Click boxes and roll overs

Hi Jill, and welcome! Regarding click-and-reveal types of effects, there are a couple ways to do those in Articulate Studio '09. One way is to use this method where you create a duplicate slide with the revealed object, and then use the Slide Properties in Articulate Presenter to make the user feel like they're actually just interacting with a single slide.

Another way is to use Articulate Engage. The Labeled Graphic interaction is a good one for creating hover/click effects. There are some examples in this blog post, and here's another approach you might want to try.

Regarding rollover effects within Articulate Presenter, those aren't currently a built-in feature in the tools, although some folks have come up with some pretty neat workarounds... you could check out Tom's blog post here  and this related screencast for one way to do it. This post from the old forums contains the source files if you're interested.

Another approach is to use the free tool that Dave offers in his blog here.

I hope that helps give you some ideas!

Hi Jeanette,

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, and for providing me with so many useful tips and ideas of how to create the desired effect.  I'm excited to start trying out thiese methods to improve my courses.

Jill

Hi Jeanette,

I'm also creating roll over definitions for a program however the challenge for me is not allowing the PP hyperlink, than moves them to the hiddent slide with the pop up, to work until the audio is complete. My client requests that the learner must listen to all the audio before any other functionality is enabled. In the example you provided, the learner can click on the hyperlink at any time and leave the slide (even if it's locked in Slide properties). I could have the learner go back to the same slide with the audio however for those learners that choose to listen to the whole slide before clicking the hyper link, I would rather send them back to a slide that has no audio so they don't have to listen to it all over again. Does that make sense?

So basically my questions is; Is there a way to keep the PowerPoint hyperlink disabled until the audio on the slide is complete?

Thank you,

Karen Allen

PS this forum is great. I always get a lot of help here!!

Hey Karen! One way you could accomplish this is to place your hyperlink on a transparent shape, and have the shape animate in at the end of your narration. That way, nothing is clickable until the audio finishes playing. And since the object is transparent, there won't be any visible difference on the screen - it's just that the hyperlink wouldn't become "active" till the narration's done.

Great idea! for some reason, when I preview, the hot spot wont' work. I know it's there because when I hover my mouse I see the hand as though there is something to click. Does this function not work in preview.s

Yeah, testing hyperlinks in Preview mode isn't supported; you'll need to test'em by publishing.

You could also use a duplicate slide but with the hyperlink on the second slide, then just have the first slide auto advance

Hi Jeanette,

OK, so i feel like I have to give up something to get something. so in your suggestion what I give up is the ability to keep the navigation restricted to current or previous.
All of my slides have audio so when there are multiple words on one slide I don't want the learner to have to listen to the whole thing again when the close the definition slide and branch back to the original slide. So i duplicate the original  slide with the words and branch them back to that slide with no audio on it. I have that duplicated slide hidden.  with the navigation restricted the learner cannot advance past the grayed out slides with the difinitions on them. (whew this is getting confusing) So i have to unrestrict navigation. Any suggestions.

Also, I notice on hiddent slides the Play button never appears; its always in the Play state so the pause button is evident.

Thanks again, I'm getting there.

Karen

Hey fellow early-bird. Thanks for that additional info - yeah, given your client requirements, it's challenging to pull off everything they're asking for: the restricted navigation and the non-audio versions of the slide and the pop-up slides.

I think there's a way you could possibly get close to the effect you want, if you change the navigation to Locked rather than Restricted. However, this would mean that learners couldn't back up and view previously viewed content, so that might be a deal-breaker for you. In case it's not though, here's the gist of it:

• You could arrange all your content slides (including the duplicates that don't have audio) consecutively, and put the pop-ups at the very end of your slide deck (after all your content slides), like in the diagram below. It's a little labor-intensive because of all the duplicate slides, but depending on your content, you could probably leverage slide masters to contain a lot of the persistent elements, so you might be able to cut down on the work a little bit.
• To avoid problems with the locked navigation, you'd need to make each content slide auto-advance to the non-audio version of the slide, so that learners would never be able to skip around (except via the hyperlinks you've added to the slides themselves). You could set the default slide duration to 1 second so that the duration of the non-audio slides wouldn't feel too noticeable. The only weird thing is, if you have a seekbar on your player, the duplicate slide might be noticeable to your learners. If your client doesn't require a seekbar, you might consider removing it so that the duplicate slide isn't as obvious.
• On your final content slide, you'd want to set the branching behavior so that the Next Slide actually redirects the learner to the slide itself. That way they won't keep advancing to the pop-ups.

Another option of course is to scrap the built-in navigation options, and create all your navigation via your own on-slide hyperlinks. If you omit the player controls this can work nicely, and it would allow you complete control over what the learners can click and when.

Wow. You took some time creating that response. Thank you for that!! not being able to see previous stuff is a problem.

The built in navigation is also a great idea and I wish I would have just done that from the get go...ugh.

Anyway thanks for the response. Maybe Articulate could create a roll over definition tool for an upcoming update!!!!

Thanks Jeanette.

I'm sorry that won't work for you. We do welcome feature requests! You can add your voice here: http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/feature/ 

Thanks Karen!