Intro

Recently I posted this article about ‘Destination/Source Theme’  I warned for using the switch button to the Destination theme after insertion of a QSP slide.  Logically you expect now an alternative workflow?  A general scheme for both responsive and non-responsive projects is however not possible. Reason: the present QSPs have a beautiful design but the technical setup is very different, no rules. 

I will try to offer some tips here to make it possible to blend the inserted QSP-slides into your project design which is probably based on a custom theme. Due to the big variation in technical setup, this first post will be limited to:

• non-responsive projects
• Quick Start projects which use master slides in a consistent way

The second condition excludes the project Wired which only uses the Blank master slide.

In a future post I will try to offer similar tips for responsive (Fluid Boxes) QSP-projects

Start situation

The workflow with its screenshots is based on insertion of one QSP slide from the project Aspire.  The receiving project is the DemoProject I mentioned in the previous blog post. Both projects have rather different color palettes:

The DemoProject uses three fonts: Termina, Filson Soft and Trebuchet (rarely), whereas the Aspire project only uses Tahoma.

The inserted slide was the Exit slide of the Aspire project was inserted in the DemoProject as you can see in the screenshot. It really needs branding. If you want to follow along, you can add that Exit slide to one of your projects.

Branding workflow step-by-step

Step 1: Master slide

Open the Master slide panel with the inserted Aspire slide ‘Exit Layout’ selected. You will see all the master slides of the Aspire project, but the used master slide is automatically selected. You see that it is labeled ‘Welcome w/o Sub + CONTENT’. Have a close look at that master slide and its components on the Timeline:

You see from bottom to top: an image placeholder,  a Title (shape) placeholder, a caption placeholder and another shape placeholder meant for a shape button.  Sorry, but the styles used in the master slide are mostly overridden styles, and replaced by other styles on the slide itself. Just for your information, don’t bother about it.

Step 2 Copy master slide

You will copy and paste that master slide to the original course theme (DemoProject) using these steps:

• Use right-click menu (or Edit menu) to copy the selected Aspire master slide described above.
• Return to the Filmstrip
• Select any slide from the original project
• Open the master slide panel again, it will refresh and show the master slides of your project (here the DemoProject).
• Paste the copied master slide from the Aspire master slide panel.

The result in this case is visible on this part of the master slide panel. The new master slide is still selected, and kept its original name. This was possible because that name didn’t exist in the DemoProject theme (more about importance of master slide names in next blog . If the same name exists in the receiving (Destination) project, you need to rename the master slide before the copy/paste

Of course the object styles are not what you want. In the screenshot above, the Title shape placeholder is selected, and you see that the style was overridden (+ sign). If that had not been the case, the Default Title Smart Shape style of the DemoProject would have been applied automatically. Another example of the lack of rules for the QSPs

Step 3: Replace styles

Still on the master slides, apply styles for the original project DemoProject theme to the objects. In this case:

• There is  a Default Title Smartshape Style in the DemoProject theme, needed only to use ‘Reset Style’ for the title. Because the style was centered, changed it to left-aligned but the font (Termina) and the color were applied automatically.
  

  
  You see a + sign, because after resetting the style I added the alignment change, didn’t create a new style for this alignment change. It will only be used on the inserted slide, all other titles in the original project are centered.
• Same workflow is used for the caption, since a Default Caption style exists (Filson Pro and light color)
• For the shape button placeholder, another shape button style was chosen from the DemoProject theme.
  

  

Step 4: Apply Master slide

Open the Filmstrip, and select the inserted Aspire slide. In the Properties panel choose the theme DemoProject and the list with master slides will appear. Choose the ‘Welcome w:o sub…..’ master slide and you should get this result:

You see some remaining problems: the placeholder for the shape button was not used in the QSP, probably deleted and replaced by another button. Either you edit that original button or you keep the placeholder button.

The background has of course not changed. You may need a last step:

Step 5: Final touch

Two more tasks need to be done to have a fully branded slide fitting in your project design:

1. Replace the image. Changing the Hue with the Edit Image features could work in some situations, but not for an image with a blue sky. Of course, editing in Photoshop while masking the sky is possible.
   
   
2. Replace the blueish gradient at the bottom. It is not a gradient created in Captivate but another image. However it could be possible to use Edit Image, and move the Hue slider for this gradient.

Conclusion?

This workflow may seem cumbersome, but it is safe contrary to the switch to Destination theme.  It is only one example slide, of course. Just hoping you would try this out. It may even lead to improving practice for your custom themes.

Intro

A while ago I posted a blog comparing the use of a Theme for consistent design of a project, with the older Template workflow (which is buggy in the recent versions):

What's in a Theme/Template?

I always start any project by the  creation of  a custom theme, starting mostly from the Blank theme (has the minimum amount of master slides needed for a theme). More recently I offered some tips in Themes Q&A

Due to my past as civil engineer, I see a theme as the structure of a building :

1. Theme colors palette (see Theme Colors) is the foundation. Palette is independent on type of theme: whether iit is non-responsive, responsive with fluid boxes or with breakpoint views.
2. Object styles, the topic of this blog are the pillars (vertical structural elements). For Breakpoint views you need slightly different styles for objects containing text.
3. Master slides are the beams (horizontal structural elements). As in a building there is a lot of interaction between beams and pillars, together they are the structure You will often going back and forth with object styles while creating the master slides. Master slides depend on type of theme.
4. Can be considered as optional: Recording defaults and Skin, depending on the project if you need them

Now you are ready to complete the building by filling in the walls, floors…. In Captivate we call them slides.and objects.

Captivate’s Object Styles

Contrary to a word processor, Captivate has no Text styles as you know from MS Word:   a bunch of paragraph styles (includes leading, space before and after paragraph, indents, bullets….) and word/character styles. I will post a future blog about the Object Style Manager where you’ll find all object styles used in Captivate’s themes. This blog will show some screenshots taken from the OSM, because you can see what is included in each style:

• Caption style: includes indeed the font, font size, eventually attributes (bold, italic, light), font color and leading, alignment but also the type of caption, margins within the caption, and the transition type. In the themes packaged with Captivate the caption type is mostly set to transparent, but that was not always the case in older versions and doesn’t need to be always transparent. It comes closes to what you know as text styles, but still... transition is unknown in MS Word..
  

  
• Text Entry Box style: has the formatting of the text but also the Fill (color and transparency) and Transition setting. You cannot edit the stroke, not included.
  

  
• Button style: is more complicated, includes formatting of 3 Inbuilt states (Visited, 4th state is not included).  In the screenshot, which shows a so-called 'Default style' (see later)  you see that when you insert a button (Interactions, Button) in these settings a Transparent button will be inserted. For each state  the text formatting of the label is defined (in case of a Text or a Transparent, button. That setting will not appear for an Image button which cannot have a label. For the transparent button , style includes also the fill (here a gradient, with full opacity), stroke (color, width and style) and the corner radius. Formatting for the two other types is much more limited.
  

  
• Smart Shape style: the most versatile object in Captivate can be a text container, hence the text formatting similar to captions. SInce it can also be used as a button, you can define the formatting of  the same InBuilt states as for the Transparent button. The corner radius is missing  You can choose a rounded rectangle as start for a shape button, and it has a yellow handle to edit the corner radius.
  

  

Terminology

It seems useful to list up some important terms concerning Captivate's Object Styles:

Default Style: Previous screenshots showed styles set as ‘Default style’. The checkbox to mark a style as default,  is automatically dimmed in that case.  When you insert an object of that type, it will automatically be inserted with that default style. The other styles, not marked as default style, can be used but you’ll have to change them manually after inserting the object. Here is an OSM  screenshot showing the presence of 3 possible TEB styles. In a previous screenshot I had the Yellow Fill set as default style, this is one of the other styles that can be used:

Overridden Style: If you edit some formatting after inserting an object with its default or manually changed style on the stage, a + sign will precede the style name as you can see in this screenshot (I changed the transparency of the fill and the font size). This is labeled as an ‘overridden style’.

Using overridden styles is considered bad practice in any style-based application. Why? It means that if you have to make changes later on, this object will not be touched anymore. Maybe your client/boss wants to have another font for the TEB? If this is the only TEB in the course, you can find it and edit this TEB in place, thus creating an overridden style. When dealing with more TEB’s it is much easier to edit the object style itself (see later). The edited style will be applied automatically to all TEB’s in the course, exception are those with an overridden style.

Style menu in Properties panel : many sections in the Properties panel have a so-called ‘hamburger’ (or hotdog) menu button. The Styles part has such a mneu button. In this screenshot you see the style menu expanded for theTEB with the overridden style (previous screenshot). You  can choose to create a New style (if I want to keep the default style for later to be inserted TEB’s) or Save the changes to the existing style if you want all the TEB’s in this project to have this edited style. There is also a Reset Style to revert to the original style in this menu.

The option Apply this style to…. is a bit confusing for this situation. Suppose you have another TEB using the Default TEB Blue Fill Style you can use ‘Apply this Style to all objects with Style Default TEB Blue Fill, but it will be the original Yellow style that will be applied, not the overridden style. I would prefer to save first the edited Yellow style.

Creation of a Custom Style

You can create a style in the Object Style Manager, as I will explain in a later blog,  but it is easier to use the ‘from example’ workflow. Step-by-step:

1. Have a quick look at the Object Style Manager to see what is included in the style for your object type. I showed several screenshots above. It is not always clear from the Properties panel which features are included in the style. Example: Transition is included in some styles, not visible in the Properties panel but in the Timing Properties panel.
   
   
2. Insert an object of that type on the stage. It will be inserted with the style set as Default style.
   
   
3. Edit the features which you detected under 1. until you have the wanted look. That is easier to verify on the stage than with the tiny Preview window in the OSM..  Do not forget the states (Normal, Rollover, Down) for interactive objects. The style field (Properties) will show the +sign to indicate the overridden default style.
   
   
4. Open the Style menu (hamburger) and choose the option ‘Create New Style’
   
   
5. Give the style a significant name and confirm with OK
   

   

The style will appear in the Object Style Manager. But you don’t have to use the OSM for these actions

• Set the style as Default style: is possible from the same Style Menu. Beware: for the example of the shape button, I would not set this as the default style because all shapes would take on that style. Really hope that we can have a default shape button style which is different from the default smart shape style in a future release.
  
  
• Apply this style for all objects with a specific style. This is a workaround I sometimes use: for shape buttons I don’t use the default smart shape style, but one of the other styles (like a hint shape style if I don’t use it in the project) as long as I am not sure about the wanted button style. When I decide to create the definite style for all shape buttons, I can use the Apply this style to replace all those ‘hint’ shape styles by the new shape button style.

This problem only exists for shape buttons. Most other object types are not used for two different goals.

If you want to include features which are not part of the style in a quick way, use the duplicate functionality (CTRL-D). It will keep not only the same style in the copy, but all features, including eventually attached advanced actions.

Third element of your theme (structure) will be the master slides. Advantage of defining object styles before the master slides is that the inserted objects on the master slides will have the new default styles. That can save time.  Just one example: if you use shape buttons on master slides, you will not be able to use 'from example' workflow to create a style for those shape buttons. Reason: the State view cannot be opened when on a master slide, and you need to set up the states. For object styles with a Transition feature, you'll not be able to define them on the master slides neither, because you miss the Timing Properties panel for them.

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.