Best practice for navigation?

Hello Bjarne, and welcome to Heroes!

Adding the custom buttons to the master slide would be the easiest route.

Can you explain more about what type of trouble you are having with the triggers and accessing objects?

It could have to do with the order in which the triggers are executed.

Hi Bjarne, 

I'm assuming that you're using Storyline 2, correct? You can communicate between the base and master slide using a variable. See this thread for one example:

http://community.articulate.com/forums/p/57712/308737.aspx#308737

The secret is creating a set of numeric variables that you can use to fire trigger listeners. Something like:

• goMenu
• goNext
• goBack
• deactivateNext
• activateNext

Now your buttons on the master slide will add one to the appropriate variable. For example, your next button would add one to goNext.

Out on your base slide, you can use a trigger to pick up on this when the variable is changed. The example in the linked thread was developed in SL1. There was an ugly bug that would cause the event to chain and skip slides. That's why there is a condition and delay on the setup object. 

This is handy for bubbling events across barriers. You can use this method to communicate from the base slide to the master slide and vice versa.

Thank you very much for your inspiring answers! With those, I was able to overcome several obstacles, but I'm still in doubt if I handle navigation efficiently..

 

1) For example - in a custom designed submenu, I have 9 topics (3 in this prototype). Each topic is a separate scene, ending with a quiz. Initially, only the first topic is available, with the next topic unlocked once the quiz is passed. Passed or failed topics, are marked with a checkmark or cross using button states and trigges on variables set in the result-succes/fail layers.

 

 

 

It works ok, but results in a lot of triggers once all topics are implemented - is that the optimal way to achieve this kind of functionality? Parts of triggers shown below:

 

2) Finally, and even trickier, I'd like to use a custom button in my quiz layout to submit the answers (multible choice interaction) instead of the submit-button in the player... I have managed to accomplish that using Steves trick (thanks) and setting a variable in the layout. However, I'm importing questions from excel into questionbanks, and if using the variable-trick, I have to edit each and every question and add a trigger that submit answers on variable change. That seems cumbersome, and I'm wondering if there is a smarter way?

 

Thank you once again - your help is very appreciated.

Bjarne

Will need to think on your first question. I believe for that it's just going to take a lot of triggers. Luckily, it's just in one place. For the second question, yes. To bubble the submission up to the base slide, you'd need to add a trigger at the base level to submit the interaction.

One of the things I do with questions is build a template question and copy / paste that to make a new question. I do this since I like to have my stem on the left, choices on the right and feedback slide up from the bottom. I also tend to do a lot of customization with triggers (much like you're trying to do here). Most of the time I end up creating 3 or 4 template questions and use those as patterns to copy / paste in new questions. This way, the Storyline question master strangeness doesn't get in the way of my obsessive need to control the layout my way