When selecting an Action for an object (i.e. Click Boxes, Buttons), you can select from several options available in the On Success drop-down menu including, but not limited to: Continue, Go to the previous slide, Go to the next slide, Jump to slide, Open URL or file; Open another project, and Execute Advanced Actions.
If you choose Open URL or file and target a website, learners will be taken to the website you specify should they click the object. That makes perfect sense. But after a learner clicks the object, the Captivate lesson will disappear when the target website opens. That's not such a good thing. Besides losing contact with the lesson, learners will have to click the "Back" button on their browser to return to the lesson. Of course, if the learner clicks around the website, it's going to potentially take several clicks to return to the lesson. Possibly worse, I've seen learners close the website, thinking they'd return to the lesson... only to realize the lesson was nowhere to be seen.
If you are like many Captivate developers, and plan to utilize the Open URL or File action, I have a simple option you can use to ensure that learners easily return to your lesson when they are finished browsing the website.
- In the image below, I've set the Action for a click box to Open URL or file. The URL is the Super Simplistic Solutions website.
- To ensure that the URL opens in a new browser window, I clicked the drop-down menu just to the right of the URL and selected New.
It's as simple as that. If you preview the lesson in a web browser and click the object, a new browser window (or tab) will open. If you close the new browser window, the lesson will still be available, in its own window.
I've created a video demo of the process and posted it to IconLogic's YouTube channel. The video demonstrates the URL action without the URL opening in a new window, and how it looks if you specify a new window.
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