Using Event Handler Widget

Submitted by Rod Ward on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 19:54

Here's how to use the Event Handler interactive widget in a typical Captivate e-learning course: 

  1. Purchase the Infosemantics Event Handler Widget and download the zip file package to a convenient folder location on your hard drive.
  2. Unzip the package to extract the .wdgt widget file and view the README.txt file with information about inserting and using the widget.
  3. In your Captivate project, add one or more objects that you want to make interactive. Objects can include text captions, graphics, animations, highlight boxes, or buttons.
  4. Under Properties, give each object a unique Item Name and note this name.
  5. From the Insert menu, select Widget.
  6. Browse to the location where you saved your Event Handler Widget and select it.
  7. When the Widget Properties dialog appears on screen, type the Item Name of your chosen object into the field provided. You can use the same object in both boxes, or different objects for success and failure.

    Widget Properties for Event Handler 
     

  8. Ensure the Show Hand Cursor box is selected (shows as white) if you want a hand cursor to appear when the mouse cursor is positioned over the interactive object.
  9. Using the radio buttons, select your desired event to trigger Success or Failure captions.  You can have different events for each one. For example, you might want to trigger Success if the user clicks an object, but Failure if they roll out without clicking.
  10. Specify Preferences for pausing behaviour and click sounds.
  11. After configuring the widget properties, click OK to save changes.
  12. In Captivate, the widget displays information so that you can see at a glance which objects and events are currently selected.


     

  13. Publish your project to test your new interactive objects!

Comments

Submitted by Laurie-Anne Gignac on Wed, 11/30/2011 - 04:30.

Hint caption

I download the trial version. The hint caption don't seem to work. In captivate the hint caption is a caption that shows on mouse over. But it is not the case here. Is it a probleme or do I just don't understand what the hint caption is supposed to be?
Thanks, Laurie-Anne

Submitted by Rod Ward on Wed, 11/30/2011 - 08:30.

Hint Caption For Event Handler

Laurie-Anne,
Event Handler has the Hint caption disabled for mouse overs because roll over and roll out are two of the mouse events you can choose to trigger Advanced Actions. We didn't anticipate that users would want to have the Hint caption appear as well. In fact, since Event Handler came out over a year ago now, you're the first person to ask about the Hint caption.

However, you raise a good point because there may be times when someone wanted to use other events such as click or double click yet still have the Hint caption appear on mouse-over and disappear on mouse-out. We'll add this feature to our wishlist of things to add for a future update to Event Handler. It would probably just be another Preference tick box to "Show Hint Caption on Rollover" or similar.

In the mean time, there's nothing to prevent you from adding a second Event Handler to the same object that is rigged to show its own Success caption on mouseover and then you can set the appearance of this Success caption to make it look like a Hint caption. So you'd be using the first Event Handler for whatever click event you were listening for, and the second Event Handler on the same object to show Hints.

Would that get you out of trouble?

Submitted by Laurie-Anne Gignac on Thu, 12/01/2011 - 00:21.

hint caption

That's what I tried when I have seen that hint caption didn't work.

For the explanation, in my case, hint caption will be great because I want only images in my slide to avoid information overload but I also want add further information to explain those images.

The problem is: if the success caption is 3 sec., it will show 3 sec. and disapears. The user will have to roll out and roll over again to show the caption again. And if the user rolls over 3-4 objects, the 3-4 captions will show for 3 sec. at the same time (and maybe overlap).

The way to manage is to have 2 widget: one roll over "show" a caption and one roll out to "hide", and of course an other to double-click. 3 widgets on 10 objects are to many widgets because I should make projet that are easy to change for the trainers.

* sorry if I make mistakes, I'm french. ;)

Submitted by Dave Lees on Sat, 09/24/2011 - 02:28.

simple rollover

Trying to do a simple rollover with this widget ... on rollover of an image show a text caption, on rollout hide text caption, any ideas? is there any tutorials on how to do this somewhere as well as maybe using it with an "Execute Advanced Action"
 
Thanks

Submitted by Rod Ward on Sat, 09/24/2011 - 07:54.

Why not just use a rollover image or rollover caption?

You can use the Event Handler to set up a rollover image or rollover caption with Advanced Actions. Lilybiri's blog has lots of examples and tutorials on how to use Advanced Actions: http://lilybiri.posterous.com/

But quite frankly, Captivate already has two special objects designed to do what you want. The Rollover Image object and the Rollover Caption object cannot execute Advanced Actions would be perfect if all you need to do is show or hide an image or caption on mouseover.

Any reason why these will not work for you?