sound button in quizmaker 09

[joe2008]

HI everyone,

I found a suggestion in both the Engage and the Presenter forums that do what I am looking for, but I am not sure if it would work in Quizmaker, since I am not sure how Quizmaker would handle duplicate slides. Here's what I want to do. I would like for a user to hear audio if and only if they click a particular button. For instance, on a graded question, they would be able to click a button to hear a word and then they would have to fill in the blank as to what word they heard (actually, it is a bit more complicated than that scenario, but I'll spare you the details). Any suggestions about how to do it?

Here's the discussion for Presenter and Engage:

Button that activates a sound?

[GerryWaz]

Well, Flash developers can probably do this with a custom Flash object.

But here is just one easy workaround way to do this in a standalone QM09 quiz for non-Flash developers . . . .

1) Record your sound file in a format that can be played by itself as a link in a browser. For example, in IE, you can use a WAV file. If the content is to be hosted on a web server, make sure the web server will be able serve up the file also.

2) In QM, create your question.

3) Put your question into Slide View mode.

4) Click the Insert tab. Use the Shapes button to insert a button-like shape on your slide.

5) Use the Text Box command to insert text over your button.

6.) Select your button shape and click Hyperlink.

In the "Insert Hyperlink" dialog box that comes up, put just the name of your sound file as the Address. Do not use "http://". For example, I used a WAV file named j0437891.wav. This is all I had as my address URL in the entry box.

For window, select "Display in new browser window."

Click the blue text "(Default browser controls at default size)."

A New Browser Window Properties dialog box will open up. For Browser controls select "No browser controls." For Window size, select "Custom." For Width, enter something like 400 and for Height enter something like 50.

Click Save to close the New Browser Window Properties dialog box.

Click Save to close the Insert Hyperlink Properties dialog box.


7.) Do everything you did in #6 above for the Text box you created. (If you don't, only part of your button will be clickable--the text box will mask the clickable link.)

(You can avoid this step if you create your button with your text on it outside of QM and import it as a picture into QM, which you can also reuse over and over again. Then you just need to add the URL, etc., just once.)


8.) Publish your quiz. Paste a copy of your sound file in the root folder of your published output--this is the same place as where the quiz.html file is. (Always insert a copy of your sound file--if you have to re-publish, you may need to re-insert a copy of the sound file as the first copy may get deleted during the re-publish.)


9.) Repeat for other slides--just keep the name of your sound files unique for each question.

It worked for me.

(Now, I did not test it with a quiz inserted in an AP preso. You may or may not have to experiment there with where you place the sound files in your QM content in AP.)

Hope this helps!

[joe2008]

HI Gerry,
Thanks a million. I was planning on placing this in an AP presentation. I'll let people know if I have to modify your suggestions.

joe

[joe2008]

HI Gerry,
I am still experimenting a bit with your suggestion. Can I ask you how you removed the underline in the hyperlink in your example?

Joe

[GerryWaz]

Hi, I believe I just selected the text box and applied the hyperlink to that instead of highlighting the text in the text box and then hyperlinking.

[joe2008]

Thanks again. That did the trick.

Joe

[joe2008]

Hi Gerry,
Sorry again to bother you, but I seem to having difficulty whether i include the quiz in Presenter or just leave it as a stand-alone. I keep getting a File Not Found message -- specifically:

The file /C:/Users/Joe/Documents/My Articulate Projects/IPA/transcription_quiz - Quizmaker output/bead cannot be found. Please check the location and try again.

When I check the properties of my sound file (i called it "bead") on my computer, I get the following location:

C:\Users\Joe\Documents\My Articulate Projects\IPA\transcription_quiz - Quizmaker output

Again, I am sorta a novice at this, but don't I have the right location? Again, Sorry to keep pestering you with this, but this would be a good feature for me to be able to use on the quiz, as I teach languages.

Thanks again.
Joe

[joe2008]

HI,
I never could get the button to work when I stored the sound file in an Articulate Presentation, but it worked when I uploaded the file to my server and then used the regular hyperlink method. Probably should have thought of that sooner Thanks again Gerry for your help. Happy New Year everyone.

Joe

[GerryWaz]

Hey, Joe! You're welcome. Glad you were able to figure it out. Good work! Happy New Year!

[joe2008]

HI everyone,

I am just passing this information along in case for anyone interested. I finally discovered what I had done wrong: I had forgotten to add .wav extension to the name of the file, so that is why i got a File not Found notice. When I added it, Gerry's idea worked perfectly. Again, for future notice, if you want to embed the quiz in AP, you simply need to add the sound file to the root folder of the AP after publishing. This will be the same folder that contains the data folder, the player folder, and the player.html file.

Joe