How to make a rollover button

[ROTHROCK]

I need to have two rollover buttons on a slide. One will send the presentation back to the first slide and the other will advance to the next slide.

I tried using the simple PowerPoint actions, which don't look that good, but at least it is a start. However when I publish to Articulate the rollovers go away.

I tried importing a Flash object to get the rollovers, but I don't see how to use the flash object to tell articulate to go to the next slide.

Any ideas?

[brianosmi]

Originally Posted by ROTHROCK

I tried importing a Flash object to get the rollovers, but I don't see how to use the flash object to tell articulate to go to the next slide.

Depending on how you are inserting your Flash objects, you may be able to lay a transparent PowerPoint shape over the Flash object, and hyperlink the transparent shape to the slide you want. This way you get the roll over effect, and you use PowerPoint to do your linking.

[brianosmi]

Originally Posted by ROTHROCK

I tried using the simple PowerPoint actions, which don't look that good, but at least it is a start. However when I publish to Articulate the rollovers go away.

Oh yeah, I'm not sure if your answer to PowerPoint actions is contained in this article, but just scanning through it looks pretty informative: Creating On-Click Triggers in Articulate Presenter

[GerryWaz]

Hey, Brian! Thanks for the link to the article. Support for PPT triggers is one of our needs and something that we've asked for for a while.

I just keep forgetting to check out Daveperso's and Dave Mozealous's blogs regularly. Gotta remind myself to keep doing that. Maybe they could post here when they add something Articulate-related? We like that you can subscribe to doofdaddy's and get an e-mail of the new posting when it is added.

Just getting lazy (or is that lazier . . . )!

[brianosmi]

I know, and talk about some great blogs... I'm not sure about mozealous.com, but you can subscribe to daveperso's blog just like doofdaddy's.

Just go to the main menu and it's on the upper-right side...

[GerryWaz]

Cool--thanks, Brian!

[ROTHROCK]

Thanks for the ideas. I had already thought of putting a transparent shape over the imported swf, but when published the stacking order is switched so I can only get the powerpoint shape where it sticks out around the swf. So that won't work.

The link is interesting, but it seems to be all about getting animation when you click. I need the animation on rollover to show that "Hey! This is a live active button."

I guess I'm back to the idea that there really needs to be a way to have a web object or swf file tell the presenation "Next Slide."

[brianosmi]

rothrock, do you have the Articulate SDK?

Also, I believe a way to get the stacking order correct would be to place your Flash objects on a master slide, then set your slide to use that master. I might be wrong about this, and I don't have time right now to test.

What I believe you'll find is that you'll be able to "stack" your transparent shapes over the Flash objects by using this method, and when you publish you'll have your rollover effects.

You can have multiple slide masters in your published output if you check the box to preserve the slide master.

[ROTHROCK]

Great idea. But I can't get it to work.

First, how do I get a flash object onto the master slide? When I switch to the Master and select "Insert Flash Object" PowerPoint either hangs or it tells me that I don't have a slide selected.

So I tried cut and paste and that seemed to work -- even though I can't rely on being able to see the artwork.

But then when I put the invisible shape over where I think the swf/button is, it still ends up below the the swf/button so I get the rollover, but no advancing to the next slide.

I really appreciate all your help. I find it a bit amazing that this product has been around this long and nobody has ever wanted to have a button with a rollover? That is truly astounding.

[brianosmi]

Sorry for not doing this sooner, but I just remembered Tom Kuhlman sending me a link where he had done something like this, quite a while back.

Here is the link to his example (notice the nav buttons at the top of the slide): http://www.articulate.com/community/...st/player.html

Here is his explanation:
"I made two master templates (one when I want nav and one when I don’t). I use regular PPT hyperlinks, then I publish. After publishing, I just swap out the background swfs with the ones I have a nav feature.

Pretty cool."

I have an email with a couple of background files he used. PM me with your email addy and I can forward it on to you.

As far as the SDK, the SDK exposes these types of controls in the Articulate API so that you can build custom .swf buttons to do things like advance to the next slide, previous, etc. A little bit fancier than Tom's example above, but possibly more straight forward for some folks.

If you have the SDK shoot me a PM and I'd be happy to chat with you on the specifics.

Have a great weekend!