customizing captivate playbar,localizing captivate playbar,captivate 4

Consider a scenario where you want to create content in some different language, say German or Hindi. You created the content properly, but then you discover that the play-bar shows its tool-tips in English. Did you know that you can localize the play-bar tooltips to match your content? This post shows you how…

Img 1. English tool-tips

Img 2. Italian tool-tips

For Localizing play-bar you will need to have Adobe Flash.

Adobe captivate 4 comes with fla files for the play-bars. Typically installation folder for captivate 4 is “C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Captivate 4”.

Locating tool-tip strings in AS2

Fla files for AS2 are located at “installation folderTemplatesPlaybackFLAAS2”.

Open the play-bar fla file which for which you want to change the tool-tips and open the actions window for the main time line.

Locating tool-tip strings in AS3

Fla files for AS3 are located at “installation folderTemplatesPlaybackFLAAS3”.

Notice a movie clip with name as “Localization” in the library window. Double click on the Localization movie clip in library to open it and open the actions window.

Changing play-bar tool-tips

You will notice few array definitions on the time line of the fla file. Name of those arrays are pbcBtnTips_ENU (English), pbcBtnTips_CHT (Chinese Traditional), pbcBtnTips_FRA (French), pbcBtnTips_DEU (German), pbcBtnTips_ITA (Italian), pbcBtnTips_JPN (Japanese), pbcBtnTips_ESP (Spanish) and pbcBtnTips_KOR (Korean). And then you will find the last line as

var pbcBtnTips:Array = pbcBtnTips_ENU;

If you want to have German tool-tips, you will just have to change the last line to

var pbcBtnTips:Array = pbcBtnTips_DEU;

But if you want to have tool-tip for a different language say Hindi, you’ll have to create a new array say pbcBtnTips_HIN before the last line as

var pbcBtnTips_HIN:Array = new

Array(“Rewind “, //rewind button Tool-tip

       “Back “, //back button tool-tip

       “Play “, //play button Tool-tip

       “Pause “, //pause button Tool-tip

       “Forward “, //forward button Tool-tip

       “Closed Captioning “, //CC button Tool-tip

       “Audio On “, //Audio on button Tool-tip

       “Audio Off “, //audio off button Tool-tip

       “Exit “, //exit button Tool-tip

       “Information “, //info button Tool-tip

       “dummy for scratch bar “, //this is a dummy entry

       “Table of Contents “, //TOC button Tool-tip

       “2x Fast Forward Speed “, //2xFF button Tool-tip

       “4x Fast Forward Speed “, //4xFF button Tool-tip

       “Normal Speed “, //1x button Tool-tip

       “Print”); //print button Tool-tip

And change the last line to

var pbcBtnTips:Array = pbcBtnTips_HIN;

Here you will have to make sure that the order of the elements in the array remains the same.

Save these changes and publish the swf file to “installation FoldergalleryplaybackControlsswfBarsas2” folder for as2 play-bar and to “installation FoldergalleryplaybackControlsswfBarsas3” for As3 playbar.

After doing this, start the captivate

Go to skin dialog, you should see name of the swf file, which was published, in the play-bar dropdown box. When this entry is selected, the tool-tip text s/he entered in the array will be shown.