Tutorial: Lock the progress bar in the Adobe Captivate playbar
In some courses you don’t want the user to “scrub” back and forth by using the progress bar slider. Of course you can disable the progress bar alltogether but then you will loose the visual indication of how far the user has progress in the course.
By using a custom Flash file it is possible to manipulate this Adobe Captivate progress bar slider so that it will show the progress but the user can’t interact with it.
The progress bar slider uses an event listener to check if the user interacts with the slider. To remove the possiblity of the user to interact with the slider we can simply delete these event listeners.
Here is the code (AS2):
1 2 3 4 | this.stop(); delete _root.cpPbcBar_mc.pbcBar_mc.pbcSlider_mc.onMouseDown; delete _root._level0.cpPbcBar_mc.pbcBar_mc.pbcSlider_mc.onMouseDown; |
This is all the code you need in order to “lock” the Adobe Captivate Progress bar slider.
A word of caution! Once you have deleted these event listeners there is no way to reactive them again. Therefore you can’t disable the interaction on some slides and reactivate it on others.
I included the Flash source file and a published SWF in case you don’t have access to Adobe Flash.
You can download the files here: Download files to lock the progress bar slider (230)
Have fun.
/Michael
9
Comments
Dave Moser
Very interesting that you can disable the slide bar programatically. What we are currently having problems with now, is when a user scrubs the progress bar the graphics seem to pixelate and block out in some areas. Is this common. Could the publishing resolution be the colpret?
Michael
Hi Dave,
I haven’t encountered the problem with pixaleted graphics myself, but then again I never use the Captivate playbar. I guess that the publishing resolution could have an effect on this. I normally published with the slides set to “Optimized” or “High Quality”.
/Michael
Dave Moser
Thank you Michael, that is helpful info. Also, I know when you adjust the background images too much, it increases the file size considerably.
Dave
Kim
Dave, Hi I am just trying to work out how to implement the” locking of the progress bar”. I tried to import the swf as a widget but it didn’t like it. Could you please enlighten me how to use it.
Michael
Hi Kim,
Insert the file as an “Animation” instead of a Widget and it will work.
I didn’t go through the trouble of making this into a full-blown widget so it’s just a regular Flash animation.
/Michael
Иво
Здравейте, искам да попитам как мога да си заключа флаша тоест както е показано малко по нагоре във видеото като цъкна на десния бутон да ми излиза settings i About Adobe flash вместо zoom in, zoom out. Мерси предварително.
Иво
Hi, I want to ask how I can lock the flash that is as shown slightly up in the video by clicking the right button go to my settings i About Adobe flash instead zoom in, zoom out. Thanks in advance.
sallych
I know I’m a little late to this discussion, but since it addresses my problems, I thought I’d try.
In CP4, I am trying to block use of the progress bar on the quiz slides but allow it on others. I trued setting the quiz slides to on slide enter>assign>cpcomandplaybar>0 as suggested in response to a similar question. It does hide the progress bar on those slides, but from the previous slides, the user can still scorll right past the quiz slides. Then, when the user goes back using the back and next buttons I included, the progress bar is gone.
From your comment above and my experience, it seems there’s no way to disable progress when the project reaches a specific slide and then resume at a later slide. Is this correct?
Thanks.
Michael
Hi Sally,
No there is no way (that I am aware off) that will allow you to control the progress slider based on which slide the user is on. Using the example in my post will fully disable the slider and it cannot be reactivated again.
/Michael
Leave a Reply