Drag and Drop Lite Widget Updated for Cp 5.5

Our popular Drag and Drop Lite Question Widget for Adobe Captivate has been upgraded to version 1.2.2 with some important enhancements. All current Drag and Drop Lite license holders can download the new upgraded version for free by logging into our website using the username and password they set up during the original purchase. New customers can purchase the latest version widget here.

This new widget version contains bug fixes, performance improvements, and is now fully compatible with the newly-released Captivate 5.5. One very important enhancement is a new Review tab that enables Captivate developers to finally control the text that appears in the Quiz Review area.

The Quiz Review Area in Cp 4 / 5

Captivate 4 / 5 developers have had something of a love/hate relationship with the Quiz Review Area.  On the one hand, if the user answered a question incorrectly it adequately indicated their chosen answer with the correct answer (or combination of answers) shown underneath.  However, although the Review Area rectangle could be relocated to another part of the stage, developers could not change the physical size (height or width) of the box.  Additionally, if you set the default text size too large, users were required to scroll line by line to view the information.

Unfortunately, the Review Area in Captivate 4 / 5 was only really designed to cater for the standard question types that came in the box with Captivate.  As a result, when we developed the Drag and Drop Lite question widget, we discovered it was impossible to automate adequate feedback information about the question's correct answer given the mind-numbing variety of ways that users might choose to configure drag and drop interactions.  We simply hard-coded our widget to insert default text in the upper Chosen Answer section. But widget users often asked if it was possible to control the text that appeared inside the Review Area box in Captivate 4 and 5.  The widget properties interface provided no way for users to place informative text in the lower Correct Answer section.  So this is what end-users saw...

We are happy to advise that with version 1.2.2 of our Drag and Drop Lite question widget you can now enter text for this area to give the user information about the correct answer.  You can add as much explanatory text as you want to this field, but it's probably best to keep it to a minimum because, as noted earlier, the Review Area in Captivate 4 and 5 cannot be resized effectively.  This means that if you add more than one line of text, your users will be forced to scroll line by line using the arrow controls at the end of the line.

Quiz Review Improvements in Captivate 5.5

If you've upgraded to the new Captivate version 5.5. you will know that it comes with some nifty enhancements to quizzing, especially when it comes to displaying feedback during Quiz Review.  The overall correct/incorrect status of the question is shown by blue and red icons, while correct and incorrect answer options are indicated by smaller versions of the same icons.

For most question types in Captivate 5.5 the Review Area, though still present on the quiz slide in Edit mode, has now been relegated to a contributing to Captivate's 508 accessibility compliance.  You need to select the Review Area box and then click the Accessibility button in Properties > Review Feedback Messages accordion to configure the feedback text.

However, for our question widget, the Review Area in Cp 5.5 is still visible and useful. Not only can the widget user now control the text that appears inside the box on screen at runtime (thanks to the new fields in our widget's Review tab), but the previous inability to control the physical size of the box has also been finally resolved.  If your text exceeds the available area, it will still show scroll bars. But since you can now resize the box, in most cases the scrollbars can be avoided.  See below...

We hope the new functionality in Drag and Drop Lite 1.2.2, in combination with Captivate 5.5, will make quizzing even more powerful. But before signing off, we just wanted to tell you there's much more to look forward to...

Further Widget Enhancements in the Pipeline

We have a list of further enhancements to the Drag and Drop Lite question widget slated for development and release later this year, including:

• Skins - Ability to skin the widget interface in a choice of colour styles and text sizes.  The user's preferred skin would be stored and remembered by the widget.
• Ability to set a sequence order for drag objects -  This would mean that a correct answer can only be achieved if the drag objects hit their targets according to the specified sequence.  This would be very useful for interactions that require users to assemble a number of components or words in the correct order.
• Smart snapping behaviour - If a target object has multiple drag objects, they all currently snap to align their top-left corners.  We intend to make it possible to have dragged objects arrange themselves on top of the target objects so that all drag objects remain visible.
• Improved Preferences Interface - We're going to need to revamp the Preferences tab to accommodate all current and future configuration options.

If you'd like to see these or any other enhancements, add a comment to this page, or go to the Contact page and send us an email!

The good news is that all current license holders for the Drag and Drop Lite question widget will be able to download these future updates to the same widget at no extra cost just by logging back into our website.

A New Interactive Drag and Drop Widget Soon for Release!

In other news, we've responded to requests from current customers using the Drag and Drop Lite question widget, and over past months we've been steadily developing an exciting new drag and drop widget called Interactive Drag and Drop.  As it's name implies, this is an interactive widget, not a question widget, so it does not replace our current widget. It behaves in a similar way to other Captivate interactive objects such as click boxes or buttons, and unlike question widgets, you can use multiple interactive widgets on the same slide to create very sophisticated drag and drop interactions.

We'll have more information about this new widget and what it can do in the near future when it emerges from final testing. Stay tuned!!