Click to Reveal Activity - Disabled Triggers required issue
Aug 29, 2022
Found a strange issue with Disabled Triggers being required in a slide activity to correctly hide/unhide states of other objects. I'm using a slide activity I've always used in the past. We check against 3 checkmarks states that are initially hidden and then when all those states are Normal via a button click/layer reveal, we set the Instruction text on the Base Layer to Hidden.
Note: In previous courses, we used to check against the Next Button state as well but because we're converting this to a video, we're removing the Navigation buttons globally. This is when I noticed that the hiding of the Instruction Text was not being hidden after the checkmarks were set to Normal like it used to.
In short, once I remove either of the 2 disabled trigger, the Instruction Text does not hide appropriately. I was under the impression that disabled triggers were not complied in the Preview/Published build so it's strange to see them required to work appropriately. They seemed tied to the activity some how.
Please see SL360 review link for correct and incorrect activity comparisons:
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/3a1dc283-c6e3-446c-bd7c-f7b0a8d54acc/review/
I've also attached the file.
2 Replies
First, the soapbox.
I never use "state of is ..." in the When part of my triggers. "State is" is not an action, so it is not a good point to initiate a trigger. Also, there have been reported lots of different occasions when that doesn't work. So I always write my triggers to initiate when an actual action happens. I put the "State of ..." statements in the conditions (if) part of the triggers. which in my opinion is the only place they can trusted to work reliably. That's my opinion. Of course, if you use "State of" this way and it works for you, feel free to continue. I also note that most of the time, I identify a section as completed when the learner takes an action to indicate having finished, or at the end of the timeline, rather than the beginning. That increases the chance that all the content is viewed. But that's another soapbox. I also know that the built-in states self-identify as a Normal state, so I'm surprised that Hidden doesn't. Again, if it works for you don't change it.
That said, I'm convinced that the slide has some corruption somewhere. Your description indicates corruption. Also, if you select one of the four triggers attached to the Check Marks, The arrow to move them up and down shows, but you can't move any of them. Another indication of corruption. I would normally start by suggesting you delete those four triggers and rebuilding them from scratch, but I tried that, and it didn't work. The next thing I tried was to take each Check Mark, edit the states, and duplicate the Normal state. I changed every trigger that references them to use the name of the new state, and that worked. Which may indicate that it is the states that is corrupted. That solves the immediate symptom, but I wouldn't trust it, because the original problem (probably corruption) is still there. My personal opinion is that there is more than one problem, and they are working together. I would import the other slides into a new project, and rebuild this one entirely from scratch.
I would say there are few more problems are there that are causing this problem.