Adobe Captivate 3: Get Your Hotspots into Shape

You have always been able to create Click Boxes in Captivate that essentially allow you to "hot spot" an area of your slide. If users click the "hot spot," you can jump the user to another slide in your project (also known as branching), continue the project, execute a JavaScript or jump the user to a Web site.

What you could NOT do was create an irregularly-shaped Click Box that would for instance, allow you to follow the contours of your logo or someone’s face. All you could do was create Click Boxes that were rectangles or squares. Bummer! But wait: with Captivate 3, there is a way–Rollover Slidelets!   Rollover Slidelets are basically mini-slides within a slide. Similar to Rollover Captions and Images, Slidelets only appear when the user moves the mouse over a specified area on the slide. Unlike Rollover Captions (which can only contain text) and Rollover Images (which can only contain images), Slidelets can contain images, text, audio, and video. In addition, you can attach navigation controls to a Slidelet, just like a Click Box.   But here is where things get interesting… it is possible to create a custom shape out of the Rollover Slidelet. In short, no more boring rectangles or squares. Interested? Read on…  

Insert a Rollover Slidelet

1. Open or create a project
2. Choose Insert > Rollover Slidelet

   The New Slidelet dialog box appears.

3. Click OK to accept the initial defaults

   Two things appear on the slide: the Rollover Slidelet and the Slidelet. While the two objects look similar, the Rollover Slidelet will serve as the hot spot. The Slidelet is what will appear should the user move the mouse over the Rollover Slidelet. Although the Rollover Slidelet contains the words "Rollover Slidelet," that identifier will go away if you make the Rollover Slidelet smaller. In that case, use your mouse to point at either object and you will see a tooltip that will help you identify which object is which.

   

Reshape the Rollover Slidelet   

1. With the Rollover Slidelet selected, press [Ctrl] [Alt] [W] on your keyboard (you can also right-click the Rollover Slidelet and choose Redraw Shape)

   Your mouse pointer becomes a cross indicating that you can draw a shape.

2. Click to create a starting point for your custom shape
3. Continue clicking around the shape you want to "hot spot"

   

4. When finished with the custom shape, double-click to close the "hot spot"

   

   And that’s it! You would now proceed to resize the Slidelet and add assets to it (such as images, Text Captions, animation–just about anything you like).

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