Mike Highfield's Rapid eLearning Blog

Here’s a really simple tip for anyone loading an .flv or .swf file into presenter and is worried about loading times.  It can be the case that a user clicks on a link to a video or .swf file and they are presented with a blank screen while the animation or video loads.  Get round this problem by inserting a simple text box that loads VERY QUICKLY and warns the user that content is loading.  Here’s what to do:

1.       In your presenter file simply create a text box with the text: loading…

2.       Ensure that the loading… text is above any other image objects on your slide.

3.       Place your flv or swf file over the top.

When you preview in Presenter™, or on your local drive you won’t see the benefit.  However, if you try your project remotely – somewhere with a slower internet connection you will see the benefit!

This is a tip I originally found on Dave Perso’s blog.  It took me a while to see the advantage of this but after some experimentation with a series of courses that I am currently developing I found it invaluable.  In this early example I had the user navigating via the engage interaction navigation bar.  

I made this decision because I wanted to restrict the user to the options within sub menus.

After extensive user testing, however, I found that there many users liked the ability to follow through a course using the control panel. 

This left me with a challenge.  How could I get the users back to the sub menu with on onscreen link from engage?  Ahhah!  That’s when I remembered Dave Perso’s blog.  It’s a hack into Articulate presenter but it works:

In your engage interaction create a hyperlink on a piece of your text.

In the URL setting add this code:  asfunction:_level44.playSlide,21 (The final number is the number of the slide that you want to link to - in this case number 21).  These hacks works fine, but only do it once you have your slide numbers finalised.  If you change the number or order of slides, it may well be the case that you have to re-assign the hyperlink.