Introduction to a project we can build together over the next several weeks. A basic calculator!
Here is what I would consider a pretty ambitious project.
On the surface, this might seem like a pretty simple project but I found it to be a pretty good challenge.
For those of you who are interested, I will be putting together a multi-part series on how to craft the STAGCALC 3000
For starters – take a look at it and test it out. Obviously, I don’t have time to test every possible calculation so perhaps there is a bug or two – or thirty.
If you find one, please let me know.
Currently – as you’ll read in the working project – you do need to clear the display after each calculation that is done. No ability to perform one after the next in series. Also I have limited the small display to a range of -99999999 to 99999999. If you generate something larger or smaller than that you will get an error.
As we build this over the weeks to come – you can make something with your own flair.
I look forward to breaking this down and hearing your comments and questions along the way.
Hi Greg, very cool calculator, I can’t seem to find the tutorial for it. Have you posted it yet?
Thank you.
Yes, there are actually four parts. Here is the link to part four which will contain the links for the others as well.
https://elearning.adobe.com/2019/06/building-calculator-part-4-operation-buttons/
This is awesome
Very cool Greg. Now if you could only get the solar panel to work.
I designed it to work off of the backlight of your monitor. 😉
Nice! 😂
I decided to take this opportunity to try using a TypeKit Font or Adobe Font, as they are simply called now. I have not tried using them before so hopefully the rendered result is better than it was.
Did you find a font that looked like the original digital font? I have been searching, but couldn’t find it. Yes, you are correct, name changed to Adobe fonts recently. Sorry that I was still talking about Typekit fonts.
No – I didn’t, but at least the bottom is not cut off . It will suffice.
As a side note – one nice thing about PowerPoint is that all I have to do is check a box to embed my fonts. I found this to be a real pain to make work.
Powerpoint is not meant to create a website, as is now the case for a Captivate course published to HTML5. I don’t understand your comparison?
You only have to add the domain you’ll publish to in the Publishing dialog box in Captivate. Is that really a pain? I have been using Adobe fonts since they appeared in Captivate, never did see it as a problem.
It will be easier to use the Adobe Fonts now that I have it set up.
Here is the long story if you’re really interested.
It started with me clicking on the little Tk box which brought me to the fonts. I picked one to try and ‘activated’ it. Then I went back to Captivate and it was not in my list. I checked out some posts and a couple videos and all of them showed/talked about picking a font and clicking ‘sync’ – even one posted 15 days ago. Well, I searched and searched for some way to sync my font choice thinking I had to find a way to do that – to no avail. Apparently, I figured, something changed.
Then, I had a realization. I have two accounts. A personal account and a work account. Since this project was a personal thing, I have been creating it on my home computer with my personal account but was logged into the eLearning Community with my work account so it was pulling up Adobe Fonts with my work account. I honestly didn’t think much of it at the time.
So I figure I will log out and log in with a matching account (that was a mistake and another long story). Anyway, I got Captivate and Adobe Fonts using the same login and tried again. Still didn’t work. Started digging around some more and eventually found a reference to downloading and installing a Creative Cloud App to make this work so I did that.
Finally, after 90 minutes of messing around, I got my font choice to show up. This is just to use Adobe Fonts – now I was thinking, “Geez, in PowerPoint, all I have to do is check a box to embed a font. I just wasted 90 minutes for a font which was not my original choice. At least it looks better than the websafe font choices we get.
That is why I thought it was a pain.
Thanks for that explanation, Greg. I have only one account on Adobe, and had already fonts synchronized with my Adobe account. Maybe that made it a lot easier.
My comment about PPT was that it is meant for presentations, not for uploading to a webserver. That makes it a lot easier to ’embed’ fonts. As long as you have no need for dynamic text in Captivate, and you have a non-responsive project, all text will be converted to images. It is then not necessary to ’embed’ fonts neither. But you have a dynamic text in the results field.
Since the result field is dynamic text, you need indeed to use either a websafe font or a Typekit font. Or you need to embed the font.
Calculator is also limited to one mathematical operator, no sequence of operations is possible.
Correct – one calculation at a time.
I may try to figure out multiple sequenced operations in the future when I decide to wrack my brain again.
I was so wrapped up in making this work as it does that I forgot all about the font piece. I will probably upload a fix somewhere close to approvals time Sunday night.
Have created calculators with advanced actions in older versions. Nice to see an alternative approach as always. I had a look at Typekit, but couldn’t find a font similar to the digital one you used originally…
good graphics… but showing the only first level result. I think you can use javaScript to achieve multiple level calculations. Also, NumberDisplay gets cut at the bottom. Better use a slightly smaller font.
Chandresh,, Greg used a font which is not a websafe nor Typekit font. It will be replaced soon.
Am I missing the
‘how to build” part of this or is it proprietary?
Since you commented on Part 4 of this series as well, I am guessing you found the rest of the information…? The links to the rest of the project are there.
I see now that the digital font I was using with this does not display on other computers if they don’t have it installed.
I will correct that with a more universally friendly font.
The display was supposed to look like the attached image.
Attachment 
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