Visited State for Buttons

shanwoman

I can't believe Lectora 12 doesn't have a visited state for buttons. Am I wrong? Storyline has this and clients now expect a gray button after it has been clicked. The disable state doesn't fit this need as the learner cannot go back and revisit the link if the button is disabled.

ssneg

Sounds like a nice idea.

adamleibler

Agreed, @shanwoman & Sergey. Right now, in almost every Lectora course we build, I have to manually account for a "visited" state using some combination of show/hide, changeContents, or some other Lectora sorcery.

It'd be nice to have this as a fifth button state to avoid that extra work in the pipeline.

In the meantime, I'd be happy to share some of my workarounds with you, @shanwoman, if you need 'em. :-)

Adam Leibler, LCA
Senior eLearning Developer
eLearning Brothers

support

I'll submit this as a feature request

shanwoman

Thanks, Adam. Yes, I'd love to hear about your workarounds. What I've been doing is using status indicators and creating a color and grayed out version of each image in Photoshop. But this means I can't have a hover state. Also, if you use a shadow or any kind of effect on a status indicator image, it often means you won't see a "hand cursor" when hovering over the image. Trivantis has identified this as a bug. What types of workarounds have you had success with?

By the way, sorry for the long delay in replying. I had forgotten to check the box to be notified of replies to my post. Just now happened upon your reply. :-)

Unknown

How about this workaround:

Add a button (it would be a checkmark) whose initial state would be hidden. After a button is clicked and the state changed to the clicked state, the hidden button would appear and be placed atop of the original button showing the user that this has been completed/viewed.

Storyline does this same thing, but a bit easier.

Unknown

Adam - please contact me to discuss your work arounds. [email protected]

towers9815

I have used a visited variable and then add to that each time button is clicked.

I have created my own Button group for each state

All buttons are groups

[button Example]
___[Image Blue] - Normal State (Background of the button)
___[Image Gold] - Selected State (For when its active)
___[Image Grey] - Disable State
___[Clear with Tick] - Visited State
______Action: On Show Hide IF...(see below)
___[Text Box] - Button Text
___[Transparent Button] Normal: Empty 100 Opacity (Clear)
_______________Down: Colour at 70 Opacity
_______________Over: Colour at 40 Opacity
______Action: On_MClk_Goto...
______Action: On_MClk_Goto_ModVar_IF

I have created a variable that will hold each visit. I called it ButtonVisited.

So on each button I have Modify Var Action that added the <<CurrentPageName>>+"A" to the variable.

Visited State image has on Show IF ButtonVisited does not contain <<CurrentPageName>>+"A". Where A is button on this page.

If you have more than one button it would be B and then C, (Sure you can see the pattern)

Note: I always keep my page names to just numbers as you might run out of space for SCORM 1.2.

Also you might ask why an image. Well each image is only 1 pixel by 1 pixel. This means that I can use the same image for button of any size!

Well thats one way to do it till its a standard feature.

shanwoman

I'm back to using Lectora for a new project after being away for a year. I just downloaded 16.2 and can it be that this still has not been fixed by the fine folks at Trivantis? No visited state for buttons? Or am I missing something?

tpriddle2405

Certainly surprising that this hasn't been included by default considering the major competitors in this space offer it.

mjbdale

Am just wondering about this myself, could anyone from Trivantis provide details?

 

Thank you!

klaatu

Go to this POST for a simple solution that provides zero graphic (no weight) buttons that can have a visited style. Very easy to do.

ahetherington9113

I'm looking for a 'down' state for buttons - one that remains after I move the mouse away. The same as a 'visited' state in other authoring tools.

I'm using Lectora 17.1 and still only have 4 button states, including 'down' but this only appears while you hold the mouse click on the button, so I'm assuming 'visited' still requires a workaround?

Cheers

Amanda

approg

There's this:
<http://www.apixel.com/atelier/page05t.htm&gt;
which mimics Captivate's smart shape object, allowing you to create buttons with "visited" states in Lectora. It's based on JavaScript but it doesn't look difficult to use.

 

peterlexsorenson

So many limitations in this product that are self-imposed.

Why not allow the user to create their own states in addition to the native core four?

I need a "clicked/selected" state - where the button can now include a checkmark to signify the button has been selected. No opportunity to make my own.

But the button still resources an image - so - with a little bit of javascript you can overcome the #Lectoralimitation.

approg

Dang, the URL should've been without the crud on the end
Mimic Captivate's smart object

mnotermans5114

I am surprised why people complain about this. Its so easy to overcome by either creating a group with images or by use of CSS or Javascript.  Especially when you want your hotspot different then your image, your way better of with the workflow as is in Lectora... just think out of the box and you be surprised whats possible.

approg

It's not that workarounds aren't possible it's that you have to spend time unnecessarily dealing with things that should be native to an elearning program like Lectora.

jwestlund6143

I agree. We just change tool to lectora and surprised that there are no visited state or clicked state that stays as long as you dont mark another one. I am used to do a lot of work arounds but now when we should follow WCAG and accessibility we want to limited the risk to make things that not work for everyone.

jcs315

I know this is an old post, but this is still an issue. We've been asking for this feature for at least 5 years. Is there any hope of this being added any time soon?

klaatu

Prior to 2010 it was possible to use :visited to access user browser history and even enough information to guess at a persons identity, however browsers now limit the information that can be gleaned from nefariously using CSS styles (with JS and PHP) by limiting what can be styled and reported back to a server. Guess what, everything you need to have visited styled links/buttons (color, background-color, outline-color, border-color and more) has been available for ten years plus now.

Again, as great as it is this program needs serious retooling as it is getting long in the tooth. Why isn't css grid being used? Why not use CSS buttons without the weight of graphics? Why not output industry web standard html5? Why are actions so limited? Take a look at the actions that Toolbook provided back in 2012 before it was bought by Skillsoft to be killed; to this day it still blows Inspire's action capability out of the water and that's natively without adding external JavaScript. Just look at what what you could easily manipulate.

eLearning Brothers has a fantastic opportunity to do what StoneCalibre didn't, listen to your users and add the things that have been requested for years, fix the issues that have plagued users for years and finally, use and output standard HTML5.

 

 

 

carlfink

Darrell, I loved Toolbook. I actually wrote two general-purpose engineering estimation programs in it that were used for over a decade. I still kind of miss it.

micmacmegan

Just nudging this back into the light...it appears this feature is now available on the desktop version, but still pending for Lectora Online. I hear it is on the horizon, but taking a moment to advocate for the feature in the online platform sooner rather than later, please :-)