Choose how states should work when grouping objects

Dec 30, 2022

Joel O.
By Joel O.

Hi, 

I have a menu slide with many objects (pictures, ovals, text), some of them having hover states and being disabled until their assigned variable reaches the proper value. 

Now I grouped them and wanted to move and animate the groups as a whole, and keep them grouped in order to have them share the same entry effect and not have an unmanageable timeline that does look like a total mess.

Now, when those objects are grouped, it seems that the hover states apply to all the group at once, but not the disabled state. Fine to me, I just added a disabled state and made it the initial state on the other objects of the group.

So isn't this a bug ? Shouldn't the objects keep their own states when grouped ? And when there are concurrent states in the group objects, which of them will prevail ?

Of course, group states do not seem feasible without loosing each object individuality, which would be a regression I'd say. That said, couldn't there be some kind of group options, like "keep the states distinct", "Choose hover state", ... ?

Anyways, please tell me if a should file an improvement request in your bug tracker.

Thanks for your help :)

5 Replies
Jose Tansengco
over 1 year ago12/30/22 at 2:32 pm (UTC)

Hi Joel,

Thanks for reaching out! 

Objects won't keep their own states when grouped because states can only be added to individual objects, not grouped objects. You can check out this article which contains some of the most frequently asked questions about Grouped Objects in Storyline 360: 

The only way to keep states of objects distinct is to avoid grouping them. I’ll be happy to pass your thoughts on improving the behavior of grouped objects in Storyline 360 to our product team, but you can also feel free to detail them more through a feature request! 

Joel O.
over 1 year ago12/30/22 at 2:46 pm (UTC)

Thanks for your answer,

I stumbled on this resource and yes, it had clear explanations on how grouping works. 

I circumvented my problem by creating a disabled initial state for all objects in the group so they are not clickable, and when I change the state of one only via triggers, only that one is being activated, not the whole group, which is fine (hope you'll keep it as such).

So it's kinda solved, but in that case the default behavior to automatically make clickable the whole group was to me detrimental and caused extra work, that's why I'll file quickly a feature request because we should be able to choose if we want or not the behavior of an object to be transmitted to others when grouping.

Math Notermans
over 1 year ago01/19/23 at 9:43 am (UTC)

I do think Group behaviour on States needs some rethinking. When you group multiple UX elements, eg. buttons and checkboxes...you loose their individual behaviour and get grouped hover behaviour. That cannot be intended as you want each UX element to behave as it did before.
Do check my post and sample here.
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/buggy-behaviour-of-buttons-and-checkboxes-in-a-group

https://360.articulate.com/review/content/d4e2610c-ef4d-4eca-84bc-97bed7c4a9f6/review

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