Summary: You can create on-click effects in presentations by placing events over several slides and using hyperlinks creatively.
Difficulty: Easy/Medium
On-click triggers are not supported in Articulate Presenter, are they?
On-click animations and triggers are not supported in Articulate Presenter but there are ways to work around this and make your projects respond to mouse clicks just as they would in PowerPoint. This demo shows how you can set animations to play with a click of the mouse.
If you click on the items in the bottom control panel on the second slide, you can start the audio, stop the audio, view the audio with a transcript, hide the transcript but listen to the audio etc. While it looks like all this is on the same slide, the user is in fact being taken to a variety of slides according to what effect is needed (start audio, show animation, hide animation etc).
You might actually need to wait a few seconds on the first slide for this to work best. If this was in a full project, I would probably make sure the user spent some time on the preceding slide (text to read, game…) just to make sure the audio was loaded on the next couple of slides.
This very simple demo below shows how you can build triggers that set off audio files:
The principle is the same except that the user is taken to a different slide for each audio piece and one slide where there is no audio (the first).
Finally this demo shows how you can click through pages and animations just as you would in PowerPoint.
Here clicking on each of the slides moves the presentation on one slide just as you could find when you view a PowerPoint file.
So how do we do it?
Well, there is one trigger that does work when you publish to Articulate Presenter and that is the action to go to another slide. We can therefore harness this to build a project which emulates the trigger animations we see in PowerPoint.
Clicking Through Slides
The simplest example is a presentation with a series of non-animated slides. What you need to do is build your presentation as normal and then paste a transparent action button over each of the slides which, when clicked, will send the user to the next slide.
This video shows you how you do this in PowerPoint 2007 but the principle is the same in PowerPoint 2003 or 2000.
You can paste any transparent shape over the slide and then add a hyperlink to the slide so that it points to the next slide.
If you are viewing this blog on your new iPhone 3G (!) then you might have noticed that the format has been modified automatically to make it easier for you to read the articles. However, the iPhone will not read Flash (yet) except YouTube videos so click on the link below to see the video above in YouTube format! (tested on iPhone3G, may well work on other mobile devices. Will not function on a standard computer.)
Triggering Audio and Video
Now if you want to trigger animations and that includes audio events or even video events, you need to split your slide over several slides in Presenter. In the Public Speaking demo above, I have two identical slides at the beginning. On the first there is no audio file attached to the slide, on the second there is.
On the second slide, I imported an audio file via the Import Audio tool of the Articulate menu. I then link from one object on the first slide to the second slide and that first on-click event is finished. The user clicks on the object and without being aware of it, is taken to another slide which looks exactly the same as the first but where they can hear an audio file.
This particular demo is slightly more complex in that there are ‘triggers’ to animations, text appearing and text disappearing, audio and no audio, so you need to link back and forth to the correct slides to get the desired results. There is sometimes a small flash as the slide changes but that is a small and perhaps acceptable price to pay for creating the on-click events you need in your presentation. You can download the project files for this particular presentation (including the audio clip) here:
If you don’t know how to remove the control button at the bottom-right, then you might want to refer to this article.
You can of course do the same with video as this example shows:
Triggering Animations
Finally the process for creating on-click animations is the same as for sound or video. The animation effects need to be split over several slides. The demo below shows how a one-slide PowerPoint file (an extract from the Rapid E-Learning Template Kit was split into 11 slides to give the on-click animation effect for the eleven animations involved. You need to click anywhere on the slides for the animations to take place.
This example is perhaps a little extreme and also a little basic perhaps but the principle is the same as in the examples above and I think it gives you an idea of what can be achieved. The text appearing and disappearing in the ‘Public Speaking’ demo above was achieved in this way.
Have two slides which look the same, but on the second slide, have an object appear via an animation. Link from the first slide to the second slide either on a particular object on the slide, or via the whole slide like in the demo above and your trigger will seem to cause the animation, whereas in effect it is causing a change of slide on which you have placed the animation.
I am sure many of you are using this technique already, but it is amazing just what can be achieved with multiple slides. This final example I made on Gabe Anderson’s Word of Mouth blog made widespread use of this technique:
Always love your demos.
Hi there,
Your site is fantastic and I have bookmarked it – I’m not enthralled with ARticulate’s help files. Quick question.
I am trying to link a file in a ppt that I publish with ARticulate. It’s being published to Plateau LMS. Every time I add an attachment, when we view throught he LMS there is no attachment viewble. When I try to do it via inserting a link, when the user goes to the slide with the link on it, the link auto opens.
I tried linking to an external file (via web url) using your method above but no luck.
Any ideas? Thank you.
Hi Julie, thanks for your comments. They are much appreciated.
Can you check the following?
1) You are adding the file as a file (not a link) in Articulate -> Attachments. The file is on your computer somewhere (not in your project files) and you are pointing to this file when adding the file as an attachment in Presenter. (that file will then be automatically brought into your project files)
2) You are linking to the file from the slide using the following code in the hyperlink:
data/downloads/thenameofmyfile
3) Your pop-up blocker is not stopping it come through.
[...] that activates a sound? Hi picklehammer. A couple of articles that might interest you: 1) Creating On-Click Triggers in Articulate Presenter It is actually not that messy a method although it depends on what kind of navigation you are [...]
[...] animation stop but you would need to split the animation over several slides as Justin indicated. Creating On-Click Triggers in Articulate Presenter __________________ Dave Moxon ********************************* Customer Support Engineer [...]
Hi Dave
Question, I have a powerpoint slide deck. I want to put a button on the page and when the user clicks on the button a PDF shows up in its own window.
I need a forward and backward button to navigate and also this document button.
Now the caveat to this is, I do not want the user to move forward to the next page unless they click on the button to view the document.
If they click on the forward button, and did not click on the document buttom a message comes up saying for them to click on the document button so they can move forward.
Can you help me….on this?
Thank you, you would be a big help.
Joe Barbella
Hi Joe, I have had a good thought about this and haven’t really found a good solution for you. If you have Presenter ’09, there is a new feature which allows you to lock particular slides. So you could lock your slide with the PDF button and users would then have to click this button to move on. If you could embed the PDF in a web object, then you could send your users to a web object slide and they would then see the PDF. I had a quick look at how you could embed PDF in HTML. It can be embedded just like you would embed an image but it doesn’t seem to work for all browsers. Equally, if you wanted to make sure that your users actually looked at the PDF (which I guess is what you are after), you could just have the PDF web object slide as your next slide and not bother about locking anything. You might want to have your presentation in restricted mode, to stop people moving ahead without viewing all the slides. There are also PDF to PowerPoint converters which might be another solution.
[...] Play Flash movie with button trigger? It’s dog time. Check here for more ideas on how to use triggers in Presenter. __________________ Dave Moxon [...]
[...] Displaying Bullets on Click This article also explains the procedure Brian describes. Creating On-Click Triggers in Articulate Presenter __________________ Dave Moxon ********************************* Customer Support Engineer [...]
[...] with AP gussyl, check out this blog post written by Articulate’s "daveperso": Creating On-Click Triggers in Articulate Presenter __________________ [...]
Dave,
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I’m glad you covered the On-Click issue, and you are both my new hero and my newest BFF.
Why the accolades? Now, I can deliver to my clients what they want in their courses.
Best to you, Dave,
Jenise Cook
http://www.RidgeViewMedia.com
info@ridgeviewmedia.com
http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/jenisecook
(Tom and Gabe are great, too.)
[...] an alternative link, if the direct one don’t work. It’s the demo called "Click to View": Creating On-Click Triggers in Articulate Presenter Thank [...]
[...] for asking questions. I am trying to create on-click triggers as described in Dave Perso’s blog: Creating On-Click Triggers in Articulate Presenter My problem is this. From what I can figure out when I try to do it myself, action triggers can [...]
Hi Dave,
Do you know if it is possible not to play the audio of a slide when a user navigates back to it. In other words if the slide is visited more than once.
Thanks
Allyn
Hi Allyn, I can’t see a way of doing this but you could simulate it so that the user thinks they are going back to the slide but in fact you are sending them to one that is exactly the same without the sound. By hiding the slide in the navigation menu and using branching at the Slide Property level it should be possible.
I cannot download objects file…broken link there…please check..and send me the file. this is exactly I want.
Thanks
Hi Ehsan, Fixed Thanks for pointing that out. :)
MOst of the demos here have something in them that my firewall says is malicious of the links are broken can you take a look and see what you think issue is.
Example business process (one i was really intrested in ) states malicious
Antaomy of URL link is not working
thanks
Hi Dave!
You have the solution I’ve been looking for at http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2008/07/29/creating-on-click-triggers-in-articulate-presenter/
Can you show me how you created the clickable sounds in the demo? I have a project that requires enabling the user to hear sirens and alarms in an emergency response planning e-learning by clicking associated icons. Any assistance is sincerely appreciated!
Curtis