Dynamically resizable text?

Apr 26, 2013

Hello,

Is there any way to allow users to resize text in a lesson? I would like this to work similar to using CTRL-+ in a browser.

I have tried setting different states for a text box, then having a button to trigger a state change. This does resize the text, but I have a few problems:

1 - even with the text box inside a scrolling panel, the scrollbars do not show up when necessary. (I have set the text box to "Resize Shape to fit Text", but no luck)

2 - if my default text size is too small for a learner, he/she would have to hit this 'resize' button on every page.

3 - I would have to create multiple states, plus a button, plus triggers for every single page of my lesson.

Any ideas would be awesome, thanks!!

7 Replies

Doug Brown

almost 11 years ago04/27/13 at 8:58 pm (UTC)

Hi Terry

After thinking about you idea, I have come up with a possible half way solution.

STEPS

1.If you set up a slide with 2 layers, one with a text box (small text), other with a text box(large text) in a scrolling panel.

Then you could edit the text to whatever you want.

2. Set up triggers to open layer based on a variable

3. Put a toggle button on the Master slide to alter variable

4. Copy Slide as many times as you need

5. Alter content on each sllde

This way you only need to code once since the triggers are copied

I have tried it online & it seems to work with IPAD Player as well

Link to Demo:

http://dbis2.com.au/demo/size.html

Code Attached:

Let me know if you need to more more about the triggers

Doug

size.story

Nancy Woinoski
Hero

almost 11 years ago04/28/13 at 5:17 pm (UTC)

Nice job with this Doug. The only thing is that it will be a real bear to maintain if you have to make edits to the text because it is in two places. I wonder what would happen if you put the text in the value field of a variable and then just referenced the variables on the layers?

Doug Brown

almost 11 years ago04/28/13 at 5:36 pm (UTC)

Nancy Woinoski said:

Nice job with this Doug. The only thing is that it will be a real bear to maintain if you have to make edits to the text because it is in two places. I wonder what would happen if you put the text in the value field of a variable and then just referenced the variables on the layers?

Hi Nancy,

I had thought about that and tried to embed a common variable per slide,

The current version of Storyline does not seem to handle text formatting of variables very well where we need to use a Scrolling Panel for the large fonts.

The scolling text box seems to get easily confused where the full variable text is not available until run time!

This is further complicated if we:

Use a variable in a Text Field

Where font size has been altered from default

Where the Text box is set to Resize shape

That is then within a Scrolling Panel

Hopefully this will be more stable in the next release.

I'm sure future enhancements will allow simplier solutions or workarounds.

I also wondered if we could use this type of solution for Bilingual modules

Doug

Terry Bell
Author

almost 11 years ago04/29/13 at 7:58 am (UTC)

Thanks both of you. Doug - your idea is less work than what I feared, but still more work than what I hoped.

I will put in a feature request for this, I think it would be a good thing to offer.

Nancy Woinoski
Hero

almost 11 years ago04/29/13 at 2:41 pm (UTC)

Doug Brown said:

Nancy Woinoski said:

Nice job with this Doug. The only thing is that it will be a real bear to maintain if you have to make edits to the text because it is in two places. I wonder what would happen if you put the text in the value field of a variable and then just referenced the variables on the layers?

Hi Nancy,

I had thought about that and tried to embed a common variable per slide,

The current version of Storyline does not seem to handle text formatting of variables very well where we need to use a Scrolling Panel for the large fonts.

The scolling text box seems to get easily confused where the full variable text is not available until run time!

This is further complicated if we:

Use a variable in a Text Field

Where font size has been altered from default

Where the Text box is set to Resize shape

That is then within a Scrolling Panel

Hopefully this will be more stable in the next release.

I'm sure future enhancements will allow simplier solutions or workarounds.

I also wondered if we could use this type of solution for Bilingual modules

Doug

Hey Doug, you could probably use it for bilingual modules to a limited extent but any player controls or messages would remain in the language you used to publish the course. It would be great if there was some way to switch the player settings on the fly but right now that is just a dream.