Updated January 2010: The Finish button no longer flashes briefly. The swf file to be inserted into the results slide has been updated. Please download the new version.
Summary: Hide the Finish button in Quizmaker ’09 by importing a custom-made SWF file.
Difficulty: Easy
Removing The Finish Button
JD from Ottawa (one of the few truly bilingual British/French cities I have ever visited) or jdallas as he is known on our Articulate forums, author of the eLearning dude blog has come up with a novel idea for removing the Finish button in an Articulate quiz. You can find details of the “hack” both on his blog and on this thread on the forums but I thought it would be a good idea to document it here and make it accessible to everyone including those who are not overly familiar with Flash.
History
One repeated request by Articulate users has been to be able to remove the Finish button at the end of a quiz. For example, at the beginning of this thread, the user explains that they are collecting the results of the quiz by mail and want to make sure that the users do indeed use the “Send Results By Email” button. With the Finish button visible, there is a reasonable chance users will click on that button rather than the “Send by Email” button. In a recent article on this blog, we looked at how we could track multiple quizzes in Articulate Online. Part of the method included hiding the Finish button or at least removing the close function.
Example
Thanks to JD, we have a very easy and effective way of removing that Finish button that requires no coding or editing of files. First let’s look at an example.
I have set up this example such that if you pass the quiz, the Finish button will not appear. If you don’t pass, then you’ll see the Finish button.
View Demo
How Do You Do It?
If you are a Flash programmer and you want to see the mechanics of this “hack”, then take a look at JD’s post. If not, just follow the instructions below:
- Download this zip file.
- Save it to somewhere safe on your hard drive.
- Unzip the file.
- Open the quiz where you want to remove the Finish button.
- Click on the Pass Result button in the Articulate menu.
- Go into Slide View.
- Click on the Import tab and select Flash Movie.
- Point to the removefinish.swf file.
- Click Open.
- You will get a message similar to the one shown below ending with “Do you still want to add the swf?”
- Reply Yes
- Leave the default settings in the Flash Movies Properties dialog box (display in slide and movie starts playing automatically) and click OK.
- Click Save & Close
You will position the swf file in the centre of the slide but since it is invisible, it won’t obstruct any text or images you might have there.
You have now removed the Finish button from the Pass Results page. If you want to remove the Finish button from the Fail Results page, then repeat the above procedure but edit the Fail Results page in slide view. So if you want the Finish button to be hidden irrespective of the score of the user, then you’ll need to import the removefinish.swf file twice.
That’s it!
Thanks for documenting this, Dave! I’m sure our customers will appreciate it.
Excellent, thank you!
Mike
Just tried it and it totally worked, great for when you need to embed the quiz in a course and the finish button won’t function. Thanks so much!
This is great, but for all the effort put into this from the community, won’t Articulate step up and make a statement that this will be a Quizmaker option in the next release?
Yes, this works on a quiz I have embedded in a page. However, the Finish button shows up, albeit very briefly, after one clicks on the Review button. It disappears rather quickly, probably too quickly to click on, but long enough to read.
Still, thanks for this solution – I’m sure the fix for this one hink is easy.
Hi sproff, yes the finish button appears too quickly to click on but it is unsightly. JD actually gave me a solution for that (but not the SWF file) so I’ll see if I can get hold of that and update the article. Thanks!
Ok. I think the problem is fixed. Please try downloading the new Flash file and see if that works better for you. Regards
Just remove the text label from the Finish button if it appears briefly. Also make sure the button matches the frame of the quiz so that it won’t show up as easily.
Thank you, this is a great feature to have. I downloaded the removefinish2.swf file above but it still flashes (albeit very briefly) when I insert it into the Pass Result slide. I thought about inserting it into the main part of the quiz, but I still want the finish button for the fail result.
Yes – I downloaded the updated swf (dated Jan 2010) and I still see the button flash briefly before disappearing. Is there a newer fix to get the button to not appear at all?
I got the flash to disappear by adding the swf to each question as well. This also removed the button from the slides that display when reviewing the quiz questions (after clicking the Review Quiz) button.
this is great stuff!
but am I the only one with ‘weird’ looking slides in Firefox?
looks just fine in IE but in Firefox the slidetitles and buttontexts are just a wordjumble…
How can we revert to get the Finish button visible again? I tried to remove the swf embedded, but failed to find a way to do it.
Hi:o)
Thanks for the fix. However, it still flickers when I use it in Studio ’09. Any fix for this? Thanks!
Cheers,
Therese
Hi Therese, If you look further up in the comments of this article, you’ll see that Katherine tried adding the SWF to all the questions and this apparently removed the button to appear. I haven’t got round testing this yet or finding a better solution, but it might help you.
Hi,
Thanks a lot for the solution we tried this in the articulate quiz maker it worked but when this quiz was integrated on to the the Flash course it dosen’t seem to be hiding the button Any idea why is there a work around for that?
This worked until I imported the Quizmaker file into Captivate. Now the Finish button is always there. Any workaround ideas?
(Also, as others have mentioned, I downloaded the new .swf file and the Finish button does flash quickly in Quizmaker).
OK–I discovered that the great little swf you provide does indeed work like a charm–although I had to move it off-stage as it was visible/clickable onstage as a white box with a thin border. It still works perfectly. Thank you!
Ok i take it all back–it works on a PC, in IE and FF, but not on any browser on a Mac OSX+. It does however, work in the Dreamweaver Live Preview within DW on that same Mac….
BIZARRE OR WHAT…! Oh well, back to the drawing board!