7 Replies Latest reply: Dec 2, 2014 11:48 AM by met547 RSS

    Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons

    met547 Community Member

      I'm using Cp 8.0.1.  I'm trying to disable and/or hide smart shape buttons to go to the next/prev slide until an specific time or condition happens.

      Smart shape buttons still work even if you disable them or hide them, even if you can't see them. Is there any way to accomplish this?  Thank you.

        • 1. Re: Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons
          Lilybiri CommunityMVP

          Time-based event do not exist in Captivate. Here are all the events that can trigger an action:

          Events and (advanced) Actions - Captivate blog

           

          A shape button can be disabled, but I never experienced that it is still working when hidden or disabled?? I'm using that functionality all the time. How did you test?

          • 2. Re: Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons
            Captiv8r CommunityMVP

            Hi there

             

            Are you talking about Smart Shape buttons that exist on a Master Slide?

             

            If you don't want a Smart Shape button on a regular slide to be "available" until a certain time point, you just configure it so that the start point is when you want on the Timeline as shown below:

             

            tmp1.png

             

            Cheers... Rick

            • 3. Re: Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons
              Lilybiri CommunityMVP

              Timeline again, but you don't have to know about it. For a conditional disabling, you need an action.

               

              Shape buttons on master slides cannot be controlled by an action, like any other object on master slides because they do not have an ID, so you cannot point to them.

              • 4. Re: Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons
                met547 Community Member

                Thanks for your reply Lilybiri.

                 

                Just to test, I created a simple project with 2 slides with smart-shape buttons for Next/Back.

                 

                Actually, what's happening is that if I disable or hide the smart-shape button, then the slide doesn't pause (the button has the pause), and automatically goes to the Next slide.

                But if I use a dummy button just to pause the slide, the disabling/hiding works correctly.

                 

                So I can use this, or use Captiv8r's solution: time the Smart Shape button to appear at the right time. Which is probably better than using a dummy button.

                 

                Do you have any other ideas to implement this?  Thanks.

                • 5. Re: Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons
                  Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                  If you hide/disable a shape button, a button or a TEB, it is normal that the pausing doesn't work anymore.  I don't understand your logic here, it is the same for all interactive objects.

                   

                  If you want the button only to appear later, than you can time it like any other object, but your first question was very puzzling because you told that disabling/hiding is not working for shape buttons. That is for me not the same as what you are telling now. And if you use an (advanced/shared) action to disable or hide a shape button (or any interactive object) exactly the same will happen: it is like if it was taken out of the project.

                   

                  When I want a shape button to remain visible to the user but to lose its functionality as a button (and its states in CP8) I will disable that shape button, same for a normal button. They have then the same behavior as in the inactive portion of their timeline: no functionality. If you hide them, you disable automatically.

                   

                  Why should you want to disable a Next/Back button? Their goal is to pause the slide and give control to the user.

                  • 6. Re: Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons
                    met547 Community Member

                    You are right Lilybiri, my logic was all over the place, sorry. This is what I need to do.

                     

                    I have slides that have multiple animations or effects of texts/images, and some also have video. Since there is no enough space to show everything at a time, and for better implementation, text/graphics will show in sequence. For videos, since I can't track video progress, I have to make sure they see the whole video before they can go to the next slide.

                    So, I  want to make sure students don't click the NEXT button before they see everything (all the info in the slide shows).


                    So timing the Next/Prev buttons seems to be the way to go.  These are no Master Slide buttons, since the only way I can achieve this is by using local slide buttons on each slide. Thanks.

                    • 7. Re: Disable/Hide Smart Shape Buttons
                      met547 Community Member

                      Thanks for your reply Captiv8r. This is probably the easiest way to implement this. I'm not using Master Slide buttons. Each slide has its own set of Smart Shape buttons (Prev/Next). It's the only way to implement this.