Month: September 2007

I recently had a student ask me how he could allow users to delete text on a screen in a Captivate simulation. Since there is no feature in Captivate that will allow this kind of user interaction, the solution seems impossible. Think about the problem for a second. The simulation with which your user is interacting is really just a bunch of screen captures. If you captured text on a screen, such as an address in a Web browser’s address bar, there is no way in Captivate to allow a user to delete the text in the address bar and replace it with a different Web address. It’s impossible! Give it up!!!! Ummm, just kidding. Read on…

It is true that Captivate does not have a magic tool that will take a static screen capture and allow a user to delete something on the background. During the following lesson, I will teach you a few tweaks that will allow you to achieve the same effect.

Before continuing, it might be helpful if you watch a finished sample project so you can see the effect in action. It’s a very short simulation. After you are finished watching the sample, minimize the window and return to this lesson so you can learn, slide by slide, how the effect was achieved.

So, if you watched the sample, you know it was a simple lesson allowing a user to jump to a Web site. The movie was recorded in Custom mode (Edit > Preferences > Recording Modes > Custom).

Slide 1 of the Sample Project

If you watched the sample movie via the link above, you should have noticed that slide 1 showed the address bar with the address not yet selected. There was a standard Text Caption, a Click Box over the Address Bar and a Failure Caption. The Click Box was set to Go To Next Slide on Success (its settings are shown in the screen capture below).

Slide 2 of the Sample Project

This is the most important slide in the sample. Remember, you’re trying to to make it seem like the user is actually going to delete the selected text. This slide in the sample showed the address bar again, but this time the address was selected. 

First the obvious: there’s a Text Caption on the slide slide. But I also inserted a Click Box with a Failure Caption. I’ll bet you’re wondering where the Click Box was hiding. Actually, it’s tiny and located in the extreme upper left of the window. Why bother inserting a Click Box and make it so small? It may seem like a waste, but I attached a keyboard shortcut to the Click Box (the [BACKSPACE] key). It’s not very likely that a user will accidentally click the little Click Box. If the user clicks anywhere on the screen, they’ll likely miss the tiny Click Box and instead see the Failure Caption. If the user presses [BACKSPACE], as instructed, they will jump to the next slide.

The settings for the Click Box are shown in the screen capture below.

Slide 3 of the Sample Project

Slide 3 shows the address bar empty. How did I get this screen capture? In reality, when I recorded the movie, pressing [BACKSPACE] didn’t result in a screen capture-and it won’t for you either, especially if you turn off the Record keystrokes feature. Since I wanted to show the address bar empty, I simply pressed [Print Screen] on my keyboard and pulled the screen capture manually.

During production, I edited the background in MS Paint to remove the insertion point.

Then I added a Text Entry Box. You can see my Text Entry Box settings in the picture below.

On the Options tab for the Text Entry Box, I selected Show button. I positioned the resulting button over the Browser’s Go button.

Then I showed the Properties of the button and used the settings shown below. (Remember, I did not insert a standard button, I elected to Show button as part of the Text Entry Box.)

And that’s how you allow users to delete text as part of your simulation. If you’d like to download the Captivate production file used to create the simulation you watched earlier, click here. (You will need Adobe Captivate 3 installed on your computer to open the file.)

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Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

Got a production problem that’s making you pull your hair out. Email your problem and maybe the solution will get published here

Adding Flash animations to an Adobe Captivate project

Adobe Captivate enables you to incorporate external Adobe Flash animations into your project easily, as well as efficiently maintain your project over time by using the project library.

Mark Alan Chrisman has written an article that discusses:

• Why you would want to incorporate external animation
• Basic tips on preparing your Flash file
• How to import an external animation
• How to update an animation in your project

Click here to read the article.

Found an interesting site? Share it with your fellow readers.

Question: Captivate Print Button… Is it Possible?

Can I insert a button on a Captivate slide that will print that slide? If so, how please?

Answer

While this feature is not built into Captivate, a Captivate developer has created a widget that will get the job done for you. Click here to learn more.

When you record movies in Captivate, you can elect to capture your keystrokes at the same time that you’re capturing your screen. The ability to capture your keystrokes isn’t a new feature in Captivate. In fact, the feature has been around since Captivate was known as RoboDemo.

If you’ve read any of my Captivate books, you know that I’ve always recommended that you turn the Record keystrokes option off. Why? In the bad old days, typing you recorded couldn’t be edited in either RoboDemo or Captivate. If you typed a typo, the typo and your attempts to fix it, appeared in the movie. If you wanted to replace the recorded keystrokes, you had to re-record the movie.

In Captivate 3, there is now a way to edit recorded keystrokes (kind of), as you will see next. Please keep in mind, however, that while these techniques will work, and aren’t difficult, replacing the keystrokes will impact your bottom line because fixing each instance of the keystroke takes time and involves multiple steps. For this reason, I still recommend using the Record keystrokes feature sparingly.

Turn on Record Keystrokes

1. With Captivate 3 running, choose Edit > Preferences
2. Select Settings from the Recording category
3. Select Record keystrokes and, optionally, Hear keyboard tap sounds

   

4. Click OK
5. Record a movie and during the recording process, type some text (when finished, Save and Open the new movie)

Replace Recorded Keystrokes

1. Ensure the movie you just recorded is open, or open an existing movie containing recorded keystrokes
2. Go to the slide containing the recorded keystrokes
3. View the Timeline (View > Timeline)

   The typing you recorded will be listed on the Timeline with the name Typing

   

4. Right-click the Typing object on the Timeline and choose Replace with Text Animation



5. In the New Text Animation dialog box that appears, notice that the Typing Text Effect is already selected in the Effect drop down menu
6. Type your corrected text into the Text field



7. Click the Change font button and select the font and font size that match the typing you recorded originally
8. Click OK twice to close both dialog boxes
9. On the slide, position the Text Animation over the background image

Now Things Get Interesting

You’ve replaced the recorded keystrokes with a Text Animation. Sweet! But you’ll notice that there’s text in the background behind the Text Animation. If you preview the slide, you’ll see that the text in the background makes it nearly impossible to enjoy your next Text Animation. You’ll need to remove the background. But how? Read on…

1. Right-click the Slide Background and choose Copy Background
2. Start MS Paint (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint)
3. Once Paint is running, choose Edit > Paste to paste the Captivate background into the Paint window
4. On the Paint toolbar, select the Erase/Color Eraser tool
5. Use the Erase/Color Eraser tool to erase the text on the background that you do not want

   

6. When finished, choose Edit > Select All

7. Choose Edit > Copy
8. Switch back to Captivate and open the slide with the Text Animation
9. Right-click the slide background and choose Paste as Background

   Cool! The background has been updated without affecting the timing of other slide objects.

Repeat this process on any slide where there are recorded keystrokes and problematic backgrounds that require editing. You might even find yourself using Paint’s Text tool to replace slide background text with updated text.

Like I said earlier, none of the steps above are difficult. But depending on how much recorded text you have to replace with Text Animation, and how many slide backgrounds you need to clean, the process could take a significant amount of time.

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

I recently received an interesting email from a Captivate user who wanted to keep an audio sound effect used in an imported PowerPoint presentation. Specifically, this person had a little bell icon on a slide that was supposed to make a sound if clicked. After importing the slide into Captivate, you could still click on the bell icon but all you could hear was a mouse-click sound. Strange! What happened to the bell sound effect?

I wrote an article a few weeks ago about the improved PowerPoint import features in Adobe Captivate 3. I wrote that you can now import the PowerPoint animations used on the slides. However, you do not get to keep your audio effects. In fact, Captivate treats the imported slides as animations and inserts a Click Box over the entire slide that controls navigation. The sound the user reported above is actually the default mouse click sound you’ll get with any Click Box.

Here’s what I would do to reclaim the audio effect on the bell image mentioned above.

1. First, open the slide in question in Captivate 3

   You’ll notice that there is, in fact, a large Click Box covering the entire slide, including the bell image (which is really just part of the animation at this point).

2. Resize the Click Box so it is no longer covering the bell
3. Insert a new Click Box that just covers the bell
4. Set the options of the new Click Box so that the On Success is set to No Action. On the Options tab, add a Success Caption (you won’t need a Failure or Hint Caption)





5. Show the Properties of the Success Caption and remove the text. Then set the Caption type to [transparent]



6. Still on the Properties of the Success Caption, go to the Audio tab and import the sound effect you want to use and click OK



If you preview the project now, you’ll be able to click the bell image on the slide (you’ll really be clicking the Click Box) and the the sound you attached to the Success Caption should play. The cool thing about this trick is that the Success Caption that appears is invisible to the user thanks to the options you set in steps 4 and 5 above.

One final thing, but it’s a biggie. You’ll probably notice that the sound will only play one time when you click the Click Box.  Here’s how you get around this Click Box limitation:

1. Insert a Blank Slide before the slide containing the image and the Click Box
2. Set the timing of the new slide to something very fast (.1 second–a tenth of a second–will work wonderfully)
3. Back on the slide with the Click Box and bell image, show the Properties of the Click Box you created over the bell image and change the On Success to Go to previous slide (in the picture below, the previous slide happened to be Slide 1). Then click OK.



Now when you preview the project and click the bell image, you’ll jump to the previous slide, which will only play for a nano-second and then continue to the slide with the Click Box over the bell image (which you can click over and over again–and enjoy the sound).

Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.