The Ultimate Guide to Buttons in Storyline 360

Buttons play a big role in most e-learning courses. After all, adding buttons is one of the easiest ways to get your learners to interact with your content. With Storyline 360, working with buttons is super easy. But are you using buttons to the fullest? Read on for some insider tips for taking your buttons to the next level.

1. Add Button States

Button states allow you to alter the appearance of objects based on the learner’s actions—for example, if they hover over or click on something. They give your learners visual cues to let them know things like:

• Which objects are clickable
• Which objects they’ve already clicked on 
• Which object is currently selected

Using button states is a great way to make your course easier to navigate and interact with. To learn more about object states, check out our article Everything You Need to Know About States in Storyline 360.

2. Copy States from Default Buttons

In Storyline 360, there are two main types of buttons: default buttons and custom buttons. Default buttons can be found in the Insert tab.

One advantage of default buttons is that they come with five prebuilt states— Normal, Hover, Down, Visited, and Disabled.

If you want a more customized look, you can create buttons out of almost any object in Storyline—such as a shape or an image—simply by adding your own states and a trigger.

But does that mean you have to create all these states manually? Luckily, no! You can copy the states from a prebuilt button to your shape using the Format Painter. Simply insert a default button, click on the Format Painter, and select your custom shape, as shown in the GIF below:

And just like that, you’ve created states for your shape! 

3. Add Icons to Built-In Buttons

In addition to having built-in states, another cool thing about using the built-in buttons is that they give you the possibility to insert an icon. Simply open up the Format tab, and choose the icon you’d like from the drop-down menu:

From there, you can either choose to use the icon alone, or add some text to label it. It’s up to you!

4. Create Button Sets

Another cool feature that Storyline 360 offers is button sets. When you create a button set, that group of buttons behaves like a radio button in a multiple choice question—meaning only one button can be selected at a time. If a second button is selected, the first button is automatically deselected. This can be super useful if you’re creating a tabs interaction, for example.

To define a button set, all you have to do is select the buttons you want to include in the set, right-click, and choose the button set you’d like to add them to.

Check out this tutorial on working with button sets for a step-by-step walk-through.

More Resources

Looking for more Storyline 360 tips from the pros? Check out these awesome resources:

• Top 5 Storyline Tips You Might Have Missed
• 3 Things to Do Before Building Your Storyline 360 Course
• Your One-Stop Shop for Storyline 360 Quiz-Building Tips
• Quick Answers to 6 Frequently Asked Storyline 360 Questions

Want to try working with buttons in Storyline 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.