Software simulations

Jan 21, 2022

Hi everyone, I'm using software simulations for the first time and I'm struggling with a few things.

When I use the Demo view, Articulate adds helpful little bubbles to describe the step.  I can edit those but how do I get it to pause so the learner can read the bubble at their own speed and then click close/next to progress the demo?

Some of the descriptions takes a few seconds to read and understand the importance of the step.  I find it goes very quick.  I don't want to slow the whole thing down as this is only on some of the slide.

I've tried doing it on single slide and pausing on cue points, then adding text boxes and hotspots to progress.  The problem with that is I end up with 15 textboxes/hotspots all on top of each other on the timeline as they are all on the one layer.  This becomes a nightmare to edit.

Any help/advice/examples would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

6 Replies
Becca Levan

Hello Geraldine!

It sounds like you want to increase the length of time the step-by-step view mode captions are visible on your slides. I'm happy to help!

Are you able to achieve what you want if you turn off the exit animation

then increase the total display time on the timeline of the caption:

Let me know if this is what you had in mind!

Geraldine Uren

Hi Becca, this will certainly help on some of the slides thank you.

On others, I've added some information in the captions that the learner will have to take a moment and read thoroughly to understand the importance of the step. 

On these slides I would like to add maybe a hotspot to close the caption when they have finished instead of the slides progressing on it's own accord.  How do I get the slide to pause and wait for the learner to click X to progress?

I've managed to do this with a recording on a single slide by adding cue points and triggers to pause the slide on the cue points, then resume playing when clicking on the hotspot.  But I don't know how to do it in the 'step-by-step' if that makes sense.

 

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Geraldine,

I appreciate the additional information. Here's what I understand your request to be:

I want the learner to have the time to absorb the content before progressing by setting a pause on the hint caption layer

From your Hint Caption Layer, you can adjust the slide layer properties to 'pause timeline of base layer' and add an X button with the trigger to hide the layer when the user clicks the x button:

Please let me know if you were sharing this or if I've misunderstood your request.

Geraldine Uren

Hi Leslie, the example you have above seems to only work in the 'try' mode with the layers.

In the first instance I'm demonstrating to the learner how to navigate the software so I'm selecting 'view-by-step' mode first.  The view mode doesn't have layers, rather, the view-by-step mode has captions on the timeline.

I want the timeline to pause on the slide when the caption pops up and restart when user clicks 'X'

I think I have a good work around now.  I've added Cue points when the caption starts to pause the slide.  I've then added a hotspot to restart the timeline when the user clicks on the hotspot.  By shortening the caption on the timeline the learner can now control the speed:)