Adding Hyperlinks and Branching

Adding Hyperlinks and Branching

Now that our start screen and video elements are in place, we're ready to add the interactivity. Using PowerPoint's hyperlinking and Presenter's Slide Properties, we'll create the multiple video branching effect.

Step 1: Adding the Hyperlinks

1. Right-click the first Play_button.png and select Hyperlink...
2. Click Place in This Document
3. Click Slide 9 > Video Demonstration
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the second Play_button.png

In most cases, it's a best practice to give each slide a unique name. For this section, we didn't rename the slides because we're only working with two hyperlinked slides.

Step 2: Copy the Hyperlinked Buttons to Slides 10 and 11

We have a couple options here. We could add hyperlinks directly to the buttons as we did for the first slide. Or, we can copy the hyperlinked buttons and replace the non-hyperlinked buttons. I like the second option.

The fewer times I have to add links the less chance I have for making an error.

1. Shift-click each Play_button.png from Slide 8
2. Press Control-C to copy the graphics
3. Shift-click the play buttons on Slide 9
4. Press Delete to delete the non-hyperlinked buttons
5. Press Control-V to paste the hyperlinked buttons
6. Repeat for Slide 10

Step 3: Modifying Slide Properties

Let's take a quick look at our project again. View the final project and click "Video Demonstration" from the Outline menu. Notice how only one slide displays? But we know there are three slides, right? Two of the three slides are hidden.

Click one of the play buttons. Now click your back button.

Notice how you navigated to Slide 7: Raise the Car. Did you expect to return to Video Demonstration? Click Video Demonstration again to return to the starting slide. Now try clicking your Forward button. This time you navigated forward to Slide 11: Remove the Wheel nuts.

What's going on? Not only did we hide two slides from the Outline menu, but we also set up the branching navigation so that learner only visits the second and third video slides if they click the play button. This is how we'd expect on-slide videos to play. Let's get back to work.

Hiding Slides

1. Click Articulate > Slide Properties
2. Shift-click Slide 9 and Slide 10 to select them
3. Right-click the selected slides and select Hide in Navigation Panel

The slides will no longer display in the Outline menu. Hidden slides display "Hidden" for the Navigation Title. To un-hide a slide, right-click the slide and select Hide in Navigation Panel just as you did to hide the slide.

Customizing Branching Navigation

Next we'll customize the player navigation so learners branch over the two hidden slides. We want our navigation to function as though the two hidden slides never existed.

This means when the learner is on Slide 9: Video Demonstration, the forward button should go to the next step: Remove the Wheel Nuts.

And when the learner clicks the Back button, they jump back to Slide 7: Raise the Car.

1. Click once inside Slide 8: Branching
2. For At end of slide, branch to: select 7. Raise the Car
3. For Previous button branches to: select 11. Remove the Wheel Nuts
4. Click OK to close the window

Changing the Menu Level

The video demonstration is a sub-topic of Raise the Car. To change the hierarchy of this menu item, we need to update its level in Slide Properties.

1. Click the Level cell for Slide 8: Video Demonstration
2. Select 2 from the menu

Video Demonstration is now one level below Raise the Car in the course Outline tab.

What's Next?

We're almost through this project. In the next and final lesson, we'll insert the videos for each of the video slides. We'll apply each of the two video settings:

1. Synchronize slide and movie
2. Movie plays independently of slide