Hiding objects and publishing

[Guest]

When I hide an object on my slide, it is still shows up visibly when the project is published. The help menu seems to confirm this. I find this extremely puzzling. If you hide an object, it would only make sense that you did NOT want that object to be seen on the published version. I want to include an object on a template that the movie creator can turn off or on if they choose that object to be seen.

Is there a work around for this? I am having the same problem with the mouse cursor movement. If I hide the mouse cursor on the slide, you still see it on the published version. Even weirder, hiding the cursor appears to mess up the cursor movement on the subsequent slide.

Has anybody produced a more detailed help guide to cursor movement? The information in the manuals do not help at all, and I am having a hard time figuring out if I am simply dealing with a bug while doing everything right...

Regards, Suzan

[Captiv8r]

Hi Suzan

I think you are misunderstanding the option. You have the ability to hide objects on the slide in order to keep them "out of the way" while you work on other objects. If you wish to hide the object, yet keep it available, consider cutting it from the original slide and pasting on a blank slide nearby. Then hide the blank slide. Hidden slides aren't included in your output.

I've got a small Mouse Movements tutorial that may help here. Please view it and see if it does.

Click here to view the tutorial

Cheers... Rick

[Guest]

Hi Rick,
I think I am actually trying to hide objects on a specific slide, not hide the entire slide. I want people to be able turn an object on or off on a slide... The demo I am working on is at:
http://www.library.ubc.ca/life/captivate/template_project/merry/testmovie_google/testmovie_google_fs...

It's the print swf on the bottom that I want people to be able to turn off or on or off, so the designer can enable the print option for the viewer. I can't hide the entire slide. I was just trying to find out if this could be done at all, but it seems the answer to that is 'no'...

Your cursor movie is great, but it's mostly what I do understand. What I don't understand is how the deleting of the mouse impacts the subsequent slide. For example, on the movie above, I don't want the mouse to appear on slide 8. It's only an information slide. However, if I delete the mouse on slide 8, it seems to impact on how the mouse movies on slide 9. The mouse moves as I intend on slide 9 only because I am showing the mouse on slide 8. However, if I delete the mouse onslide 8, there is no mouse movement on slide 9. That's the confusing part!

Cheers, Suzan

[Captiv8r]

Hi again Suzan

To make objects hide or show at run time would require developing your own custom Flash object in a manner that would support that.

As for the mouse, I'm thinking that you are seeing the following. If you have absorbed what I presented in the little demo, you will hopefully understand the following points:

* You are limited to a single mouse movement per slide. You cannot perform a circular action or a zig zag.
* The mouse starting point can be set for only the first slide where the mouse makes its appearance.
* The mouse starting point for subsequent slides is determined by where it stopped on the previous slide containing mouse movement.

So here is what I think you may be seeing. Assume you start mouse movement on slide one. Mouse moves from upper left corner to the middle of the screen.
Slide two has the mouse moving from the middle of the screen to the upper right corner of the screen.
Slide three has the mouse moving from the upper right corner of the screen to the lower left corner of the screen.

Now lets say you turn the mouse off for slide two. If you were to do this, slide three would have a new mouse starting point. Its starting point would be where the mouse stopped on slide one. So instead of starting in the upper right corner of the screen and traveling to the lower left corner, it will now start in the middle of the screen, because that is where it stopped on the last slide that has mouse movement, which is slide one.

Does that make more sense?

Cheers... Rick

[Guest]

Now it sinks in Rick! I was trying to control the movement to slide 9 from slide 8, not realizing that deleting the mouse from slide 8 meant that previous mouse start point is actually slide 5, the actual slide I should have fixed! The mouse now movies the way I want it to!

Thanks again so much!
Regards, Suzan

[jbradley88]

Suzan,

Two suggestions:

1) Cover the print button with a highlight box and paste them both onto each slide, telling the developers to delete the highlight box on slides where they want the button to be visible to users.

2) Since you likely only want to print "paused" slides, set the On success action of the "pause" button to jump to next slide and then move the print button to the right of the pause button on the timeline. Then tell the developers to move the button to the left of the pause button on the timeline if they want it to be visible to users.

On the "timeline" shown below, if the Pause button is set to jump to next slide, then the Print button will be present on the slide but never visible to users

.....[.. Pause button || ..]....
................................................[..Print button || ..]....

As for mouse starting points, Rick is exactly right. To "specify" a custom starting position on a slide, you have to make sure it ends in the desired spot on the PREVIOUS slide.

Try the following and see if it works for you:

Let's say you want to specify a custom mouse starting point on slide 5.

1. Insert a new slide in front of slide 5 (we'll call this the new slide 5).

2. Configure the new slide 5 as follows:
a) Display Time: 0.1 seconds
b) Transition: No Transition
c) Change the background image to be the same as the original slide 5 (which is the new slide 6)
d) Position the mouse cursor where you want it to start on the new slide 6.

When you run the movie, the new slide should flash by so quickly that users won't really notice, but the mouse cursor will be in the correct starting position on the next slide. If necessary, you can also copy any foreground objects (text, graphics, etc.) from the old slide to the new slide to increase the visual similarity & make the transition more seamless.