Storyline as a web design tool?

That's a good point about Dropbox.  With a more complicated object it would be slow.  It is very useful for testing however as it means I can upload and move files around easily.  Dropbox has however just announced that they won't be creating Public folders in new accounts and the share function in other folders doesn't seem to work in the same way (oh well).

Once I am happy with the design I would most likely move it onto the actual site server and call it from there.

Thanks for the reply!

Mike

Mike,

I love the direction you're going with this.  I think I've spent more time playing with Storyline as a tool for non-eLearning uses than the other way around, so it's so cool seeing others experiment as well!  Would be cool to see how many different ideas the community could bake up using unusual size dimensions (for example 150 wide, by 800 high).  So in essence, you start with a particular dimension set, and then let that help dictate your approach.

Keep rolling with this, it looks great!

Mike

Cool idea!

I'm thinking along the lines of small interactive guides or tools within a course homepage.

For example, in a homepage a small block could present the student/visitor with a simple set of choices that would then return suggestions or help based on the choice. e.g. "What course should I study".

The possibilities are pretty much endless and now having support for HTML5 etc makes it a pretty flexible way of creating these "micro-apps" (it's the only way I can think of describing them).

Mike

Cool idea making embedded widgets with SL. We've built a few page top slivers that follow the Jellyvision Labs interactive conversation pattern. I'm guessing Storyline would be great for building these.

S

I think this is beautiful Mike! 

I'm wondering about search engine optimization with a site built with Storyline.

I love the (to use Steve's term) embedded widgets idea.  The possibilities are only limited by the imagination!   

From what I gather, my website (built in SL) does not have any Search Engine Optimisation, but then I built it as somewhere to send people AFTER we were talking, to show capability, (in effect, a course aboyut me!), rather than as somewhere to get hold of me initially.

I use the SEO built into other places that I "inhabit" online to drive people to the website via contact information they find, and from there they get hold of me.

...and it seems to be working rather well as a strategy! 

Bruce

Just in case anybody was looking for this banner.  I had to remove it from the site I was working on but it can still be found here > http://tiny.cc/totzfw.

Not quite as interesting when outside of a site!

Mike

Good question Nancy,

There are two answers...

Firstly and simply, I was working on the site and didn't want to be loading the banner all the time as working in developer mode on Moodle slows down the page load times considerably (as it individually caches around 200 different CSS files).

Second reason is a bit more sinister!

This theme has a dropdown menu when the user is logged in that looks like this...

However, when the banner is in place it obscures the menu like this...

This isn't a Storyline problem, it's a problem with Flash.  Flash objects always sit in the top layer of the page (I have no idea why, I've tried playing with positions and the z-index attribute) causing this problem.

There is a solution however, if instead of calling the story.html file in the iframe you call the story_html5.html file this problem goes away.  The downside of course is that html5 just isn't quite there yet and the player chrome returns and a lot of the animation and text effects are lost.  You can see the flash banner on the link in my previous post and the html5 banner on the site.

Cheers,

Mike

If the Flash component is embedded with something called Wmode (window mode): Transparent or Opaque, it should allow other stuff to load on top. In your published output, try changing the line that looks like this:

var g_strWMode = "window"

To this:

var g_strWMode = "transparent" 

Or -- to this:

var g_strWMode = "opaque" 

That should allow your menu content to float above the Flash component. The downside of this mode is screen readers (JAWS) won't pick up your Flash content, which affects the accessibility of the component. If it's an enhancement to the base content on the page, it should be OK.

Steve

More info here:

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash/kb/flash-object-embed-tag-attributes.html#main_Browser_support_for_Window_Mode__wmode__values

Thanks Steve, I just found a load of stuff on the web about wmodes.  I'll have a play later but wondering if it is something that I can implement in the iframe or will it need to be hacked into the story.html file itself?

It'll have to be changed in the story.html file.

Interesting, I thought the wmode just made the swf background transparent. I'm glad I asked this question.

Well there you go!  Steve you're a star.

I'm not a great coder and I love it when I learn something new like this.  Crazy thing is, if you actually go in and look at story.html, there it is commented out:

var g_strWMode = "window"; // opaque | window (use "window" for optimal performance, opaque for webobject support)

I changed it to opaque and lo and behold it works like a charm.

Of course, the next question is - should I not be embracing HTML5 anyway?!

Mike

Hey Mike - if you publish the output as Flash and HTML5 and embed the story.html  won't  it redirect to the HTML5 output when necessary? So that way you get the best of both worlds.

Was going to suggest this as well. I'd embrace both Flash and HTML5. In this case, I wouldn't publish to the iOS player but checking the other two will get you where you need to be on legacy platforms and more modern browsers.

Love HTML5 but 100% of my audience can't see it (IE7). Thankful that tools are starting to cater to the old and the new with a single workflow.

Sorry, my comment about HTML5 wasn't really that clear!

The ability to publish to both Flash and HTML5 simultaneously is probably THE key reason I have moved to Storyline.  But I was considering if it was going to be easier just to call the story_html5.html file directly, knock out the flash component altogether (although it would still be there in the output) and design for HTML5 given that certain things don't work the same.

Of course Steve just pointed out something I hadn't considered in that those people still using IE7 can't see HTML5 and so I need to keep that Flash component for the time being...

(who'd have thought a quick post about a silly banner would turn into this?!)

Mike

Hi  Mike - Steve's point is right on the money. Everyone is so eager to jump to HTML5 but the standard is not really there yet  - older browsers don't support it and even the ones that do have varying degrees of support. I think the best way to go is to offer the swf and HTML5 versions. When doing your design you just have to be aware of the limitations of HTML5 and then decide what you are willing to live with in terms of user experience.

Well said, Nancy and Steve.  Did a preso on Storyline last week to local learning leaders and that was my main message to them when in comes to mLearning right now.

We're in crazy time . . .

Hey Mike - are you by any chance using the Ardvark-Posit theme as the basis for your moodle site?

At the moment this one is using the standard Aardvark theme.  It's the first time I haven't just built one from scratch but I wanted to try out the Profile block in the header bar.

It's pretty nice although I am doing a fair bit a modifying to get the results I want.

Cheers,

Mike

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping this thread is not dead.

I am looking into the possibility of designing a small web site - to be used as a web site, not an LMS intro page or anything else - with Storyline.

What might the drawbacks be in doing this? For instance, is it possible to use meta tags for search optimization? This was mentioned above but it didn't look like anyone had needed it/hadn't tried it. I'm not a web designer (just enough to be dangerous, as with most things!) so maybe I am missing some important keys that make SL not a good tool for this purpose. But it SEEMS like it would work....

Thanks for your input!

Hi Leslie,

I don't see why you couldn't use Storyline to design a small website (like Bruce has done).  I'm sure someone will chip in but I don't think SEO is going to be possible.

Personally, I wouldn't do a website in SL unless I wanted it to look and behave like an eLearning resource. I always turn to Wordpress in the first instance for all website development.

That said, if you wanted to create something like a brochure site that visitors would be directed to, rather than searching for, SL could potentially create some awesome content. *brain starts to wander thinking of an interactive brochure with characters, videos and variable controlled content...*

Cheers,

Mike