Needing to keep all Objects in view from iPhone to desktop is important. Limit the students ability to advance until they have covered the material and yet be able to review material already seen at any time. A number of questions as you can see. (1) can objects be used in a master slide and referred to in Advanced Actions?, (2) Is there a method to keep Objects in view outside of using Fluid Boxes?, (3) Can Captivate Playback controls be edited?, (4)Are any of the options I have tried workable? (5) Articulate is accomplishing a nice Playback control with the ability to limited the student from advancing before completing a slide, having a progress bar disabled from use, and the ability to scale all its Objects from desktop to iPhone. Can we?, (5) If I need to use the Flash editor, what is the name of this product?
Have created a custom Playback control using six SmartShape buttons used to control Play/Pause, Sound, forward, backward, CC, and TOC. All this to control when a user is able to go forward yet still be able to review material already viewed.
What seems ideal for the students learning, is to see the forward button but not be able to advance until the slide has completed and that same forward button enabled when the slide has already been reviewed. Also to rewind within the slide to review material is important without having to restart the slide completely.
I have accomplished (with the communities help) Advanced Actions that turn the forward button to a gray State and disable it until the slide is complete. A rewind feature seems achievable using the system variables to go back X amount of frames on each button click. The objective is for a student to be able to review material (already seen) at any time during the course so taking the PlayBack Control away does not satisfy this goal. If there was a way to control the existing Captivate Playback controls that would help. Taking away various buttons does not satisfy the request.
I have tried putting the custom SmartShape buttons with supporting Advanced Actions (on Enter):
(1) …on the first slide, but SmartShape buttons do not stay with the slide view (desktop, smartphone – a very important requirement!). They will not stay in a Fluid Box.
(2) …on every slide, but a nightmare to maintain I think.
(3) …on a Master slide which seemed like the best solution, but I don’t see how to refer to these buttons in an Advanced Action. I see the SmartShape has a Style name that is the name previously given.
I have also tried using the properties that control what items will appear on a Playback control within Captivate taking away the forward button but as said earlier, that is not ideal for the student.
There is white paper on using Flash editor to create custom Playback controls. Perhaps that is where I need to go? If so, what is it called? I don’t see specifically a product called Flash editor on Adobe’s list.
I see that a competitor is using Articulate and achieving these results. Wonder how they are doing it?
I do understand that Advanced Actions can be used in Master Slides but not to refer to an object there because as you say there is no ID.
As far as Flash, perhaps I am misled by old information? I just noticed that on Adobe’s product page last night that Flash Professional is now Called Animate CC. I though maybe this was the product that we could use to modify existing Captivate PlayBack controls. So it is not possible at all in these days? https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1282696
I often use a button on the master slide, which changes state of an object on the slides, set for the rest of the projects. Of course with all the limitations linked to Fluid Boxes that is not possible for a responsive project with that workflow.
Editing the playbars was possible in the good old SWF time, not with the HTML playbars. Animate CC is the new name of Flash Builder application because Flash is still very much alive (it is the Flash Player which is dying, not the same). Animate CC can create output to both SWF (still much used in games, with AS3) and to HTML (using JS).
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my situation. It is helpful to hear from someone who has been working with Captivate awhile.
I was thinking early this morning that all but two of my SmartShapes need to have Advanced Actions associated to them so I will try putting them on each slide throughout the course while the rest can perhaps be placed on a Master Slide. I am wondering whether the objects on the master slide will be fluid with the ones on the Filmstrip view? I’ll try it now. Have you had any experience using the Flash Editor which is now called Animate as I understand?
Maybe you misunderstand. It is perfectly possible to have a shape button triggering an Advanced action on a master slide, but if that action has to control an object (like show/hide, or change state) the object to be controlled has to be on a slide because it needs an ID. Look at my personal blog, have plenty of use cases for toggle buttons.
I don’t understand your question about Animate CC which I indeed use to create HTML animations, not to create SWF anymore since the EOL of the Flash player is announced. BTW it is totally impossible to use a SWF in a responsive project.
As for objects in fluid boxes on the master slide, with the exception of the main master slide, they work well. I have blogged about fluid boxes in the master slides as well (you don’t find a lot about them, most bloggers just ignore the master slides for a totally unknown reason).
https://elearning.adobe.com/2017/08/master-fluid-boxes/
Items on a master slide cannot be controlled by any action because they do not have an ID. I gave up the request to make an ID possible, after 6 years of insisting.
I don’t know exactly how you achieved it up till now. You can find several blog posts where I explained how to create toggle shape buttons using shared actions, how to force a first view etc. If you need to control a Next button you cannot do this with a shape button on the master slide because items on master slides have no ID. You need to use the a shape button timed for the rest of the project in that case. I don’t understand the problem you state concerning responsive projects: which workflow do you use? If you are using Fluid Boxes there is indeed a problem because you cannot use objects timed for the rest of the project. Such a problem doesn’t exist for Breakpoint Views workflow which is the only workflow producing real responsive projects in the full sense of that word.
Go with Articulate if you want, but they do not have real responsive projects. Lot of juggle with terms that are not understood by many users. For a rescalable project there is of course no problem to solve this.
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