Image rollover?

Feb 22, 2011

Hi,

Is it possible to create image rollovers? Dave posted THIS TUTORIAL on the old forum, but it does not seem to be working. I am trying to do what it looks like he is doing on the frozen screencast - make shapes, hyperlink them (to other slides/interactions), and have change of color on rollover.

Thanks, Colin

15 Replies
Simon Perkins

Hi Colin

I too had issues with that particular method.  Managed to get another to work a little bit, but it just wasn't scalable or versatile enough to keep doing.

Which has reminded me about why I think native rollovers would be an excellent addition to the next release ... hence I've just made a feature request.  Definitely something that would add real value (all IMHO of course) to loads of courses. 

Brian Allen

The only way I have been able to incorporate image rollovers is by incorporating Flash into my presentations.  I saw (and may still have) an example where Tom K. used some simple Flash buttons on his slides, he might have incorporated them on the slide master now that I'm thinking about it, and then on each slide he just added invisible click areas over each flash button and used PPT hyperlinking to control which slide the presentation went to when the button was "clicked".

Not sure how easy it is to visualize what I'm describing above, but if I am able to find the presentation files I'll attach them to this thread...

Brian Allen

Here you go - follow this URL and scroll down the page to the "Add Rollover Buttons" section: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/get-creative-and-build-better-e-learning-courses/

The info in the blog talks about rollover buttons but you could use the same tips to create any kind of rollover image you wanted.

Hope this helps!

Simon Perkins

Well remembered Brian - that's an excellent tutorial of Tom's.

The only real limitation I think I saw was that you could only have one such SWF in your course?  Is that right?  Or you can only call one master slide/layout?  I'm sure there was something that limited how it could be used multiple times in a single course.

Hopefully I'm talking rubbish because I too would like to make more use of it. 

David Anderson



Colin Bill said:


Is it possible to create image rollovers? Dave posted THIS TUTORIAL on the old forum, but it does not seem to be working. I am trying to do what it looks like he is doing on the frozen screencast - make shapes, hyperlink them (to other slides/interactions), and have change of color on rollover.




Hi Collin,

Rollovers are tough right now with PowerPoint. If you have Flash, you could do something like this:

http://articulate-community.s3.amazonaws.com/Flash-Rollover-Buttons-Presenter/index.html

It's a simple .fla with code that tells Presenter to jump to a specific slide. Here's a screencast overview on the process:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/204929857

And if you want to look at the source files:

The effect works well, but if you change slide count - add or subtract slides - you'll likely have to update the Flash file to point to the correct slides.

Brian Allen

Hello Simon!

The only limitation I am aware of in relationship to Flash is that you can only have one per slide.  You could work around this by incorporating two or more buttons into the same .swf file before importing it.

With the master slides, Articulate supports multiple master slides within a presentation and will honor whatever master slide you have applied to a slide.

It's an old school way of getting the job done, but it is an effective work around for the time being.  I would love to see native support for image rollovers in the next version of Presenter...

Brian Allen

David Anderson said:

Rollovers are tough right now with PowerPoint. If you have Flash, you could do something like this:

http://articulate-community.s3.amazonaws.com/Flash-Rollover-Buttons-Presenter/index.html


Nice example David.  I believe the same concept could be created by adding the Flash .swf files to master slide layouts in PPT (you would only need two for this example), then use PPT hyperlinking to branch to the different slides.  This would do away with having to add the code in the flash file and simplify maintenance should the presentation change, I would think...

David Anderson

@Brian - It seems like it should work, right? For some reason when you try to insert a .swf file into the Slide Master via Articulate > Insert Flash Movie, a reference error is thrown:

If I were using this effect in real projects, I would go with something like e-Mersion's example where it's used at the beginning of the course. For me, it's too much to manage throughout an entire course. 

Pamela Shields

Hi!

I'm new to this forum and need IMMEDIATE assistance for project due tomorrow!. I've read mutiple posts/blogs but still not getting a c lear answer/understanding sorry guys...I need to make a provide a definitions to words in my slides. Using a mouse rollover would be ideal. The requirements are for the rollover text to only appear and not open the entire word doc. Can this be done using ppt 2007 and work in Articulate? I do not have flash.  Thanks so much

Simon Perkins

Hi Pamela

Someone on these boards wrote a piece of code that enables you to build a simple rollover that can then be imported into PPT.  They also produced a Screen with instructions.  Can't remember their name so best to go a search here and on Screenr.  Perrsonally, it didn't really work how I wanted it to so don't use it.

As for PPT, my understanding is that you'll need to instigate a click so as to launch another slide where you display the text.  There's no native solution.

I wish I could say the other thing I'd like to say, but I'll leave that for the staff to decide on

Pamela Shields

Thanks Simon and Brian!

I really appreciate the feedback. I tried using Presenter with the combination of Snag-it then realized you have to save it as a .swf file. The new company I am going to be working with does not have Flash. However, for the time crunch I'm currently in, I'm downloading a trial of Adobe Flash just so that I can get this done and working for presentation tomorrow.

Simon...I know EXACTLY what you would like to say...LOL

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