I have setup some buttons with custom states, however, every time I use them as part of a freeform interaction Storyline 2 changes the "selected" state by adding a glow and selecting a random color (usually a color that has been set in the design pane). I didn't have this issue in the previous version of Storyline so I was wondering, is there a setting where I can prevent Storyline 2 from doing this?
I did test this in Storyline 2 and I do see that custom buttons are being defaulted back to the blue "glow" that is the default for freeform selections.
For now you can just change the default selected state to the one you created. You should be able to copy and paste it into the states. I will post here if there are any updates.
I just want to add, I also encountered this issue when I put in a few Storyline radio buttons and then converted the frame to a freeform interaction. It added the blue glow to the selected states of each radio button. It didn't seem to change any colours, though.
- we are having big problems with creating questions and random glows being added in - it is taking a LOT of work to go through and remove them, and then in some cases the button then doesn't work. - It worked fine when we created the interaction and the glows were on the buttons, then we go and take the glows out and suddenly the screen doesn't work anymore!
This issue is still with our QA team. Unfortunately I cannot offer a time frame for a fix. Have you tried setting the shapes as default as Jai mentioned above?
When we put a default 'selected' state it has a blue glow. Then we remove this and change the state to how we want it to look. - We then can not seem to click on the shape and see the selected state.
This sounds like odd behavior. After editing the state, you should still be able to select the item. Please confirm that you are working locally as described here. You could try and import the file into a new file.
You could also share the file here if you would like us to take a look.
We have found that if we use a different colour (we wanted grey text to turn to black when it was selected) and have it turn to orange it works. - But every time it is edited random buttons have the glow attached to them again. It is very annoying to have to keep removing it.
Hi! Has this been resolved? I'm using shapes rather than buttons, but I'm still getting a weird looking glow when I convert to freeform. It also causes the text color inside the shapes to change in the hover and selected states. When I fix the first shape, I can use format painter to remove the glow and adjust the color in the others, but the text color doesn't transfer with format painter.
If you're creating it as a freeform question, as Emily mentioned it'll automatically assign the glow to it as a part of the states so that users know when you're hovering or selected the choice. It sounds like you're able to edit them though to remove that, and that's what you'll need to do if you've changed to a freeform question. You could also look at changing the theme colors overall to make the glow less noticeable depending on the other colors you're using, but please note that this will impact all your colors and set up.
I also encounterd the isue with the glows I didn't ask for when converting to Freeform with shapes (used as buttons). Please Articulate, I want to decide myself which effects I want (not) to use. I just sent in a feature request.
Sorry to hear you've run into this behavior as well and found it not what you wanted - at this time it is the expected behavior based on changing the set up to a freeform question type, so sending along the feature request is the best option. Also you may want to look at using the "format painter" to allow for the quick application of the changes from one button to the next.
Just ran into this same issue myself, on a E-Learning project related to Title IX for our community college. I could not figure out why it was applying the goal. The other problem I was having, was that on subsequent buttons,copied from the original shape converted as a button, was that it was leaving the glow... where (or associated with) I had copied the original free-form shape/button from. See attached image of my custom tab interaction for example. The glow is on the 2nd button; but the 4th button is activated.
I would agree, it seems to be a feature that may have originally seemed like a good idea, or helpful; but appears to be more of an annoyance than anything else. Again, to reiterate from the comment above, let me handle or choose my own "Active" state for my custom shape button.
Thanks Christopher for sharing your set up here - and I hope you'll share it in the form of a feature request as well as sharing here. Those go to our product development team and are tracked and categorized for easier tracking and determining of what features may be investigated for the next update or release.
This problem pretty much doubles my design time having to fix unwanted effects when converting to freeform. The format painter does not work in all cases. The glow only effect shapes and i have groups with text boxes and shapes which means i have to ungroup everthing which in turn "breaks" the question because i object i selected (the group) no longer exsists.
Hi there, Peter. Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I can see where that would be frustrating to have to break apart your groups and then reset your question choices accordingly.
I don't have an update about changing this behavior, but our product development team should hear your voice too! Can you add your name to a feature request? Thanks again.
No update yet, but it hasn't been a topic I've seen a lot of discussion around in ELH.
We're working on better prioritizing bugs and feature requests. Here's more information on how we identify and tackle bugs. No article yet for feature requests, but we're working on that one to give you more insight into our process!
Makes sense - and those type of features can be given a lower priority based on the workarounds available and how much impact it is having on folks in the community or in a Support case.
I'll keep an eye out for other mentions of it and see if we can push it up a bit on the listing. 🙂
Is there a work around yet for this? I have a slide with over 50 buttons with custom selected states and really want to change it from a pick one to a pick many but I know as soon as I do it will ruin all my custom states and I'll have to spend another hour or so going back and fixing them all. This feature is frankly such a pain and has been for years, I've mentioned this many times to Storyline devs over the years and every time I go to an e-learning convention I will mention it and still nothing seems to have been done.
Just a setting in preferences to stop the glow being applied when converting slides to free form would probably have saved me hundreds of hours in my career using this software.
When you convert the slide to a freeform it'll apply the standard question type states, as prior to that Storyline doesn't recognize the custom states as a part of the question. If you wanted to make the transition a bit easier, you could look at duplicating the question prior to converting. That way you'd be able to use the original and the Format Painter to copy the states over pretty quickly versus rebuilding from scratch.
31 Replies
Hello Jai!
I did test this in Storyline 2 and I do see that custom buttons are being defaulted back to the blue "glow" that is the default for freeform selections.
I will report this to our QA team for review.
Thanks for looking into this.
No problem Jai!
For now you can just change the default selected state to the one you created. You should be able to copy and paste it into the states. I will post here if there are any updates.
I just want to add, I also encountered this issue when I put in a few Storyline radio buttons and then converted the frame to a freeform interaction. It added the blue glow to the selected states of each radio button. It didn't seem to change any colours, though.
The color issue for me was solved as soon as I set the custom button I created as a default button.
Thanks for the update Jai! Glad you found a solution.
Any update on this??
- we are having big problems with creating questions and random glows being added in - it is taking a LOT of work to go through and remove them, and then in some cases the button then doesn't work. - It worked fine when we created the interaction and the glows were on the buttons, then we go and take the glows out and suddenly the screen doesn't work anymore!
Hello Lizzie!
This issue is still with our QA team. Unfortunately I cannot offer a time frame for a fix. Have you tried setting the shapes as default as Jai mentioned above?
Not too sure what you mean.
When we put a default 'selected' state it has a blue glow. Then we remove this and change the state to how we want it to look. - We then can not seem to click on the shape and see the selected state.
Hello Lizzie,
This sounds like odd behavior. After editing the state, you should still be able to select the item. Please confirm that you are working locally as described here. You could try and import the file into a new file.
You could also share the file here if you would like us to take a look.
We have found that if we use a different colour (we wanted grey text to turn to black when it was selected) and have it turn to orange it works. - But every time it is edited random buttons have the glow attached to them again. It is very annoying to have to keep removing it.
Hello Lizzie!
I checked the file, and i am able to edit many of the text boxes states without seeing a new glow appear.
When you add a new item within a quiz slide, it will by default have the glow for selected state when you assign it as a possible answer.
You may want to try a repair on your Storyline if the edit issue does keep up.
Hi! Has this been resolved? I'm using shapes rather than buttons, but I'm still getting a weird looking glow when I convert to freeform. It also causes the text color inside the shapes to change in the hover and selected states. When I fix the first shape, I can use format painter to remove the glow and adjust the color in the others, but the text color doesn't transfer with format painter.
Hi James,
If you're creating it as a freeform question, as Emily mentioned it'll automatically assign the glow to it as a part of the states so that users know when you're hovering or selected the choice. It sounds like you're able to edit them though to remove that, and that's what you'll need to do if you've changed to a freeform question. You could also look at changing the theme colors overall to make the glow less noticeable depending on the other colors you're using, but please note that this will impact all your colors and set up.
I also encounterd the isue with the glows I didn't ask for when converting to Freeform with shapes (used as buttons). Please Articulate, I want to decide myself which effects I want (not) to use. I just sent in a feature request.
Hi Chris,
Sorry to hear you've run into this behavior as well and found it not what you wanted - at this time it is the expected behavior based on changing the set up to a freeform question type, so sending along the feature request is the best option. Also you may want to look at using the "format painter" to allow for the quick application of the changes from one button to the next.
Just ran into this same issue myself, on a E-Learning project related to Title IX for our community college. I could not figure out why it was applying the goal. The other problem I was having, was that on subsequent buttons,copied from the original shape converted as a button, was that it was leaving the glow... where (or associated with) I had copied the original free-form shape/button from. See attached image of my custom tab interaction for example. The glow is on the 2nd button; but the 4th button is activated.
I would agree, it seems to be a feature that may have originally seemed like a good idea, or helpful; but appears to be more of an annoyance than anything else. Again, to reiterate from the comment above, let me handle or choose my own "Active" state for my custom shape button.
This post was removed by the author
Thanks Christopher for sharing your set up here - and I hope you'll share it in the form of a feature request as well as sharing here. Those go to our product development team and are tracked and categorized for easier tracking and determining of what features may be investigated for the next update or release.
When will this problem be fixed?
This problem pretty much doubles my design time having to fix unwanted effects when converting to freeform. The format painter does not work in all cases. The glow only effect shapes and i have groups with text boxes and shapes which means i have to ungroup everthing which in turn "breaks" the question because i object i selected (the group) no longer exsists.
Hi there, Peter. Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I can see where that would be frustrating to have to break apart your groups and then reset your question choices accordingly.
I don't have an update about changing this behavior, but our product development team should hear your voice too! Can you add your name to a feature request? Thanks again.
No update yet, but it hasn't been a topic I've seen a lot of discussion around in ELH.
We're working on better prioritizing bugs and feature requests. Here's more information on how we identify and tackle bugs. No article yet for feature requests, but we're working on that one to give you more insight into our process!
Makes sense - and those type of features can be given a lower priority based on the workarounds available and how much impact it is having on folks in the community or in a Support case.
I'll keep an eye out for other mentions of it and see if we can push it up a bit on the listing. 🙂
Is there a work around yet for this? I have a slide with over 50 buttons with custom selected states and really want to change it from a pick one to a pick many but I know as soon as I do it will ruin all my custom states and I'll have to spend another hour or so going back and fixing them all. This feature is frankly such a pain and has been for years, I've mentioned this many times to Storyline devs over the years and every time I go to an e-learning convention I will mention it and still nothing seems to have been done.
Just a setting in preferences to stop the glow being applied when converting slides to free form would probably have saved me hundreds of hours in my career using this software.
Hi Tom,
When you convert the slide to a freeform it'll apply the standard question type states, as prior to that Storyline doesn't recognize the custom states as a part of the question. If you wanted to make the transition a bit easier, you could look at duplicating the question prior to converting. That way you'd be able to use the original and the Format Painter to copy the states over pretty quickly versus rebuilding from scratch.
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