The slide duration widget provides the developer with the slide’s time, a data that is unfortunately not directly available from the Captivate Variables. The use of the widget is fairly simple. Insert the widget on the slide you wish to get the time.

In the Widget Properties Dialog, insert the name of the variable that will hold the slide’s duration. It can be any name you wish. We will later use that name to setup a Captivate user variable.

Now, from the Captivate Variable Dialog (accessible from the Project… menu), add a new variable with exactly the same name that you entered in the widget Properties Dialog. Make sure that you set the value of the variable to zero. Also beware, the name is case sensitive! Now close the dialog.

The final step is to use the variable in a Caption or in any other way you want. For example, we have inserted the name of the variable holding the slide duration inside a caption. Note that the name of the variable is enclosed between double dollar signs as this is mandatory if you want Captivate to replace the variable with the actual value at runtime.

UPDATE: As Lieve mentioned in the comments, it’s a good practice to insert variables using the button in the format section of the properties panel. This way, you just need to position the caret where you want to insert the variable and click on the button. The variable, enclosed with the proper control characters, will be automatically inserted into your text thus avoiding some typo errors. However, this implies that you already have added the variable in the variable dialog first.

So, give it a try and have fun! You can download the widget below.