Rollover slidelet not displaying (or flashing)

[Itzelm]

HI, we are using Captivate 5.5 and we have noticed something strange. We have a main screen with a slidelet.  The slidelet is large and appears over the hotspot area. When we rollover or click the hotspot, the rollover caption does not appear or it flashes several times.  What is the problem? We need to display the rollover caption over the hotspot because the caption slidelete is quite large. We have been successful at doing this in Captivate 4.0 without any issues.

The project was originally done in Captivat 4 and converted to 5.5

[Lilybiri]

Very sorry to confirm your suspicion: it is not possible to have the rollover slidelet and area in the same location. This is not only a problem with the slidelet, not with rollover captions or images.

Lilybiri

[Itzelm]

Thanks for your reply.

Well, surprised and disappointed. We were willing to give Captivate 5.5 a try.

No good.

[RodWard]

What's wrong with just using a rollover caption as Lilybiri suggests?  Why do you need a rollover slidelet?

[Itzelm]

The problem is this. A few years ago, when we started production of our 100+ lesson in Captivate 4, rollover captions did not work because the audio files attached to the rollover captions would not play completely. After many attempts at solving the problem and asking questions on this board, it was obvious that slidelets were the way to go. Besides, slidelets allow for synchronization of images with audio.

Fast forward to 2012, now we are attempting to upgrade to Captivate 5.5 to see if other problems we are having in Captivate 4.0 get solved. But instead we find that now Captivate 5.5 does not allow for rollover slidelets to be displayed over the hotspot. Moving forward with this software would be major work on our side because we would have to change the content we display in rollover slidelets to other formats. Its a task we are not willing to complete, considering that in our experience with Captivate 4.0, we fix one thing and run the risk of other things breaking. For example, every time we republish a course, some of the rollover captions move away from their targets. Anyway, everytime we mess with a change in Captivate, we find more annoying little things.We are not sure if those annoying will happen in Captivate 5.0 but we are just tired of having to deal with little annoying bugs.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there Itzelm

I totally understand that folks expect things to just work. And they certainly don't expect things to regress. But such is often the case in software development. In Captivate's case, it was totally re-written using different tools when version 5 appeared. Some things were better, some were worse. Looks like this one falls into the "worse" category. That's a bummer.

All I can do is encourage you (and others) to report the issue to Adobe and hope it gets fixed in a service release or in a new version. The likelihood of that happening is directly tied to how many reports from irritated users they receive. If only a handful, probably nothing will change. But if they see hundreds of reports, it will carry much more weight. If nobody reports it, the problem simply doesn't exist as far as they are concerned.

Cheers... Rick

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[RodWard]

I'm just wondering if this issue might actually be due to upgrading the older slidelets to Captivate 5.5 format.  I just tested Cp 5.5 slidelets that had the rollover hit area and rollover object set to exactly the same size and position on the screen and I couldn't get them to flash as described. 

I remember this issue occurring in previous versions and it was one of the main reasons I stopped using slidelets. 

But I'm wondering if perhaps you could try just removing a few of your slidelets in one of these upgraded Cp4 projects and then inserting replacement slidelets from Cp 5.5 to see if doing so might resolve the flashing issue.  Perhaps this is just one of those annoying upgrade issues that we sometimes see.

[Itzelm]

Hi Rick, thanks for your suggestion. I will report the issue to Captivate.

RodWard, another coworker and I tested having the rollover object over the hit area, and we both had the same behavior (flashing hotspot or no slidelete at all). We tried it out by starting with a blank project in Captivate 5.5 and adding the slidelete. Dd you put objects such as text and pictures in the slidelet?

Thanks

[RodWard]

Yes you are correct.  There is an issue once you add images into the mix. 

It seems that if you have an image inside the slidelet, and you place your mouse over the image, then the slidelet loses focus and thinks you've moused out of the hit area.  Then it immediately detects your mouse cursor IS in fact over the hit area and turns itself on again. But because this then means your mouse is again over the now visible image, it turns off again.  This happens very quickly and causes the flashing.  It's definitely a bug.  But if Adobe hasn't fixed it yet, I don't have high hopes they will now, with Cp6 just about on the doorstep.

It seems slidelets were only ever intended to be used where the hit area was NOT over the top of the area that would be revealed on mouseover.  So you can for example have a list of items down the side of the screen with rollover slidelets on each one.  When you mouse over an item, more information becomes visible beside it. In this situation they seem to work quite well.

[LynnSterchi]

This is possible! You just need to adjust the stacking order of the elements. The Slidelet Rollover area needs to be the top layer. Unfortunately this element does not appear in the timeline. To change the stacking of the Rollover Slidelet, from the timeline, select the Rollover Slidelet element. Adjust the Slidelet Area so the Slidelet Rollover area is outside of the Slidelet Area. Now you can click to select only the Slidelet Rollover area. Right click the Slidelet Rollover area and click Arrange, click Bring to front. Now go back and replace the Slidelet Aarea to where it was originally. The Slidelet rollover should work now.

[Guest]

Thank you Lynn. This was exactly what I needed!