Captivate: No links or clickboxes on Master pages: A way around this problem?

[anvw]

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It seems to be a well-worn truth in Captivate (I'm using v5) that no clickboxes or links are allowed on master pages, and that the only solution is to put them on each page. I have 6 files with a total of 200 or more pages - I don't want to be pasting links laboriously to every page. Is there a more efficient way to do that, a way around the "no clickboxes or links allowed on master pages" problem? Alternatively: I already have clickboxes on every page, but I want to change the old link for each clickbox to a new link which is the same in every case -- not manually going through each clickbox, but changing them all in one go if possible. Find and replace would be great if it worked for this, but Find-and-Replace doesn't seem to "see" the link references in clickboxes

[RodWard · Accepted solution]

Yes it is indeed a well-worn bone of contention that Captivate does not allow interactive objects on Master Slides.  Something we hope to address in Cp6.

If you have access to Flash and AS3 scripting skills, you could possibly create an SWF or static widget that could be added to a Master Slide.  This object would then be able to have clickable areas (buttons in Flash) that linked to external URLs.  Getting them to link to slides within the same project is also doable.

If you want to be able to change the destination URL of a number of navigation buttons or clickboxes all at once, then instead of setting up the URL in each individual interactive object, I would suggest you set up an Advanced Action that has the URL specified and just get the other objects to all execute that Advanced Action.

[anvw]

Thank you - that's helpful.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Another workaround, that I didn't see in Rod's answer: there is a Static button widget available with Captivate. It can be added to the master page. It has not all the actions available to normal buttons, but navigation and Open URL is in its list. Beware: in Captivate 5.5 this widget has no pause. In my blog you can find the same widget with a pausing point at half its duration:

What I (dis)like in Captivate 5.5

Lilybiri

[James_Hugh]

This may not solve the basic issue, but it may "work-around"

Set up a slide with the text boxes to display for entire project, then Hide and show as required using the advanced script. It works with text boxes, but I haven't tried it with buttons.

Jim

[RodWard]

Jim, you cannot set interactive objects to display for Rest of Project.