Why?

Whlie watching the sample project included with Captivate 2019, where the author is using two toggle buttons for Audio and for CC, I thought it could be useful to re-post this article from my personal blog in the community. Replacz the advanced actions by one shared action. It can also be used for other toggle buttons as you’ll see. In more recent articles I already pointed to the big advantages of shared actions over advanced actions, will not repeat .

In the past I wrote some posts about creating Toggle buttons. The oldest article explained the use of an Expression and a system variable for a button that kept the same style but could turn on/off a functionality (created for versions 5/5.5). My excitement about shape buttons, appearing in version 6, was the inspiration for several scenarios in which the style of the toggle button changed with the on/off situation.

When shared actions appeared with Captivate 7, I posted some articles about the difference with advanced actions. Captivate 8 enhanced shared actions by allowing variables and literals as candidate parameters. Although Captivate 9 seems not to add any improvements to shared actions (had hoped secretly for an easier way to edit them), combining shared actions with the new multistate objects will save a lot of time. The use case described here is a good example. Start by watching the example movie to understand my interpretation of Toggle buttons.

Concept

All toggle buttons have in common to be associated with a variable that can be toggled by the developer: I’m talking about Boolean variables, which can have only two logical values ‘0’ (False/No) or ‘1’ (True/Yes). Both system and user variables are possible. On this screenshot you see the Timeline with the 6 shape buttons, labeled to identify their functionality (SB is my indication for Shape Buttons):

Possible boolean variables which could be used are:

• v_visib (user variable with Default value = 0) for SB_visib
• cpCmndShowPlaybar (system variable with Default value = 1) for SB_Playbar
• cpCmndTOCVisible (system variable with Default value = 0) for SB_TOC
• cpCmndCC (system variable with Default value = 0) for SB_CC
• cpCmndMute (system variable with Default value = 0) for SB_Audio

This list shows that one of the system variables doesn’t have ‘0’ as default value, cpCmndShowPlaybar. Solution for this discrepancy can be found in switching the states for the associate button, or in switching the variable itself to ‘0’, thus hiding the Playbar. I used the second scenario: with the On Enter action for the third slide I did Hide the Playbar, which toggles cpCmndShowPlaybar to 0

The shared action can be used for any button with such a, associated Boolean variable, system or user variable. Some examples are shown in the last slide of the example movie: cpLockTOC or a user variable to toggle an audio object.

In the Sample project about the interactive movie, the variables that are used are cpCmndCC and cpCmndMute. Look at the top control panel for the Audio and CC buttons in the movie.

States

The shape buttons have three InBuilt states: Normal, Rollover and Down. For each button I added one custom state. That state will change the shape button to show the ‘OFF’ state, and if necessary additional objects are added in this state. In this screenshot you see the 4 states for the shape button SB_Audio:

This shape button has a SVG added in each state. At this moment SVG cannot be used as a Fill image for a shape button (maybe in a next version?), they are separate objects. For some states I also changed the style of the shape itself (Fill):

1. Normal: has a SVG indicating you can mute  audio (since cpCmndMute has a default value of 0, which means that audio is playing)
2. Rollover: Speaker only (SVG), Fill different
3. Down: Speaker only (SVG), Fill different
4. AudioOn: has a SVG indication to play audio; this will be the state that is visible when audio is muted, cpCmndMute = 1.

In the sample movie the author deleted  both the Rollover and Down state. That is probably because you can only switch to one other state, in this case the custom state, whereas the InBuilt states for Rollover and Down will remain the same in the two states. I solved it in another way as you can see in the screenshot above.

The button for the CC has a similar setup with two states.

Bit off topic but interesting to point out: the custom state is not as limited as InBuilt states. In the original blog post I showed two ‘Visibility toggle buttons. In those buttons I have added other objects for the custom state as you can see here:

Shared Action

1. the button itself (SB_Audio in the screenshot above)
2. the state ‘Normal’ which is used and
3. the state ‘AudioOn’ which is used as well

Candidate parameters are:

1. The variable cpCmndMute: it has to be a parameter, because we need other Boolean variables for the other buttons
2. Literal ‘1’: because I choose the 4 th state (custom) for each button with this action in mind, it is not necessary to define this literal as a parameter

This leads to the definition of the shared action with 4 parameters, the compulsory and one candidate parameter. In this last screenshot you see the parameters with their values for another button, SB_Playbar. Watch the description of the parameters.

Conclusion

In many situations using a Captivate playbar is not a good choice, and with states, one single shared action from your script library it is now really simple to create not only Next and Back buttons, but also every other toggle button needed on the course slides. If using shape buttons (as was the case here) you can put them on the first slide of the course, time them for the rest of the project. They will have each a unique ID, which allows you to take control of those shape buttons, to hide them when they are not needed on some slides. Good luck!

As you’ll see in the interactive movie, you’ll probably need some toggle buttons. Once you get the hang of those interactive movies, you’ll need those toggle buttons over and over again. Better use a shared action. Be sure, I will post interactive movies in the near future, here and on my blog, but I wanted to offer this tip.