Advanced actions not responding as I expect.
Hello,
I’m creating advanced actions for a slide in my presentation and am having trouble with one of the elements not displaying as I would expect.
Scenario: 4 boxes with questions – click the ‘?’ to display an answer and an orange horizontal rule. The horizontal rule stays for each of the 4 ‘answers’ while the actual answers change depending on which ‘?’ is clicked. Also, with each click, the color of the box changes and a down arrow/caret appears below the box.
Problem: When clicking the first box, the horizontal rule displays then I have to click again to get the first answer to display. I can then click any of the other boxes and their answer appears.
Expected result: When clicking the first box (or any box to start) both the horizontal rule and the corresponding answer should appear with one click.
I’ve attached images of the 4 advanced actions that I set up as well as my timeline. Please let me know if there is anything further needed.
thanks,
Terry
A suggestion, grouping related objects together into a group can add meaningful organization to your projects and is very helpful later when you are trying to find a specific object, and also when you are working with advanced actions. Command + G on a Mac, CTRL + G on a PC. Grouping objects and employing a (personally ) understandable labeling system can go a long way when you are having to troubleshoot down the road. Especially when you have numerous smartshapes, etc.
Although it depends on the case, using the Show/Hide function, instead of changing an object’s state – which requires an extra step to fine tune – may make the process you are trying to implement more straightforward.
You can actually combine the Show/Hide function with your object groups which may make everything easier for you to work with.
- Create your Group.
- Label your Group.
- Use that Group name with the Show/Hide function when you are writing out your advanced action.
So then each “box” or question would have its own group and Show/Hide function.
I am not sure this would definitely solve your problem, but at a glance I think that this might make things easier for you to trace.
@eshakerdge272 Thanks for trying to help. You are correct, grouping is a great way to organize the slide. However the functionality itself of this project is completely based on multistate objects and state commands, and in that case grouping is not helping at all. No Show/Hide has been used at all, which is the older alternative, which was the only way before Captivate version 6. Maybe have a look at this blog post comparing both workflows:
http://blog.lilybiri.com/tip-3-show-slash-hide-or-multistate-object-advanced-slash-shared-actions
The problem itself has been solved (told the OP) but the whole setup could be much simplified by getting rid of a lot of multistate objects and their states. That is what I explained in my last answer but apparently the OP is no longer following this thread.
Some tips to simplify your advanced actions and the object mess. It looks like you think it is impossible to add objects to a state and/or use a shape as a text container:
- Use the box shape as text container. If you really need a completely different style for the two parts of text (scenario/answer) you could keep one of the two text captions, It is perfectly possible to set margins for the text in a shape as well. That will get you rid of 8 or 4 Text captions.
- Do not use a separate multistate object for that blue arrow, but add the blue arrow in the Aria_bluebox state of the boxes. That gets you rid of four multistate objects, and an action line in the advanced actions. See screenshot.
- Personally I would get rid of the TextCaption_24 as multistate object, but add (caption or shape) in a custom state to the Question mark buttons. Get rid of the Rollover and Down states. In that case you can use ‘Go to Next State’ to have the Normal state (question mark) replaced by the custom state which will show the answer text. This even turns your button in a toggle button, because clicking it again will return to the Normal state.
Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. You may have a look at this post:
http://blog.lilybiri.com/tip-3-show-slash-hide-or-multistate-object-advanced-slash-shared-actions
Personally I use multistate objects a lot, and I do create tons of shared and advanced actions.
Indeed those red arrows mean that the end of the object timeline is glued to the end of the slide timeline. Increase the duration of the slide by dragging its end and you’ll see what I mean. Some of your objects are timed for the rest of the slide, which is the most common option. Personally I even change the default duration for most objects in Preferences to ‘for rest of slide’. To get rid of the glued situation, you’ll need to drag the end of the object timeline to the left, and set the object in its Timing Properties panel to ‘rest of slide’. Once you’ll want to add slide audio (narration) which is always recommended in any eLearning course, you’ll see why I asked about this, because such audio would mess up your slide completely as it is now set up.
Well… there are tons of tutorials here in the portal by the Captivate team. On my personal blog I have a lot of tutorials as well, most of them are about use cases for shared and advanced actions, but I have several basic tutorials as well. For sure, have a look at:
http://blog.lilybiri.com/pausing-captivates-timeline
I was wondering about those text captions, because some of your smartshapes could have been used as text containers as well. Sorry, but I am still trying to see the complete picture: what are those shapes which have states ….arrow and ….box? State panel?
Now I see that the four buttons are at the bottom, and that you use 4 images (SVGs) of the question mark as buttons for the advanced actions. The pausing of the slide happens with the four buttons, the question marks seems not to have any pausing point. They are displayed for the rest of the slide (I could see it in their timeline, but cannot see it for the other objects).
The explanation appears using a state for Text_Caption_24, which has probably 4 states + Normal state. Where is that text caption on your slide and what is its size? You talk also about a color change. If you had used a shape as text container, it would have been easier because both the text and the background color/border of the shape could be changed in states.
The question mark images functioning as buttons: how do you switch back to the Normal state, to mimick closing the explanations?
My apologies for all those questions, I am searching for a reason for your problem. I suspect that you have Infinite attempts for the images used as buttons?
It would be easier if I could see that project, or at least this slide in cptx-format. My CP intuition tells me that what you want could probably be done in a much simpler way, but I can be wrong. Not only the use of shapes as text container, but also replacing the many multistate objects by a much smaller number of multistate objects.
I downloaded the example, which is something I rarely agree to do.
However it doesn’t have the original problem, because you don’t have the Line object anymore. Are there other problems? I may simplify the layout, but first goal was to solve the issues which I don’t see now.
I will try to see if I can simplify the layout and the actions.
I’ve added a screenshot of the “Aria” slide and the Advanced Interaction panel as well. I’m not sure what you mean by why do I have old text captions and shapes? Those are the content pieces for the slide.
I changed out the line for an underscore inside the text caption box to keep that ‘group’ together when displaying, but will try using a very thin rectangle in my next round.
Help me with the ‘off topic’ comment you made. Are you referring to the red arrows at the end of some of the timeline rows? If so, please tell me how to get rid of them.
Unfortunately I am learning Captivate on the fly as I have not found any useful courses to teach the proper way to use its wonderful features. ANYTHING you can provide to help this learning experience would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Terry
Difficult to help for multiple reasons. Tons of objects on that slide, without meaningful labels nor grouping. Can you post at least a screenshot of the slide itself and of the part of the Advanced Interaction panel for that slide. You have 4 buttons, and each of them trigger an action. Why do you need old text captions and shapes? The line object is rather tricky, would like to see its Object State panel. From my experience it is safer to use a very thin rectangle.
Off topic: why do you have some objects with a timeline attached to the end of the slide timeline? Other similar objects either have a fixed duration or are timed for the rest of the slide.
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