slides that has event video on each slide and nothing else. The videos autoplay. The user can enter these groups at any point and must watch each video before being redirected back to a main menu. “

After I had gotten all details, I created this example file. The assets panel in 11.5 was very useful as you can see. Only Chapter 1 has been worked out with 4 slides containing event videos. For Chapter 2 and 3 only one slide is available with a back to menu button. Try it out: you can start with any video, but then the sequence will be linear: 1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-1, 3-4-1-2 and 4-1-2-3 are all possible. You can use the Chapter 1 button on the main menu as many times as you wish. It should be foolproof. However… you have to watch the videos from start till end.

The embedded movie is at a fixed resolution. The project is published as Scalable HTML and you can also play it directly in any resolution from this link.

Setup

Variables

Events and actions

Enter event of video slides 1-2-3-4

This event is used to trigger an advanced action which will check the value of the 4 variables. If they have all the value 1, the learner will be navigated back to the menu slide. Have a look at  the Preview of this action:

Exit event of video slides 1-2-3

For the first three video slides this event is used to trigger a simple action, similar to this one for the first slide:

Assign v_one with 1

Exit event of video slide 4

1. All video slides are viewed (learner started with first video)
2. Not all video slides are viewed (learner did not start with first video)

The first situation means that the learner will be navigated to the main menu slide, the second that he still has to view video 1 and maybe more. This means we need a conditional advanced action. Here is the screenshot:

Since the exit event has also to toggle the variable v_four, I used two decisions. The first one ‘Always’ is toggling that variable. The second decision is the conditional one described above.

Success event of the Video buttons (Chapter 1 slide)

Since both remaining chapters will have a similar group of video slides, this approach can be used there as well, to reuse the same variables. The advanced actions described before, can be duplicated and edited. The shared action can be used as it is without any change.

§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 

This post is meant as an answer to a thread posted in the eLearning community. "I want to create a menu that slides on and off the screen, like a door that moves to the left and right, when the user clicks a button." I invite you to read the comment by Greg Stager who is posting some links to blogs he wrote where JS is used to create slider solutions. As you know, I often try to use only Captivate features to solve similar use cases instead of JS. This is a new example. You'll find a step-by-step workflow to recreate the example I show. The shape (which I use as 'box') is not having a menu, I invite you to (re-)read my post about Hyperlinks for the creation of a Dropdown menu. They are a great way to avoid creating multiple interactive objects in the 'box'. 

If you don't like creating advanced actions, I have an offer at the end of the post to make your life easier...

Example

Watch this short file, only three slides after the 3 seconds long Title slide. They have two buttons (from the Assets panel in 11.5): a Next button on top, and the Slide toggle button below it. You can use the toggle button as many times as you wish on a slide. To restart, refresh the browser.

Step-by-step workflow

Step 0: Next button on master slide

I used only one master slide in this project, which made it easy to put the Next button on that master slide. I kept the default option 'Pause project until user clicks' (Actions tab). That will result in having each slide paused at its last frame.

Step 1: Sliding assets

Two assets have to be created and put on the first slide where you want to use the sliding box:

Step 2: Custom Out Effect

Create a time-based effect to get the sliding box out of the stage. Do not use an Exit effect, but a simple motion path. I added an AlphaFromTo effect as well (100% to 0%), and reduced the duration of both effects to 1 second. 

Workflow to save this effect as a custom effect is described in detail in this post. Do use that method after you have done step 3:

Step 3: Create Guides

Show the Rulers (View menu) and create two vertical guides, through the start and end point of the motion path. See this screenshot:

They will be needed to create the In Effect, to be exactly the opposite of the Out effect. Now you can save the custom effect, and take it out from the slider box.

If you didn't use a horizontal motion path, you'll need also horizontal guides. If you need more information about using Guides and Rulers, look at 'Guides Rule'.

Step 4: Move slider box in Out position

Use the guide in the scratch area to move the slider box to the correct position. I mostly use shortcut key (SHIFT or CTRL combined with left arrow) to keep that movement horizontal. For a non-horizontal movement, you use vertical and horizontal guide. You'll see a screenshot of the new position in step 5

Step 5: Custom In Effect

Create this effect using the two guides (or four if you needed also horizontal guides). In the screenshot you see this effect, where I combined a motion path effect with an AlphaFromTo effect (0 to 100%). Save the effect, same as for the Out custom effect. 

Step 6: Hide Slider box

Use the On Enter action of the slide to hide the Slider box. 

Pause

Now comes the hard work: you could skip steps 7-9 and scroll immediately to the bottom for an offer. 

Step 7: Variable v_slider

Create a user variable, which I named v_slider. It will be used to track the status of the Slider box: in or out? Similar logic you'll be able to see for all the Toggle buttons in this older post.

Step 8: Advanced Action ResetSlide

Create this advanced action (conditional):

Step 9: Advanced Action ToggleSlider

Create this conditional action. Like with the previous actin, I indicated the 4 parameters if converted to a shared action.

Step 10: Attach the actions to events

The action ResetSlide has to be triggered by the Success event of the Next button, whereas ToggleSlider has to be linked to the Success event of the toggle button.

Offer

You can obtain the described actions as shared actions for free, including a short explanation of how to use them. You could skip steps 7 to 9, but still have to do the other steps.

How? Visit my website (lilybiri.com), fill in the contact form with your request, and a small comment on my blogs or website. You'll get everything by mail. I probably will post more offers in the near future, if you don't want to hear about them, you can indicate that as well (I am European, respect the GDPR).

Intro

Although I have already posted about one Submit button for multiple TEB’s, recently users tried to apply that blog to non-validated TEB’s, which was not the goal of that original post. Moreover giving another attempt to a TEB where the Submit has been done has become less easy with HTML5 output. SWF output had so many advantages (rewinding the playhead a couple of frames was simple), but that is the past.

This example was created with version 11.5.0.476, the most recent version of Captivate. I uses some image and button assets from the new Assets panel. However, nothing has changed for interactions in this major update to version 11. I am confident that the solution will work for every version since 8, meant for HTML output.

Example

The first slide has three fields to fill.  If any field remains empty, a textual warning will appear and you can retry. The Continue button appears when all fields have an entry. Project has no poster image, just the default play button. It is not rescalable. Here is the link

Setup

Variables

• v_one, v_two and v_three will be used witl be associated with the Interactions
• v_null is needed for the advanced conditional action to test if the field is blank; more info in ‘Where is Null’‘

Scrolling Text Interactions

You see in the dialog box that I edited the font (used an Adobe font), the font size and attribute.  Just a reminder: it is not sufficient to type in a variable name to define it, you need to define it in the Variables dialog box. 

Although I resized the interactions to the same height as the Text containers with the questions, the height is decreased in the output file. Be careful with copy/paste to duplicate an interaction, prefer the Duplicate functionality within Captivate (CTRL-D).

Advanced Action

This action is triggered by the Submit button. I used the On Enter event of the slide to hide the warning that will pop up if at least one field is empty. This is the Preview dialog box. The operator 'is equal to' is replaced by the JS equivalent needed '=='. The logical operator OR is replaced also by its JS equivalent |  As you perhaps know, an advanced action will be converted to JavaScript on Runtime.

The replacement of the grayscale image by the color image, disappearing items on the slide: all is achieved using  the timeline. For those interested, here is a screenshot of that timeline, I didn't group any items, but their label clearly shows what they are.

Conclusion

As usual I appreciate any comment, whether to add an alternative or to ask questions. You are welcome on my website as well.

Intro

Interactive video is one of the new features in CP2019 (version 11). Over 10 years ago I did choose for Captivate because it had a lot of possibilities for interactivity in any cptx-project, Some users do think that 'interactive video' is the way to go, but to me it is a nice addition especially to make existing passive video a little bit more engaging. To avoid confusion, because already did see a lot of theoretical posts here that talk about normal interactive projects, not about interactive videos, I will continue to point at published cptx- projects as ‘interactive movies’ to show the difference with less interactive 'interactive video'. A standalone interactive video can be nice. However I honestly believe that the combination of interactive video slides with static interactive  slides in a cptx project is more powerful. Later on I will try to show with use cases what I mean. These tips are for 'interactive video' only. 

The first version of interactive video offers the possibility to insert:

• Bookmarks: which out of the box can be used with the new command ‘Jump to bookmark’ to realize some branching often based on answer to  knowledge check slides.
  
  
• Overlay content  slides: which appear at certain frames of the video on top of the video (can take up part of the screen, with  in a dimmed version of the video in the background). Most Captivate features can be used on those content slides, including advanced/shared actions.
  
  
• Overlay Knowledge Check slides: which are based on the quizzing master slides.  Their appearance is the same as for the content overlay slides. Scored quiz slides are not possible.Contrary to the overlay Quiz slides in a 360 slide, these Knowledge Check slide do honor the used theme, their style can be full controlled. However, you cannot use scored Quiz slides in overlay (which is possible in a 360 slide). 

I will post lin the future a full description of the timeline of interactive video slides, and line up the differences with a normal video. An interactive video is always a slide (synchronized) video, never an event video. Consequence: interactive video is not possible in a fluid box which can only support event video, nor in the state of a multistate object.

In this blog post, I’ll offer some tips for using and enhancing the present functionality of interactive video. I posted an interactive video, as illustration in this article . Explanation of the tips is based on that example, I recommend to watch it if you didn't had time yet.

Tips

Tip 1: Prepare Master Slides for Overlay slides

Interactive video supports two types of Overlay slides; Content overlay slides and Knowledge Check  overlay slides. Both types can have the same size as the project size, but I prefer to have a smaller size for the overlay slides, so that the video itself remains visible in the background (dimmed). That can be done by using a duplicate of the Blank slide, on which you insert a shape with a smaller size than the slide, as background for your content or questions. As with normal content master slides, you can create as many as you need.  Have a look at the 3 master slides used for the example video mentioned before:

Next to the Blank master slide you see two content master slides :

• OverlayTip: has a bubble shape, semi-transparent as background; the white space surrounding the shape will be ignored in the overlay and show the dimmed video.
  
  
• OverlayWarn: has a different shape, less transparent and also white surrounding space.

The Quiz master slide which I used is a duplicate of the MCQ... master slide. It is necessary to use such a duplicate because you need all the embedded objects with their functionality. I used a rectangular shape as background, not transparent.
Beware: 

1. use a non-responsive theme, because the Quizzing master slides in a Fluid Boxes theme have a setup with fluid boxes. 
   
   
2. when creating a slides based on this master slide, you need to choose Knowledge Check slides, because normal Quiz slides cannot be used as Overlay slides for an interactive video.

After insertion of 5 overlay content slides and one KC slide, the Filmstrip looks like this (watch the hierarchy symbolized by the smaller size of the overlay slides, and by the icons at the bottom). :

Tip 2:  No fixed duration but a Close button

To me Interactivity means to offer as much control as possible to the learner. Some need more time, some want to proceed quicker. That is why I don’t like the fixed duration for Overlay content slides - which is the default setting.  No problem for the Knowledge Check slides,  the Submit button (with a pausing point at 1,5secs) takes care of keeping the slide available as long as wanted. Same would be the case for a slide with a D&D interaction or when using an interactive learning interaction.

For the static content slides however you need to pause the slide. To achieve that with minimum effort,  I used a shape button on the two master slides OverlayTip and OverlayWarn.:Look at this screenshot, where the Close button is at the bottom left:

For shape buttons on a master slide, the pausing point visible at the end of the Timeline is just an indicator. It will not appear in the Timing Properties because smart master objects have no timing. However, in the default setup, the shape button will pause at the end of each slide, hence the indicator. Look under the Actions tab for the shape button on the master slide. 

The action triggered by the Success event of that button is very simple: ‘Continue‘, to release the paused playhead. Since the pausing point is at the end of each overlay content slide, it will close immediately and the video continues.

Tip 3: Information button

That button is available for the full duration of the project, from the second (video) slide on. . I described the workflow in an older post, which dates from  CP2017: Interactive Video Buttons but is still valid for the present version. It is a simple click/reveal button, which pauses the video and has a close button. That close button takes care of hiding the information and releasing the video playhead.

Tip 4: Navigation Menu

With the Menu button the learner has a TOC to bookmarks available, to review only parts of the video. I described my workflow in this post.

The menu button has a custom state, which is used to close the menu (similar to the Pause/play button of the example video). It triggers this action:

The menu items are hyperlinks triggering advanced actions, which jump to the wanted bookmark and close the menu. As mentioned in the past, for some weird reason the option 'Execute Shared Action' is not available for hyperlinks, or I would have used a Shared action instead of duplicate Advanced actions.

Intro

Recently a user posted a question about using the 'Go to Next State' command used in Advanced actions. You can read our discussions in this thread.

Time to write out some tips for multistate objects. This blog wants to give an answer to the user, and has its focus only on that solution. I plan to publish more about the basics of states and their commands later on.  To me personally the introduction of multistate objects is in the list of my favourite features in Captivate, closely following Shared/Advanced actions and Shape buttons.

Example movie

Watch this published rescalable interactive movie. The second slide has three shape buttons, navigating to three slides where you can read and confirm reading, or click hotspots, or answer questions. Each of your actions will result in changes to the progress bar on that second slide. Beware: whenever you have clicked an interactive object it will be disabled!

Terminology Multistate objects

InBuilt States and Custom States

You can add custom states to any object, static or interactive.  In those states you can have many object types: graphics, video, audio... but no interactive objects nor hyperlinks.  The Normal state is the default state, which will always appear unless you have changed to a custom state using a command (in a simple or an advanced/shared action). You have a lot of freedom for custom states: contrary to the InBuilt states, nothing is locked tto the default normal state. You can have objects in a custom state that are in a totally different position from the Normal state. Custom states are always controlled by commands, not by a situation. If you want a custom state to remain for future visits to the slide where the multistate object is sitting, you need to check the option 'Retain state on slide revisit'.

Inbuilt States exist for these object types:

• All types of buttons Shape buttons, Image buttons, Transparent buttons and Text buttons.  You have four of those styles: Normal, Rollover, Down and Visited. The first three are part of the button style.  You don’t have the same freedom for location of those states, they are locked to the Normal state (look for the Lock indicator).
• Drag sources and Drop targets on a D&D slide. For more information see: InBuilt states for D&D

I will only talk about shape buttons here. Contrary to custom states Inbuilt states appear automatically in a situation: when not hovering over button (Normal), when hovering over button (Rollover), when pressing button (Down) and when after clicking/tapping (Visited, if it has been created). You can only control Normal and Visited by a commandif necessary, not the Rollover/Down states.. 

State commands

These commands are available both in a simple action (dropdown list in Actions) and in the Advanced Actions dialog box, to be used in advanced or shared actions:

• Change State of …. to 
• Go to Previous State  …..
• Go to Next State ….

When you use these commands as a simple action, from the dropdown list inthe Actions tab, they can only be applied to multistate objects on the same slide as the event triggering the action (Slide event, interactive button events) The Hypelink even thas only the first command (Change State). 

If you insert one of the commands in an advanced/shared action they seem to be able to apply also to multistate objects on other slides. That is indeed the case for the ‘Change State’ command, but is NOT functional for the commands Go to Next/Previous States. I have logged this as a bug, because you are able to choose multistate objects on other slides, however without any effect. That was the reason of the question in the forums, described in the Intro. 

You could see in the Example movie that I have a workaround. How?

Solution with variable and While loop

YOu will need one user variable v_counter,  to track the number of clicks while being on other slides than slide 2 with the Progress indicator SS_Progress (a multistate object). This progress indicator starts with a Normal state which is a shape with Alpa and Stroke = 0.

That variable starts with a default value = 0. The clicks on the OK buttons in slide 3, on the hotspots in slide 4 and on the correct answers in slide 5 do increment the variable, besides other commands. 

When returning to slide 2 (which has the progress indicator) using the shape button ‘Back to….’ (is on the used content master slide) an advanced action On Enter for that slide is launched, using the While loop:

Example: if the user has performed 3 actions on any slide, v_counter would be 3. The while loop will then be done 3 times, which means the 4th state of the progress indicator will appear. At the same time, the variable will be set back to 0 at the end of the loop. The learner can continue to visit another slide, and the variable is ready to track again.

This is just an example, many variations are possible. Maybe you want to allow visits and actions to consecutive slides before returning to the main slide, this can easily be achieved. Or have feedback appearing on the main slide after all slides have been visited, based on the obtained progress.. 

More?

I didn’t explain all actions in this post. The slide with the hotspots is based on a recent article about Hotspots in a 2D image.

Maybe you are wondering if I used the Visited state or a custom state for the OK buttons (slide 3) or the hotspots? What the quickest workflow is to create the states for the Progress bar? Did I use shared actions or advanced actions, and why did I choose that way? Why did I disable the buttons? If you are interested, I can explain… on demand.