Using a SWF to control the properties of a Lectora button
September 1, 2009 12:00 AM
I've done something similiar useing Captivate animations on my Lectora pages. Basically what you do is to set the Next button property to make it initially invisible or use an onshow action on the page to hide the next button when the page displays. Then create a varible to use to manage the visibility and use a timer action to check the status of the variable. In the SWF file have an action script set the value of the varialbe to the desired value. The timer action will see the varialbe change and display the button. I've posted a document about this and the source files for the code to show how to do it in the Files section. This works great with Captivate and I'm sure you can do the same with Flash.
Shawn
montague said:My company has just bought an e-learning package from a provider that dropped a series of SWFs (created in Flash CS3 using ActionScript) into a simple Lectora title. However, all of the 'next' buttons in Lectora were initially invisible. When the SWF finished playing - or in some cases the user finished interacting with the SWF by clicking parts of it - the SWF somehow communicated with Lectora to make the 'next' button visible. The user then clicks the 'next' button to go on to the subsequent Lectora page, on which a new SWF would play (with the Lectora 'next' button again invisible until the SWF told it to display). Does anyone know how to achieve this? The supplier has confirmed it is a Flash CS3/ActionScript/JavaScript combination, but a confidentiality agreement means the designer cannot share with me how he did it! Very frustrating, because it's a very neat combination that I would like to achieve in my own Lectora titles. Help from the Lectora Lounge community would be very much appreciated.
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