Blurry Notes text in the player - Storyline 2

Oct 17, 2014

Robert Lengacher
By Robert Lengacher

FIXED! On 5/5/2016, Articulate Storyline 2 Update 8 was released, which essentially fixed this issue. You can download the latest version of Storyline 2 at this link. New issues:

  • If your Notes tab in the player is first or the only tab, the slide title may run into the Notes text. This can be fixed by either adding a line/paragraph break at the beginning of the notes on each slide (approx. 2-3 sec. per slide to fix) or by moving the Notes tab so that it's not first. 
  • Also the dividing line between the slide title and notes in the Notes tab may cut through the title. This line can be "removed" by modifying the Player Colors>Transcript>div element to match the background color (Menu>bg)

My team is experiencing the following problem with all projects in Articulate Storyline 2. In the Player, the Menu text is crisp and clear, but the Notes text is noticeably blurry. The low text quality looks like the anti-aliasing is out of control. This phenomenon occurs in projects that are upgraded from Storyline 1 and in projects that are newly created in Storyline 2. 

To demonstrate the issue more clearly, I created a project in Storyline 1 with identical slides that have a different 12-pt font in the Notes area. As you can see in this demo, the Menu and Notes text are both equally crisp and clear. I then opened that same exact project in Storyline 2, which automatically upgraded it. As you can see in this demo, the Notes text in the published output is noticeably blurry / fuzzy. I have also attached both Storyline project files in a zip archive.

Other things I've tried that had no effect:

  • Updating Storyline 2 - We're running the latest version that was released on Oct. 3, 2014.
  • Changing the player display properties to be resize the browser to the optimal size and to lock the player at the optimal size.
  • Using the Clear Formatting icon
  • Trying larger and smaller font sizes.

I'm getting push-back from clients about this noticeable difference in the published output, so any help to get this resolved will be helpful.

124 Replies
Belen Ferrer
over 8 years ago10/15/15 at 5:05 pm (UTC)

Hi Carla,

Do be careful with the "Lock player at optimal size" setting, since learners with larger screens won't be able to get the lesson to scale up and, more importantly, those with smaller screens will have to scroll around to use your course. It's a solution that my team couldn't use because student experience was just not good, it interfered with their learning.

Udi Gilboa
over 8 years ago10/15/15 at 5:46 pm (UTC)

Leslie,

What Carla has shared is not a solution. The notes text still remains blurred and the students cannot use the developed module with this proposed implementation.

Articulate keeps ignoring the customers community complaining about this problem and avoiding a simple patch to be implemented on SL2 to resolve this issue. It is time for a senior Articulate executive to share a planned solution in this thread!!

Justin Wilcox
over 8 years ago10/15/15 at 6:43 pm (UTC)

Hi guys. I'll be updating this thread when I get some more information as to the why we moved away from how we were doing things in Storyline 1. We completely understand that crisp text is preferable to blurry text. I should have some specifics about what changed between versions so I can shed a little light on this for you. 

Justin Wilcox
over 8 years ago10/19/15 at 7:26 pm (UTC)

Hi guys and sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. I spoke with our quality assurance team to get a sense of what happened between versions. We added additional formatting support in Storyline 2. When we did this, we used an image for the slide notes versus actual text. This is why you are seeing the loss in quality, particularly when the presentation is not being viewed at optimal quality. We do understand the importance of the crispness of text and we are taking a look at what we can do moving forward to improve the quality while not losing the additional text formatting. 

Robert Lengacher
over 8 years ago10/26/15 at 6:07 pm (UTC)

Justin - Thanks for providing the clearest explanation for why this problem exists in Storyline 2 and not in Storyline 1. I can't speak for other developers, but for our team, the enhanced text formatting options in Storyline 2 are great for content on the main slide; however, we do not need to have any fancy formatting available in the Notes. For my team, the basic options available in most rich text format editors (e.g. font, text size, text color, bold, italics, bulleted list, ordered list, and indent controls) would be sufficient. If this needs to be submitted as a feature request, I can do that, but it might be good to see if there's a way to poll users.

Justin Wilcox
over 8 years ago10/26/15 at 7:01 pm (UTC)

Hi Robert. 

Thanks for the feedback. This issue is definitely something we are looking at for future versions. We are actively discussing what the options are. I know that text quality is something that is really important and we will see what we can do moving forward. If there is any news about this specific issue, I will be sure to update the thread. 

Gwen Epstein
over 8 years ago11/10/15 at 11:42 pm (UTC)

Hi Justin, I concur with Robert --it is great to know the reason why we are seeing the fuzzy text. Thanks!

Do you happen to know if there are other cases where text appears as images? I am seeing blurry text also on the main content of the story (in rare cases, it seems to be when experimenting with custom story format sizes).

Is text always represented as an image in storyline 2?

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