How to Build Your Own Custom Articulate Tab to Go to Any Slide

I am currently working on a project where we have three parts of a course, and one of the requests of my internal customer was the ability to jump to the beginning of each particular section. In an effort to dummy proof our course, the internal customer wanted buttons on the top or the bottom of the Articulate interface. So, not having enough time to build a custom player with all the specifications that we wanted, I built tabs (actually called Tools by Articulate). For those who have access to the Articulate SDK, this is a custom toolbar item.

For those who want this already done for them see James Kingsley’s (@onEnterFrame) jumper which uses the XML file and an extra node, great for those who don’t have flash. However, I believe it can only do one tab because of the way it is called. If you want one that can build multiple tabs, James has one for sell at elearningenhanced.com for only $10.

However, if you own Adobe Flash, then simply follow these steps. First, you will need your art_plugins.xml file. Open art_plugins.xml in Notepad++ (the best text editor for Windows users). In the SDK, it contains a section that looks similar to this:

<item>
		<enabled>true</enabled>
		<id>5050</id>
		<type>navtool</type>
		<title>New Toolbar Item</title>
		<file>NewToolbarItem.swf</file>
		<labeltext>New Tool</labeltext>
	</item>

So, feel free to edit any part of this XML file. If you want multiple items, then place them one after the other in between the <modules> tags. For example:

<item>
		<enabled>true</enabled>
		<id>5050</id>
		<type>navtool</type>
		<title>New Toolbar Item</title>
		<file>NewToolbarItem1.swf</file>
		<labeltext>New Tool</labeltext>
	</item>
	<item>
		<enabled>true</enabled>
		<id>5051</id>
		<type>navtool</type>
		<title>New Toolbar Item</title>
		<file>NewToolbarItem2.swf</file>
		<labeltext>New Tool</labeltext>
	</item>

So I created buttons at the top. The <labeltext> is what will be written on the button at the top of the Articulate Player. ATTACHMENTS is generally in UPPERCASE, unless you edit it in Articulate > Player Templates > Text Labels, so if you wish to be consistent then use all CAPS.

In flash, open your TestTool.fla file. Go to the ACTIONS layer, frame 2 under init. Click F9 to reveal your actions panel, and you will see your artModuleAPI function. Inside the switch statement make the following edits:

		case "activate_onclick":
		case "activate":
			ArtAPI.PlaySlideNum(nSlideNum); 
			//where nSlideNum = whatever slide you'd like
			break;
		case "deactivate":

Save As naming it whatever you’d like. Then publish the SWF file hitting F12(note: when you publish, you may receive an error stating, “Cannot open a protected movie.” Don’t worry about it.). Note, whatever you title your file, it must be in the art_plugins.xml file. So if this was saved beginning.swf where it takes the user back to the beginning, then the XML will be:

<item>
		<enabled>true</enabled>
		<id>5050</id>
		<type>navtool</type>
		<title>Beginning</title>
		<file>beginning.swf</file>
		<labeltext>Back to the Beginning</labeltext>
	</item>