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Slide Progress Bar

Guest
Dec 30, 2012 Dec 30, 2012

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Hi We are working on Adobe Captivate 6.

We want the progress bar in the playbar to be for each individual slide rather than the entire project.


Eg. Instead of showing say, Slide 1 to 100, we want it to show slide duration.

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Community Expert ,
Dec 31, 2012 Dec 31, 2012

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You would need to customise the playbar skin to achieve this.  You'd need to find yourself an ActionScript 3 and a Javascript HTML5 programmer to do this.

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Engaged ,
Jan 04, 2013 Jan 04, 2013

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Just guessing here but are you trying to build self-paced learning sans playbar?

I am trying to understand why you would want a playbar dedicated for the time of a single slide. How about doing away with the playbar altogether and place back and next buttons for navigation? 

Shawn

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New Here ,
Feb 05, 2013 Feb 05, 2013

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I have spent a couple years developing self-paced learning courses with Captivate (v 6 now) and I too have tried find a way to have a progress bar for each individual slide.  Students would like to be able to navigate within slides without the frustration of jumping from slide to slide (expecially if you have large number of slides/content). Often they comment that they would like back up the presentation a little, to catch something they missed, or to make a note of an important comment, etc. 

It would also be helpful if the slider control would prevent jumping forward to unviewed slides (Similar to the TOC having the option to navigate to visited slides only)

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New Here ,
Jun 26, 2013 Jun 26, 2013

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Did you ever figure out how to do this?  Even if it included finding that Action Script 3 and / or Javascript HTML5 programmer.    I need a solution to this problem!

The first slide of my project is a slide containing 30 minutes of audio.  The rest of the project contains branching, allowing a user to jump to wherever they want to go in the course, based on menu items.   So a Progress Bar that controls the entire project makes absolutely no sense as you randomly jump to slides that were never meant to be visited in sequential order.

The best I did was just put the PAUSE button on the first slide, allowing the user to pause during the 30 minute audio introduction slide, but my users want the ability to replay a part that they missed without having to start over.   Adding the progress bar only adds to the confusion when they can't figure out why they have ended up at some random slide.

Seems like there could be an enhancement to Captivate to make the progress bar either slide or project specific.

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Engaged ,
Jun 26, 2013 Jun 26, 2013

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Can you split up the 30 minutes of audio into shorter slides (with divisions that make sense), and have back buttons on those slides? Then you can think of each slide before the branching as like a "chapter" of a movie on a DVD -- the users won't be able to fastforward or rewind, but they will be able to skip to a previous chapter to replay a part that they missed.

(Honestly, 30 minutes is a long time for a single slide. I think the longest slide I've ever had in a project was maybe 5 minutes long... but perhaps that's just me?)

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New Here ,
Jun 26, 2013 Jun 26, 2013

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Yes, 30 minutes is rather long for a slide if a user is unable to navigate, proceed forward or exit. 

I have included options for the user to pause or exit the important introductory information slide and move on if desired, so they are not stuck on the slide for 30 minutes.  Cutting it up into mutiple slides is not very feasible for my specific need and as you noted would only allow going back or foward to beginning of sections, not to rewind to hear the last couple of sentences.

A Progress Bar that is slide specific would be perfect for my needs.  If anyone knows if that is possible and has more detailed information about how it's done (especially if that includes modifying the playbar skin) I'd appreciate that!  Thanks!

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Engaged ,
Jun 26, 2013 Jun 26, 2013

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Fair enough.

(One last workaround, in case you don't have any luck making a custom playbar: you can use micronavigation, as Lilybiri calls it. Insert a button on the slide, and then create an Advanced Action that skips back a certain number of frames. If the project is 30 fps and you want to allow them to skip back 10 seconds at a time, you'd go back 300 frames.... expression cpCmndGotoFrameAndResume = cpInfoCurrentFrame - 300)

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New Here ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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ElaKat (or whoever might know the answer to this), I have tried to create the action you recommended because that gives me a bandaid for the same problem I have with navigation, but I can't find where to enter the value of -300 after I select cpInfoCurrentFrame.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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Are you perchance trying to use an Assign action instead of an Expression action.  Assign will not work in this case.  You need to use Expression, as ElaKat pointed out.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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You could visit my blog post about micro navigation:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/micro-navigation-in-adobe-captivate

Lilybiri

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New Here ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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Yes, I'm using Expression.  Here's the screen shot of the advanced action panel.  Again, I don't see where to add the -300 variable.  http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3816/11733091926_fb1f593b61_z.jpg

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Community Expert ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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-300  is not a variable! An expression has two terms separated by an operator (here the minus operator). 300 is not a variable but a 'literal'. I suppose you don't have time to read blog posts.

Your expression has no sense whatsoever. Have a look at this overview of system variables

http://blog.lilybiri.com/system-variables-in-captivate-6

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New Here ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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Wow.  A little snarky today, are we?  Yes, I read through the post you sent to me.  Thank you very much.  That's not what i'm trying to do, however.  I was trying to duplicate what ElaKat was doing because that meets my need (ie. a 10 second rewind).  Your second blog post looks more informative for what I'm trying to do, so thank you for that one as well.  It sounds like maybe I'm bothering you, so maybe you could just avoid responding.  Maybe ElaKat will respond in time.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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Not at all, you must have misunderstood. I'm not an English speaker. And you literally wrote: 'where to add the -300 variable' which make me suspect that you are new to advanced actions and that is why I posted to that micronavigation post that has examples of Expressions. 300 is the total number of frames that you want to rewind.

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New Here ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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Lilybiri, you could have fooled me --your blog is very well-written in English and I got exactly what I needed from the second link you sent to me.  Thanks very much.  This is the script I ended up with that works perfectly - http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3781/11733554114_208b1ec9b1_z.jpg

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Community Expert ,
Jan 03, 2014 Jan 03, 2014

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Never fool anyone, English is only my third language but Captivate forums help to learn more English.

You know that a standard action is not releasing the playbar? Here is a link to a YouTube video that explains (and shows some micronavigation):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3nKi-DB6Fw

Lilybiri

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 25, 2014 Apr 25, 2014

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Back to the OP's original request: Is there a way to show the progress bar for an individual slide rather than the whole project?  This is how Articulate Storyline and Presenter show their progress. 

I despise those two programs, however, the stakeholders on my project are Articulate fanboys and want me to find a way to make Captivate show slide progress (or else force me to develop in Storyline).  They feel the TOC gives an accurate idea of how much content is left in the lesson but want to show how much time is left on each slide, especially since some slides have up to a minute of audio.

Is this function built into CP7 or do I need to look to build a custom widget or something?  Since Adobe has adopted pretty much every Storyline enhancement they had over Captivate, I would think they would have that as an option as well.

Please help!  Death before Articulate!

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 25, 2014 Apr 25, 2014

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Thanks for bumping the topic thebloodynine.

Another point in favor of this - there are a lot a savvy users now who will attempt to use the playhead to scrub back for things they've missed - works in YouTube, eh?

Have you ever tried scrubbing on a 12 minute captivate?  Good luck finding your way back!

-james

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Community Expert ,
Apr 25, 2014 Apr 25, 2014

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It is not built in, sorry. As I already mentioned maybe, I don't see a playbar to be that useful at all, since a slide will often not be viewed totally, and that may confuse the user. Same for the global playbar that is confusing when you don't have a totally linear project but branching.

Lilybiri

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 25, 2014 Apr 25, 2014

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I found out why the progress bar is useful to my client as I just got out of a meeting with them.  The learners are disbursed all over the world and most of them have English as a second language.  While listening to the audio there have been times when learners need to re-listen to a portion of the slide.  This is not possible with the full project progress bar.

Storyline and Presenter have progress bars for the slide only and the learners can rewind to any part of the slide as desired.  In fact, my client feels so strongly about this as a feature that I will need to use Storyline if I cannot find a way to make Captivate mimic this functionality, one way or another.  I hate Storyline and do not want to go that route. If nothing else, surely there is a way to do this with Advanced Actions, isn't there?

BTW Lilybiri, I'm a big fan!  Based on your Multiple Scoring tutorial using Advanced Actions, I was able to use Captivate to build an assessment that rates learners in 13 communication skills after completing a simulated coaching session.  I was told it couldn't be done but was able to prove everyone wrong thanks to your tutorial!

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Engaged ,
Apr 25, 2014 Apr 25, 2014

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I feel silly for suggesting the same thing twice, but that scenario sounds like a "skip back x number of seconds" micronavigation button might actually work. It stops the user from being able to accidentally move foward and skip content (in the slide, or in the entire project), but it allows them to move backwards in increments to catch something they missed.

(You could even get a bit more advanced and make sure that the button never takes the user back to the previous slide. Thinking aloud: upon entering a slide, have an action that sets a variable to the current (slide start) frame. Then the action for the button calculates the jump back. If the jump-to-frame is higher than the slide start frame, it jumps there. If it is lower, however, instead of jumping to a previous slide it simply jumps to the beginning of the current slide.)

Whether or not the client would accept a button instead of a progress bar is another matter, I realize

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Explorer ,
Apr 27, 2014 Apr 27, 2014

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That's a very elegant solution, ElaKat. I'm going to use that.

I want users to be able to skip back 5 second to re-listen to the content since it's complicated matter. I want to use only navigation buttons:

A play/pause button

A previous and next button (with arrows and a vertical line behind the arrows)

A "go back 5 seconds" button and a "go forward 5 seconds" button (only with arrows)

I can use EleKat's solution for the user not going to the previous slide when the slide is in less than 5 seconds. But I also don't want the user to go the next slide when there is less than 5 seconds left, since my project is going to be non linear.

This would be possible if the cpInfoFrameCount variable would count the frames per slide, but it doesn't right?

Does anybody know of a solution to be able to find out the number of frames per slide? Obviously I don't want to count for each slide because this will take ages and will change with every adjustment.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 27, 2014 Apr 27, 2014

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cpInfoFrameCount gives you the total number of frames in the published content.  That's NOT going to help you in this case.

What you need to do is create a Standard Action with the following action line items:

  • First captures the current frame number at the moment the action is executed You can get the current frame number via cpInfoCurrentFrame.
  • Then ASSIGN the frame number to a user variable. (You'll need to have created this user variable already.)
  • Then jump to a frame about 5 seconds before the current frame.  If there are 30 frames per second then you need to subtract 150 frames from the current frame number.  You'll need to use an EXPRESSION action to perform this calculation.

Once you have created this Standard (or Conditional) Advanced Action, then you can execute it at any time by clicking a button on any slide

If you are unfamiliar with Advanced Actions, you may need to study up on them:

http://www.infosemantics.com.au/adobe-captivate-advanced-actions

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Explorer ,
Apr 27, 2014 Apr 27, 2014

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Thanks, Rod. I did figure out how to go back and forward 5 seconds within a slide. Thanks to Lilybiri's great blog post.

ElaKat had a great idea for the user to stay on the current slide when he/she clicks to go back 5 seconds when the slide is not yet running for 5 seconds. This can be done with a user variable.

The next challenge, however, is for the user to stay on the current slide when he/she wants to go five seconds forward when there are less then 5 seconds left. To do this, I need to know the number of frames for that slide (actually, at what frame that particular slide ends, but you can calculate that with the number of frames per slide since you know the number of the first slide frame from the user variable).

So, the questions remains: is there a way of knowing the number of frames per slide (without counting "manually")?

@ Lilybri: thanks for the tip for the framecount. This should be preventend with an error margin. 

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