Hi all!
One of the most common feedback items we've seen is the lack of a progress bar to let the student know how much of the presentation is left. Sure, there's a bar when the viewer is in the "tabbed" view, but the "time remaining" listed there is usually WAY off if you're letting the student advance through the presentation at their own pace. We set out to make a self-contained progress bar in Flash that could be dropped into any PPT presentation and would provide the student with a simple indication of how far along they are. Here's how to make one yourself :
First, your progress module has to have at least two frames. This is because your module will need to read data from the "viewer.swf" application that shows the Breeze presentation, and that information is apparently not read in until all the actions on frame one of every module present are done. So the actionscript for frame 1 of our module is simply:
this.gotoAndStop(2);
Next, we're indicating progress by how long a bar is - namely, modifying the _width property of a movieclip instance. Our movieclip in the library was just a green rectangle, and our instance of that was named progress_mc, with a default width of 285 pixels. Make sure that the bar is aligned with the left & center of the stage in the movieclip in your library, so that it will grow and shrink correctly.
Now that the bar is set up and ready to manipulate, here's the code we placed on frame 2:
var mySlideNumber = _root.m_contentView.m_currentSlide.indexInTOC + 1;
var myLastSlide = _root.m_viewerController.m_slides.length;
var myIncrement = 285 / myLastSlide; //285 pixels is the default width of the movieclip instance
progress_mc._width = (myIncrement * mySlideNumber);
_root.m_sidebarView.m_elapsedBar._visible = false; // this hides the incorrect "time remaining" bar
...and that's all it took! Of course, the one we're using now is a little fancier in terms of graphics, and tailor-sized for our templates, but the code is virtually identical. I can give the "progress bar.swf" module to anyone for inclusion in their PPT slides, and it will work perfectly when they compile their Breeze presentation. The only annoyance is that you have to paste one on every slide (that you want indication on), rather than putting one on the slide master. But, this is still FAR easier than hand-crafting progress bars for every presentation.
Cheers!
~Marc B
One of the most common feedback items we've seen is the lack of a progress bar to let the student know how much of the presentation is left. Sure, there's a bar when the viewer is in the "tabbed" view, but the "time remaining" listed there is usually WAY off if you're letting the student advance through the presentation at their own pace. We set out to make a self-contained progress bar in Flash that could be dropped into any PPT presentation and would provide the student with a simple indication of how far along they are. Here's how to make one yourself :
First, your progress module has to have at least two frames. This is because your module will need to read data from the "viewer.swf" application that shows the Breeze presentation, and that information is apparently not read in until all the actions on frame one of every module present are done. So the actionscript for frame 1 of our module is simply:
this.gotoAndStop(2);
Next, we're indicating progress by how long a bar is - namely, modifying the _width property of a movieclip instance. Our movieclip in the library was just a green rectangle, and our instance of that was named progress_mc, with a default width of 285 pixels. Make sure that the bar is aligned with the left & center of the stage in the movieclip in your library, so that it will grow and shrink correctly.
Now that the bar is set up and ready to manipulate, here's the code we placed on frame 2:
var mySlideNumber = _root.m_contentView.m_currentSlide.indexInTOC + 1;
var myLastSlide = _root.m_viewerController.m_slides.length;
var myIncrement = 285 / myLastSlide; //285 pixels is the default width of the movieclip instance
progress_mc._width = (myIncrement * mySlideNumber);
_root.m_sidebarView.m_elapsedBar._visible = false; // this hides the incorrect "time remaining" bar
...and that's all it took! Of course, the one we're using now is a little fancier in terms of graphics, and tailor-sized for our templates, but the code is virtually identical. I can give the "progress bar.swf" module to anyone for inclusion in their PPT slides, and it will work perfectly when they compile their Breeze presentation. The only annoyance is that you have to paste one on every slide (that you want indication on), rather than putting one on the slide master. But, this is still FAR easier than hand-crafting progress bars for every presentation.
Cheers!
~Marc B
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