Captivate demo - no controls when inserting in Robo 7

[deadtreefrog]

Whe I insert the demo into a RH7 page, the playback controls do no show up. I have checked the box in Captivate when creating the demo and it plays in a flash player with controls that work, but they don't show up in RH7..
Any ideas?

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Welcome to our community

This will happen if you use RoboHelp to point at just the main part of your movie from Captivate. You need to ensure you point at the .SWF that ends with _skin.SWF.

Cheers... Rick

[deadtreefrog]

Thx for the info, some subtle changes since RH3 I guess.. Thank you

[th72]

I'll take this one step further. I'm working in RH 5 and Captivate 3.0. My problem is that the controls come in to my HTML (chm file) project, but do not work properly. For example, if I click the Pause button, it does pause the movie, but the buttons no longer work. However, the playback controls work fine in my WebHelp version of the same project. Any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance. Tom

[RoboWizard]

Welcome to our community, Tom

Have you tried adding all the Captivate files to your Baggage Files folder in RoboHelp?

Other than that, perhaps consider publishing from Captivate again but use a short file name.

Cheers... Rick

[th72]

Hello Rick,
I tried your suggestions of adding the additional Captivate files as Baggage Files in RoboHelp but to no avail. Also renamed into a six-letter, no space published file in Captivate. Still no go. Again, the Web Help works great, just the HTML help that won't let me use the controls. Any other thoughts? Thanks again. Tom

[th72]

Hi again Rick,

Some additional information about the playback controls: as I have said, the Flash version of the controls do not work at all in the chm file. However, when I chose the older bmp control (still available in Captivate 3 Skins list under BMP Playbars), it kind of works. By that I mean that the Play and Pause buttons work in the chm file, but none of the others (FF, Rew, etc.). So just some extra info about this dilemma. Wish all my help could be in Web Help format, but unfortunately it's not.

Thanks for your input.

Tom

[RoboWizard]

Hi Tom

Sorry, but I've been very busy with other things and sort of set this one on the back burner.

Is eliminating the _skin.SWF a possibility for you? If so, I'm guessing you have tried that? If you haven't tried it and it's a possibility, please try that next.

To eliminate the _skin.SWF you open the project in Captivate and click Project > Skin > Borders tab. DE-select the "Show Borders" check box and re-publish the file.

Cheers... Rick

[th72]

Hi Rick,

I did try it without the Borders. Still no good. (I couldn't have used it that way regardless because our apps have control buttons at the bottom of the screen that need to be visible. With Borders off, the playback controls cover my buttons.). I click one button and none of the others work (in chm file still, of course).

I guess I'm disappointed with our friends at Adobe for not addressing this, especially since they now own both these products.

If you have any other ideas I'd be happy to hear them. Thanks again for all your suggestions.

Tom

[RoboWizard]

Hi again Tom

Prickly tickly situation, that one. I just conducted a small test.

First off, you should report this to Adobe as a bug. (I'll be doing the same)

As a workaround, I find that if I opened the Captivate in a new window that it works fine. Not sure if that's a possibility for you, but it seems to work here on my own PC. However, there is a small side effect and that's the Yellow Information Bar that appears. I know that having Mark of the Web on a page will typically prevent the information bar from appearing so I made some attempts to insert it. So far all have failed.

Hopefully this helps... Rick

[RoboWizard]

Hi again Tom

Okay, I did just finish testing with a Captivate I created that had my own navigation in the form of Buttons on each slide. Fortunately it would appear that this form of navigation survives unscathed.

Not sure if that's an option for you, but it may be.

Cheers... Rick