I’ve long been a fan of simple Captivate slides. As I’ve said numerous times in this newsletter, less is more. When I produce Captivate projects, I keep the number of slide objects as low as possible. For instance, I try to use just one text caption and one interactive element on a slide (such as a button or click box). I’ve discovered that more slides with fewer slide objects is easier to produce than fewer slides with more objects.
Having preached the gospel of “less is more,” I do realize that there are many Captivate developers out there who simply need to insert more than one text caption on a slide. Horrors! Okay, if you really need to do it, go ahead. It’s certainly possible to add 20 text captions to a slide… 60… 100!
However (I bet you saw an “however” coming, didn’t you), if you do need to work with multiple text captions on a slide, you should be aware that the vertical order of the text caption on the slide’s timeline might prove important… and might not. Curious? Read on…
Consider the image below. I am not trying to trick you when I describe the image below as a slide with three simple text captions.
And here is the timeline for that very slide.
The order of the text captions appear to be in a logical order (caption 2 beneath 1, and caption 3 hanging out at the bottom). Does the stacking order shown in the timeline above matter? You could easily drag the timeline object for Caption 3 above Caption 1 and it wouldn’t make any difference. According to the timeline image above, all three captions appear at the same time. But since the text captions do not overlap on the slide, the vertical order does not matter.
Ummm… but it does. Maybe. Sorta…
Allow me to explain… if you intend to record your own audio for the slide (Audio > Record > This Slide), below is how the text from the captions will appear on the Captions tab. Ooops. It seems like the logical order represented on the timeline is no longer logical. In fact, it looks like the text is presented in reverse. And it is.
Do you plan to add Accessibility text to your slides? If so, an easy way to add the Caption text is to show the Properties of a slide and, on the Slide tab, click the Accessibility button. If you click the Insert slide text button (shown below), your caption text is added to the slide for you… but it is once again in reverse order.
So what’s a developer to do? Simple… think in reverse. Instead of thinking in a top to bottom way, think bottom to top. If you set up your timeline like this…
… the Captions area for new audio will look like this…
And the Accessibility text that gets inserted will look like this…
Do you have a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.
Hi,
I’ve just found out that the vertical order of the objects in the timeline depends on if the objects are (on the slide) in fore- or background. If you change the objects position from fore- to background, or reverse, they switch to the appropriate position in the timeline. Foreground objects get placed on the top position with number one and so on. Background objects get a higher number and switch to a position at the end of the timeline. For me that wasn’t good. I had a slide with about 10 objects, if you hate it or not :-), and they had to be sorted by the time of their appearance. You can control the appearance of objects only in the timeline, at least if you need a complete overview. You then can see, “alright, both the objects in the top right corner of the slide appear at the beginning of the slide and the second object one second after the first one”. This overview gets destroyed when you change the fore-/ background position of the objects, which is for example necessary if you have one object covering the other.
What you mean with your post, I must admit I don’t understand it. But it also seems it has no relevance for me…
But thank you anyway. And… Any further comments on this?
Bye
Hans-Peter
Hi,
I’ve just found out that the vertical order of the objects in the timeline depends on if the objects are (on the slide) in fore- or background. If you change the objects position from fore- to background, or reverse, they switch to the appropriate position in the timeline. Foreground objects get placed on the top position with number one and so on. Background objects get a higher number and switch to a position at the end of the timeline. For me that wasn’t good. I had a slide with about 10 objects, if you hate it or not :-), and they had to be sorted by the time of their appearance. You can control the appearance of objects only in the timeline, at least if you need a complete overview. You then can see, “alright, both the objects in the top right corner of the slide appear at the beginning of the slide and the second object one second after the first one”. This overview gets destroyed when you change the fore-/ background position of the objects, which is for example necessary if you have one object covering the other.
What you mean with your post, I must admit I don’t understand it. But it also seems it has no relevance for me…
But thank you anyway. And… Any further comments on this?
Bye
Hans-Peter
Hi,
I’ve just found out that the vertical order of the objects in the timeline depends on if the objects are (on the slide) in fore- or background. If you change the objects position from fore- to background, or reverse, they switch to the appropriate position in the timeline. Foreground objects get placed on the top position with number one and so on. Background objects get a higher number and switch to a position at the end of the timeline. For me that wasn’t good. I had a slide with about 10 objects, if you hate it or not :-), and they had to be sorted by the time of their appearance. You can control the appearance of objects only in the timeline, at least if you need a complete overview. You then can see, “alright, both the objects in the top right corner of the slide appear at the beginning of the slide and the second object one second after the first one”. This overview gets destroyed when you change the fore-/ background position of the objects, which is for example necessary if you have one object covering the other.
What you mean with your post, I must admit I don’t understand it. But it also seems it has no relevance for me…
But thank you anyway. And… Any further comments on this?
Bye
Hans-Peter